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We use Startup Monitor and ZoneAlarm Security Suite software firewall. The newest ZA pops up a window the first time anything suspicious happens. It's a big problem convincing users to report the ZA popups, but if they do, Windows is much safer.

However, it's a losing battle. The problem is that Microsoft makes more money if its operating systems self-destruct. What you call "vulnerabilities" billionaires call "maximizing shareholder value".

If rich people sold good operating systems, poor people would not buy the next upgrade.

Using an operating system is like having a partner in your business. If it is a Microsoft OS, your "partners" want some things that are bad for you. If you use Linux or BSD, you can breathe a huge sigh of relief; your partners want what you want.

It's absurd that governments of countries use Microsoft products. It's even absurd that state governments in the U.S. use Microsoft products. The U.S. federal government spends more money on world-wide surveillance than any country in the history of the world. Exploiting computer systems is now one of the biggest new frontiers in surveillance.

The U.S. government's Echelon surveillance system watches everyone all the time. (Echelon quote: "Since the close of World War II, the US intelligence agencies have developed a consistent record of trampling the rights and liberties of the American people.")

The biggest discretionary expense of the U.S. government is the cost of war. The president and the vice-president of the U.S. are people who themselves and their families and friends made their money through oil and weapons. Is it any wonder that the price of oil is so high and we have war?

When a country uses Microsoft operating systems, it effectively has the U.S. government as one of its partners. Given the present climate of corruption and conflict of interest and adversarial behavior and using war as a justification for anything, why do countries want the U.S. government and U.S. billionaires as partners?

If volunteers can make a secure operating system ("Only one remote hole in the default install, in more than 8 years!") is it difficult to believe that the amazing number of vulnerabilities we've seen in Windows are deliberately allowed?

Polygraph is highly effective at measuring what it is meant to measure. The real issue is how much does that correlate to lying. The problem is is that it's very easy to beat/confuse "general-purpose" polygraphs by understanding the questions, how they scored, what they mean and using countermeasures (A slight warning... it is entirely possible, if you ever plan on getting polygraphed for the NSA or CIA, that they will ask if you know about countermeasures... during the test, and thus maye actually harm your chances of passing by reading this site.) This type of test is essentially a voodoo science of pure psychology. There is another type of test, though, and there is a -very- large difference in the scientific literature between specific-indicent polygraph and the general-purpose polygraph often used at the CIA and FBI for periodic screening of employees. Neither, however, is accurate enough to be admissable in court.

There are well known polygraph counter-measures that can effectively fool the machine, well, make your test inconclusive. The polygraph can never say conclusively you are lying or telling the truth. It's far more difficult to do that for the specific-indicdent style of tests, but a trained spy who practiced often could get away it.

Here's what the NAS says about it: National Academy of Sciences

Personnel security screening involves a different type of polygraph test than specific-incident investigations, and very little screening research has been conducted. ...However, OTA concluded that the available research evidence does not establish the scientific validity of the polygraph for this purpose.

principal use of the polygraph test is as part of an investigation (usually conducted by law enforcement or private security officers) of a specific situation in which a criminal act has been alleged to have, or in fact has, taken place. This type of case is characterized by a prior investigation that both narrows the suspect list down to a very small number, and that develops significant information about the crime itself. When the polygraph is used in this context, the application is known as a specific-issue or specific-incident criminal investigation.

Six prior reviews of field studies: average accuracy ranged from 64 to 98 percent.

This is just braindead reasoning. Bombs kill people by their explosive force. When you are downwind of an exploded bomb, the smoke might not be plesant, but breathing a particle or two won't cause your body to be burned from the inside out, starting with your lungs. Getting hit in the arm by a bullet will be immensely painful, but it won't be anywhere near the agonizing pain caused by WP, and bullets won't continue to slowly burn their way up your arm. WP is DEFINED as a chemical weapon, because it IS a chemical weapon. End of story. If you still can't grasp that simple fact, that's your problem.

...It took 50 years for the stealth bomber to be made public, I'd imagine something like quantum computing would be held secret as long as possible.

Are you talking about this http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/bomber/b-2.htm stealth bomber? If so are you saying that it was flying in 1933?

What?!! The Soyuz (in its many varieties) has flown over a thousand of missions since the system's inception in 1963 (for the booster) and 1966 (for the capsule). There were 220 of the original Soyuz vehicles, before even the "T" variety and a total of 750 Soyuz launches by 1994. By 2005 the Shuttle's has flown a meager 114 or so. You do forget that the Russians maintained, staffed and suppiled a series of space stations, starting with the military Almaz/Salyut series in 1973 and then the Mir complex.

You know, if you're talking about Clinton-China conspiracy theories you might want to mention the Chinese military contributions that were made to Clinton's re-election campaign. http://www.fas.org/news/china/1998/980521-prc2.htm
Probably insignificant, but when has that stopped a good conspiracy theory?

The most famous robot kill was on November 3, 2002, when a Predator UAV equipped with a Hellfire missile blew up "six suspected Al-Queda terrorists" in Yemen.

That's just the beginning. Once the technology developed in the DARPA Grand Challenge really gets rolling, which, according to the director of DARPA, will be in about five years, America's armies of killer robots will go into the field. The Army calls this the "Future Combat Systems" program.

dB in water is not the same as dB in air, primarily due to water being a denser medium (takes more energy to get those water molecules moving, while hearing is based mostly on the magnitude of the movement). For a rough conversion to dB in air, you need to subtract 62. And even then, the sound levels are within the range of other natural events.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/acoustics. htm#conversion

It is happening all the time.
Now if this doesn't convince you, I don't know what will. Anyway, this is the last I will contribute to this particular thread. If you want more information, contact your local Patent Office for more information.

Do you remember when CNN alerted about the super-computer virus that seems to be the end of the world?
This could be the same, I suggest to follow specific sources instead of general news-media. With computer security, you now AV companies, Secunia, CERT and so on.
For this, my bet is: http://www.fas.org/promed/

IG Farben
Ford
US Arms Sales to Iraq
Oil Companies in Nigeria
US/UK Subversion of Democratic Iran for Oil Companies

I don't recall anyone asking for the public's opinion on these business practices.

The point is that, in the end, interpreting the law is the job of the courts - not congress. And this particular issue - who is and who is not "the press" will remain the domain of the courts until an unambiguous definition is legislated.

It's clear from reading the text of the bill (here), that the senator has tried to make it clear what he means, but the terms employed are problematic: "periodical", "magazine", etc. Whether a particular blog qualifies as "the press" or not is pretty clearly going to be handled case by case, as the issues are murky enough to require litigation. Once again for the libertarians out there: NO, WE ARE NOT ALL "THE PRESS"... at least according to current case law - which is what is relevant here.

The point of all this is: The senator's opinion is irrelevant.

My apologies to anyone who has already pointed this out - it just seems like most people who've commented so far just don't get it... or maybe they know that the senator's opinion doesn't matter, but just want to vent about the issue anyways. But I digress.

You want control of the root servers? Come and get them! http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m1a1-tank- iny.jpg

Anybody with money can buy these and almost any other non-NBC Russian weapon. This is a revelation?

...so expect being shot from a speedboat with one of those fuckers in the near future (like...10 years?). good luck in the middle east/gulf/whatnot, Mr. Supercarrier.

That's one thing I wouldn't worry about as a carrier captain. This kind of torpedo needs lots of sensors and expertise to work properly. Not something terrorists have in great quantity. Besides, if they do, this is much more likely to be a concern, since you don't have to be on top of the ship to use it.

Echelon

I was about to post that there were only two nuclear powered non-carrier surface ships in the Navy (the two my father helped build), but my favorite source indicates there were nine nuclear-powered guided missile cruisers (CGN's), the last of which were decommissioned in 1998.

IIRC, the US built one proof-of-concept nuclear-powered merchant ship (the Savannah) in the 60's, and the Soviet Union built at least one nuclear-powered ice-breaker.

Slashdot: a convenient dumping ground for the trivia that clutters our minds...

P.S. I have to add that pausing to contemplate environmentally safe warfare is laughable; this is a classic case of wanting to treat the symptom instead of the disease.

...how do you counter nuclear depth charges and torpedoes? Hope the range on this system is decent...these bad boys kill with the same shockwave principle...they don't need to impact a ship/sub at all to be effective.

So what do we build multi-billion dollar nuclear powered air craft carriers for if the Russians, and whichever army they sell to, can destroy them with these things?

From FAS (Federation Of American Scientists) - NOT a conspiracy site:

VA-111 Shkval underwater rocket


Apparently fired from standard 533mm torpedo tubes, Shkval has a range of about 7,500 yards. The weapon clears the tube at fifty knots, upon which its rocket fires, propelling the missile through the water at 360 kph [about 100 m/sec / 230 mph / 200-knots], three or four times as fast as conventional torpedoes. The solid-rocket propelled "torpedo" achieves high speeds by producing a high-pressure stream of bubbles from its nose and skin, which coats the torpedo in a thin layer of gas and forms a local "envelope" of supercavitating bubbles. Carrying a tactical nuclear warhead initiated by a timer, it would destroy the hostile submarine and the torpedo it fired. The Shkval high-speed underwater missile is guided by an auto-pilot rather than by a homing head as on most torpedoes.

There are no evident countermeasures to such a weapon, its employment could put adversary naval forces as a considerable disadvantage. One such scenario is a rapid attack situation wherein a sudden detection of a threat submarine is made, perhaps at relatively short range, requiring an immediate response to achieve weapon on target and to ensure survival. Apparently guidance is a problem, and the initial version of the Shkval was unguided However, the Russians have been advertising a homing version, which runs out at very high speed, then slows to search.

I believe the OP was referring to the Boeing SST designed in the mid/late 60's. It was supposed to carry quite a few more passengers than the Concorde, and initially have variable geometry (swing) wings. The linked page indicates it was killed off by Congress for political reasons.

Your comment that this "wasn't even doable on a military budget" made me originally think of the XB-70, a still future-looking aircraft conceived in the 50's that was to fly its entire mission at Mach 3.

Well, you could technically get that vehicle as gov surplus (even though they started destroying vehicles now). Its just an altered (although new) M923/939

Honestly, I would have used an M113 APC. It has plenty of room inside for racks of equipment, enclosed space for air conditioning and air filtration, its a tracked vehicle, plenty of room on top and in front for sensors and, like all military vehicles, has (roughly) a 10 hour operating capacity (which is where the 10 hour rule came from).

As for the software and nav systems, I agree with you. Unless its something that has been released to the public for awhile, I don't think it should be in a vehicle.

Well, you could technically get that vehicle as gov surplus (even though they started destroying vehicles now). Its just an altered (although new) M923/939

Honestly, I would have used an M113 APC. It has plenty of room inside for racks of equipment, enclosed space for air conditioning and air filtration, its a tracked vehicle, plenty of room on top and in front for sensors and, like all military vehicles, has (roughly) a 10 hour operating capacity (which is where the 10 hour rule came from).

As for the software and nav systems, I agree with you. Unless its something that has been released to the public for awhile, I don't think it should be in a vehicle.

Oh, but not for granny to carry her groceries. I want one so I can carry this.

um, considering i hit half the shots in the army at 300 meters with only the rifle's sight i'm pretty sure you're wrong about the effective range.

"Maximum effective range:
Point target: 1,804.5 feet (550 meters)"

Course that's the A2 but that's what the army uses now and has been for many years.

"The sound of a weapon discharge at that distance is very faint."

Not a M16A2's, speaking from first-hand experience. You'd have no problem hearing it at 300 meters... unless maybe u had ur iPod blaring ;)

This is closer to what I was thinking when I read the article. Although the robot idea is very sci-fi and appeals to me on a geek level, a more practical approach would be to integrate this into a HUD for the soldier, like something into the Army's Land Warrior system. First shot gets fired, the system filters the echo, identifies the weapon, displays the weapon ID and direction on your display. Makes a little more sense than sticking some robot out in the field and hoping someone will shoot at it.

I'm thinking this means my chances of getting Google to remove some false but ancient usenet posts containing my name are significatnly dimished. For some reason, I doubt my emails to Google are more effective than phone calls from foreign dignitaries. Then again, maybe Google is ignoring Taiwan because they're not nuclear capable. In that case, I'll just have my wife contact them... she certainly IS nuclear capable!

Nuclear blast areas: (20 megatons at 17,500 ft airburst)

8.5 miles - vaporized.
35 miles - 15% dead, 50% injured. Cite
??? miles - EMP so strong that internal components of chips melt. Cite

Hmm. Paper seems safer, easier to deal with without computers. And if I live, so does the data. Anyway, it's not likely someone would get a 20 megaton bomb. More likely 10 Kt to 1 Mt. Revise that for "Best be more than 50 miles away." Make that 150 miles for a 20 megaton.

Can I go live on a planet where we don't have this madness?

I'm a little curious to see what the inside of a Kirov class cruiser looks like. I doubt even the CIA or the navy knows exactly. Based on what I've been allowed to see of our own conventionally powered Aegis cruisers and destroyers in the tours I've been on, and the fact that the layout of nuclear-powered ships is even more protected in both the US navies, there has to be a huge amount of conjecture going on here.

Still, I've always been interested in playing a game that effectively encompasses all of a relatively small area, rather than meandering through small parts of a huge area. Quite a few pictures of the Kirovs are publicly available, and if they study other ships (retired destroyers, battleships, etc), they should be able to create a very believable environment, with all sorts of mundane curiousities to explore. If the entire game really takes place on this ship, notwithstanding the fact that it's dimensionally nearly as big as an Iowa class battleship, it should lend itself well to that sort of game design. Being on a ship also offers some fun. For example, they could change the weather and sea states throughout the game (how about throwing a grenade in a 40 knot wind?). I thought the varying weather was one of the nice subtleties of Enigma: Rising Tide (although that's not an FPS).

Of course, it could end up simply sucking like most other games out there.

Actually the USSR has pursued nuclear and nuclear-electricpropulsion. Their limited funding has all but ceased these efforts but a partnership with the EU may accellerate those projects. Of course the US will not be of any assistance as long as they continue to beat their chests regarding Iran. But as we've seen in recent days, practical matters can overcome congressional paranoia.

JDAMs have GPS receivers.

Actually, now that you mention it, I'm not sure that we do. Somehow I thought we did, but I can't identify a source. After searching the web, it appears that the prints are supposed to be purged from the FBI database when a suspect is cleared. However, there seem to be some cases (such as a suspected gang member) where these prints will linger for 5 years past becoming "inactive".

You have to actually carry out field tests. Generally this means you develop a simulated agent that is less dangerous than the real thing, calibrate it against the live agent in a sealed chamber**, and then conduct full-scale field trials with the simulant.

Cities were unwittingly used as laboratories to test aerosolization and dispersal methods; Aspergillus fumigatus, B. subtilis var. globigii, and Serratia marcescens were used as simulants and released during experiments in New York City, San Francisco, and other sites. Concerns regarding potential public health hazards of simulant studies were raised after an outbreak of nosocomial S. marcescens (formerly Chromobacterium prodigiosum) urinary tract infections at Stanford University Hospital between September 1950 and February 1951, following covert experiments using S. marcescens as a simulant in San Francisco. A report from the Centers for Disease Control completed in 1977 found no association between reported morbidity and mortality from pneumonia and influenza and local simulant experiments.

A series of field tests took place under the auspices of the Biological Laboratories from 1943 to the mid-1960s:

• In one such test, travelers at Washington National Airport were subjected to a harmless bacterium. Traps were placed throughout the facility to capture the bacterium as it flowed in the air. Laboratory personnel, dressed as travelers carrying brief cases, walked the corridors and without detection sprayed the bacterium into the atmosphere.
• In the New York Subway, a light bulb filled with the same harmless bacterium was dropped on the tracks. The organism spread throughout the system within 20 minutes. Traps and monitoring devices showed the amount of organism--if it were one of the predictable, dangerous organisms, could have killed thousands of persons. No one was injured or became ill as a result of the test.
• In San Francisco, a U.S. Navy ship, equipped with spray devices operated by Fort Detrick personnel, sprayed serratia marcescens, a non-pathogenic microorganism that is easily detected, while the ship plied the San Francisco Bay. It spread more than 30 miles to monitoring stations.
• A jet aircraft equipped with spray devices, flew a course near Victoria, Texas, and the harmless particles were monitored in the Florida Keys.

In March 1968, 6,400 sheep were found dead after grazing in south Skull Valley, an area just outside Dugway's boundaries. When examined, the sheep were found to have been poisoned by a deadly nerve agent called VX.

You have to actually carry out field tests. Generally this means you develop a simulated agent that is less dangerous than the real thing, calibrate it against the live agent in a sealed chamber**, and then conduct full-scale field trials with the simulant.

Cities were unwittingly used as laboratories to test aerosolization and dispersal methods; Aspergillus fumigatus, B. subtilis var. globigii, and Serratia marcescens were used as simulants and released during experiments in New York City, San Francisco, and other sites. Concerns regarding potential public health hazards of simulant studies were raised after an outbreak of nosocomial S. marcescens (formerly Chromobacterium prodigiosum) urinary tract infections at Stanford University Hospital between September 1950 and February 1951, following covert experiments using S. marcescens as a simulant in San Francisco. A report from the Centers for Disease Control completed in 1977 found no association between reported morbidity and mortality from pneumonia and influenza and local simulant experiments.

A series of field tests took place under the auspices of the Biological Laboratories from 1943 to the mid-1960s:

• In one such test, travelers at Washington National Airport were subjected to a harmless bacterium. Traps were placed throughout the facility to capture the bacterium as it flowed in the air. Laboratory personnel, dressed as travelers carrying brief cases, walked the corridors and without detection sprayed the bacterium into the atmosphere.
• In the New York Subway, a light bulb filled with the same harmless bacterium was dropped on the tracks. The organism spread throughout the system within 20 minutes. Traps and monitoring devices showed the amount of organism--if it were one of the predictable, dangerous organisms, could have killed thousands of persons. No one was injured or became ill as a result of the test.
• In San Francisco, a U.S. Navy ship, equipped with spray devices operated by Fort Detrick personnel, sprayed serratia marcescens, a non-pathogenic microorganism that is easily detected, while the ship plied the San Francisco Bay. It spread more than 30 miles to monitoring stations.
• A jet aircraft equipped with spray devices, flew a course near Victoria, Texas, and the harmless particles were monitored in the Florida Keys.

In March 1968, 6,400 sheep were found dead after grazing in south Skull Valley, an area just outside Dugway's boundaries. When examined, the sheep were found to have been poisoned by a deadly nerve agent called VX.

The rapidity of elaboration of American biodefense programs, their ambition and administrative aggressiveness, and the degree to which they push against the prohibitions of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), are startling.
The production and stockpiling of biological-weapons agents are not the only criteria by which an offensive biological weapons (BW) program is defined. They are only such a program's most obvious terminal expressions. Taken together, many of the activities detailed above -- most particularly the "Store, Stabilize, Package, Disperse" sequence and the "Computational modeling of feasibility, methods, and scale of production" item -- may constitute development in the guise of threat assessment, and they certainly will be interpreted that way. Development is prohibited by the Biological Weapons Convention.

There are a few in use currently in Iraq. There is the Talon which can fire many different weapons (M249, .50 cal, M4A1, M24, etc). They are very accurate, more accurate than any soldier. Every EOD team seems to have one of these which they use to detonate IEDs.

UAVs are everywhere and are common place in almost all operations. There is the Predator, which when armed with the hellfire missile system can be very leathal and the little Raven which can be utilized at the squad level. The new Viper Strike bombs, which are starting to be depoyed on UAVs, are very usefull in urban situations where you need to take out the enemy without harming innocents in say, the next room. This is a big development because the "insurgents" like to take shelter in mosques, schools, and hospitals, etc. The new Hardstop bombs help in this situation as well (but I do not think they are carried by UAVs). Anyways, here is an exellent video/story which mixes captured enemy video with the video from the UAV which nails them. I love UAVs.

There are a few in use currently in Iraq. There is the Talon which can fire many different weapons (M249, .50 cal, M4A1, M24, etc). They are very accurate, more accurate than any soldier. Every EOD team seems to have one of these which they use to detonate IEDs.

UAVs are everywhere and are common place in almost all operations. There is the Predator, which when armed with the hellfire missile system can be very leathal and the little Raven which can be utilized at the squad level. The new Viper Strike bombs, which are starting to be depoyed on UAVs, are very usefull in urban situations where you need to take out the enemy without harming innocents in say, the next room. This is a big development because the "insurgents" like to take shelter in mosques, schools, and hospitals, etc. The new Hardstop bombs help in this situation as well (but I do not think they are carried by UAVs). Anyways, here is an exellent video/story which mixes captured enemy video with the video from the UAV which nails them. I love UAVs.

Google Knave - http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en& q=B-52&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/bomber/b-52.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-52_Stratofortress

The Saturn V weighed 3000 tons at launch. By the time it reached 17,500 mph, it weighed about 100 tons. Most of the lost weight was used to generate the kinetic energy ultimately imparted into the remaining 100 tons. That paper is talking about a 15000 ton structure continuously moving at orbital velocity. I'm skeptical of the concept based on that alone. Furthermore, if I'm reading it correctly, it proposes to trade kinetic energy of the ribbon for the force necessary to support it against gravity. This is akin to supporting an Ohio class ballistic missle submarine in midair with a stream of water. He addresses the issue of providing energy to accelerate launch vehicles via the ribbon, but not how to replace the kinetic energy of the ribbon itself as it is accelerated downward by the upward force it exerts on its sheath. It is theoretically possible to support a submarine with a stream of water, but you'd better have one heck of a big pump transferring energy into the water stream. Granted, I haven't investigated the issue as much as the author of that paper, but I think he left out quite a few details from his analysis. Plus, even though all the technology for this may exist today, as the poster stated, none have been applied on anything close to this scale.

If this were really such a great idea, I would expect to at least see engineering students playing with scaled down models, as many have with the space elevator concept, and Liftport is planning on doing on a larger scale in the near future.

On a completely unrelated note, it seems I've been delayed about an hour posting this for a 503 error, and unless I missed it before, the long awaited CSS transition took place before my very eyes. Yippee!

The US Army has had technology like this for a while: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/stingray.h tm

A good article to read about blinding cameras is here:
http://www.naimark.net/projects/zap/howto.html

You mean these?

We still have the tech. It's come and gone as many different engines, including DUMBO, Timberwind, the Space Shuttle upper stage engines, and (most recently) TRITON.

Still no information on your statement of He also stopped North Korean nuclear program several times, only to resume it again, when the US didn't follow on its promises.

Turns out the United States has nuclear weapons (where are they aimed, what do you think?) right next to the North Korean border (in nuclear terms)

We also had nukes aimed at west germany during the cold war. The plan was that in the event of a soviet invasion of europe, the armies would have to try to cross through a nuclear wasteland. These nukes that are pointed near the border are probably pointed at the DMZ then and are there in the event of a an invasion by NK into SK. That said, I see nothing in that page that says nukes are pointed there.

Then the timeline details (some of) the promises, concentrating mainly on the promised nuclear reactors. An important thing to understand is that North Korea has few other energy options, it needs nuclear power to run the economy, not just to make plutonium. But these promises haven't been followed up on very well. You can also see from the timeline very clearly that North Korea has repeatedly made steps towards compromise, peace, etc.

I see nothing in there on the US breaking any promises. I see items in there on NK breaking IAEA agreements, among others.

For power, this compromise was given and agreed to 1994: U.S. and North Korea conclude an "Agreed Framework," in which President Clinton promises to help arrange, finance and construct the light-water reactors and fund interim energy supplies.

Here's two points of information from another page. http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/dprk/nuke/

On 19 August 1997 KEDO and North Korea held a groundbreaking ceremony to begin construction of two light-water reactors.

In October 2002, North Korean officials acknowledged the existence of a clandestine program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons that is in violation of the Agreed Framework and other agreements.

NK has broken IAEA agreements. NK has broken agreements that the US was keeping. I have not seen anythink that says the US has broken said agreements.

I also suggest that you watch a "Nuclear Nightmare - Understanding North Korea" documentary, it has a lot of interesting footage and, though it's also biased a bit, overall it shows a very interesting picture of where North Korea really stands.

Found a place to watch it from. Will do.

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/doctrine/dod/jp3 _12_1.pdf

It sometimes amazes me that LMCO manages to build planes that actually fly. But then I have to remember that the people designing the planes apparently aren't the ones designing their software.

If they build aircraft the way they build software, their planes would make these look like this.

For example, here. But you should really google yourself. Russian space agency budget is mere $130 million in total per year. That is why $20 million for a paying customer is a big deal. Note that a single Shuttle launch costs around $400-500 million. Presently the Russians are not receiving even the contract work they used to due to the Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000 as the US law forbids it.

However, I won't be heartened if the numbers show the US is "saving money" by investing it in the Russian space industry rather than our own. Our space program spins off manifold its cost in benefit to our economy, not to mention our national pride.

What I was pointing out is that the total amount is miniscule by comparison to the NASA budget.

I don't mind producing science and engineering knowledge the rest of the world also gets secondhand. In fact, that's one of the benefits to the US: we're valuable to other countries. It's one of the social benefits from the essentially transnational scientific community that has been possibly the most civilizing force in our species for hundreds of years. But I don't want us getting it secondhand from other countries at our expense.

It all depends by what do you mean at your "expense". The zero-g Russian experience from two decades of operating orbital facilities would be very expensive to obtain otherwise. Or are you suggesting that the US should have not built the ISS with the rest of the world and made a new Skylab (NASA's last orbital habitat experience was 30 years old)?

I want us investing in our own space industry, which also grows our own commercial aerospace industry (those huge contracts go to aerospace corporations, not just relatively small NASA units). So we can stay competitive, even with the extremely experienced Russians and their cheaper economy.

As I said, you are making an issue from some spare change on the fringes of the American space activities.

Wrong, he's probably thinking of the ABM treaty, dumbass.

... feel the need to hide behind secrecy.

If they could be proud, they would be loud.

Project on Government Secrecy http://www.fas.org/sgp/

the US navy should get off their butts and bring in some LCACs (http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/lcac.htm) to pull every single stranded person out. all the browsers in the world wont help if youre stuck without food/water. and if youre poor and black, but thats another story.

umm..ever heard of hovercraft ? especially military ones ?
ones that can carry 200+ tons at a time ? or several hundred people on an armoured platform ? something which the us navy has hundreds of sitting around ?
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/lcac.htm

From what I've been told while in Haiti, they wouldn't be quite so generous. :)

Personally I wouldn't mind seeing a pair of AC-130's on "looter patrol". Once word gets around that TV's and 105mm holes are closely related, I'm sure the deadbeats will find something more productive to occupy their time.

Actually F16 fighter planes do not carry phoenix missiles. F14 is the only type that does.

Also through the miracle of (btw, is that a terrorist behind you?) fearmongering you also have the new "sensitive but unclassified" stuff. Which basicly covers everything the freedom of information act was once made for.