Jump to content

janwas

WFG Retired
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    2.733

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Posts posted by janwas

  1. Israel invents a "force field"?

    in Introductions & Off-Topic Discussion

    Posted

    Right, but how many Abrams tanks have been knocked out in Iraq? Obviously the Iraqi army tried to take them out during the "conventional" phase of the war, but couldn't scratch them. So, why is it so arrogant to assume something special took one out when they performed so beautifully in combat? Just askin. Ain't hatin.

    That's a good question.

    First, the number of tanks knocked out: 2 total losses, guesstimate 20..100 disabled (1, 2.). The official figure of 8 is really BS, because mobility kills and abandoned all-but-destroyed tanks of course count as 'lost' (even if crew survived).

    It is not a realistic picture that's painted when the media says "none were scratched"/"Abrams is invincible".

    Now why weren't there more losses? The most modern tanks the Iraqis could muster were some T-72 (export variant). Those were developed in the early 70s - some 10 years before Abrams, not counting the latter's various upgrades. Worse, they didn't even have real ammo for them. It is kind of a joke that destroying those is judged an accomplishment :)

    (and one doesn't even know whether the few dozen T-72 actually fell victim to tanks or air - I'd bet on the latter)

    BTW, the Abrams is practically a tank destroyer because its armor is very good for frontal engagements, but too weak from the sides/rear (as seen in above pics, one solid hit to skirt or rear or turret bustle *penetrates*, often leading to ammo cookoff). That means it's great for large-scale tank engagements where the enemy is in front (which was of course its design goal), but bad for urban combat where enemy can be behind or above you.

    So let's summarize here. I have seen various flamewars as to "which modern tank is the best?", all fanned by their respective partisans/zealots. Thankfully there hasn't been any real tank battle, so the question remains open. There is one bit of food for thought I'd like to pass on to balance the picture usually presented by the media:

    against a modern foe, most any MBT will fall to one ATGM hit (from beyond visual range). As a small consolation, Leo2A6 tanks have some protection against this and T90 has good countermeasures. Abrams looks to have the worst hand dealt here, actually.

    Did not know you had a similar interest Jan What's your main focus? I focus mostly on small arms (hence my rant on the RPG ), although I have a keen interest in air combat and surface forces.

    That's cool! :D

    I have an interest in tanks - no surprise, since my dad is in charge of German tank R&D.

  2. Israel invents a "force field"?

    in Introductions & Off-Topic Discussion

    Posted · Edited by janwas

    Paul, I share your interest :)

    "RPG's - crude weapons".......trust me, with the newer projectiles RPG-7s are far from crude.

    Indeed. Remember the Abrams tank knocked out in Iraq? There was talk of "rail guns" and high-tech experimental weapons, but the culprit is now believed to have been an RPG-7 with a newer HEAT warhead.

    heh, it is amusing to think of the arrogance that must underlie those statements ("of course our tank is invincible!"). In reality, firepower will always defeat armor eventually.

    The Abrams is only now getting reactive armor plates (as part of TUSK upgrade), which have been used in Chechnya for years. Now they can also have their 'revolutionary' "force field", which has only been around for 20 years. What will they re-invent with glorious fanfare next?

    hm, that article is a bit short of details. I wonder if this APS can protect against KE as well as CE rounds?

  3. How do you organise your appointments and things you need to do?

    in Introductions & Off-Topic Discussion

    Posted

    heh, interesting question. I've had TODO lists for quite a while because at some point I just couldn't trust my memory (either it's getting worse, or there's just more stuff to keep track of :) ). About 2 months ago those were just constantly getting longer, so here's what I do now.

    Separate plain text files for: calender (future appointments), todo (<- that day), mid-term stuff that needs to be done and recurrent weekly times, e.g. sports.

    Each of those are displayed (via notepad) on every Windows startup, and I copy stuff for that day into the TODO (only takes a few seconds). Over the day, I always check back at the computer what's next and tick those off :D

    A bit primitive, but it works.

    Battlefield 2

    in Gaming Discussion & Match-making

    Posted

    The patch is highly recommended for the dolphin-diving fix alone.

    Unfortunately it severely crimps attack helis: rocket pod size, minigun damage and hitpoints are all reduced, while AA missiles lock on faster and track better.

    That translates to: mobile AA is a serious danger; no more invincible helis.

    Solution is to hide behind hills, woods and buildings; pop up quickly to have a look and shoot TV missile. This is the way it is IRL anyway.

    Conclusion: there will be whining after people get utterly wasted by flak, but the game is (to be honest) better for it.

    Mark and all other programmers, I need help..

    in Computer Desk

    Posted

    Was helping Tim with this via IM. I think part of the problem is that the array is indexed 0..N-1 (N=num tasks), but accessed as 1..N (since id=0 means i_have_no_parent).

    There's at least one other bug in there: the IDs that actually have children are reported as having some, and also having none (in the next line of the output).

    BTW, here's how to decode it:

    %d\n (single number on a line) - an id that has no children

    %d :: %d [:: %d]\n (numbers separated by :: - the first is the id, the next numbers are its children)

    Wish you lots of debug mojo :)

    Gas Row Hits Holocaust Memorial

    in Hall of Intellectuals

    Posted

    If I decide to build something, it is of course my prerogative to choose who's going to do it. Even so, I don't have to be petty about it - see below. What's absolutely not done is to unilaterally cancel a contract, throwing away everything built so far, having someone else (the German taxpayer) foot the bill, and all because of a reason like that.

    So let's recap the logic here: having poured the concrete for those pillars, and coated some of them, the contractor is found to be evil - they happened to own a subsidiary that manufactured rat poison 65+ years ago. Therefore, the contract must be stopped, and we can start over.

    This is utterly wrong for 2 reasons:

    1) you will have a hard time finding a company NOT somehow linked to past events; anyway, are we jumping on American companies that manufactured parts for the atom bombs dropped on Japan? Consider the morality here of manufacturing rat poison that someone decided to use to kill people, vs. building to order a weapon of mass destruction. Finally, we should take issue with the high level decision, not with the company that happened to produce something - they are not to blame.

    2) German companies recently paid billions in reparations for any damages caused, notwithstanding #1, and the fact that the current management, or workers, or shareholders, didn't have anything to do with it. If you argue that they profited from business done in the war, without which they wouldn't be where they are today, and should therefore pay retroactively, then you advocate turning the entire USA over to any descendents of the Native Americans and slaves you can find. Once you start this, where do you stop? Further, why do people keep coming for more after we pay restitution? Belay that. The answer is obvious. A better question is, why we are unable to do anything about it.

    This kind of behavior is mind-boggling, absolutely shameless, and a good way to make yourself unpopular.

    Oh, a similar issue (which I posted in a discussion in the gamedev lounge; copy+paste):

    >

    I am also disgusted with other actions of the Israeli state that don't make the news (and predate Sharon). Example: we basically gave them 2 modern subs around 1998. The occasion: Israel made a large fuss of German firms supplying components used in Scuds fired in the Gulf war; they pulled this card after they couldn't find a US shipyard willing (or able?) to build them the subs. These were fitted with nuclear sub-launched cruise missiles as a deterrent (note: making Isreal the 3rd nation with this capability). Around 2000, apparently worried the newly inflamed conflict would spread to a regional war, they urgently asked for another.

    I am also told the Israeli government asked for a new set of Atropin injections because their current stocks (also part of this deal, I believe) had reached their shelf life; they then sold the older batch to the Palestinians.

    Amazing.

    <

    Oh, by the way, I believe Schröder has managed to withstand the latest blackmail thus far - AFAIK, the 3rd gift submarine (used to threaten Israel's neighbors) hasn't been built yet. Understandable though: if word gets out that he's blowing millions in such a manner, while everyone else has to cut back since Germany is sinking in debt, he'd be lynched.

    *sigh* It is time for this nonsense to end.

    What are you listening to right now?

    in Arts and Entertainment

    Posted

    Paal: you also have the original Crimson Tide soundtrack (Hans Zimmer)? That's better than the Nightwish version IMO ^_^

    SUD: Guardian, Rhapsody, Hammerfall - good call, those are my favorites!

    Last: Hammerfall - Heeding the Call (metal = good for coding+debugging)

    Current: In Extremo - Werd ich am Galgen hochgezogen

    Next: The Rock - Hummel gets the Rockets (Hans Zimmer again)

    Mathematics

    in Hall of Intellectuals

    Posted

    Correct. Congratulations!

    I had it in printed form (badly), and I just didn't see it for 10 min or so. Didn't think it'd be that easy ^_^

    edit: remembered a good one - try this for size!

    1 = sqrt(1) = sqrt((-1) * (-1)) = sqrt(-1) * sqrt(-1) = i * i = -1

    ^_^

  21. Language Support

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hi folks, a little background: supported languages isn't just a matter of translation: it also affects hows text is stored in the engine, and how we display it.

    The easiest for us would be to use the ISO-8859-1 codepage - we'd only support all Western European languages (i.e. Latin-based alphabets). We could also use an 8-bit encoding for other alphabet-based languages, but we'd have to remember what codepage we're using when editing/displaying the text. (Hebrew chars and say French might have the same value).

    The full monty would be using Unicode - this is necessary if we want to support Asian languages. That would entail different text processing in the engine, as well as a special display algorithm (we can't pack 10000 chars into a texture - we would need to have a font engine render our text from .TTF).

    Now neither of these are problems, we just need to know up front. Hence, how much do we value translations into non-Western-European languages, especially Asian?

×
×
  • Create New...