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These three are the US master clock's stratum-1 servers. They most likely will not run out of bandwidth. The last one isn't (intended) for civilian users, so don't come to me if an aircraft carrier, F/A-18 Hornet, etc. smashes through your front door.

tick.usno.navy.mil
tock.usno.navy.mil
ntp.usno.navy.mil

More information.

I don't need to explain why training terrorists might not be the best idea for our long term interest, right?

Yes! Why didn't the pentagon think of this? Training hackers is a terrible idea.

Oh no.. it's worse than that. It looks like they are also training people how to use guns, fly airplanes, and use armed ships

... the video of the robot Octavia in action to get a feeling of it. Developed by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) it looks so much like a mixture of Alien (out of the famous movie) and the cute Nao that it is the most scary thing I ever saw moving.

This thing is so far in the Uncanny Valley - you could also just call him "Uncle Vanney".
It's look is strange enough that my brain just can't decide wether it's cute or evil, so decides to panic and makes we want to flee immediatly - and might it be into the open flames...

(Just to be on the safe side: I for one welcome our new firefighting Octavia lords)

The impact(s) of sinking and damaging Japanese shipping were enormous!

http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/n87/history/pac-campaign.html

"Disproportionate Costs Imposed on Japanese

I have attempted to roughly calculate costs of each side's effort in order to determine whether the U.S. campaign was "efficient." The cost of merchant ships and warships lost to U.S. submarine attack were calculated using actual Japanese prices and added to the cost of all Japanese ASW frigates and corvettes (but not fleet destroyers or ASW aircraft).(48) Using U.S. Navy figures I calculated the cost of the entire fleet of 288 U.S. submarines that served or were built during the war (regardless of whether they served in the Pacific). The result is impressive although not surprising: the Japanese spent at least 42 times more on anti-submarine warfare and in losses attributed to submarines than the U.S. spent on her Submarine Force. When one considers the fact that the Japanese economy was only 8.9% of the size of the U.S. economy in 1937, the submarine campaign was clearly both an extraordinarily cost efficient and effective means to employ U.S. forces against Japan.(49) Regardless of the cost effectiveness of the U.S. submarine campaign, the military effects were stunningly clear. Fully a year before the end of the war, and before the extensive bombing of mainland Japan, the war against Japanese lines of communication resulted in decisive impact on the Japanese war economy and on the Japanese military logistical system. "

That's only one class of US subs.

The U-Boat crews did a terrific job with what little they had, but they could stalk convoys from port-to-port and use Wolfpack tactics to concentrate force.

Some U-boats had superb commanders with, well huge cojones:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BCnther_Prien

On the other hand, the collective US submarine effort was much MORE effective than the U-boats.

http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/n87/history/pac-campaign.html

""Bauxite imports fell off 88% just between the summer and fall of 1944. In 1945, pig iron imports plunged 89%, pulp 90%, raw cotton and wool 91%, fats and oils 92%, iron ore 95%, soda and cement 96%, lumber 98%, fodder 99%, and not one ounce of sugar or raw rubber reached Japan."(12)

Moreover, the reduction in imports of raw materials mirrored problems importing food. During 1944, average caloric intake fell 12% below the minimum daily requirement for the non-farming population.(13) The enormous drop in importation of raw materials resulted in a significant drop in Japanese industrial production. In fact, the Japanese mobilization committee stated in a late 1944 report: "Shipping lost or damaged since the beginning of the war amounts to two and one half times newly constructed shipping and formed the chief cause of the constant impoverishment of national strength."(14)

Submarine attacks on the oil flow to Japan were a second critical factor in destroying Japanese military potential. Japanese oil imports fell from 1.75 million barrels per month in August 1943 to 360,000 barrels per month in July 1944. In October 1944, imports fell even more due to high losses around the Philippine battlefields.(15) After September 1943, the ratio of petroleum successfully shipped from the southern regions that reached Japan never exceeded 28%, and during the last 15 months of the war the ratio only averaged 9%.(16) These losses are especially impressive when one considers that the Japanese Navy alone required 1.6 million barrels monthly to operate.(17) Much anecdotal evidence describes Japan's often desperate responses to the American guerre de course. For example, in early 1945, the Japanese Navy loaded crude oil barrels on battleships to import home, while at the same time the nation experimented with producing gasoline from potatoes.(18)"

"The war against Japanese SLOCs resulted in significant indirect effects on Japanese air strength. In fact, the reduction in Japan's air power strength was not so much due to the reduction of aircraft quality or production but due to the reduction in pilot quality. Fuel shortages substantially reduced pilot training.(25) In 1944, the great Japanese naval aviator Fuchida complained about the "inadequate training" aviators received prior to attachment to an operational unit.(26) Moreover, once Japanese pilots reached operational units, their training opportunities often did not improve. For example, prior to the Battle of the Philippine Sea, Admiral Toyoda stationed his carriers at Tawitawi near the Borneo oil supplies due to the effective submarine campaign against Japanese tankers. U.S. commanders vectored submarines into the area. Alerted to the danger, the Japanese commander refused to sortie for training- with the result that what little skills his undertrained pilots possessed atrophied.(27) The resulting Japanese aerial defeat became known as the Marinas Turkey Shoot."

"As previously discussed, 30% of total Japanese Navy losses were caused by U.S. submarines. Submarines played another important role in reducing IJN capabilities. Damage to ships, caused in part by submarines, significantly increased ship repair time in Japanese shipyards, thereby reducing opportunities for new construction. The Japanese Navy spent 12% of its construction budget on ship repairs in 1943 and 1944; the figure increased to 34% in 1945.(29) Additionally, the submarine cam

You are off base with this. The budget estimate of 1 trillion is for the entire life cycle with fuel, weapons, maintenance, and crew for the next half century. The F22 is a fifth generation fighter and not comparable at all with the Mig-29 or the Su-27. Those are 4th generation aircraft comparable to the F-18 super-hornet. The competitor for the F-22 and F-35 is Russia's Sukhoi PAK FA which is not even in production yet. Not only does it look like its American counterpart; the cost of development & production is similar. Plus they are further behind and still in the design phase with only 4 produced. Cost can only go up from there.

There is no shortage of planes to use for combat, there is an entire stock yard of planes kept by the military. There are 4000+ planes kept in Sonora Desert where they can just drain the fuel and oil and have the planes sit there forever either for future use or parts. Factor with the 4000+ planes currently in use plus production capacity and we have plenty.

You are also forgetting that now cruise missiles and drones preform the majority of attacks that were once only done by planes in the past (ie WWII). America has no shortage of missiles. One Tomahawk missile is around $600K and the US has thousands of them. This is just 1 type of missile among the dozens the US has.

...While in dry dock, the boats have all kinds of cabling in the way preventing hatches from being closed. Forgot about that in my first post on this topic. So, no, you typically cant just walk up and close the hatch - not that you'd want to.

It is my understanding that since the sinking of the Guitarro, quick-disconnects for such cables are mandatory:
http://www.history.navy.mil/library/special/guitarro.htm#rec

They abandoned that stuff out there on a rock in space.

Well ... that's the thing. What do you mean by "abandoned"?

I'm no expert on maritime law (which is what has been typically extended into space), but to my understanding while you're right that an abandoned ship is a free-for-all for any and all takers to salvage, the key to that is it has to be "abandoned", which is different from simply not doing anything with it for a given period of time - particularly for Government owned vessels (at least those used in on-commercial endeavors; see http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/org12-7h.htm "These laws establish that right, title, or ownership of federal property is not lost to the government due to the passage of time, or by neglect or inaction.") That's all aside from the explicit call for preservation of archaeological and historical objects (to "be preserved or disposed of for the benefit of mankind as a whole") that's part of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

That's even explicitly specified in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 "A State Party to the Treaty on whose registry an object launched into outer space is carried shall retain jurisdiction and control over such object, and over any personnel thereof, while in outer space or on a celestial body."

So my understanding is that the remains of NASA vessels (as government-owned items) are *not* abandoned simply because they've been left on the moon or on the ocean floor, regardless of how much time passes. Rather, to be abandoned, there has to be an affirmative law or administrative decree which explicitly abandons them and removes them from the registry of government ownership.

I did a quick g**gl*, but couldn't find any more detail on the DEVICE 9B6 - MULTISTATION DISORIENTATION DEMONSTRATOR .

Does anyone have any good sources of information on this?
Why did the Navy need to hire American Airlines to build this instead of Sellner Manufacturing?!

You need to understand the limitations of those threat assessments. The Pentagon doesn't assess the likelihood of such an event....Keep in mind that the Pentagon occasionally does threat assessments for alien invasions, asteroid impacts, and other low likelihood events too.

Nonsense of course they asses the likelyhood when it is possible to do so, as is the case with mass migration due to rising oceans and an expanding sub-tropical desert zone, border disputes due to resouces becoming accessible in an ice free artic summer, the list goes on... They have to make such judgements in order to state the priority of the threat, without that the report would just say, "here's some fanciful senarios, if congress would be so kind as to throw the budget dart, we will spend a trillion dollars on whatever it hits".

Protip: Look up and listen carefully to Rear Admiral David Titley on youtube, he's one of the grown-ups your taxes are employing.

My uncle retired as a US Navy Captain. For many years he had two photographs displayed in his house, which he ascribed to Admiral "Bull" Halsey's "second" typhoon, in June 1945. At that time my uncle was an ensign, assigned to a destroyer, and on his first sea voyage.

The two photographs were of a sister destroyer. In the first photograph, all one sees is a giant wave, with the bow of the destroyer sticking out of one side, and the stern sticking out of the other. The middle of the ship, including the masts and superstructure, is submerged and not visible.

In the second photo, taken a few seconds later, the middle of the ship is now visible, but both the bow and stern are now submerged in the wave train. And as a kid, the part that fascinated me the most: You could see an air gap below the middle of the ship, between the ship's keel and the wave trough below.

Some of the information provided in the article:

“This project involves furnishing video game systems, both new and used, and creating prototype rigs for capturing data from the video game systems.”
-- U.S. Navy listing

"“R & D effort for the development and delivery of computer forensic tools for analyzing network traffic and stored data created during the use of video game systems.”
-- Federal Business Opportunites website

Some links from the article:
Statement of Work [DOC]
Contracting Activity document [DOCX]

Some of the information provided in the article:

“This project involves furnishing video game systems, both new and used, and creating prototype rigs for capturing data from the video game systems.”
-- U.S. Navy listing

"“R & D effort for the development and delivery of computer forensic tools for analyzing network traffic and stored data created during the use of video game systems.”
-- Federal Business Opportunites website

Some links from the article:
Statement of Work [DOC]
Contracting Activity document [DOCX]

The number of symbolic. But giant electromagnets make some pretty awesome railgun weapons: http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=65193 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1q_rRicAwI

Anyone who regularly consults Internet sites which promote terror or hatred or violence will be sentenced to prison

Such a law would be a joy for military recruiters. Click the links below to be put onto a French terrorist watch list!
Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines!
Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines!

I suppose the French President meant violence he does not agree with should be prosecuted. That makes more sense.

Well, we're a little off topic here but I have karma to burn, so here you go.

"How can a new method be more accurate than the method we use to define time?"

Because the current definition, based on a hyperfine transition of electrons in the Cesium atom, cannot be practically realized. The "definition refers to a caesium atom at rest at a temperature of 0 K." Neither of those conditions can be realized in the real world (there's gravity, and electromagnetic fields, etc.), and corrections are imperfect.

The new method discussed in the article, allows one to realize a better performing timebase. There are already ones which perform better, but the definition of the second hasn't changed.

USS Constitution is STILL in commission.

USS CONSTITUTION, the world's oldest commissioned warship afloat, promotes the United States Navy and America’s naval heritage through educational outreach, public access and historic demonstrations, in port and underway.

Being assigned to the crew of Constitution is still a very much sought after posting due to the prestige of the posting. Only the very best and brightest ever get such duty.

Ref. 1
Ref. 2

...but the USS Constitution is the "world's oldest commissioned warship afloat", having been launched 21 October 1797.

As for the USS Enterprise (CVN 65), some video memories:

USS Enterprise at Sea
USS Enterprise Flight Operations

"Fate protects fools, little children, and ships named Enterprise."

Fair winds and following seas.

...but the USS Constitution is the "world's oldest commissioned warship afloat", having been launched 21 October 1797.

As for the USS Enterprise (CVN 65), some video memories:

USS Enterprise at Sea
USS Enterprise Flight Operations

"Fate protects fools, little children, and ships named Enterprise."

Fair winds and following seas.

Major General Smedley Butler, United States Marine Corp, was an extraordinarily brave and devoted Marine who served the United States in an exceptional manner while in uniform, earning two Congressional Medals of Honor - the highest American medal for bravery on the battlefield. Out of uniform and in the realm of politics, however, citizen Butler involved himself in leftist fringe politics. I would be inclined to follow Major General Butler anywhere on the battlefield, but nowhere near a voting booth. In this regard he is like Chomsky, a man of exceptional virtual in his field, but a political crank (popular though he may be) and genocide denier.

. . . . Back in the 1930s, the U.S. Communist Party recruited a former Marine Corps general, Smedley Butler, to give speeches on the eve of World War II denouncing military preparedness as a capitalist racket. The idea was that by persuading an individual man of valor to propound shameful views, those views would somehow become less shameful. It didn’t work then. I doubt it will work now. - Wesley Who?

War is sometimes chosen for you by your enemies, not by some secret cabal in government or industry. Other nations and groups have their own plans, such as forcing Islamic conversion and Sharia law to replace the US Constitution on the US independent of anything the US does.

If the so called Military-Industrial complex is so powerful, why has the long term trend since World War 2 been towards decreased spending as a percentage of the economy?
Defense Spending as Percentage of GDP Well Below Historical Average

If there is no threat, why do we keep seeing arrests and convictions like this?

Federal agents arrest Amine El Khalifi; he allegedly planned to bomb Capitol
Federal authorities on Friday arrested a 29-year-old Moroccan man in an alleged plot to carry out a suicide bombing at the U.S. Capitol, the latest in a series of terrorism-related arrests resulting from undercover sting operations.

FBI’s Top Ten News Stories for the Week Ending January 27, 2012

Denver: Man Arrested for Providing Material Support to a Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization

Jamshid Muhtorov was arrested by members of the FBI’s Denver and Chicago Joint Terrorism Task Forces on a charge of providing and attempting to provide material support to the Islamic Jihad Union, a Pakistan-based designated foreign terrorist organization. Full Story

Baltimore: Man Pleads Guilty to Attempted Use of a Weapon of Mass Destruction in Plot to Attack Armed Forces Recruiting Center

U.S. citizen Antonio Martinez, aka Muhammad Hussain, pled guilty to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against federal property in connection with a scheme to attack an armed forces recruiting station in Catonsville, Maryland. Full Story

Washington Field: Man Pleads Guilty to Shootings at Pentagon, Other Military Buildings

Yonathan Melaku, of Alexandria,

Those Strogg mofos are going to be sorry now!

And it looks bad ass too.

Have you seen any anaerobic terrorists? Well, have you?

Any number of dead terrorists...the most famous one of the bunch is now at the bottom of the North Arabian Sea.

The freezing point of seawater is about 28.4F (-2C), instead of the 32F (0C) freezing point of ordinary water.
http://www.onr.navy.mil/focus/ocean/water/temp3.htm

bugs being smashed in electical components has already happened, lots of times in history.
Here's one of the first properly documented cases of it, from 1947:

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/images/h96000/h96566k.jpg

That is the one I was thinking of,

You might call the source for this claim journalistic, but it is at least from within the military. Could the encryption of the transmitted data, or maybe massive redundancy, account for the size of the figure?

bugs being smashed in electical components has already happened, lots of times in history.
Here's one of the first properly documented cases of it, from 1947:

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/images/h96000/h96566k.jpg

Photo #: NH 96566-KN (Color)

The First "Computer Bug"

Moth found trapped between points at Relay # 70, Panel F, of the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator while it was being tested at Harvard University, 9 September 1947. The operators affixed the moth to the computer log, with the entry: "First actual case of bug being found". They put out the word that they had "debugged" the machine, thus introducing the term "debugging a computer program".
In 1988, the log, with the moth still taped by the entry, was in the Naval Surface Warfare Center Computer Museum at Dahlgren, Virginia.

Courtesy of the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren, VA., 1988.

NHHC Collection

You're right that this isn't something for covert ops over an opponent you don't want to alarm. But, I don't think it's only for naval operations; the Navy Press release from which these stories have been cribbed (Autonomous Deployment Demonstration Program Completes Flight Testing, December 5, 2011 -- just reaching ./ a month later) indicates that these replace sensors that would have to be manually deployed by warfighters (or spies), with payloads for acoustic, magnetic, chemical/biological and signals intelligence. That sounds like this could be launched over land, and that the sensors remain active for a while upon landing -- it looks like you could fit a cell phone battery in there, so let's assume there's a one to two week operational time. You'd want to launch a cheap swarm because your enemy (and you'd likely be at war -- think Iraq or Afghanistan) would collect some of them from the ground, but hopefully not find all of them. They'd probably have radio burst communications to a stealth UAV overflying at a preset time, maintaining radio silence otherwise to avoid detection and save power.

For naval use, though, the magnetic sensors might be very handy, and especially if these don't disintegrate on contact with the sea. A swarm of floating magnetic sensors that communicate only when necessary via a mesh network and/or radio to a listening UAV could be useful for creating an adhoc dragnet for stealthy detection of ship hulls (yay for Magnetic Anomaly Detection) without all the helicopters and expense it takes today.

Somebody, somewhere spends hours coming up with these "names"

CICADA = Close-In Covert Autonomous Disposable Aircraft

It was actually the inventor of the CICADA himself, who has a great sense of humor and loves to do this to almost all the "drones" he creates.

Somebody, somewhere spends hours coming up with these "names"

CICADA = Close-In Covert Autonomous Disposable Aircraft

The US uses steam catapults, which are even better but are more expensive and are fairly involved to design.

Beulah the buzzer says "Sorry, wrong answer", should have been "Used to use steam catapults", Now they're using EMALS

Now things brings up the question, why on earth did they name the newest, most advanced aircraft carriers on the planet after a President who was never elected by anyone

Probably because he was in the Navy.

It's been so long, I forgot a key fact about your point: During the Gulf War (1991) we didn't have the full GPS constellation up. There were only 14 or so of the necessary 24 satellites up in orbit. The coverage was poor in the Gulf Region and so two Captains got sweet write-ups for coming up with a novel idea to give the region better coverage. There was a satellite that was no longer able to stay 3-axis stabilized, and so it had been spun up. When a satellite is spun, most of it's orbit is spent with the bottom (the side with the antennaes that normally transmit to the Earth) pointed out to outer space. At this point, normally a GPS satellite is set to "unhealthy" and considered non-operational. So what the two Captains proposed was turning the satellite's payload (the Atomic clocks, L-band transmitters, etc) back on, and rotating the satellite Z-axis so that the small portion of the orbit where it DID point at the Earth, was when it passed over the Middle East. It was approved and we were able to extend coverage by a few hours for 3-D (lat, long, alt) and 2-d (lat, long).

GPS wasn't considered FOC, or Full Operational Capable until after the Gulf war (1991) ended. Heck, it wasn't even IOC yet. So, you're right, it wasn't an accident. Feel free to read: NAVSTAR GPS However, keep in mind the accuracy numbers are wrong in the link I include, since this article was written BEFORE we turned SA off for worldwide use. Another reference point since no one seems to think I know what the hell I'm talking about: Launch Dates. Most Block 1's only lived a few years beyond their 3 year design life. They were R&D birds with several design flaws. The exception and case in point, was SVN3. It was up 13 years (I was the SSO who set it unhealthy) and the only reason we turned it non-operational is because one of the batteries wasn't engineered to the same spec as the other 2. It was externally mounted (outside the main bus) and so it went through more severe thermal cycles as it went into sunlight and darkness. When the 3rd battery failed, the other two were still ok, but it wasn't enough to make it through eclipse season (point in an orbit where the sun passes often behind the Earth leaving it in periods of darkness, which is bad because the solar arrays don't make power). My point? Just because it launched prior to 1991, doesn't mean it was operational in 1991. I spent about 15 minutes Googling for a site that listed the total but can't find one. I just know as a GPS SSO in 1991, I was really really bored because we didn't have many satellites at the time to maintain, and for that year alone, we had 3 SSOs per crew. So there were hours between satellite supports .

Hopefully that was helpful. I've spent a couple hours replying to replies from my original...so I'm done at this point. I try to provide insight, be helpful, but a few of the other replies just border on silly.

While I agree that all captains (whether you're on a teeny little sailboat or a SuezMax container ship) should know how to use their fallbacks, I think that disabling GPS during military exercises is going to increase the probability that innocent civilians are going to accidentally encroach on those military ships during those same exercises. Seems like a bad idea.

For the most part, the cell phone networks don't need GPS to operate. Just knowing the location wouldn't be good enough for signal beamforming anyway because of all the multipath in urban environments. It's often the other way around - GPS location information is often provided by the towers to the phones. The phones use that info (whether acquired via real GPS or cell phone network assisted GPS) for E911 and for whatever smartphone apps want it. However, CDMA *does* need *very* precise time synchronization to work - and this is usually implemented via GPS receivers on each tower.

http://www.history.navy.mil/wars/foabroad.htm

Nope. But the US has shown willingness to use the guns it has. Now explain to me again how this makes the US the "good guys" again.

It really depends on the use the arms are put to, doesn't it? Kuwaitis were pretty happy when US led coalition forces removed Saddam's army from Kuwait in 1991. Of course there were many Europeans that protested against the US for planning to remove Saddam's forces from Kuwait, but virtually none when Saddam invaded and conquered Kuwait, thus demonstrating the moral bankruptcy of the "Peace" movement.

The French (practically no oil) were pretty happy when the mainly US and British forces of the Allies removed Nazi German forces from France. Likewise the Dutch (practically no oil), Danes (practically no oil), Belgians (practically no oil), and Luxemburgers (practically no oil). Many Italians (practically no oil) were glad to be rid of the Fascist government, as many Germans (practically no oil) were happy to be rid of the National Socialist government.

Australians (practically no oil) were happy to have not been invaded by the Japanese, which the US presence helped, and the Philippinos (practically no oil) were thrilled to see the Japanese (practically no oil) removed by American forces.

South Koreans (practically no oil) are quite happy that they are not governed by the North, a fate prevented by US arms. The South Vietnamese (practically no oil) almost made it, they defeated the 1972 invasion by North Vietnam with American air support. Unfortunately the "peace" movement influenced the US Congress to cut off all aid to South Vietnam, including medical supplies. South Vietnam fell to another conventional invasion by tanks and infantry divisions from North Vietnam.

The vast majority of Eastern Europeans (pretty much no oil) are happy to be free of Soviet rule, and many West Europeans (mostly no oil) are happy to have avoided that fate. American arms made a substantial contribution to that end.

The people of Taiwan (practically no oil) are still free today in large part to America.

The Iraqi people are free today, with a budding democracy, and are rebuilding their country. They are happy to be free from Saddam which wouldn't have happened without American intervention. Despite the large number of people killed by terrorists and insurgents (the vast majority of the dead), they were really no worse off than Saddam’s long term average death rate, and now violence is down overall by about 90%. They have a chance, but not a guarantee, of being able to build a decent country. That is a chance they never would have had under Saddam or his sons.

American arms have helped stop and reverse the world wide trend toward despotism at least twice, helping to turn the tide against fascism, and soviet communism.

America has used its military power in humanitarian relief efforts, such as after the 2004 tsunami, and in Haiti.

So, what has your country done?

In other words, code that isn't downloading this file at least once a week, or using a parameterized version probably isn't going to be affected. Any code that doesn't require |UTC-UT1|>1 second will continue to work just fine. If you're not pointing a telescope, guiding a missile or a spaceship, or using a UT1 clock in an inertial reference system locked to GPS or TAI time, I can't conceive of a way this could affect you.

And the Trieste's sister, Trieste II ), is on display (along with a bunch of other cool stuff) at the Naval Undersea Museum at Keyport, WA.
 
  Google Maps link.
 
You're wrong about Alvin though, she's still in operation. The DSV exhibited at the Navy Yard Museum is either DSV-3 Turtle or DSV 4 Sea Cliff . They do both look like Alvin and were built using spare spheres originally ordered for Alvin though.

He was indeed stationed in the South Pacific for awhile, but did a few months duty at BuAir" in the Main Navy building as well:

"From December through March 1945, he served at the Bureau of Aeronautics, Navy Department, Washington, D.C."

Whether it was an "eyesore" is really in the eye of the beholder. The Navy didn't maintain it properly because it was intended to be temporary from the start.

Nixon inspired a lot of people to alter reality to fit their preconceptions.

I believe the real reason was that a portion of the building had been condemned and 3000 of the 7000 occupants had been relocated in 1969. If you have a citation that indicates he was ever stationed there I would like to see it, I thought he was stationed in the South Pacific. The building was an eyesore, neglecting the entrance perhaps, from the time it was built. Your comparison to Mr. Jefferson's home indicate you are not an "architecture buff."

Nixon entered office in 1969 demolition began in the spring of 1970 and was completed in 1970 That's not two years even with rounding.

Nixon inspired a lot of people to alter reality to fit their preconceptions.

I believe the real reason was that a portion of the building had been condemned and 3000 of the 7000 occupants had been relocated in 1969. If you have a citation that indicates he was ever stationed there I would like to see it, I thought he was stationed in the South Pacific. The building was an eyesore, neglecting the entrance perhaps, from the time it was built. Your comparison to Mr. Jefferson's home indicate you are not an "architecture buff."

Nixon entered office in 1969 demolition began in the spring of 1970 and was completed in 1970 That's not two years even with rounding.

Ah, now you've stoked the architecture buff in me. That was the Main Navy & Munitions buildings, built as "temporary" headquarters during WWI. But they were built of steel-reinforced concrete, and so lasted a long, long time. Externally, they had an attractive, federal-style facade and fit in with the surrounding building. Inside, however, they were said to have a rather dingy look and feel to them. Regardless, the real reason Nixon wanted them torn down is that he was stationed there as a young officer and hated them. But compared to some of the modernist monstrosities in DC, the old Main Navy buildings looked more like federal buildings than some of the glass and steel and concrete horrors that we've since built in the capitol. Next to the J. Edgar Hoover building or some parts of the State Department headquarters, Main Navy was a veritable Monticello.

Yes, it's absolutely unpossible for them to use a laser to destroy objects traveling above the earth's surface at high rates of speed! Unpossible, I say!

If you bothered to read the article, you'd see that they're talking about using either:

1) A powerful-enough laser to ablate the surface of the junk enough to destabilize its orbit so it falls back into the atmosphere and burns up;
or
2) Using the momentum of photons from a lower-power laser over a longer period of time to slow down the junk enough to cause it to de-orbit and burn up;

Both are certainly possible given current technology.

http://www.spectracomcorp.com/ProductsServices/TimingSynchronization/GPSTimeFrequencyReferences/tabid/117/Default.aspx

http://www.tekroninternational.com/gps_clocks

http://www.trimble.com/timing/mini-t.aspx?dtID=overview&

and for the gold:

http://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/time/gps/gps-info#tt

I would expect US NIST Time & Frequency division or US Naval Observatory Time department would be more than willing and able to host the zoneinfo database. Otherwise the time-nuts would likely step in and offer their support. A number of them being long time Unix folk, they wouldn't be total strangers to IANA or various national time authorities.

Apparently, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH)...for some strange reason...has been hosting the project. (Off the top of my head, I know that NIH also developed Image and ImageJ, presumably for their own needs.)

<republican>Sounds like more government waste to me. Why is NIH in this business exactly</republican>

I would expect US NIST Time & Frequency division or US Naval Observatory Time department would be more than willing and able to host the zoneinfo database. Otherwise the time-nuts would likely step in and offer their support. A number of them being long time Unix folk, they wouldn't be total strangers to IANA or various national time authorities.

Dude, your GPS receiver is 14 seconds off!

People who use GPS for accurate timing need to be aware that GPS doesn't account for leap-seconds. As such, GPS is ahead of UTC by about 14 seconds. You can read more about the problem here.

It gets more complicated, however, as some receivers correct for this. You can read more about the correction here.

Some have wondered how accurate the time display is on Garmin GPS receivers such as G-12XL, G-II+, and the G-III. Here is an answer provided by Garmin Engineering. This also explains why the GPS can be locked for awhile and still differ from UTC by 11 or 12 seconds. (This answer applies to other brands of GPS receivers as well.)

Start of Garmin quote>

Provided the unit has collected current leap second count from the navigation message, (current leap second difference from GPS time is only broadcast once in a 12.5 minute Nav. message), or current leap second has not changed since the last time the unit collected this variable, the time displayed on the front of the unit should be accurate to within 1 second of UTC.

>end of Garmin Quote

Joe Mehaffey comments:
This means that IF your GPS does not have (or does not save) the leap second offset from last time it was operated, your time may be off by perhaps 12 seconds until the complete NAV MESSAGE is received by the GPS. Jack and I have observed that "typically" Garmin GPS receivers display time which is delayed from about 1/2 to 1 second behind UTC. Lowrance GPS receivers are usually between 1 and 2 seconds delayed behind UTC. In both cases, this is a result of the display driver subroutine having low priority as the "GPS internal clock" is within a few nanoseconds of correct.

Similarly, the NMEA time output on the serial link is typically delayed a second or two depending on various factors.

In the Navy, I can get a lot of fish.
In the Navy, I sweep mines for liberty.
In the Navy! In the Navy!

Don't you have to prove your innocence in military trials? No presumption of innocence? That's my understanding, anyway.

Your understanding is quite wrong.

You could read it for yourself. But I'll enlighten you a little
Manual for Courts Martial 2008 (PDF and .mil warning)
p. 461

851. Atr 51. Votings and ruling

(c) Before a vote is taken on the findings, the military judge or the president of a court-martial without a military judge shall, in the presence of the accused and counsel, instruct the members of the court as to the elements of the offense and charge them---

(1) that the accused must be presumed to be innocent until his guilt is established by legal and competent evidence beyond reasonable doubt;
(2) that in the case being considered, if there is reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the accused, the doubt must be resolved in favor of the accused and he must be acquitted;
(IANAML - emphasis mine)