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Her Commodore/Admiral rank was only honorary.

No, it was not merely honorary. However, 40 of her degrees were (see same link).

From http://www.history.navy.mil/trivia/trivia03.htm:

The space between each pair of deck planks in a wooden ship was filled with a packing material called "oakum" and then sealed with a mixture of pitch and tar. The result, from afar, was a series of parallel lines a half-foot or so apart, running the length of the deck. Once a week, as a rule, usually on Sunday, a warship's crew was ordered to fall in at quarters - that is, each group of men into which the crew was divided would line up in formation in a given area of the deck. To insure a neat alignment of each row, the Sailors were directed to stand with their toes just touching a particular seam.

First, the development of "The Bomb" had been horrendously expensive

"The Bomb" was a mind-bendingly cheap and awesomely rapidly developed piece of world-changing technology. Anecdotally, it has been known for a long time that the total cost of the project during WW 2 was about $2 billion in contemporary dollars.

A detailed audit of nuclear weapons costs was completed in 1998, and the part from pre-Manhattan-Project research beginning in 1940, after 1939's Einstein-Szilard letter, through FDR's formal approval of the program in October 1941, through and past the end of the war until December 31, 1945 determined the total cost to be:

$1,889,604,000 in contemporray dollars, corresponding to
$21,570,821,000 in constant 1996 dollars

That compares to a total outlay for WW 2, for the US alone, of:

$296,000 000 000, corresponding to
$4,114,000,000,000 in constant 2008 dollars

In other words, the Manhattan Project accounted for 0.6% of all US WW 2 spending. More was spent on small arms alone (NOT ammunition) than for the Manhattan Project.

Parenthetically, the absurdity of post-9/11 domestic security enhancements alone (Operation Noble Eagle) saw about 50% more real dollars spent than the Manhattan Project! That's $33 billion spent to counter an outlay of well under a million dollars by Al Qaeda - a few airline tickets, living expenses for 20 people for a few months to a few years, and elementary flight training. Is a minimum of three million percent of differential asymmetrical enough to impress?

Don't look now ... but theres nothing the US can do to stop them.

Depends on what it is that needs to be stopped, how badly China wants to do it, and how badly the US wants to stop it. If all that is going on are speeches and radar beams, there isn't much to stop. If China starts sending fighters or missiles into the area, there are things that could be done.

The US plans on keeping 11 carrier strike groups around, for the moment. It is doubtful they would or could all be deployed simultaneously, but even 1 is nothing to sneeze at. China has a variety of things they could try against them, but it is uncertain how effective they would be.

The possibility of miscalculation leading to war is non-trivial if China keeps ratcheting up their aggression.

The price to the U.S for WW2 was $288 trillion, imagine the accelerator we could have build with that.

[citation needed]
According to The Navy Department Library, the second world war cost about $300 billion in 1945 dollars, or $4.1 trillion in today's dollars. If you include the costs of the Marshall Plan, etc, I'm sure that changes things quite a bit, but probably not almost two orders of magnitude.

The "unproven" part is the floating platforms. And, in this case a floating transfer station as well. But it is true that these installations are becoming more common. And they seem to have an advantage in installation and maintenance since less rugged tow boats can be used for installation and maintenance can be done on shore. Eventually, I expect that these will be used to charge floating flow batteries or synthesize hydrocarbon fuels is the highest wind resource areas such as south of Iceland which are too remote for grid hookup. http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-releases/2012/fueling-the-fleet-navy-looks-to-the-seas

The US Navy and its Soviet counterpart remains the only two entities to have left broken nuclear reactors on the ocean floor (unless someone has since picked them up covertly). The US Navy has two such sunken subs and the Russians appear to have several as well.

While the US Navy's more recent safety record appears much better, one can say the same of most civilian nuclear reactors as well.

You may be a little behind the times on this sort of thing. http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-releases/2012/fueling-the-fleet-navy-looks-to-the-seas If the Navy can get that kind of cost structure using their expensive to run reactors, $0.15/Watt solar will make synthetic fuels very cheap.

One path might produce liquid fuels in the doldrums for easy shipping http://www.solar-islands.com/ with gasification carried out at a convenient natural gas hub. Wind off Iceland also looks attractive for non-grid exploitation through hydrocarbon production as scale drives down the cost of floating turbines.

Already, curtailment of renewably generated electricity makes such projects interesting, especially for wind where the production tax credit is left on the table otherwise. Carbon is a viable solution to the storage problem in the hydrogen economy and hydrogen is an otherwise efficient battery. So long as the carbon is non-fossil, this also helps with climate.

Well, I'm glad things are that easy in your world, I really am. Let me show you a bit more about mine. Checkout:

http://www.public.navy.mil/bupers-npc/reference/messages/Documents/NAVADMINS/NAV2011/NAV11346.txt

See the etc. in item 3(E), that's where my cable falls.

See the ITPR in section 4. That stands for Information Technology Procurement Request. That's the 14 page document I mentioned. The other 2 are local to my command. If some reforms would get us closer to what you describe I'd be much happier.

Maybe I can help.

Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report - The Pentagon
Hunt the Boeing!
911 Debunked - Pentagon Flight 77 Photo Evidence
Pentagon & Boeing 757 Engine Investigation
Pentagon 9/11

Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report - Flight 93
9/11 investigators tell of piecing together mystery of Penn. crash
Direct Evidence
9/11: The Day of the Attacks
Response and Recovery - Shanksville, Pennsylvania

Given the Captain of this ship, we'll have to wait for the next generation for it to run LACARS.

Citation no longer needed.

That's pretty awesome.

No, the overall number of active Navy ships is actually shrinking. Personnel number have fluctuated somewhat but have remained relatively lower after a shrinkage in the early 90's.

I said WWI, not WW2.

For an example of something where the two sides had something close you need only look at WWI.

The death toll of WWI was around 37,000,000 - which sounds a lot like 'tens of millions'. The death toll of the Spanish flu was about 50 million (with high estimates of 100 million), which also sounds a lot like 'tens of millions'.

Foreign aid of the USA per capita is more or less the same as other civilized nations and far behind scandinavian nations.

There are lies, damn lies and statistics, and what you did right there is a perfect example. My statement is factual and you are trying to manipulate statistics in such a way to take credit away from where it is due. Your statement is disingenuous when the US gives tens of Billions of dollars more in Foreign aid per year, every single year.

The US army was crippled in Vietnam by a policy of not bombing near civilian centers which is why the North built as much of their military strength their as they could. They knew the US wouldn't touch anything near the cities and fully exploited the policy. The inability to target anything near a city was directly inspirational for the development of GPS guided munitions that are in use today.

Next time you might want to pause and read what I actually wrote and take a moment to look for some citations before responding. Just like with the other guy, remove the hyberbole and it's much easier to take you seriously. For the meanwhile I'd like to suggest you spend a little time in the history section of your local library before trying to argue history next time.

This will get you started.

Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report - The Pentagon
Hunt the Boeing!
Pentagon 9/11
911 Debunked - Pentagon Flight 77 Photo Evidence
Pentagon & Boeing 757 Engine Investigation

If that doesn't do it for you, I would suggest you keep digging.

Actually, Vice Admiral is an O-9. Based on his bio, he has over 34 years of service, so base pay alone is $16.4K/month. Probably lives in base housing, so with BAS and sub pay it totals close to $17K/month.

If found guilty in the investigation, he will probably be retired at a lower rank. In addition to whatever civilian penalties are incurred. Assuming that there are no instances of military misconduct found, otherwise all bets are off.

Once again you obscure the facts. The Maddox was attacked in international waters, not North Vietnamese waters. Just as North Vietnam was conducting a war of aggression against South Vietnam, it also engaged in aggression at sea.

Actions in the Gulf of Tonkin, August 1964

On the afternoon of 2 August 1964, while steaming well offshore in international waters, Maddox was attacked by three North Vietnamese motor torpedo boats. The destroyer maneuvered to avoid torpedoes and used her guns against her fast-moving opponents, hitting them all. In turn, she was struck in the after gun director by a single 14.5-millimeter machine gun bullet. Maddox called for air support from the carrier Ticonderoga, whose planes strafed the three boats, leaving one dead in the water and burning. Both sides then separated.

Carriers are sitting ducks without a battle group. I doubt the Chinese are worried over this at all.

They should be worried about their own carrier shaped ships since they don't have a battle group either.

Besides japan does have a battle group.

Dont forget China's deadly and groundbreaking land carriers.

Carriers are sitting ducks without a battle group. I doubt the Chinese are worried over this at all.

They should be worried about their own carrier shaped ships since they don't have a battle group either.

Besides japan does have a battle group.

These words ending in "-illion" all sound too much alike. Let's try scientific notation. TFA says TET will save 2x10^7 dollars. The Navy budget is approximately 1.6x10^11 dollars.

So this savings is, roughly, 0.01% of the Navy budget. It's like a developer who makes $100K/year saving 10 bucks over the year. It's worth doing, but I wouldn't call it a windfall.

Well, there's this. That's not on a "carrier" as such, so maybe the title's not technically wrong (can't be arsed to look) but if nobody landed a UAV on a carrier before because they were busy landing them on smaller ships, it seems kinda silly to celebrate this as a first. They absolutely have landed many UAVs on many smaller ships, and there's no reason landing on a carrier would make it harder.

Even better than this: use the following as a style guide for presentation templates:
http://www.ncis.navy.mil/securitypolicy/seced/trng/NSMC%20Student%20Guide/sg_4-1.pdf

Every slide in the deck labeled TOP SECRET with headings listed as 1.4(d) TS//NOFORN, with at least one slide of a leaked document embedded should be enough to keep anyone with security clearance out of the presentations, or with a lot of paperwork.

For that matter, just make the sign-in pages leaked documents -- nothing quite says headache like explaining what your signature is doing on a document outside of your clearance.

Of course BBC can solve this problem. Other sites solve it. They all agree within one second of my own system's NTP-synced time.

Try man ntpdate. With the right option it will set your clock one time post haste. It's intended for use at startup, when the clock is discontinuous anyway. Then ntpd can keep it synced.

You could do the equivalent of ntpdate when you load the page, and the equivalent of ntpd while the page is displayed, with the clock updating.

Yes, what NTP does is very nontrivial, but it's a long-solved problem. Pulling the NTP levers using the already-compiled executables is not hard, and rolling your own implementation is not exactly rocket science, since the protocol definition is exhaustively defined and open source implementations are freely available.

I'm not going to do the complete design for you, but just consider, why would they use HTTP?

There are a lot of options, and the OP is just asking for a general structure. Classic /. community fail to assume we are even dealing with someone that will be doing with implementation. This could be the director trying to get a ballpark before sinking their teeth in or a under-paid teacher, with little time, whto wants to make their students' learning environment better. I was the only one with a VPS in my classes, and thus the only one, in the end, who actually knew how to get anything done, outside of theory.

My rant to /. is over. Now to answer the OP:

The easiest way to get started would be Xen Cloud Platform + Citrix Xen Center. That alone will get you a free robust virtual hosting environment, but this will require you to set up a few VM templates and manually deploy to students. You can take this one step further by using OpenStack + XCP which will give you an API which you can use to build a web-front for student deployment. Some might already exist, but all the ones I am aware of are built around payment models.

As for users managing switches, I have no clue and good luck there. IMHO, I would VLAN and let OpenStack manage it. You can use the US Navy's network simulator to teach concepts if you like. It even allows using tools like wireshark for real-world analysis experience.

Good luck, I hope you use this to make students more ready for the real world.

They operate as part of the US Navy Marine Mammal Program In the early days of the program, various marine mammal species were considered including: killer whales, pilot whales, belugas (white whales), Steller sea lions, grey seals and fur seals. Other animals were used in various studies pertaining to locating personnel from downed aircraft and creating effective shark deterrents to protect them until they could be rescued.

Depending on the constraints they have in budget, optics size, and desired target focus size, it would be quite reasonable that their limits would be there if it was in a vacuum and not be due to interaction with the atmosphere in between. It depends on the exact wavelength they are using, but I've already seen reports disregarding thermal blooming effects for fiber based lasers systems up to 100 kW over a couple kilometer range (an example that shouldn't be behind a paywall). Additionally, thermal blooming can be compensated for by adjusting the phase delay across the beam profile. So for this 10 kW example, meant to be compact and mobile, it is probably more a limit on their optics than the atmospheric conditions short of rather crappy weather or if for some other reason they picked a not so good wavelength to work with.

Then you probably will cringe if you go here.

Normal might be too strong, but arctic sea-ice extent is certainly above the average for the 2000's.

Weather report as of 28 minutes ago (20:00 UTC):
The wind was blowing at a speed of 6.7 meters per second (15.0 miles per hour) from West/Southwest in Resolute, Canada. The temperature was -13 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit). Air pressure was 1,014 hPa (29.94 inHg). Relative humidity was 71.8%. There were broken clouds at a height of 427 meters (1400 feet) and overcast at a height of 914 meters (3000 feet). The visibility was 2.0 kilometers (1.3 miles). Current weather is Light Snow . Arthropolis

so it's still plenty cold enough. Personally I think Ice loss is more a matter of Sea currents and wind direction than temperature, and the ice is flowing more toward the bottleneck of the Bering Straits than the Greenland Sea. Right now the ENSO index is holding close to neutral so I don't expect anything noteworthy happening this summer, the rate of warming has been zero and the temperature anomaly has stuck in the .3-.10 degree range for 15-20 years. I just don't see anything to get excited about.

In one very important way: It runs on my portable device and I can walk away with it.

So how is that different from stuff that runs on my a-bit-larger portable device (it's called a "Retina MacBook Pro") that I can walk away with?

That's all tablets and smartphones give anyone. But saying "that's all" understates the value by incredible amounts. I *love* having that kind of power in my pocket.

OK, your pocket's pretty big or your tablet's a bit small if your tablet fits in it. But I digress.... (The point being that lumping tablets and smartphones is a bit bogus, just as lumping desktops and notebooks is a bit bogus. I don't even think twice about carrying my smartphone with me; I suspect I'd think at least twice about carrying a tablet with me. I might or might not think more about carrying a notebook than a tablet; I wouldn't even think about carrying a desktop computer with me.)

In any case, this has nothing to do with "apps" vs. "computer software for desktops", it has to do with the size of the computer. How much of that software would be interesting only if running on a computer you can carry with you? How much of that software would be interesting only if running on a computer smaller than a notebook? And, as long as we're going down that path, how much of that software wouldn't be that interesting on a tablet, only on a smartphone?

And, once we're talking about software that's basically the same type of software as "computer software for desktops", except for the "the screen is limited in size, but you can touch it and activate the UI that way" part, why is there going to be a huge "app market" for it different from, say, the market for "computer software for desktops"? For example:

What's the length of an inverted vee resonant antenna for 3.800 MHz at 35 feet? At 60 feet?

...is the market for antenna-design software for sub-notebook machines going to be significantly larger than the market for antenna-design software for notebook-and-larger machines?

Hey, want to see my photo portfolio?

That's one of the minor apps and, if you're somewhere with sufficient connectivity, it might be sufficient for it to be a Web app. Same thing with the "When does Jupiter rise?" app.

And a lot less than one F-35 Lightning II fighter jet. They're $107-238 million dollars each, depending on the variant.

You have no understanding whatsoever of Navy Information Warfare. This might give you an idea.

As I have explained on slashdot before, while most people look to a generic definition of "information warfare" and immediately think "propaganda" (which even then is only one small piece of IW, or what the US now calls "Information Operations" in doctrine), this actually has nothing to do with with 99% of Navy Information Warfare officers actually do.

The Navy Information Warfare Community was renamed from "Cryptology" a few years ago when everything "cyber" started getting big. Navy IW officers do signals intelligence (SIGINT), and "cyber" ("computer network operations", or CNO), to the exclusion of nearly everything else, against foreign adversary targets.

Yes, sometimes Navy IW Officers get put in billets where they are doing traditional "IO" (as they did in Iraq, for example), of which even then "propaganda" is a very small piece. But that has nothing to do with the job of nearly all Navy IW officers, and even when that happens, it's all in foreign theaters (e.g., Iraq, Afghanistan).

When I post on slashdot, as I have done for about 15 years, I have always done so as myself. You might disagree with me, but that doesn't make me someone you imagine to be a shill. It makes me someone you disagree with. And no matter what my jobs are, I'm posting here on my own time, with my own opinions, as me.

I do find it amusing that so many on slashdot can't stomach the idea that it's possible for people to have differing views without being paid for them, or automatically assume politics. It illustrates one of my initial points about people falling neatly into political boxes quite nicely; thank you. It's also amusing that you believe, by default, that no developments in the world may ever be worthy of US military intervention.

No, I know, I know...you're one of those types who believes that "war" is all an excuse to line the pockets of some imagined elite, that what the US does is "no different" (or usually worse) than any other nation, and that the US is the source of evil and conflict in the world. It's an interesting, if bizarre, position, and it's always been fascinating to me.

I'm sure the modern world after WWII would have been quite free of major conflicts where millions of lives would be lost, and safe for principles of freedom and liberal democracy without significant US investment. After all, it's not like there was anything else in the world opposed to those views, and I'm sure Iran and North Korea represent no threat to these ideals, and that China's massively accelerating military spending and aspirations to replace the US as a global steward will leave the world in a better place, what with their shining record on personal freedom, freedom of information, and human rights.

False flag operations are extremely risky, and don't happen as often as you would think.

... and don't happen as often as you would think.

Bugs for electronics, bird poop for science and now rats for engineering?

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/images/h96000/h96566kc.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/nov/06/cern-big-bang-goes-phut
http://www.aps.org/programs/outreach/history/historicsites/penziaswilson.cfm

Half the price for the piece of paper with the specs on it. But like the dreamliner, Boeing will deliver late, overbudget, and with serious issues forcing it to be grounded. Cos that's how it works. The more you pay, the less you get.

Really? The F/A-18 E/F acquisition program was an unparalleled success. The aircraft emerged from Engineering and Manufacturing Development meeting all of its performance requirements on cost, on schedule and 400 pounds under weight. All of this was verified in Operational Verification testing, the final exam, passing with flying colors receiving the highest possible endorsement.

The project runs on Linux and on Nokia's N900 and N9 phones. I'm looking for help to port it to Symbian, Android, and iOS devices.

The project runs on Linux and on Nokia's N900 and N9 phones. I'm looking for help to port it to Symbian, Android, and iOS devices.

The project runs on Linux and on Nokia's N900 and N9 phones. I'm looking for help to port it to Symbian, Android, and iOS devices.

Note that Hopper's log entry reads "First actual case of bug being found.", clearly indicating that "bug" was already in use for non-insect problems.

She was responsible for a lot more than that. She found the first computer bug, when she "...traced an error in the Mark II to a moth trapped in a relay. The bug was carefully removed and taped to a daily log book. Since then, whenever a computer has a problem, it's referred to as a bug." Here it is.

Not really. NTP's such a lightweight service that it runs fine on a vm. As other posters have mentioned, you certainly don't want to use the system clock as your time source, but you shouldn't do that anyway. Hopefully you're syncing with an upstream provider that syncs from a non-computer-based source. See http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/ntp.html for a good sync source (among many others). We've successfully virtualized NTP servers serving a 6000-person university.

MIT - NANOR reactor...http://cdn.coldfusionnow.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/HagelsteinPdemonstra.pdf SPaWAR - co-deposition of palladium ... http://www.spawar.navy.mil/sti/publications/pubs/tr/1696/tr1696.pdf Dr. Iraj Parchamazad, Chairman of the Chemistry Department at the University of LaVerne, in LaVerne, California - http://coldfusionnow.org/iraj-parchamazad-lenr-with-zeolites/ Let's continue work on ITER, but not ignore the progress in the lenr/lanr field by opening up federal funding and the us patent office to researchers in this field... The very least this will attract private investors under the protection of patents in which case the scientific establishment can keep denying lenr public funding.

That they did. Old English had a neuter gender, but was frequently in contact with Romance languages that didn't, and Old English used gender in peculiar and exciting ways on its own anyway. The US Navy's Naval History & Heritage Command has a trivia page that corroborates the assumption that the ship is seen as something that is nurturing, but to be honest we can't say either way—for the most part, the origins of particular grammatical gender assignments are very ancient, and full of eccentricities we cannot hope to fathom.

Also: Hydrogen seems unlikely to become a vehicle fuel. but it has long been useful for submarines, not to mention spacecraft. But perhaps the ultimate use will be aircraft carriers, using their abundant excess electricity and using the only raw material available... sea-water... to fuel-up jets.

http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-releases/2012/fueling-the-fleet-navy-looks-to-the-seas

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce the Mk 38 25mm chain gun system with an effective range of 2000 yards. Plus the Nimitz class' formidible torpedo defenses (SSTDS and AN/SLQ-25 Nixie,) aforementioned carrier strike group, aircraft on board and the odd SEAL sniper. So, yeah, think I'll be taking my chances on the carrier.

Really?

"The Navy flew more than 8,000 combat sorties during May" (1967)

http://www.history.navy.mil/docs/vietnam/high66-5.html

This form of propulsion is so clever, it is just dying for a racing league - who knows what speeds might be possible? But I wonder what the patent situation is.

Let me see if I have this straight:

You think that for 15 years, I didn't realize that I've had a link to the same public homepage on my slashdot profile, which has thousands of posts, dozens of accepted front page article submissions, and also uses my real name, and that in reality I'm secretly a paid government shill that just didn't do a good job of hiding his identity?

Wow. Just... Wow.

Also, US Navy Officers are not anonymous. By law, all US Navy Officers must be identified by name, rank, and officer designator: https://navalregister.bol.navy.mil/

Ugh ....
Maryland - Goddard Space Flight Center
New Mexico - AF Research Lab - Space Vehicles, Sandia Labs, Los Alamos Labs
Colorado - Ball, Raytheon, etc
California - JPL, Livermore Labs and way too many others to list
Virginia - Navy Research Lab, Wallops Island
Texas - UT Dallas, Texas A&M, Johnson Space Center, many more
Arizona - Orbital Sciences Corp., GD, etc
Tennessee - Oakridge
Alabama - U.S. Space and Rocket Center
Utah -Space Dynamics Laboratory, L3
Florida - Kennedy, ATK and many more
Alaska - Kodiak Island

The space industry is spread out over the entire country. This list could go on and on. Saying it is only Florida and Texas that benefit is mildly absurd. I agree with the idea, but it isn't nearly as narrow as that.

SAP was around 18 years ago, but not well-known. And plus, being a German company, it probably would not have been the choice then for a US Defense Department project.

Well, so much for that. From the Navy's "About Navy ERP" page:

The Navy ERP Program uses a product from SAP Corporation, which allows the Navy to unify, standardize, and streamline all its business activities into one completely integrated system.

First guess is that he's somewhere like U.A.E. or something, and pulling in internet via a cable drop on the pier. Obviously the government there restricts what goes on in their part of the internet. VPN seems like a suitable workaround, and would still be a great improvement over the satellite feed with really limited bandwidth and/or a spotty connection.

Probably somebody in the chain of command passing the buck instead of helping. Somebody in IT-DIV should be able to do this job. I remember having non-classified access via the shipboard IT-21 network, and doing whatever on the internet back in the early 2000's. Not like the wheel has to be re-invented here.

Now why not just search for the info if somebody doesn't want to do their job? Good luck with that! Google or other search engines aren't much help, since typing in "nmci approved non-classified vpn provider" gives nothing but useless spammy stuff and link-farm sites of dubious nature. Probably explains why he desparately came over to Ask Slashdot.

Only thing seemingly relevant in such search without too much digging seems to be this .pdf titled "Security Requirements", but likely he has a more updated version somewhere amongst the TECHMANs. Yet that doesn't tell much other than giving a basic outline of how the local network and its security should be set up.

Really, somebody on the ship should already have email addresses or phone numbers of people back in Norfolk or D.C. that can give a list of pre-approved VPN services with a government contract if not a list of DOD provided VPN services. Might have to pester some senior chief or such to get off his lazy khaki ass, but if that's what it takes then do it. At least try to bring up this morale issue with the CMC.