RE: Old Europe

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 23-01-03 AT 11:35 PM (GMT)]You are right. I think when dealing with Hitler post 1940, “Containment” would have been the better option on how to deal with the then Nazi Germany . We would make a “no fly” zone out of Vichy France. }>

RE: Any wide eyed Mac zeolots here

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 23-01-03 AT 05:15 AM (GMT)]I do a lot of photo retouching. Up until Windows 2000 and WinXP, Nothing on the Windows side of the house was reliable. Windows 98 did not use protected memory and would “Blue Screen of Death” you when doing a lot of Photoshop stuff ( swap file ).

Win NT was unfriendly to a lot of high end scanners and photo output devices.

The Mac was stable and hooking up to a professional scanner or output device was a breeze. In the mid-90s Kodak came out with highy productivity software like KPIS for the Mac used for high volume photo printing. Stable, reliable, etc.

I started on Photoshop in 1990 on a Mac IIFx ( 68000 motorola chip ) lots of RAM hooked up to devices like the early Nikon film scanner, Kodak XL7700 printer via a GPIB board. The photography was stored on a 650 meg. optical disk ( CD witers ( 2x ) would come out the year after in the $40000 ( U.S. ) price range 🙂 At this time Windows was a joke for this work. Windows 3.0 had a 16 Meg RAM limit. Windows 3.1 fixed this but still, the whole platform was unstable for this kind of work. In high end photo processing, equipment that isn’t reliable isn’t tollerated.

Now. While OSX is cool, Unix, and fast, it is going though font management problems and hardware legacy issues ( if you have an expensive $20000 (U.S.) scanner that is over 2 years old you may be in trouble. The shoe is on the other foot.

Now what I use are Win 2000 and XP machines hooked up to digital cameras via firewire and output it to the Kodak ML500 printers ( also firewire ) Everything works great.

Years ago for certain jobs there was nothing that could touch the MAC. It took the Windows environment this long to catch up. Kinda sad. Now big articles in MAC magazines are how to fix all the OSX problems.

RE: Cost of portrait photography

If we give you good advice, you have to post the photo here }>

Get a friend to take the photo for you. As long as it looks nice and is finished well, they will be more than happy with the photo.

RE: Korea..an example?

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 22-01-03 AT 05:46 AM (GMT)]What I suggest isn’t isolationist, it is just practical.

England: Remove the F-15 Wing and KC-135 tanker unit. U2 support.

Germany: Remove everything.

Aviano: Keep what ever is needed to support NATOs effort in that area.

Korea: Remove everything. S. Korea has enough firepower to defend itself.

Japan: Remove everything from Kadena except Recon platforms. Remove the F-16 unit from Misawa. Remove most of the airlift from Yokota. Keep the COMINT/SIGINT assets in place.

Bringing these assests back to the states would allow for a lot of savings in $$.

It would be natural that we deploy units to these countries occasionally for exercises, so practice in combat readiness would not suffer. Also it would leave more active duty forces available to do more important things and take some of the workload off of the Reserve and Guard.

RE: Libya to head UN’s Human Rights Commission

Hey Geforce. Maybe that intern job at the U.N. is open. You would be perfect for it. Maybe even a whole career path }>

RE: So I guess it’s just a matter of ‘when’ the US is going to war

What is sickly amusing is that most of the anti-war hollywood leftys and other similar types were strangely silent when we were bombing Belgrade. Of course it was their boy who was in office so they it seems they also have a double standard.

RE: Low flying…..

Great pics. I don’t know about there, but crop duster accidents here in the states when they happen, are pretty dramatic.

RE: My Short Pilot Career Thus Far

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 16-01-03 AT 03:14 AM (GMT)]Great work Phantom. WYSIWYG is right ( and I know I passed this advice on before ) be religious in your flight planning and always have a calulator and always know what the aircraft weight is. Some people that crack up their plane failed to do that. They fly all the time in a lightly loaded ( 172 is a good example ) then one time load up their buddies and all their gear and go flying and as you can guess the aircraft will handle different ( all your speeds and attitude you are used to are different) You are good at remembering things so I am sure you can memorize all the important passages from the 152 and 172. Here are some other things I learned growing up around small aircraft.

* Always make sure the gas caps are on tight/ see to it yourself. You stop at an airport on a trip, a kid comes out and fuels your crate and you get back in and a few minutes away from the airport see your fuel gauges go down fast because the gas caps were not put on tight 🙂

* Become an expert on the weather

* Really get into being an expert at doing cross wind takeoffs and landings with confidence

* Always keep your head moving. ( too many private pilots don’t do this ) I saw a cool feature on a ex Harrier pilot flying a small twin. He never stopped moving his head and was looking outside the cockpit a lot. The example to follow.

* If you get some time someday, get some hands on, spin training from a good instructor.

Anyway great stuff Phantom. I am always partial to the days when my dad had a 150hp 1973 Citabria. It was so fun to ride in.