BilboBaggins

Looked to me like rising debris, being blown by the wind and inferno below.

That video suggests to me -- in the first four seconds of it, the only part where there's any indication of explosion of the plane -- on the ground, not at 30,000 feet -- that the plane indeed crashed, and was not shot down.

I don't think we even know that the MH17 B777 was shot down. In fact, I highly suspect it wasn't. The tragic good news if that were the case might be that recovery of the black box has the possibility of leading to insight into why the other Malaysian Airlines B777, MH370, went down. That's all the speculation I'm willing to venture. Looks like Malaysian Airlines has had a great record since their last crash in 1995, so two of these, on the same plane, so close together in time, most likely is coincidence, but could be symptomatic of something else. I will leave it to the investigators to figure that out.

As before: PLEASE refrain from the stupid speculation game. Everyone and their brother is jumping to make political hay of this for any purpose they can attach the event to, and we simply have NO idea what happened. And, for reasons different from MH370, it may also be difficult to resolve (tribal warzone, anyone?).

This has been an interesting thread, lots of thoughtful (and entertaining) responses. I can't help but think this guy's financial strategies - do new business to cover old debt you can't pay back - is learned from the current state of the entire, corrupt global financial system, as basically, that's how it operates. And the minute the new "sales" (of financial instruments) slow...... KABOOM! It's criminal whoever's doing it, whatever the scale or seemingly logical justifications. And again, the biggest damage of all? A pervasive destruction of trust. This damages the ability to do business, sustain trade and maintain financial and currency legitimacy, with all the ensuing chaos that entails. Round 'em all up, I say!

You want revealing, go look for a bikini for your Aussie girlfriend at..... :wub:

Pankaj, that's just an artificial construct. Where the sliders are don't matter, the experience does. I have both installed, still, and use them differently. I don't add-on to P3Dv2, I use it as is, and it's great, as is. It is its own intrinsic experience. Here and there I might add in ORBX scenery, as they've been updating their whole library to be P3DV2 compatible. But the "zen" of P3Dv2 is in enjoying what's there, rather than desiring "more" in some sense. Take what is at hand and have fun with it. Learn its own nature. Don't cross with expectations from other flight sims; they all do things differently and have different strengths, and weaknesses.

I know I could easily be happy the rest of my life with my current suite of flight sim software: Rise of Flight, DCS, Battle of Stalingrad (in development), FSX and P3Dv2.2. If I had to stop there, it'd be more than I could master in my remaining years. I'm actually at a point where I may do just that; there are a few incremental add-ons I'd consider, such as ORBX's landclass stuff when it's finalized, but really, what's out now is about all I could ever have imagined it might be. And I started with all this a long, long time ago, when microcomputers (as they were then called) were first invented. :)

I wanted to mention I've found other, better places for Carenado enthusiasts than here at Avsim. Carenado never shows up here. I would like to recommend that this sub-forum be renamed "The Unofficial EAGLESOFT Support Forum." Or "The Unofficial EAGLESOFT Support Forum II," if there already is one. The villagers of that particular tribe seem to have little better to do than to raid the village here, burn the huts and steal the women, every time they see even the slightest hint of smoke from a possible cookout in the distance. So, let's add some clarity to the situation by reorganizing this forum, eh? Steve

I've found weirdness in FSX that can be cleared by a reboot. I wouldn't advise it as a pre-flight every flight necessity, on the contrary, Windows can get quite busy for awhile after a reboot doing "housekeeping," which can introduce all sorts of odd latencies for awhile after a reboot. But if nothing else is helping and you have an issue or a slowdown, sometimes a reboot can be a cure.

Tabs, thanks, I've since confirmed as much, know what to do to defeat Norton360 in this case, and have been giving Bitdefender a serious look, as it seems to get consistently good ratings. The explanation of what's going on is helpful, much appreciated. Ultimately, one way or another, it's all about trust in an online environment.

Yep, all good recommendations. I can also say with confidence that properly installed, maintained and configured, Norton 360 is great and has a lot of flexibility in customizing what you allow/deny, _if_ you know what you're doing. Reality is, no security is fire-and-forget; you need to understand all the technologies, including those built into various browsers, and exactly what they do, to maintain adequate management of both protection and performance. And, in particular, this can vary with what you are doing on the PC, so active management of the software related to the stuff you're doing is really essential. The danger is in thinking any one of these things is sufficient and can just be installed and you're done. A good friend of mine years ago, Loyd Case, always had the best antivirus/malware recommendation: FDISK. . Wipe it all out and install fresh (OS included) every three months or so. And this means don't even restore from backups, you do that, you just restore any problems, too. It's hideous to contemplate but not too onerous if you're not a pack rat.

BillW, sounds worth consideration, thanks.

I'm very much looking forward to their next "expensive eye candy," thank you. I hear digital synths are all crap, too, apparently, according to the analogue purists........ and nothing sounds as good as vinyl! Except leather, maybe....

Gustavo, I've had weird problems with this and other Carenado aircraft where the knobs sometimes don't rotate with the mouse wheel (clicking on the frame of their G1000 seems to somehow "bring it back in focus" and fix that), and yes, where either it seems slow, or sometimes (I suspect mouse acceleration settings) will only increment 10 degrees with each turn of the knob with mouse wheel. Annoying. There may be some logic somewhere re: clicking on the knob (r-click?) changes it between 1-degree or 10-degree rotation speed, but I can't get it to work consistently. Try playing with your mouse sensitivity and wheel speed settings, might help. Or, as I do sometimes, go back to the original FSX keyboard commands, which work just fine (N and then + or - to increment/decrement, etc.).

Yeah, true re: AV. Also means if you don't use it along with a bunch of other techniques..... you're even more vulnerable. I would be suspicious such claims are just more marketing, but I have a brother-in-law who's an expert in cryptology and works professionally in that field, and he's confirmed the validity of such statements (and not just because he makes a living out of it; he's an extremely moral, truthful guy). He also claims that it is quite literally scientifically impossible to provide any real transactional security on the Internet. Juniper Networks among others is moving towards tech that will integrate security directly into a variety of network hardware components, but even that is no guarantee; and the problem with that is, once the hardware's "cracked," it needs replacing. Buy Juniper stock. <g>

FScamp, generally agreed; it's a lot harder, for instance, for the official news in the EU and in the US to pass off the eastern Ukrainians who've been struggling to have a free referendum on whether they want to be part of the Kiev government or not, without being shot, killed, gassed, burned and run over by tanks in the process, as "insurgents." One corporation's "terrorist" is another person's "freedom fighter," and that is only becoming more clear over time. This will, eventually, prevent the kinds of widespread abuses of power and money that are so prevalent now. OTOH: the value of professional, some would call refereed (in academic circles, for journal articles), others would call "curated" (for news -- makes it sound like the News Museum...) information is that there is, ideally, some filtering, translation, interpretation, valid and thoughtful analysis and the context of tested and trained conceptual clarity that is all too absent in the Twitterverse. It's a balancing act; I like the free-for-all, may the most persuasive win, that's democratic... if the playing field is level. Which, usually, it's still not. Richie, not picking on you, just trying to be even-handed and pointing out that we have no "evidence" based on what we see on the internet, only hearsay, really. The bigger issue is, what determines the point at which gossip, innuendo, propaganda, marketing, self-serving and outright lying gives way to trustworthy, validated, accepted by some kind of standard of agreed-upon truth? It's clear to me right now that there's more of all the former than there is the latter. Why? Hard to say; you'd think the "open-ness" of the internet would change that....? Or is it just a dive to the lowest-common-denominator, whatever anyone says is so because they say it's so? Hirdy, well there you go: I specifically made reference to Norton 360. So AVG doesn't "cause problems" -- maybe it's also not _detecting_ problems, that'd be my concern. I'd rather have overkill than have my computer hijacked, whatever the inconvenience involved. Agreed if FSXGenius is scamming, he deserves full prosecution. Only those immediately involved will ever know.

Well, Richie, to be fair: is there evidence of all this other than a couple of Youtube vids, Froogle saying so and maybe some Facebook posts? It may be the case. It may be the case David Love Brice accused Tim Taylor of asking him for bail money to get him out of jail. Or it may be like Bill O'Reilly and Jon Stewart fluffing each others' ratings by generating scandal about each other, both of them being entertainers above all, truth be damned. On the internet, you just don't know. If you're closely involved, maybe you do. But the high melodrama online just in general leaves me suspicious, weary of it all, and inclined to just stay away more and more, I have to say, sadly. Steve

Believe it or not, I just landed at ORBX YMML v2.0 in the Carenado Embraer Phenom 100 WITHOUT CONTACTING AIRCRAFT CONTROL.... horrors! And I parked diagonally at Gate D11 instead of lining up with the straight lines! OMG! Even though I do know how to do all that correctly if I wish. I even PAUSED THE SIM while in the air to dial in the Direct-To, find the airport and the runway ILS frequency, push a few buttons to enter it into VOR1, etc..... WHILE PAUSED! TOTALLY UNREALISTIC! ARREST THIS INSURGENT, NOW! I'm sure there are those out there looking for training and certification and full-fledged professional-world practice on fully accurate systems simulations, or find nothing short of that impossible to contemplate. I'm not a fan of the Cleveland Symphony, preferring the Vienna Philharmonic, myself. But the eight of you aren't the only ones in the world, either. Some of us know how to have fun other ways, and are perfectly content to do so, and don't consider it utter tragedy if heck, we have to listen to the Cleveland Symphony tonight because the flights to Vienna are too pricey at the moment due to skyrocketing fuel costs. If that's even an apt rough analogy, since I'm sure the other Phenoms aren't PERFECT, either. Further: I'm not willing at this point to even take a look on a webpage at any other Phenom; the acid rejections of everything except the Club's utter insistence on their version of "truth" have pretty much permanently soured me (and, I'm sure, others) on that possibility. So consider that, too.

Well, I'm having too much fun flying the Carenado Phenom 100 to really care what a few people here think, because of a couple of tiny features they're all OCD about and have decided is the absolute make-or-break regarding whether an add-on is Worthy of Their Approval, or Utter Trash (there is apparently nowhere in-between). I just check in every now and then to see whether the beatings here have continued; and yes, they have.

Sorry to have participated. I'll let the club intent on using any reference to Carenado's Phenom as an excuse to advertise the perfection of Feelthere's or Justflight's (who as a result I will never buy anything from now, btw) have their way. Funny how that works. Good luck with your marketing campaign for old software. May you get 2 more buyers.

zoran, Well that's a far different, more trivial story than the implication Frooglesim is making. Sigh... as with anything on the internet these days, it's almost impossible to tell what is real, and not. Oh well. Hirdy2013, same question to you as Marc: what AV do you use?

I've always built my own. Get to choose my parts, review them before assembly, methodically put them together and lay out the wiring the way I want, and know at the end of it all that anything odd is my own responsibility. It's weird that anyone would choose some random guy on the internet to assemble a PC (I'm speaking from a US perspective, though, mustn't assume that's the universal one). Marc, do you use Norton 360 Premiere Edition? If not, you're talking apples to oranges. I know Norton creates false positives (other AV systems do, too, as well as Windows Smartscreen); I also know there's enough legitimate, professional, licensed software on my computer from a bunch of companies (not just flight sim stuff), none of which have ever sprung a false positive on me or needed me to disable the firewall to allow the validation server to work. That's all fact. Regardless of whether you want to blame Symantec or not (they are pretty comprehensive in crowd-sourcing info on the internet at this point for the purpose of generating heuristics for downloaded files, not just relying on signature databases and such), reality is, they're identifying something wrong in the assembly of specific files by a specific company that doesn't occur with anything else. Unless there's specifically someone at Symantec out for Flight 1 or something bizarre like that... I'm going to trust them before I trust a small indie, even if some of the stuff they do (and have done since I started using them, in 1995 or so) goes FUBAR and becomes an education in the entire Windows OS architecture when you have to fix it. People can narratively claim this or that AV software is fine, but chances are pretty high, in my opinion, that they're nowhere near as thorough as Norton -- McAfee included. And even Norton doesn't really solve everything. So, there's that. Steve

Yes of course, no AV protection is sufficient, even with a variety of different systems. Ditto firewalls. Blacklisting IPs. And so on. There are a huge variety of different kinds of security techniques, but their proliferation - along with the increasing tendency due to the growth of digital advertising of pop-ups to take over and contaminate almost anything you're trying to do online, and make you waste your time and hurt your hands trying to get around - is rendering the Internet almost unusable at this point. I'm truly concerned some sort of catastrophic implosion is imminent, not necessarily from the hackers but from the overload of the environment with techniques on an increasingly impossible mission.

Kattz, I agree in part with you and others' assessment of Norton, but have been using it for years, am familiar with what it can/can't do, so I stick with it. Their rate of update/tracking of a variety of existing issues is quite aggressive, and thorough. There's a system cost, yes, but I'm willing to take it. The only problems I've ever run into with Norton actually have been with its heuristics identifying false positives. Properly installed and configured, it (mostly) is not an issue. Agreed re: your assessments (have some IRIS stuff, too -- the latest Warthog II is great), but I do think caution and care are still warranted.