Agiel

@Bendu Can you tell me what your get-up is in your pics? As compared to Dark Souls 1, it's hard for me to find a look that suits me.

Picked it up as well. Spent about an hour in the first task of making breakfast for an eagle since it's as if the task given to you assumed that you the player have lived in a Mongolian Yurt your entire life. Went crazy trying to figure out where the mortar and pestle that was needed to grind up the ginger was as although I had a general idea of what they looked like, I didn't know where some Mongolians living on the steppes kept them (on top of the crockery). Although the game has the kind of adventure game designer logic that aggravates me, otherwise having a good time. Am probably about half-way through the game if the level select screen is anything to go by, and the fiction of that world is certainly drawing me in. I still don't really know what to think of it, but it's definitely an interesting game. I'm probably nowhere near as far as you because I'm splitting time between Cradle and The Talos Principle: Road to Gehenna. Finished it in probably about 6 hours or so, and it probably would have taken me a bit longer if I searched every nook and cranny for the extra fluff. I honestly see a lot of shades of Dark Souls in the narrative, insomuch that a lot of the gaps left by what is explicitly told to you has to be filled in with stuff you have to actively seek out in the game world and analyse (like how a lot of Dark Souls lore comes from item descriptions, or by the fact that this guy's body was found near the sick spider lady). That, and at risk of sounding like a cultural and linguistic chauvinist, a lot of the confusion can also be attributed to localisation issues (hint: When they say "red pot" they mean "red wok" and when they say "solar battery" they mean "solar panel"). The Steam store page also has one of the most disastrous translation jobs I've seen this side of Ice Pick Lodge's Pathologic.

Picked it up as well. Spent about an hour in the first task of making breakfast for an eagle since it's as if the task given to you assumed that you the player have lived in a Mongolian Yurt your entire life. Went crazy trying to figure out where the mortar and pestle that was needed to grind up the ginger was as although I had a general idea of what they looked like, I didn't know where some Mongolians living on the steppes kept them (on top of the crockery). Although the game has the kind of adventure game designer logic that aggravates me, otherwise having a good time. Am probably about half-way through the game if the level select screen is anything to go by, and the fiction of that world is certainly drawing me in.

There is the Ault Report AKA Project Red Baron which was a massive study on air to air encounters over Vietnam, It's a dense and rather impenetrable tome however, but its conclusions basically were: 1. Almost universally losses (on both sides) were attributed to the pilot never knowing that his assailant was there. Meaning situational awareness was key to survival in air combat. 2. There was a need for Dissimilar Air Combat Training to prepare pilots against adversaries flying aircraft with different flight characteristics. In other words, take full advantage of the strengths of one's aircraft and minimise the importance of the strengths of his opponent's aircraft in an encounter. This led to the formation of the US Air Force's and Navy's "Aggressor" squadrons. 3. A pilot who had managed to survive 10 sorties could see his chances of seeing the end of his tour alive massively increased. So the "Red Flag" exercises were created in order to simulate as realistically as possible those 10 sorties not just for US forces but also allied forces. This also served to increase interoperability between those air forces as well. A little summary of a portion can be found here: http://elementsofpower.blogspot.com/2014/02/air-to-air-combat-over-southeast-asia.html

ah Service industry, I do not miss you. I've found that people who are a little well off (but not excessivly so) are the absolutely worst customers ever. Exceedingly greedy, impatient and rude. Extremely poor and extremely rich people tend to tip even (in a country where you don't tip). Just shows that humans can't handle a little power, we apperantly need it all - or non I believe that by law everyone should work in a retail or customer service job for at least one month in their life so they learn not to give the cashier, waiter, driver, etc. s***. That said, having worked in retail in my college years, irate customers aren't usually the ones who get at me, since I tend to be rather empathetic and understand that they have no way of knowing my position. No, what gets at me is upper management who should know better that isn't constructive in the slightest, detests innovation on the part of its employees, and expects to do more with less when in fact when you get less hours, less resources, and less incentives, surprise surprise, you do less.

Kind of got a laugh at how poorly chosen that bottom right image was. Or maybe it's a case of Trump showing his true colours.

Stupid question : how is that F-35 program seen in the USA? I read a rather long article in a French magazine a few months back which painted an absolutely horrible picture : completely over budget, horribly inefficient, software was ****ed up, cannons weren't working, ordinance capacity were ridiculously low, stealth was a scam, it couldn't get within 25 kilometers of a lightning storm lest it catches on fire, it couldn't dream of performing as well as the planes it was supposed to replace and it had become obsolete for the new kind of war that the USA started fighting after 9/11. The F-35 program still receives fierce criticism to the US, most of it arguably ill-informed in the eyes of most in the know. This is criticism borne out of a well-meaning attitude that in an environment in which a peer or near-peer power is no longer an imminent threat to the US, its allies, or its interests, such programs seem rather "extravagant." However, I would argue that there is importance in the deterrence value these programs provide (even disregarding the US nuclear arsenal, which I _do_ think is largely extraneous, countries like Iran and North Korea wouldn't dream of doing anything drastic because they know the conventional forces of the US and its coalition partners would put the kibosh on that), and since the US depends on an all-volunteer force for its military, our defence tax dollars should be dedicated to making sure our men and women in uniform have the best equipment at their disposal.

Gulf War Air Power Survey - Selected Figures: http://imgur.com/a/ftxZv

Double post.

F-35 in a knife fight in a phone booth, modeled in Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations.

The high watermark has always been Combat Evolved (since you never forget your first love) and Reach for me. Particularly with Bungie no longer at the helm, I don't think the series will ever be as good as those two. I am also of the controversial opinion that the Library in Combat Evolved was actually a pretty darned good level. Playing it co-op on Legendary was like playing Left 4 Dead eight years before Left 4 Dead was out.

I'm sure Woldan can enlighten us on the nature of the "Schützenverein".

Reminds me of this conundrum: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2014/05/14/_99_percent_invisible_by_roman_mars_designing_warning_symbols_for_the_nation.html

Today on my way home back from work I passed by a Mobil that yesterday had prices at around $3.75 for a gallon of Unleaded. Today it was at $4.65, and I did a double take and incredulously thought to myself: "Did Iran sink a tanker in the Gulf with a Silkworm while I was at work or something?"

Oldie but goodie. http://on.cc.com/O3Szpb "If only there was an organization that was sworn to defend that free speech." "...we don't have to worry about [the Marines'] rights. It's not an equal relationship." She at least has the second part right about the men and women who voluntarily sign a contract with unlimited liability. One of my former signatures (emphasis mine):

The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal, by David E. Hoffman Non-fiction account of the CKSPHERE case that passed on critical intelligence on Soviet sensors and avionics development to the CIA (partly responsible for the hugely disproportionate kill ratios in Desert Storm and Allied Force), and proof that Russians should never trust a man named "Adolf" ever again.

Trends in Air-to-Air Combat: Implications for Future Air Superiority

Hurl and I were referring to the private dances. In any case, not like you have to head for Vegas for strip clubs. Plenty in any big city no matter what state you're in (save for perhaps Utah).

I know the sentiment. I may be largely single ever since I graduated from college, but I have never, ever been desperate enough to even consider having to spend money on anything resembling "companionship."

Even disregarding the need for an aircraft that corresponds to future threats, the RCAF has to replace its jets sooner or later. Fighter jets are complex machines and the parts and (more importantly) the airframes have limited lifespans. The procurement run for the CF-18s ran from 1982 to 1988, and as the years go by more maintenance hours are needed to keep the aircraft airworthy. For instance, the F-14 was replaced because they took twelve hours of maintenance time for every hour they spent in the air compared to the three hours of maintenance per flight hour of the F/A-18C. As the years go by the Canadians could cut corners on maintenance in order to keep up with their pace of sorties, but recently we've seen the consequences of that (and the prove that they can be potentially lethal). Last month the Russians experienced three crashes in five days, likely because their air planners never envisioned their current tempo of operations until major reforms and modernisation programs were complete (to which they aren't anywhere close to).

Former F/A-18 and F-16 driver writes on "Why the 'F-35 v F-16' Article is Garbage."

I wouldn't be surprised if a doctrine that incorporates "wolfpacks" of drones working in tandem with manned fighters for target acquisition and coordination is being worked on. I remember reading that while kill ratios for Russian missiles were worse than their US counterparts, Russian doctrine simply called for MOAR missiles to be available per engagement. Having a bunch of unmanned missile dispensers flying alongside stealth(ish) fighters would solve that without necessitating a costly redesign of weapons systems or aircraft. Weirdly enough, that's what DARPA is envisaging leveraging F-35's sensor fusion capabilities and the payload capacity of cargo aircraft, and even a proposed interceptor variant of the B-1B Lancer (with the unfortunate name, "B-1R": Going a step further, there has been a proposal for long-endurance turbo-fan powered "suicide interceptors" loitering a given airspace that attack positively ID'ed tracks entering its airspace with a second-stage rocket booster for the intercept stage.

They have said pretty much exactly that sort of thing before though, prior to the Vietnam War when they were making F-4s with no cannon because they'd only need missiles. The end result was the F4 getting a cannon and the F14/15/16/18. Though they could be right, this time. ...which kind of ignores the fact that virtually all air combat kills since the 1982 Lebanon War were done with missiles. The kind of indictment of A/A missiles based on teething problems from their first ever combat usage would be akin to saying tanks had no place in maneuver warfare based on their initial showing at the Somme.

E-M diagrams from tests by Marine Corps test pilots say it compares favourably from the legacy F/A-18Cs they are graduating from. http://archive.defensenews.com/article/20110516/DEFSECT01/105160302/F-35-Tests-Proceed-Revealing-F-18-Like-Performance Note that the legacy Hornets are widely regarded as among the most agile fighters out there short of the super-manueverable Rafales and Typhoons out there. There is a reason the Blue Angels fly them, and why they're used to simulate asymmetric fighter threats by Navy "Aggressor" Squadrons: So "growth" can be defined as "its potential can be unlocked to match the performance of projected, notional threats (if said threats even arrive)". Which may be a bit of a moot point in an age of Helmet Mounted Displays and advanced high-off boresight IR-guided missiles; there is absolutely no aircraft that can ever out-fly an AIM-9X or an ASRAAM flying at Mach 2.5 and pulling 70Gs.

War is Boring is good for its historical and political commentary and bad for its technological and doctrinal analysis. And honestly sounds more like the writer is deliberately twisting the words of said pilot and omitting stuff that's inconvenient . original piece from Aviation Week: http://aviationweek.com/defense/f-35-flies-against-f-16-basic-fighter-maneuvers