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E.U. Agrees To Launch Galileo Satellite Location System
waimate writes "The European Union today decided to go ahead with Galileo, the constellation of 30 satellites which will compete with the U.S. GPS system.
The U.S. abolished selective availability three years ago partly to make GPS more useful for all mankind, but also to dissuade other countries from developing their own navigational satellite system, and thus be dependant on the U.S. for both peaceful and military purposes. Since the demise of the Russian GLONASS system, GPS is the only game in town. Evidently recent events make Europe feel less comfortable about such things, and so they're building their own. Good thing for commercialization of space, or bad thing for world peace?"
I guess we Americans can't blame anyone for not trusting us after the whole Iraq thing. Somebody's got to police the police!
This has been in the works for many years. It has to do with American power in general, and not any specific recent actions.
It's great the worlds only sat navigation system is no longer in the hands of the US Army I guess...
I'm not Seth.
The ones Iraq tried to use against the United States succesfully? Well, I'd bet the United States military has GPS blockers that actually work, and wouldn't hesitate to use them if necessary.
or bad thing for world peace?
Er, I you mean good thing for world peace.
Unless you want to imply that the USmilitary is going to attack europe to stop them from lauching its satelittes...
You can't take the sky from me...
Europe is, slowly and quietly, moving towards the status of Superpower, and it is unsurprising that it is seeking independence of technical material.
Not to be cynical, but the U.S. is hardly viewed as an unbiased and trustworthy party, a fact that has got worse since the turkey shoot in Iraq.
Should preview my posts.
How could it possibly be bad for world peace that not only one (violent) country can direct their bombs accurately??
A receiver compatible with both systems could provide increased accuracy over either alone. Even though current GPS is accurate enough for my practical demands, I want more for nerd reasons. I remember speculation on using both GLONASS and GPS signals several years ago with the idea of improving both reliability and accuracy.
Remember, theres 1 000 000 000 cubic metres in a cubic kilometre.
But theres 147 197 952 000 cubic feet in a cubic mile.
So remember, those windows boxen are not going to take 28000 cubic miles.
One day, the SUA will learn not to crash into mars!
I'd have a hard time thinking of a bigger waste of resources. Unnecessarily duplicating a very expensive piece of infrastructure that the world needs only one instance of.
I'm sure I'll get blasted for this, but the US really showed it's true colours in this last war. They rode roughshod over every international organisation when the consensus didn't go their way and ultimately staged an invasion rather than liberation. I think under these circumstances the world needs another option.
I just hope they do a really good technical job of it, that results in an even better system than GPS.
My rights don't need management.
So they have their own system now, excellent. Autonomy is always a good thing. Don't get me wrong, I like the fact that the U.S. is healthy as hell, but no country should be dependent on it for satellite navigation (GPS) or software (Microsoft). I just wish Japan would get its act together to avoid a U.S. economic bailout...
Perhaps at some point in the future, both satellite systems will be merged into an internationally-run outfit. Good standardized functionality as well as a symbol of building what President Clinton referred to as an "integrated global community."
The coolest voice ever.
Hey Europe - knock yourselves out. Glonass was nearly a total clone of the GPS system - except that like almost all of the Soviet harware built from stolen US blueprints it never worked quite as well - You can bet that the EU system will also be a clone of the existing GPS system. Unless they are going to come up with some major accuracy improvements (unlikely due to cost) I don't see that it does anything other than keep Europes high tech industry working and sucking Europes taxpayers dry...
well everyone knows this will take them some time.. and i likly to lose funding by europe. Also, if we ever did get into a conflict with them everyone knows we would have a way to jam it before they could ever jam ours.
About the US attempting to bully everyone else out of space - and what gives them the right??? since when do they own space??? - I say good on the EU!
Galileo has been in the planning for quite a while, and will as far as I can tell be compatible and possibly linked with the US GPS system.
The Galileo homepage, in english.
---
The combined human population is enough to feed every living tiger for app. 28000 years.
They need to follow it up with extensive space-based surveillance and ABM/ASAT capabilities.
To say nothing of all the work they have to do in conventional forces.
America the beautful has given way to America the barbaric. If there is to be a future that sees a world at peace, the EU may very be our last, best hope.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Galileo is --in theory-- much more accurate than GPS. You probably don't want your airliner to risk missing the runway by a couple of meters in thick fog. Galileo will give QoS guarantees and greater precision, which will make it a viable solution for critical systems such as air-traffic control. But I have no clue what the current plans are to enforce the policy that it should be a civilian-only system.
Hopefully, more choice would benefit all.
As another poster pointed out this move is not due to 'recent events'. I remember reading about this some time before.
In any case, one of their major concerns of the Europeans was that that we could potentially deny or disable the GPS network when some events such as wars start.
The 'recent events' might however have underscored their concern, for instance:
Maybe, these things just made the Europeans want their own network even more.
It shouldn't however be a problem to anyone. Aren't we going to get more choice. Hopefully.
Thank you.
GrimReality
2003-05-27 00:49:03 UTC (2003-05-26 20:49:03 EDT)
Good thing for commercialization of space, or bad thing for world peace?
Well, why can't it be both?
An expansion of Europe's independence from American technology could lead to a more stable and powerful EU. For better or worse, this could give the US the rival superpower it's been looking for the last 10 or more years.
Then again, it might just bolster technological advancement and general global interdependence. In that case, more power to them. I believe we'll just have to see how the project progresses and how the powers that are react to it.
Twelve fingers or one, its how you play. ~Gattaca (Vincent)
would it really be a waste of resources? if the gatekeepers were able to use the ONLY instance of this infastructure to exclude others from using it, for better or worse, then it looks like creating a duplicate or redundant infastructure isn't that bad of an idea. Look at Iraq. If the US decides to be the only player on the block with the technology they can and private citizens would be farked. A second system can act as competition and as many have pointed out, can increase reliability and accuracy.
Love the US or hate it, it's pretty clear that our goernment doesn't want anyone to rise to our level of power, and God only know what will be done if someone tries.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
I hope they are using new protocols in this thing, instead of just copying the GPS system. Anish Kadavil
When the U.S. gets a "monopoly" on something, we seem to have a way of imposing our moral correctness on others. (Lots of foreign aid money, kick-ass military, GPS satellites, etc.)
This, of course, rubs everyone the wrong way and is probably why we are so, um, disliked in many parts of the world.
We have this weird political morality that makes people very uncomfortable. On one hand, we impose Hollywood/TV on the world (OK, "Impose" is the wrong word) and then we also have the high-falutin right-wing christianity twist to what we expect of others. It's more than just that, but that's the gist of it.
Look for more of this. I think it's great for Europe to stretch its legs a bit. Perhaps a streak of independence will help nurse them from the socialism that's dragging their economy down (big unemployment and large upcoming social payouts).
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
That's just great! In a few years the Iranians, North Koreans, the you name them's will have precision guided bombs to kill Americans with...
All bought through France of course...
(they seem to have a history of selling anybody anything)
And exactly who's going to use this so called system? Currently the US Gov picks up the tab for GPS but the EU satalite system is going to be pay to use. So while you can find yourself anywhere on the globe with greater accuracy i'm betting that no one will pay for the extra few meters of accuracy other then businesses who get along fine without it currently.
During Galileo's day, longitude was hard to determine. Ships at sea had no sufficiently good clocks to determine position. Galileo proposed a system using the moons of Jupiter, but it never worked well enough. John Harrison ultimately solved the problem, but I guess "Harrison" does not sound as good as "Galileo." Nova had a good program on the longitude problem. There was also a bestselling book about Harrison and his feat, but I have not read it.
Good thing for commercialization of space, or bad thing for world peace? And how is the EU having thier own GPS system a threat to world peace? Maybe if your a paranoid mountain hermit, and if the world to you is the USA. I for one trust the EU as peacekeepers more than just about any powerful organization out there.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
"they will need their own GPS-like system."
So that they can accurately mark the locations where there capitols used to be....
Unfortunaly some of those people will use the power of these Geo location systems to kill (i.e. poor man's cruise missiles). Whatever system is in place it should have an international governing body to control it like we should have had with nuclear weapons from the beginning.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
http://www.galileo-pgm.org/
It threatens the new policy the US of A would like to have - from the cold war and MAD to UAI - Unilaterally Assured Invunerability, as seen by their insistance on a rocket shield, when any poor fool who'd try launching a nuke would be erased from existance, including the country in question. If anyone that desperate actually had a nuke, they'd probably just drive or ship it in instead. Same effect, helluva lot less payback (until they were found out at least).
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
as an European taxpayer i find disgusting this continuing tendency of certain European Governments (always the same Gang : French, Germany and Belgium) of copycatting the US instead of cooperating for the global good...
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This is not even competition, it is simply a continued waste of money
Some European Politicians didn't understood yet what Alexis of Tocqueville (himself a French) found two hundred years ago and still think that Europe must, whatever it takes, be the Center of the Universe
Imagine if they had learned to cooperate : we could already be on Mars or close
but no, those Americans are the menace, and yet those Americans saved Democracy in Europe twice in the 20th Century !
Cheers from Portugal, Europe
why would this happen? the US is circumventing the UN (see IRAQ II - pulling away from the SC, the abandonment of the ICC after the Iran affair). This points to Domination of a proprietary system (GPS) and the potential for using it exclusively. This is a potential danger for those not on the side of the US.
Doesn't the US have some trademark or some other crap on the name "Galileo" relating to a spacecraft?
Can't Europe do something orginal. Sure copy GPS, but do you need to copy our mission/ship names too?
When you are the one controlling the monopoly.
Sucks for everyone else.
The Europeans are hoping to fund the system by licensing fees on the receivers, and fees for access to high-reliability positioning information for critical applications such as aviation.
The basic service will be free and comparable to GPS in accuracy and reliability.
I have my doubts about their business model. They are essentially trying to compete with a totally free service that already offers high reliablility and is increasing in accuracy with WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) and LAAS (Local Area Augmentation System) enhancemnts to the GPS system.
Will you buy a GPS receiver with no licensing fee or a Galileo receiver that does the same thing for more money?
In fact, if Galileo allows basic receivers to be produced license free, GPS manufacturers can tap into the Galileo signal (frequencies & signals are supposed to be compatible) to further increase GPS accuracy, at no cost.
I guess I don't mind watching the French et al blow lots of cash enroute to having their asses kicked in the marketplace. Let 'em have at it...
The main problem with accuracy is the timing circuitry in the receiver. Most receivers now are accurate to a few nanoseconds, which happens to be the time it takes light (or GPS signals) about 1 foot, so 10-20 ft accuracy is typical (at least in my experience). Other than timing issues, atmospheric heating would cause inaccuracy.
The protocol of the satellites is hardly improvable, except maybe increasing the frequency of transmissions to more than 1 per second.
Catapultam habeo. Nisi omnem pecuniam tuam mihi dabis, ad tuum caput saxum immane mittam.
1) existing market for GPS products.
2) potential for military abuse.
There exists billions of dollars in infrastructure to use the Navstar GPS system including software, hardware, weapons, and base stations. A new system may not gain commercial traction, and if it does, it just splinters the existing market, limiting potential improvements.
As for military applications, what happens diplomatically when the frenchies or the belgians or some other group of fruity bastards mandate that their system be left on while the US is fighting the next war for them? What does it mean if they turn it off? Even so, the french are notorious for buying and selling state secrets, so when equipment that can read the encrypted systm starts ending up in north korea, everybody has a big problem on their hands.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
What part of the war against Iraq did you miss?
The part where we lied about the al Qaeda links to Saddam Hussein?
The part where we got caught manufacturing phony evidence that Iraq was building nukes?
The part where we violated international law and waged war on an essentially defenseless nation, killing thousands of people in the process?
Or the part where it turns out that there were never and WMD's at all?
A lot of companies are going to be developing applications that require high-precision GPS. Suppose, say, 10 years from now, the U.S. threatens to turn SA back on unless everybody toes the line on the some issue. All these people with high-precision GPS apps will then pressure their governments to back down. A European political or economic leader is not going to happy about such a scenario, and can hardly be blamed for spending a few bucks to prevent it.
And if the situation were reversed, an American president who said, "Oh, we can just use the European GPS network" -- well, how would you feel if were dependent on the goodwill of a foreign country for a basic resource?
Oh, wait a sec. Strike that last question!
The GPS satellites are pretty much limited by the accuracy of the atomic clocks in them. So unless the European system uses much more accurate clocks, they will probably have roughly the same accuracy.
Just think for a moment about how dependant we are on GPS for a whole bunch of things now...
It is a complex system, and if computer science has taught us nothing else (and it hasn't), we know that complex systems can never be immune to failure.
If there were a totally redundant system of different design, I for one would want to require planes and ships to carry recievers for BOTH systems. Then you can check for agreement or be in much better shape if either system failed for whatever reason.
- Peter
(extra points to anyone who sees my failed attempt at a Simpsons reference)
INsigNIFICANT
BTW, have you read UN Resolution 1483?
668: Neighbour of the Beast
they will know what a lot of us who do know, ESA has made a total blunder with dephasing Ariane 4 for the super sized Ariane 5 launcher.
Currently ESA is running out of funds and it's the worst of times. A lot of teams have been slashed (oh, not the staff members of course, they don't pay income taxes, they never get axed) but most contractors who do the actual work. A lot of projects look like they will be canned, it's a very tense moment.
Investing in something like this project is the dumbest move they can make at the time. I'm not saying this to contradict you holidays on Mars buffs or justify the usual right wind "pay for the people???!" usual boring comments, but this will be the last straw unless they chrage exorbitant fees for use (something very European too)
If you hate Europe, encourage this project, please. It's been politicaly itching the EU for a few years (5 years about) and doesn't add anything new.
OTOH, it will bring new contracts... So I wont piss on it either. I view it as some kind of New Deal like in the 1920s.
tee hee hee
"oops"
War criminals, the lot of them.
Oh wait.
Didn't sign THAT treaty, either.
>Unnecessarily duplicating a very expensive piece of infrastructure that the world needs only one instance of.
I think its common knowledge that the US uses all its muscle when it wants something, and we're not just talking military here, but trade. Perhaps the EU believes this will be a boon for them during negotiations with American corporations when discussing stickly matters. No one wants to hear, "So how many GPS devices are you using in Europe right now?" from a high-level American office holder.
On top if it, and probably the main reason for this is control. The EU is going to connect all their expensive toys to GPS and have no control over it. What if its a bad "GPS day" in that part of the world? The Americans have priveledged information on how well GPS is working.
Also, this will create a Galileo market which will help offset the cost. Sure, the Europeans could be buying GPS toys, but after this thing is working guess who will be selling the Galileo toys first and how brand/country loyalty will play out in this multi-billion(?) dollar industry.
The final argument and I think this stands on it own, is autonomy. The EU is not the US-lite. They're their own association and if they want to get off the US teat, the better. Heh, I'd love to see a poll on how Europeans feel about paying for this. I think many wouldn't mind just to be that much less attached to Uncle Sam.
Whatever happens, it could not be a bigger failure than iridium, so lets not cry "financial crisis in the EU" just yet.
So are the EU's space programs "unnecessary" too?
I think we should be glad for redundency and competition right now while most of space program is in dry dock.
The U.S. doesn't really give a damn about the rest of the world, just that part of it which crashes airplanes into our skyscrapers.
If France, sorry, the EU wants its copy of GPS, the U.S. will be ine with it. Until it's used to attack the U.S. At that point, it will cease to exist.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
How can have alternative GPS systems affect world peice?
Honestly giving people the ability to chose , for location systems is more likely to help stabilize the world because if the US decides that they dont want "terrorist" (read other countries / public) to be able to use there GPS systems almost everyone is screwed and it would put in risk quite a few lives and possible provoke retalition. (For instance the victoria faries from vancover I beleive used DGPS for most of the navigation) . If that system gets cut off its back to the "I think this is the correct way" . Whereas with multiple systems US decides to pull the plug , big deal just switch over.
Another situation (for those who beleive everyone is a terrorist) , us GPS infrastructure is taken down by terrorists at least we have a fall back right?
The /. article claims that the US abolished selective availability three years ago, but that's not the case. They abolished the 'fuzzing' of resolution, so that ordinary joes could get 10-foot accuracy instead of 70, but that's not selective availability.
Selective availability is the capability of 'turning off' GPS in specific geographic regions during times of war or for any other reason. They did it in Afghanistan last year, and they can do it whenever and wherever they want, though it's on an incident by incident basis.
Kevin Fox
http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2001/2 2.html
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
The European Union today decided to go ahead with Galileo, the constellation of 30 satellites which will compete with the U.S. GPS system.
Competition is good right? People will be free to chose which positioning system to use? Sounds like the values America supposedly stands for to me...
The U.S. abolished selective availability three years ago partly to make GPS more useful for all mankind, but also to dissuade other countries from developing their own navigational satellite system, and thus be dependant on the U.S. for both peaceful and military purposes.
But it's still US Property, controlled owned (and presumably licenced by US companies). Why shouldn't Europe have one too?
Good thing for commercialization of space, or bad thing for world peace?"
Just cool new geek toys, and maybe a price-drop in GPS?
How, exactly, do you measure potential wars that have been averted? That's a little like measuring the number of times that I have NOT had sex. Seriously. There are an infinite number of chances for a war to occur every day and the UN most certainly has defused some of the situations that would have led to war further down the road.
I love to suck big cox whilst editing /etc/crontab on my supar r1337 Red HAT LUNIX systaem!!!!11
you fucking Europeans just keep on conflicting, and we have to break up the fights. losers.
Right now we (the US) are bad for world peace. Anything that will help level the world playing field is good for world stability and peace. The EU just needs to get their ducks in a row so they can truly be a world superpower.
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act!" -- George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)
But jamming a nanovolt signal isn't exactly rocket science.
The principles behind GPS are well understood, as are the interactions of radio signals in the ionosphere. So I don't think it will take very long at all. Bah.
..don't panic
Among other things, the article notes:
The European Space Agency (ESA) said in a statement that an agreement had been reached among its member states which finalised the conditions for their participation in the project.
"The European Space Agency is now able to finalise the conditions for participation in the Galileo navigation program and to approve the Galileo joint undertaking foundation act to be soon signed by ESA and the European Union," ESA's statement said.
"Now able to finalize the conditions for participation"? Sounds to me like scheduling a meeting to discuss the meeting where they finalize the agenda items to be discussed in the main meeting.
Good luck to them, but I doubt they'll succeed.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
errrr... Japan doesn't need a bail out, they need to let their banks FAIL. That and build a more diverse credit market.(corp bonds) Shit they wont take our advice, let alone our money. Things aren't getting any better over there just last week they bailed out Resona.
? story_id=1801496
(free) http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm
1. Circumvention. you are kidding yourself if you think that the UN is a failure. it is based on a positivist notion that states are the only actors in the international scene. the UN is adapting to individuals as actors within that scene (Human rights (see the belilios case) and terrorist groups). Without pushing for modernization the US is stepping away from the UN; it is making the UN fail. similarly circumvention of the Security council delegitimaises the UN and causes failure.
2.ICC. This is another example of stepping away from the UN and creating delegitimization. The idea that crimes against humanity are of international interest fits witht the post-positivist paridigm that fits the contemporay world. The US idea that they have domestic justidiction over crimes against humanity, not against the US, reduced the international control of international terrror (and yes war crimes are international terror, from Osama or US military personel). real mature calling the Euro's whacky.
3. Potential Danger. It would be naive to blindly support an unchecked power. Absolute power corrupt absolutly. put a US flag on your SUV and lets see how that stops invasions into your privacy. coat yourself in psudo patriotism and lets watch you get defensive about things you are ignorant about. good job!
I appreciate that this question is intended to provoke a debate, but it seems to me to narrow that debate through its phrasing. The implication seems to be that the US are the Guardians of World Peace (TM), and that we pesky Europeans have no business sticking our noses in when it makes the Yanks feel a little less in control.
Given the assumption that any removal of absolute control of some useful technology from the US is potentially "a bad thing for world peace", can anybody possibly point us to the evidence for Iraq's possession of WsMD, given that the Guardians of World Peace (TM) used them as their sole justification for starting a war?
Or could it be that the US should have listened to what the European states (with the sorry exception of my own nation) were trying to tell them about making unjustified assumptions? Might it not be a good thing if more than one kid in the playground has control of the baseball bat?
Using HTML in email is like putting sound effects on your phone calls. Just say <strong>no</strong>.
i don't see how this is interesting or useful.
Glonass is far from dead 3 new sats. were launched within the last year the system is far from complete with I think only 9 sats. in working order but its good enough since Russia has dropped Glonass guided bombs in Chechnya. The system will be 100% operational by 2005 at a cost of over 750 million dollars. The EU is working closely with Russia on their own new system. The Russians have been quietly rebuilding a lot of stuff. 25% of their air force is currently in the factory for ugrades. 200 T-90's have been purchased since 1997 a brand new submarine class had been developed (only 1 built) as well as a new ICBM called the Topol-M over 300 Topol-M's have been built. Christ we can joke all we want but the Russians arent as badly off as we think.
Janes ran a piece a few weeks ago that said it would take nothing less than a full seal team to get into a Russian nuclear facility so why all the panic? The terrorist dont have that capability.
US did develop a satelite missile:
It goes something like having a F-15 (later maybe something different, but right now F-15 is one of the only (the only?) plane with a thrust-to-weight ratio > 1) pull an arc up with full afterburn, when the plane hits the operating ceiling and then some - this is something rediculous like 110,000 ft or 150,000 ft, I forgot - release a rocket-based missile that will go LEO (lower earth orbit) and down a satelite in such an orbit.
Now, I say you are partly right because AFAIK positional satelites are not LEO (slightly higher, but nowhere near geosync). augmentation satelites (WAAS, etc) seem to be geosync though - now that I think about it.
but anyway, my military science knowledge has been getting rusty and i am lazy to check, so if somebody knew better, please correct me.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
are launching a satellite system as well
This I can understand considering that the US and China represent so different systems.
But for Europe to launch a comprehensive, expensive system... I don't get it. I mean of course there are sometimes disagreements between the US and Europe but I wish that we could realize that we stand on the same side: that of democratic capitalism. Most of the rest of the world does not.
Why not spend the money on real space science? Even if you think that stronger European military independence is a good thing (I do) there are plenty of military investments that make more sense (e.g., strategic trasport aircraft for power projection). This Gallileo system is very expensive and is useful in the very unlikely scenario where the US blocks GPS for Europe (btw, can anyone describe a single plausible scenario where this happens?).
Tor
For all of the faults of the US, I don't think that anyone has any right to call them barbaric.
Europe 1914-18 - 10 million dead on Western Front
Europe 1914-17 - 2 million dead on Eastern Front
Europe 1939-45 - 12 million killed in death camps
Europe 1992-1999 - 250,000 killed in Former Yugoslavia
Russia 1918-1953 - 30-40 million starved to death, executed, slaughtered, etc
Europe 1941-45 - 20-30 million killed on Eastern Front
Europe - Post WW2 - killed while 790,000 repatriated to USSR
China - 1933-45 - 12 million killed
China - 1949-75 - 30-50 million starved to death, executed, slaughtered, etc
Algerian War - at least 36,000 killed
Pakistan - 1971 - 1-3 million Bengalis killed
Cambodia 1973-1980 - 1-3 million killed
Vietnam - 1945-75 - 1.2 million killed by US, No. Vietnam, So. Vietnam, France
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos - 1-3 million killed by Communists following Vietnam War
Iraq - 2003 - 15-50 thousand killed
Iraq - 1990 - 25-100 thousand killed
Somalia - 1992-94 2-8 thousand killed
Granada 1983 - 2-6 hundred killed or wounded
Panama 1989 - 1-2 thousand killed
I'm all for the EU creating something like this Nav System, I'm also all for the EU defending it's self.
But it's not right to call America barbaric when the US fronts and wars are among the least bloody in the last 100 years.
That link was a pretty good read! I'll get to work as soon as my Magneto helmet is done. (I'm kidding about the last part, but not about the thanks.)
The only way to block a GPS signal is to overpower the satellite's signal with a stronger one. By doing this you could not scream "shoot at me" any louder to a anti-radar missile. Hell I'd imagine it would be difficult to target anything else while a GPS blocker is in operation. The US versions (if they even exist considering the US can just turn it off) would suffer the same fate.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
great ! As long as morons like you exist my relection is guaranteed.
Thank you and God bless
-George walker bush
We need somebody besides the US keeping an eye on the world. I would think this even if I didn't think the US is abusing its advantage.
The assumption that the rest of the world have the arse falling out of their pants and America is the only going doing OK economically is not only false, it's insulting.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Strange, that sounds awfully familiar. Perhaps you should look up who armed the Iraqi's and Taleban in the first place?
http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20030522S0050
The U.S. has put there interests in space before anyone elses for reasons of National Security in a policy referred to as 'negation', the idea being to deny use of space assets (U.S. or otherwise) against U.S. national interests.
Europe putting up their own navigation system raises the cost of doing so, and may require compliance for international flights etc. going to Europe. A case of forcing the U.S. wasting money on Star Wars dipshit stuff, or not extending the imperium to low earth orbit. None of this is about right or wrong, after all the EU is talking about their own ECHELON, all the makings of a cold war though with both sides spending a lot of money for posturing...
(Isn't Ariane French?)
I recall hearing about India launching some satellites for its own global positioning system. Does anyone know any more about this?
I think under these circumstances the world needs another option.
Please explain how this extraordiary expensive Gallileo system would have stopped US action in Iraq.
ultimately staged an invasion rather than liberation
Are you saying that you think that it would have been better if the US had stayed out of Iraq?
Or are you one of those who before the war opposed US action, and after realized that it was better than the alternative, but refrain from saying so and rather complain on those things that went wrong or did not happen as Pentagon predicted...? It's weak, but at least you have plenty of company.
Tor
Yep, its out fault we have a vastly more flexible labor markets, that and our crazy free (more free that yours anyway) market encourages companies to compete.
Yes, I concede that the US$ devaluation, (not perpetrated by the Government, but by the currency markets) has hurt EU exports and EU profits, but come on, all of the countries in the EU are facing HUGE budget deficits because of SOCIALIST pension schemes(among other government restrictions), and no politician is prepared to fight the Unions. Whether you like it or not, it's the socialist mentality of the European people that is keeping their economies in the shitter. Socialism is cute and allows people to be lazy. Free market capitalism demand that your ass go and get a job, and work hard.
Keep in mind that Garmin, www.garmin.com, dominates the consumer GPS market. Part of the motivation of the ESA and EU is to foster home grown GPS industry. So it is not simply out of military concern but also an attempt to grow a European GPS industry and give competition to US corporations like Garmin.
-- Multics
Of course, no one should _rely_ on GPS, because it can fail and drop out any time. In aviation, for example, where a high degree of fault tolerance and backup systems for everything are needed, GPS plays only a tiny role. But still, millions of people depend on it. Rescue teams use GPS-based navigation systems to get somewhere fast without getting lost, but can only fall back to paper maps if it fails because they don't have the resources to set up a backup system, et cetera et cetera. If you can't imagine a scenario in which someone in Europe needs sattelite navigation, but the US is blocking it, you must be an idiot. You're hitting straw men there. Europe did not take any actions, besides diplomatical ones, to stop US action in Iraq. The majority of people over here are still asking themselves whether it was really justified to liberate the Iraqis against their will (where are the weapons of mass destrucion, by the way?), or if it was just a PR campaign for Dubya, so it was the duty of their official representatives to give their opinion a voice. Galileo has absolutely nothing to do with interfering with US actions, it is not, and was never, intended to get in the way of US forces. The only relation to recent events is that the USA are waging wars and threatening to switch off civilian GPS every few years, so it became apparent that it's a bad idea to make onself depend on their goodwill. You're confusing politics with war mongering there. Besides, Europe doesn't raise the claim to be the _leader_ of the world. I don't think that the US would be delighted if Europe would compete for their role as world police. Besides, they're letting the whole world use GPS anyway. This only changes when they fear the system could be helping some 'rogues' to do evil things, and in this case, they don't care about Europe or anyone a bit, as we saw again recently. Expensive? Why do you care? It's not going to cost the US anything; to the contrary, Europe will probably import some parts from the US. And it's certainly not as expensive as certain US activities which arguably have less merit.
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
> Good thing for commercialization of space...
..or bad thing for world peace?
How could it be good for commercialization when a government is doing it?
>
How could it be bad for world peace?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Maybe it has something to the proposed US rules for space:0 50
http://www.eet.com/sys/news/OEG20030522S0
as reported on ars
I'm sure I'll get blasted for this, but the US really showed it's true colours in this last war. They rode roughshod over every international organisation when the consensus didn't go their way and ultimately staged an invasion rather than liberation. I think under these circumstances the world needs another option.
What a bunch of bullshit.
The rest of the world should be embarassed that they were willing to leave Saddam in power.
The UN should be embarassed. They exist to take care of situations like this. The Gulf War was in 1994. The UN had been trying unsuccessfully to get Iraq to live up to the agreements it signed at the end of that war. They weren't doing their job.
Saddam was playing them like a violin. The U.S. was ready to do something about this whole situation years ago, after talks with Iraq failed and they weren't letting inspectors in. Then Kofi Anan went in, and somehow just took their word that they would let inspectors back in just for him. They were, of course, lying and any reasonable person could have noticed the pattern in Iraq's actions.
The UN totally fucked up the Iraq situation.
The US has managed to depose a brutal dictator, with a minmum of civilian casualties. More people would have died if Saddam had remained in office.
The US is not "stealing" Iraq's oil, nor are they claiming any territory.
You might think by now I'm a GWB supporter, but I'm not. I never really wanted this war to happen. My father was drafted his senior year of college, and I sure as hell didn't want that happening to me. I didn't trust GWB to do the right thing, and have a quick, respectible war, but....you know what?
He has. I think GWB is a tool, but I'm not going to make up bullshit reasons not to like the guy. There are plenty of real ones.
Your "invasion rather than liberation" comment is a lie. You have no proof that the US is doing anything but what's best for the Iraqi people. If that changes, you can expeect my views of this whole thing to change, but right now you're just making yourself look bad.
The Iraqi people, the US, and the World in general is better off due to the US' actions in Iraq. It's too bad some other countries couldn't see past their own petty oil interests, egos, and fears to make the world a better place.
Right now, I'm proud of what my country has done. In the past, we've had a tendency to prop up brutal dictators, in place of the original ones just so they'll do whatever we want. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, this has changed. I'm not about to go out an protest because my country is actually doing the right thing for once.
Life is too short to proofread.
I think I saw a documentary about this system a couple of years ago. If I remember correctly they claimed it would be more accurate than GPS. Better to have two good systems for such a critical task. I personally would be more at ease if a tanker filled with oil could switch between GPS and Galile in case one fails.
this is not about competition. the problem right now is that GPS is used by a ton of people. Planes, ships, cars, agriculture. all kinds of stuff. the problem is that the system is however still under US military control, and they still control operation, location of satelittes, etc. In short they still reserve the right to turn the system off or make it unusable at any time. Or like happened during the Iraq war relocate the sats to achive greater coverage in some regions. Not even the most patriotic under all Americans can feel comfortable with such a situation given that at any time the military may decide to disbale the system that many mission critical application depend on. That's why the EU is building a new system taht in the end will duplicate the current system (after all there is only so many ways to build a car with four wheels) but won't be in the hands of a military institution but instead dedicated to public use.
enough to let my car figure out which end is facing which direction.
us does hideous hideous things to butcher a perfectly good technology into getting absolutely horrendous resolution.
i cant be happier there's competition. how can the us keep selling GPS if Europe's got four times the resolution? (made that up, more would be even better...)
...is a good thing if you don't want your multimillion euro satelites being destroyed by the US to deny the enemy from use.
I read thur a bunch of comments and you freak'n start to scare me
Earth isn't flat, devided into nice pices of pussle bits, gigged together, Galileo paid with his life/freedom just for saying it's true shape, round! It's more than round, it's occupied by a bunch of scary people fighting over "pices" of it; claiming it's their, it's more holy then the next pice, better, prettier more beautifull, and the list goes on.
Conquering each other, by taking turns at whos at the "helm", maybe doing so in an endless loop (who knows? what the future has in store, but looking behind sure looks like an endless loop).
I have to say it sometimes freak'n scares me that I was even born on such a planet.
I know, I know, running away won't make things different, bearing your head into the ground won't make things any brighter.
So my first goal is (a three-faced coin):
Perhas your wondering how a coin can have three faces; that is your mind to ponder on and mine to keep it's business out of.
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
that simple
...first we have the discovery of eu passports from a french consular office or embassy in iraq, and now we'll see france with the capability of supplying terrorist states with pinpoint gps equipment for launching their north korean/chinese made rockets.
btw, that was a nice smirk on villepin's face as he posed for the camera while he was shaking hands with another terrorist, arafat across the table, and sitting next to villepin was a leader of another state that supports terrorism, (and even has terrorist groups' offices such as hamas and others, in the capital), syria.
Check out villepin's smirk. The clip is playing on the major news stations today, and should also be playing again tonight. Arafat was forced out because of his support for terrorism, there's new leadership for the palestinians, supported by the palestinians, israel is willing to work with him, the US accepts him, and the US is a central negotiator, and there's villepin building credence once again for terrorist arafat. villepin should concentrate on getting french troops out of africa and leave regional/world negotiations to more capable and less meddling leaders. Even germany, one among many other choices would be more favorable than french meddling in these important negotiations.
Good points, but..
"to the contrary, Europe will probably import some parts from the US"
I would very much doubt that. So, you build an independent system, yet are dependent on components for said system.
Makes no sense. They'll be sourcing from their own. Wanna bet?
Poof.
for more space junk? Lovely.
Actually, it's very easy to imagine the US to switch of half or all of GPS because they're combating some 'rogue state'.
Really? To my knowledge, the US has never actively stopped GPS signals with the intent of disturbing Europe (although admitevly, during military operations satellites are shifted around to increase presence in the hot spot itself).
Europe did not take any actions, besides diplomatical ones, to stop US action in Iraq.
This is exactly my point. They almost never take any action. If it were the case that Europe frequently took action, and the US opposed and switched of GPS, then this Gallileo would make sense. Now it does not.
was really justified to liberate the Iraqis against their will(where are the weapons of mass destrucion, by the way?)
When I hear these arguments I ask one thing. All in all, would you say the war did more good than bad, yes or no? If the answer is no, then I respectfully disagree. If the anwer is yes, I just think it is a really pathetic attitude. Then it is time to admit that one got the big picture wrong, not for complaining about everything that one would have prefered for the US to have done differently.
Expensive? Why do you care? It's not going to cost the US anything; to the contrary, Europe will probably import some parts from the US.
Because I am from Europe (three years in the US now) and I fundamentally believe that the US and Europe should be on the same side. I wish that the people of Europe could protest against Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Ill instead of against George W. Sure, George W has many faults and we may disapprove of his solutions for the world problems, but somehow people seem to forget that people like Saddam and Kim Jong Ill constitute the world's problems. If Europe had taken a hard line against Saddam then perhaps the regime would have collapsed wihtout any intervension. If Turkey would have let through the US 4th Infantry division then the war would have ended even quicker and there would have been more people on the ground to stop looting in Bagdad and elsewhere.
Tor
The essence of the elections is not whether they are conducted with the same set of rules as in the U.S.; the essence is whether there is some semblance of democracy at all.
:-)
I would not even expect offhand that Iraq will have a governmental structure or election structure like the U.S. has. Keep in mind that the way the U.S. elections, federal/state system work, etc., are a 200 year old legacy system, not something that the current generation of leaders dreamed up
TROLL!
Hopefully, EU will microsize these and then send a "gaggle" of them on over to Mars. It would be reasonable cost if they do it at the same time for earth.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That's why we went to war y'know!
WHERE ARE THEY????
OBVIOUSLY WE WENT INTO IRAQ TO CONTROL THEIR OIL! THE VERY FIRST THING WE WENT AFTER WAS THE OIL WELLS! AND WHAT'S THE FIRST THING WE DID WITH THOSE WELLS??? SHUT OFF THE OIL TO SYRIA!
The president went before the American people and did nothing but lie to justify this war.
Just like all the lies told about Iraq before. Like the Kuwaiti babies being ripped from their incubators by the Iraqis. It was a lie.
Or the Iraqi troops massed on the border with Saudi Arabia. Another lie.
Sell your shit someplace else.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
We also test fired an anti-satellite laser at a satellite that was no longer in use. We were originally planning to destroy the unused satellite in the test, but other countries asked us not to do so in fear of all the little pieces flying around in orbit.
Intelligent Life on Earth
And you think that they can not use GPS now?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Also good to note is that the current GPS system is long overdue for an overhaul. According to Wired, there are 18 satellites in the constellation that are due for replacement and only 13 in the pipeline (and not nearly enough rockets to launch them all).
Also, since Galileo is supposed to support a lot of what's promised in GPS III, I can't see this being a *bad* thing for anyone.
___ alwaysBETA.com - Hey, you've got nothing better to do.
1) It won't get fully funded and therefore never fully deployed
2) It will be a subscription based system, so it will never be popular and be shut down, particularly since Europeans have no need for a GPS system anyway.
"You should go read about other people's religions and laws first before making inflammatory statements like these just shows that you are a bigot."
Sorry that all these gutter religions in the middle east advocate violence.
I mean "sorry" in the sense that I wish you'd all go to hell and never come back. You're an f'ing joke, except you have guns and you're crazy.
I mean "sorry" in the sense that I wish the entire people in the middle east would simply vanish and leave the world to the rest of the world who don't live like bickering animals.
Sorry, but the truth f'ing hurts, you animal.
I think I may have read about this on /. but the more stuff we put in space, the harder it becomes for us to escape when the time comes to abandon this planet.i ons/sog lie/node1.html
See this:
http://apollo.cnuce.cnr.it/~rossi/publicat
I believe a cooperative solution to ELIMINATE clutter, not add to it.
During WWII, the french gladly turned over jews to be gassed.
You don't think anything has change in a generation do you?
In fact, Germany is less anti-semitic than France.
And for every study linking THC to stopping cancer there is a study refuting that.
UCLA says smoking weed leads to lung cancer and that THC supresses anti-tumor immune responses.
"Or another example, our criminalizing the use of intravenous drugs, knowing full well that needle-borne diseases like AIDS/HIV would spread like wildfire, killing even more people."
Criminalizing IV drugs spreads AIDS? Is that like criminalizing cats spreads mice?
The fact is that the majority of AIDS/HIV transmission comes from sex and from infected mothers giving birth, not drugs.
These "indisputable" facts are easily disputed. There is zero evidence that THC would be a magic cure for the hundreds of cancers. And there is no way that anyone can blame the US for the 6 million cancer deaths world-wide.
If it's so indisputable, then the Ministries/Departments/Directorates of Health of the other 200+ nation-states on Earth and the World Health Organization are equally guilty.
I will stand by the facts. If you pile up the bodies, Communism, Socialism, Facism, and Fundamentalism have killed tens of millions more than the United States has in the last 100 years.
"I think many wouldn't mind just to be that much less attached to Uncle Sam."
But the only thing Europeans want to pay taxes for right now is more social welfare.
There's no real army to speak of, and outside of more unemployment insurance and more cell phones, Most western europeans won't sit still for raising taxes to pay for a GPS system.
" its population already exceeds that of the US, "
Ironically, mostly by Muslim immigration and breeding which will within 1 generation set up a violent serious of clashes.
This is gonna be funny, and the race wars in the US in the 60's will be a joke in comparison.
In the US, we will be laughing our asses off at european countries which are less tolerant of foreigners than they want to admit.
Its gonna be good...
"Yeah, and the US economy is just great right now - isn't it?"
Compared with Europe, its doing fantastic.
The US unemployment rate is right now at 6%. That's bad, right?
Nope, in Europe, it hasn't gone that low in decades.
The point: US at its worst, it better than Europe at its best.
"Historically, it usually shows up right before the empire crashes and burns."
Uh huh.
Keep telling yourself that. I'm sure it will be a great comfort as the european economy continues to stagnate putting greater economic and political pressure on the less and less people who are working. I hope the last guy working doesn't mind paying for the rest of you to sit around and blab on your cell phones.
Europe is dead. What's left is just the big party after the funeral.
Don't worry. It will fail to reach orbit like the last multi-million dollar sat that the EU tried to place into orbit.
Oh no wait, according to the cynics the US conspired to somehow lasso it down with a U2 spy plane. Since we are just a bunch of cowboys right? Yee Haw.
The is just one more example of people trying to be king of the hill. Most of these cynics can't even see past their own stream of urine. All it takes is for them to look up a realize what matters is not the prove yourself against the US. Lame...
"Most Europeans (and many Americans) are concerned because they want to live in a world where nations obey the rule of law, "
There's no such thing as international law. That's something the US created to keep you guys in line.
It plays well though, to an aging population that is risk averse and is more interested in how comfy the couch is in their broken-down flat than in creating something grand, and bold, and being part of a country of great ideas and laws.
I know that doesn't make sense to you; it rarely does to people who just want everybody to be quiet while they lie down and die.
The Middle East has been the center of tribal battles for thousands of years. All texts clearly show that the middle east can't get along with itself. Better it go back to an ocean like it was a few hundred thousand years ago.
it really is now the ONLY game in town. gps or variants are the only working non specialized wilderness positioning out there. compasses can no longer ne trusted except in a generalized "yeah that's kind of north" way. try it yourself. find due north on a magnetic compass (old school) and compare it with your gps heading. you'd be lucky to find it less than 10 degrees off axis. pole shift people. without gps and variants we'd be lucky to pee straight right now.
The media has you. Just like the damn Matrix. The media you see concerning the latest redneck being interviewed and his ignorant dislike to a white rapper is the same kind of shit you find elsewere. Ohhhh.. look.. I found a person that hates the US.. must be the consensus everywhere for the next 100 square km.
When's the next global earthquake or volcanic eruption? If only 4 billion people would simply go away, it would make life so much nicer.
"If Europe had taken a hard line against Saddam then perhaps the regime would have collapsed wihtout any intervension. "
The trouble is, the French and German governments would rather sell stuff to these guys to create a market and let the US deal with it later.
It lets them have things both ways.
France was opposed to the US war in Iraq not because of any principle, but primarily because it destroyed a market.
I think the French in particular are the most cynical politicians in the world. They've never cared about right or wrong; they simply want to win.
The lost. Oh, they had center stage for 4 weeks, but they're now less relevant and they won the battle, but lost the war.
So now they flame the fire of Anti-Americanism, all the while, silently commiting any atrocity simply to prop up their meaningless position in the world.
They are sickening.
For one, Britain won't have anything to do with it. The Blair administration firmly opposes the EU attempting to become a rival to the US as opposed to a client state. Britain was involved before the Iraq war, though it is doubtful whether in light of things they will continue to be, and find the huge sums of money required. That leaves France, Germany and the like; so the process is at the mercy of not only a multinational, multilingual bureaucracy in Brussels but of the inefficient state-run industries of France and the like.
Europe roundly condcemned us for not joining WW I fast enough, even tho it was a purely European matter which the Europeans couldn't solve.
... and guess who told them to get out? Duhh ... the US! How about that?
... The US!
... and you'd think, this having been the very hotbed which started WW I, that the Europeans would have been a bit more eager to put a lid on it ... but wait a minute, I seem to remember France popping off their mouth that they wouldn't contribute any troops unless we contributed the lion's share.
... Datyton, Ohio, USA ... how about that!
... and who actually monitored it and enforced it? The US mostly. France and Germany even agreed to a UN resolution just a few months ago telling Saddam he had stalled long enough .. yet when it came time to back it up, they slid into a corner and made silly noises.
... why don't you damn fools get some spine and take care of yourselves?
Then Europe roundly condemned us for not joining in WW II fast enough, even tho that too was a purely European matter which was in fact jump started by the disastrous treaty, drafted by France, which ended WW I.
Not to mention that while Roosevelt was trying to help the Chinese, who Japan had invaded in 1931 and 1937, the Europeans couldn't be bothered with some trifle so far away.
Then the Suez canal fiasco, where Egypt nationalized that wonder of colonial days, Britain and France invaded to take it back
And who told the French that trying to recover Indochina after WW II ended was a mistake? Duhh
Then there's the Balkans again, 1990s, couple of purely European wars there
And where were the Dayton Accords signed? Hmmmm
Now I personally am not a big fan of Bush, or either gulf war. But by gum, the UN signed up in 1991 to cleanup Iraq, put in sanctions, rid it of the big nasty weapons
I personally am sick and tired of saving Eurpoe's ass. WW I, WW II, Suez, Balkans
Infuriate left and right
That is by far the worst post I've ever read on Slashdot. In case you're wondering, it was the laughable phrase "post-positivist paradigm" that put you in the top spot.
Now go kill yourself somehow. I'm not picky, but it would be fine if you were to use something violent and/or messy.
I'm sure future GPS devices would be able to use both networks without that much extra hardware. With some cleaver programming using data from two different networks, future GPS/Gallileo devices could be more accurate and relible than either network would be seperatly.
The article says nothing about the United States or Europe being threatend, rather references how the project has been held back by "sqabbles" over influence between the ESA states, and how Britian, The Netherlands, and Germany argued the project's irrelavence given the existing US GPS infastructure. Which I might add will no longer be "degraded" 2 years before Galileo will supposedaly be operational.
What is the economic advantage of this project? Why not leverage what already exists? This could be likend to creating your own Internet (another DARPA project). It seems that this is just going to generate more goverment funded jobs sending europe even deeper into the economic grave that is socialism (sweden's GNP). Even if the motivation is rooted in paranoia - there is no gain in security - the US could drop those satillies in a heartbeat.
Basically, the US could care less if Europe has their own GPS spinoff over a decade after it was cutting edge technology - just all work together nicely and end the "sqabbles". I get nervous when sqabbling and Europe are used in the same sentence. I have my Selective Services number... Maybe get the UN involved - I mean that is why the UN was created - to prevent another European sparked
Currently, the US shuts down GPS (basically) to countries it is at war with. If Europe built an always-on, indescriminate GPS system, and the US went to war with some country that used Euro-GPS guided missiles, the US would consider this giving aid to their enemy. Europe would either have to shut it down (making it do just what the US-GPS does) or the US would shoot it out of the sky. So, basically, the main gripe with GPS (US controll) is not alleviated at all. Totally pointless.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
His statement is completely and totally incorrect.
FGCS-Selective Availability Removal
President Turns Off GPS Selective Availability
I believe that, in a democracy, politicians should do what the people want. If the government disagrees with the public opinion, they should educate the citizens and provide them with the facts they need to vote for the right decision, but they shouldn't lie to them. It was okay to tell people how cruel Saddam was to his own subjects and how inacceptable his diplomatic relations with the US were. But it was not okay to direct the people's anger against terrorists towards Iraq, as if Saddam had anything to do with the Assault on the WTC. It was not okay to present speculations about Iraq's armament as facts without waiting for the results of UN examinations. It was not okay to _stage_ the 'rescue' of private Lynch.
Of course, I want Europe to be on good terms with the US. I want a relationship of friendship and trust. However, the current US government proved, in my opinion, that you can't trust them too much.
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
I don't want to support saddam, but in the years before america fucked up the iraqi infrostructure it had sanitation, health care and a quality of life that was the envy of the whole middle east. Sadam built the country into a prosperous nation (through fairly brutal methods that cannot possibly be justified such as the gassing of the Kurds). And most importantly, it seems that Sadam was smart enough to distroy his chemical and biological weapons to save his country. Unfortunantly for him, he had too much faith in American wisdom and his country was invaded anyway.
For the protection of our troops/liberators
Any liberator that anticipates that the people they have liberated will turn against them is fairly dubious. Hell! Sadam trusted the loyalty his countrymen for years without being shot, it seems that he had more popular support than the "liberators"
Ever been in a large scale natural disaster that requires martial law
What natural disaster has happened in Iraq? What has happened in Iraq in the ten years before the war? The fact is that the only reason the "liberators" had to come in is that twelve years ago Sadam got some personal beef with the president's daddy. And one and a half years ago some totally unrelated people (mainly from Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia) commited an act of terrorism and the people of America have decided that everyone who comes from roughly the same area, follows the same religeon, or stands up to America in any way that is noticable are worthy of death. Don't give me that shit about an emergency being held back by the liberators, because the liberators are the emergency.
Fuck. Give us a break!
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
One thing I am SICK AND FUCKING TIRED of is the my own government "protecting" me from everything. Thank god for sovereign states who can build these things and let everyone who wants to use them. Yes, other countries will have battlefield positional accuracy competitive with the U.S., but oh fucking well. I like thinking the U.S. is greater than any other nation in the world, but not to the point that I like seeing everyone else get treated like red-headed stepchildren. Go EU!
Put differently, what would the US response have been if the GPS system was run by France and they'd degraded the signal quality over the Middle East to be accurate to within a kilometer? It would've made the invasion as it was handled impossible because of the difficulty of doing precision targeting without GPS use. Do you think the US wouldn't do similar things if our leadership disagreed that strongly with something another nation was doing? "Fine, go ahead despite our objections but don't expect our assistance (including the provision of accurate positioning signals)."
Second, Europe is doing this for the same reason the FAA wants WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) - so it's possible to do precise navigation for all sorts of purposes, including automated takeoff and landing. Systems like that are useless unless they can actually be relied on, and with SA as an option the reliability of the systems is a political issue not a technical one.
fencepost
just a little off
The Euro GPS is so that if the Americans show their true colours again towards Europe, Europe won't have to sit around playing with their dicks because they can't hit anything without GPS. It's because at the moment the USA can threaten whoever it likes with nuclear missiles, because it knows full well that retaliation would be impossible without proper targeting. With Euro GPS, the Americans will have to worry about a few gigatons of hydrogen fueled goodness falling on them if they try that kind of shit again
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
That's like saying Linux is a huge waste of effort, because windows already exists.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
The future of space exploration is being put in jeopardy by the sheer volume of space junk out there now. I hope there is serious consideration by the EU to use better techniques than the Russians and the pre Space Shuttle to deploy their
satelites. The use of atmosphere burn up vectoring for discards is very tricky and expensive. Dollars to dognuts they will take the cheap route and leave several hundred tonnes more junk vizzing around!
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
People, get a clue. The European version of GPS won't make a damn bit of difference. It'll be just one more thing the manufacturers of aircraft avionics have to build into their equipment. Hell, I bet Garmin and Magellan will even build "dual-band" receivers to use both GPS and the EU system. I don't know how many satellites are in the American GPS system, but if the EU can get the same quality out of 30 satellites, I'll be impressed.
If the rest of the world is supposed to be saying "f--- you" to America by building another GPS system, that's pretty sad. As a matter of fact, I'd be willing to bet that most Americans, including myself, really don't care how you spend your money. If you want to throw more redundant junk into space on your dime, fine! Spend your tax dollars on a redundant system!
I'll be more impressed if the real reason is that the EU wants their own system that they can control whenever it suits their interests. If the Brits have a little Falklands skirmish again, or the French decide to occupy Vietnam again, they should have the right to fade the signal to throw their enemies off. Of course, if one country within the EU decides to have its own little war, I wonder how the rest of the countries would handle letting them fade the signal.
This is not US v. The World (or the EU), people. This is the EU finally showing some gutsy, good old-fashioned, me-too innovation, just like Soviet Russia. I wonder if this means Nokia will sell crappy Euro-GPS units like their crappy GSM phones here in the states, competing with Garmin and Magellan.
Galileo was a european. I don't see why the US would be able to have more of a claim to him then europe...
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Wait until the US military decides Galileo is a potential tool for terrorism.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
In case anyone cares: This is why Europe needs Galileo
better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt
New Hampshire, New York, New England, New Brunswick
Your right, they should just 'catch-up' to the North American level of originality and just name it "New Galileo". What were they thinking naming a navigation satellite after the man who had such a profound stance on our REAL place in the universe? Something tells me you wouldnt stand on your word with your life like that man did.
In fact, its not the US govt that has the trademark, its a toy company Please dont just open your mouth and spew more diarhea, americans have enough reasons to be called stupid for now.
Intelligence has many forms, ignorance has just one
One of the big hopes of the ESA Galileo system is better accuracy than the current GPS system. If they can get out of the box accuracy under three meters it will make it possible to have Galileo-guided "total blind" landing and takeoff systems that is unfazed by visibility limitations such as rain and fog, not to mention very accurate landing pattern guidance to avoid controlled-flight-into-terrain (CFIT) crashes that plague airports in mountainous areas.
Having the US exist as the only major power does not mean there will be peace. I think it would be best for these European countries to work toward their own mutual benefit without outside influence because they do exist in a very tight geographical location.
While the US is not perfectly secure, the country is surrounded by water and 2 friendly nations. I can only imagine how tense it could be to live in Turkey, Serbia or even Germany right now. The European Union may prove to be the new stabilizing force in the world now that the US and USSR are not fighting over the way things should be.
In a few years we may realize the biggest threat to war is a nation that fears nothing and is sees nothing wrong with destroying other nations as long as it serves their interests.
Brennan Stehling - http://brennan.offwhite.net/blog/
First of all, if I remember correctly Gallileo was conceived a long time ago, way before recent tensions between the US and Europe. It addressed the problems with the availability and accuracy of the American GPS system, so that it can be used (mainly) in Europe for civilian purposes: Automatic Freight unloading and transhipment in Ports, Aircraft & Ship navigation, as well as many more commercial activities.
What is the age of GPS satelites, and what is their useful working life? Are they really still state of the art? I think with Gallileo, the world has the chance to obtain a newer and better technology.
No matter what your political opinion, we should all welcome the better system. Some People are happy to run Suse or RedHat with low performance, others prefer optimised Gentoo. When the system is ready, you can still continue to use GPS if you want to. Nobody is forced to switch.
thanks, I'll be taking you quite seriously.
the post-positivist paridigm is the emergence of human rights and the efficacy of individuals in the international system. How this is laughable, I do not know. maybe your high school education could enlighten me.
Self appointed dictators/invaders when a few cents can be taken of an import.
Is President George W Bush going to be tried as a "WAR CRIMINAL" when the so-called "Smoking Gun" is NOT found (because it does not exist). Ans: NO, they will keep looking till the matter is forgotten, or just cover up the real reasons for the war like when the US created a coup in Guatemalan in 1954 where 200,000 people died so that US Americans can have cheap bananas.
A pre-emptive strike on IRAQ without UN approval shows that the US (along with UK and Australia) has nothing but contempt for what other countries have to say.
The US reverted the accuracy of it's GPS (to the original civilian standard) for Europe during the invasions of Afganistan and Iraq, ruining the guidance systems supplied in many up-market cars, not to mention tracking systems employed by courier companies all over Europe.
Controlling the GPS system give the US a military tactical advantage. The US "pre-emptive" strike puts the every country on notice, and Europe is not going to wait to find out it has something the US wants and does not want to pay full price for.
When the US came to liberate France in WW2, they bombed the sh!t out of it, doing more damage to buildings and property than all the previous wars combined.
Some buildings that has stood for over a millennium were complete destroyed. Who needs that kind of help?
The U.S. doesn't really give a damn about the rest of the world, just that part of it which crashes airplanes into our skyscrapers.
Not to be too flippant, but since when?
Also, I don't see us invading (or even threatening to invade) Saudi Arabia. Maybe our leaders just have a very poor grasp of geography.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
...when you've got friends like America? And the French are supposed to be arrogant. ;^)
Oops!
Kevin Fox
Take a look at this URL http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/press .htm
Gee it REALLY does sound like he was supporting Hussein! Why? Because he was not to loose against the Iranians!
Now about the Clinton pictures. Of course he was shaking Arafat's hands. Why? Because during the 90's there was a peace mission going on.
Please next time you get your facts straight as well.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
How can world peace be optained if one single country controls a very important technology? Dominance and leverage can surely be optained from it, but not much more I'm afraid...
Think how this will affect the Geocaching scene?
What system will be best?!?! Will the scene split into two different world factions? Will I have to carry two recievers?
I can't take this... the thought just makes me sick to my stomach.
Just to sum up this discussion so far:
Europeans: There is a need for a european GPS system. The US has proved itself to be rather unpredictable and who knows what they might do in a tight spot.
Americans: This proves it! You piece of crap lame terrorist apologists. If you're not with us, you're against us. The US would never do such a thing to hurt Europe, we're the greatest nation on earth, assholes!
Europeans: That's exactly what we're saying. And why are you so upset that we'll make this system, it's not like it's going to cost you any money?
Americans: Europe has shown it's real colors now! You were wrong about Iraq and you are wrong about the US!! We are the greatest nation on earth, don't nobody else try to be relevant!
Europeans: Look..
Americans: SPEAK TO THE HAND CAUSE THE HEAD AIN'T LISTENING!!
Etc. etc.
I've constructed a strawman that's scarily like the majority of Americans posters here. You are truly the most arrogant and loud people I've ever have communicated with. Why don't you stop shouting profanities and try to think it through. Why are Europe so out of rythm with the US? Do you really think we're so jelaous of your way of life?
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
That said.. I'm so glad I'm European !!
Makes us wonder why you're an AC poster.
Of course, I'm proud not to be from the US. Sometimes I'd rather be from even Iraq.
Anyways, the parent post should be modded up..it does have a good point. It would take a long time to build a system such as Galileo. I don't have any of the dates, but it must have been before September 11th, and the world didn't really start to go anti-Bush until more recently. This can't really be a retaliation against recent events.
Feel free to mod me down for the comments on Iraq, and for saying that I don't think Sadam Houssin has done anything wrong, and that he may have been a revolutionary leader if the US didn't start picking pickles over there.. err I didn't say that, but I did now. But the guy up needs to be insightful.
Vehicle Stars used car search is my current project
One reason for alternative systems (GLONASS, Galileo, &c.) is the threat of the US military manipulating GPS accuracy for tactical reasons. Are there any real-world examples of this having happened?
GPS gives you lat+long+(not too good altitude)
you can get the altitude from another source.
Compare with a terrain map --> you know the ground's altitude relative to sea level
Subtract --> you know your altitude relative to the ground, which is what you really want.
The alternative method is to send a radar ping to the ground; this should give you a very accurate reading, provided you send the beam in the right direction, and provided you don't mind the signal being picked up by ground stations (the problem in mil-craft being that said ground stations might belong to your opponent).
Good thing for commercialization of space, or bad thing for world peace?
Well, uh, if we had to wait for the US to establish world peace, uh, you wouldn't want to live in Iraq, I guess. Don't mention North Korea, or Iran. Should I mention Texas, where they kill their own people in masses.
Sorry, if I have to trust the US at the moment, it means I have to trust G.W. Bush. I don't trust anybody who cannot read a book. Besides at the moment the US is a country in fear. Fear is not a good guide when it comes to world politics.
Wrong. The US didn't tell France and Britain to back out. The Soviets said back out or else we nuke you out. The US then said to France and Britain: whatever happens guys, you're on your own. The Suez crisis is actually what triggered the French nuclear programme.
/prevented/ France from having a consistently unfair but solid treaty. The result was a terribly unfair but fragile treaty; add to that 1930's era politician incompetence, a good dose of Communist agitation, a former British King who toured the Western Front then sent letters to his friend Adolf H. somewhere east of where himself was, and of course strategic military incompetence from French generals.
Then on the Treaty of Versailles. One of the problems was that Wilson actually
(1940 French Army was the absolute best in the world, for trench warfare. Ooops.)
For Indochina, who said to the US that the problem was not a colonial problem, but a problem with Communists? Uh, I guess the US had a good grasp on the problem afterwards.
....did I just see someone mention "Nixon" and "moderate foreign policy" in the same sentance??
Here in a little country called The Netherlands in Western Europe, we house the "international court of Justice". This formally has nothing to do with our country. We just happen provide a place for this institution to "live". This court tries to be fair to dirtbags that order thousands killed in wars.
The United States has "promised" us that they will invade us if "we" ever convict an American of such things.
So, the Europeans should trust their friendly American "friends", who openly refuse to be subjected to the internationally agreed upon "police"? Right.
There are always "differences" between countries. We think that shooting someone for being on your property is outrageous. You think that allowing small quantities of drugs is outrageous.
If at one point in time we (any European country) end up with a difference of opinion that the Americans find important, we'll certainly be refused the right to use the GPS system in a conflict situation.
Also, should anything go wrong with GPS, it's nice to have a backup. I mean how big is the chance that suddenly the Americans end up unable to launch (replacement) satelites for over a year? Only happened twice so far....
Was not exactly on the North American continent (last I checked, Vietnam is still in Asia). And it killed, on the US side, about one or two years worth of road fatalities.
Last I checked, WWI & WWI killed much more French or British than a decade of either country's road fatalities (which Falklands, Algeria or Indochina did not -- though Algeria was close).
As for the biochem WMD, I hear a certain Donald R. was sent on by a certain Ronald R., during the eighties, with that purpose. Nobody's clean.
Before everyhing someone should have said that Galileo is a comercial system. GPS is a military weapon with some civil applications. So I is a high risk to build and strategy arround the GPS as it was shown during the Irak war when the US reduced the accuracy. What if I am using it to guide planes? GPS doesnt garanty QoS. Surely mi users will like to have a garanty. So Galileo can be good news for everybody who uses GPS for civilian purposes. In fact, Galileo is suposed to be built for economic reasons. I could pay for itself in a few years. We are in a free world where everybody could start a business if it is profitable. aren't we? The fact that U.S. trying to push Europe means that they are much more intervencionist than they were suppoused to be. We are a bit bored of limitation due to military or strange legal problems: - Encriptation - WiFI chips - Software patents and now Galileo. Thanks UE allows us the "non U.S." Debian. I just want to be free engineer.
Finally Europe is beginning to stand up in the face of the USA. America may see the Galileo system as a competitor to it's own GPS. At the end of the day though why should the USA run everything in the world? The USA is 'one country' yet it's sticks it's fingers into as many other countries/regions as possible, interfering here, interfering there. But to be quite honest what Europe wants to do in/above it's own territory is nothing to do with the American government.
I didn't have a problem with the war in Iraq; I felt this was quite necessary to stablise the world situation.
America likes being in ultimate control of a situation. When Russia were racing to beat the USA to space/the moon the USA absolutely hated it. Well America is going to have to get used to sharing a bit of power in the coming decades. No doubt it will not be long before China/Japan/Asia install it's own satellite positioning system too.
Gradually both Europe and Asia are degrading America's 'market share' of world power and the American's are getting itchy trigger fingers. Be prepared for some harsh words between the two continents of N.America, Europe, and Asia.
VOR beacons are transmitters that transmit a signal that encodes the direction from the station that continuously changes as you rotate around the compass points. Thus the receiving unit can tell what direction it is from the VOR based on the content of the signal. Using two VOR's together you can triangulate your position if you know where the VOR transmitters are on a map. "I'm on compass heading 110 from Milwaukee, and 68 from Chicago, which means I'm right over the edge of Lake Michigan, right here." The simplest VOR display in a cockpit doesn't show anything more than the directions and the pilot has to have a map to do the triangulation himself. The complex instruments used in airliners feed this data into a computer which gives you your position on a map display. But in either case, NO, a VOR is not accurate enough to land your plane to the nearest meter. It's no better than GPS. For landings, a different system is used that is much more accurate but only covers a limited zone. You use the VOR for macro-navigation from point A to point B, but use the ILS (instrument landing system) for the more accurate beacon while making your landing approach.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Say I'm laying cables and I want to know *exactly* where they are on the site so I can dig them up again in the future, or avoid putting a backhoe through them in ten years when the building's altered. I need to know to sub-cm accuracy exactly where they are.
At my site we use Trimble-supplied backpack GPS with Ipaqs to map this stuff straight into AutoCAD.
At least most of Europe can point to there country on a map of the earth.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Of course, with all those evil muslims in France they will have Sharia law before they know it.
And they are all anti-Semetic as well, where as the wonderful US declared war on Germany as soon as it found out what was going on in the death camps, accepted all Jews fleeing Europe, and the Bush family made no money at all from the Nazis.
Sorry, got a bit confused there after watching some Hollywood version of WW2. In fact Germany declared war on the US (as there was popular support from you wonderful freedom loving people to fight Hitler), the US turned back huge numbers of Jews for the first few years of the war and Grandpa Bush made a fortune banking for the Nazis.
So before you criticise the French learn something about your own history.
And contrary to popular belief in the US, muslims are not any more an evil bunch of fundamentalists than Christians or Jews (just look to far right loons in the US or nutters in settlements for examples) are. I personally am proud that we have a diverse population in the UK and that we have virtually no religious extremism in the population as a whole and especially none in our government.
Can the US say that? France could....
It's asymmetric warfare, kids
Me an Olde European living in streets where plus /minus "a few inches" is all the space it takes for a courier bike rider to drive a 600cc bike down at 60mph, difference between me parking my car or not, or little old lady in mini car getting shouted at by White Van Man "come on darling, you could get a truck down there!" :-)
Methinks plus
``Good thing for commercialization of space, or bad thing for world peace?''
More like another instance of suits deciding that another's efforts need to be duplicated because, well, that one is theirs and we want ours. This sort of global service for anyone should really be independent of nations IMO.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
The US international policy is at the mercy of the whims of whoever is the elected (or not ^-^) president. Dubya and his illuminated cronies demonstrated repeatedly that they have no intent to seek consensus with world organizations or the US historical allies, obey international laws, honor treaties signed by former US administrations, or avoid opposing multilateral projects to make the planet a better place. (ACBM, Kyoto, International War Tribunal, Irak 2003, nuclear arms testing ban). They are also clearly stated that nations expressing opposing views on world affairs will face consequences. The current US administration is terrible. The next administration can be worse.The world needs a counterbalancing superpower to force the US to return to multilateralism and diplomacy.
Europe is an economic giant and a political dwarf (no military power without the blessing of the US through Nato). Every strategic step taken by Europe toward military independence and the nullification of exclusively US-controlled military technologies is a good thing for world stability. However, while the typical military icon in the US is a glorious vision of a marine in a hummer speeding toward the sunset, in Europe the memories of two world wars with its mass destructions, countless horrors, millions of casualties and sacrified generations still remain vivid. I doubt Europe has the will to become a military superpower or the stomach of exercising such power, not counting other reasons such as perpetual internal divisions and a clear preference to spend on social issues rather than the military.
In the aftermath of the Iraq war, the world is a much less safe place. Saddam, formerly natural ennemy of Al Quaida, will now be delighted to provide them biochemical weaponry expertise, intelligence and money. Radiologic materials looted from AIEA sites are unaccounted for while radical groups find a larger and larger audience amongst the outraged islamic public in Asia, Middle East, Africa and Europe. Obviously, only good things to come.
This would be like someone developing an alternative desktop operating system to the great and good one given to the world by Microsoft....wait a minute....d'oh...
Monopoly bad - unless held by USA...
Free competition good - unless competing against USA...
Redundant systems good - unless USA wants to control them
and also quoted Air Force secretary James Roche as saying,
So unless the EU wants to build anti-anti-satellite defences as well, they better make sure insurance on the Galileo system covers them for acts of war.
Bah.. should be "bloody", not "bloddy"
The problem with the UN isn't the theory, it's the practice. After the second world war, there were some key players that ended up becoming permanent members of the security council, which gives them more than their fair share of influence. The problem is that the balance of power has shifted since then. Is France still an important enough country to have a permanent status on the security council? Why give 5 nations permanent status? Why even *have* the security council in the first place? The UN is NOT democratic, not in the slightest. Consider, that India has 1/7 of the world's population, but only 1 vote in the general assembly, the same as, for example, New Zealand with a small fraction of the population as India Thus citizens of New Zealand have "more vote" on the UN that citzens of India, on a per-capita basis. Also keep in mind that there are no rules in the UN about how an individual country appoints it's representative.
When was the last time you voted for your country's UN rep? In most countries, the representative is an appointed position. The UN represents the *governments* of the world, not the *people* of the world. I cringe when I hear people talk of turning the UN into some global governmening body. NO, NO, NO! First turn it into a democracy, then we can talk...maybe.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
this is only the small start of what will eventually be a movement to make europe independent of the U.S. imperialism.
I sincerely hope the American posters to this discussion really are just the dregs of your society.
:
What is wrong with you people ? Are you really so insecure and downright arrogant as your posts suggest ?
A country (actually the EU in this case) has proposed to deploy a global positioning system.
You lot display an incredible amount of arrogance by trying to convince us that (a) we don't need it, (b) that it's just duplicating an existing system, and (c) well, if we go ahead with it you'll just shoot it out of the sky anyway !
Lets take these issues one by one
a) The EU has decided that they DO want it, and we don't give a fiddle what you Americans think. It will provide a lot of immediate work to get the thing going, and a lot of spin-off work will follow when systems are made to use it. To those that say it will be a waste of resources, I say why should you care ? It's not your money, and you've never worried about wasting resources up to now - you are the most wasteful country on the planet, gobble up half the world's resources, and are totally unwilling to cooperate in anything that is not totally self-serving.
b) Yes, it is duplication, but this happens all the time in industry, and in life in general - it's what makes for competition and variety. More importantly, the system will not be owned by a foreign power, and recent events have shown that this is a good thing. America is just as 'foreign' as anywhere else, and to be trusted just as little. Oh, and it will be a lot more accurate !
c) So, if you don't like it, you'll shoot it out of the sky eh ? Well, that just goes to prove how utterly pig-headed and untrustworthy you are.
I've never liked America's attitude. You always come across as a bunch of utterly arrogant, thick-headed, insecure fools. You're only happy when you're sticking your nose in someone else's business and display nothing but self-serving interest in world affairs.
I'm very pleased that the EU project is going ahead. It's one more thing that will be out of your control.
Heres from another Portuguese:
The USA would never have made it has far as to the moon without political reasons (the cold war). Competition was allways good for the space program.
A waste of money? I see it as a way of being less dependent. And should the GPS fail or come under the control of maniacs, its nice to have an alternative.
A waste of money? The ESA is one of the most efficient space agencies in the world. I personally know people working there: everything they do is expected to yeild returns under a tight budjet. Every probe mission features prototype tecnologies from private companies. Even Arianne-space is a private company under contract by the ESA. They are not NASA's white elephant with fortunes to waste in public relations. So stop fooling yourself or drinking pro-bush imperialistic propaganda.
Cooperating? Who's the ones with a multilaterist approach to the world, in a true alliance of nations, unparalleled everywhere? Cooperating doesnt mean "bending over", and friends and allies arent the same as "vassals".
Those Americans may have saved democracy in europe, but that was hardly selfless: they knew they would be the next ones on the line, so better use europe as a war scenario than US eastern shores. Furthermore, if I recall well, they gained their independence with french aid.
P.S. Were on our way to the moon and mars. Check the Aurora program in the ESA site. Regardless of the americans deciding ever to place a foot on mars: we are going to do it. Mark my words.
Why should we Europeans trust in another US monopoly? Indeed, why should you Americans trust in another monopoly?
As for the "world peace" point I am sure there are a few far right fruitcakes in America (you have plenty after all) who think that the EU is the Anti-Christ or whatever other biblical similie is de jour in the Heritage Foundation these days and are planning an attack. Meanwhile we are too busy eating our Quarter Pounders (or was that Royales?) to be bothered fighting you.
By Osama bin Ladin and hiw fantasy ideology.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Look, throwing a Marxist, America-hating e-rag in my face is not an argument. It's more of a statement about where you stand in terms of sucking down propaganda.
As for Saudi Arabia, it's time will come.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Why, today I heard a senator describe Canada as a 'safe haven for terrorists', demanding that something should be done to 'force' the Canadians into taking their 'duty to world peace and security' seriously. Goddamn if it didn't sound like some asshole prepping the ground work for a fucking invasion...if Americans could accept *that* then I'd say the world is well and truly screwed.
Just what are those sneaky Cannucks up to? Look at all of the admitted Canadians in our media, and those are just the ones we know about. Who knows how many Canadian sleeper agents are here right now forming a fifth collumn?
Heck they're not even a real county!
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
That was Afghanistan.
Iraq gave support to al Qaeda, as Iran and Syria are doing now. (And yes, before you ask, they're next on the list. Iran first, I think.)
Oh, and BTW, the U.S. long ago established that it would not blame an entire people for the acts of a minority. Germany, remember?
As for loving to kill, we're actually beyond that. We're now to the point of actively minimizing casualties on all sides.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
After all, those people who were in these tall buildings two years ago chose to have such a lifestyle, right? They did it to themselves, right?
<Note to INS>Please don't be mean the next time I submit my I-94W, this is just sarcasm, thanks. </Note to INS>
That's like saying a bomb isn't a bad thing, as long as you don't set it off. High resolution GPS is now available, but could be withdrawn at any time. Indeed, I wonder how many security wonks are still pissed at Bill Clinton for disabling Selective Availability, and are agitating to have it restored.
Yes, America has the worst military in the world. Except for all the others.
Anyway, see this: military force is one part of how America deals with the world.
For example, we bottled up the Russians so they could stew in their socialist juices until Lenin's inhuman, brutal, vicious form of government finally collapsed on itself.
As for the Europeans, well, I don't rate them at all. They long ago decided to hide behind the American aegis and spend their money on social welfare programs. I mean, if you belong to a continent whose recent contribution to world history has been a couple of suicidal collectivist ideologies, a couple of world wars, and an attempted genocide or two, you're going to spend a while licking your wounds and hanging your head in shame.
Thus, at the end of the 20th century, America had to intervene in the Balkans to put down another European attempt at genocide - the Europeans, for reasons of weakness, venality, and history did nothing but watch it happen.
As for invading a western country of decent size, well, taking France would only require us to learn German.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Don't be silly.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
World War one and World War two would like to have a word with you.
Free Iran
Don't forget the US shipments of equipment and supplies (especially dried eggs, nicknamed "Roosvelt's eggs") towards the Eastern Front.
It's quite possible that the US will avoid spilling the blood of their own soldiers even at the cost of ten houses and their civilian formerly living contents, but that's their way of doing business. I visited several WWI and WWII western battlefields with significant American action (and also lots WWI with no American action -- who the hell decided to continue the botched action at Craonne!!), and it's clear that those who were there -- living or dead, friend or foe -- deserve too a lot of respect.
Since the europeans as a whole are moral cowards, they let dictators and tyrants kill millions, you forced us into the role.
We don't *like* being the police, but you leave us no choice.
Europeans like shitting, but they don't like wiping.
Explain that.
I think the whole Europe bashing by Americans and vice versa pretty strange. First of all anyone that thinks foreign policy of the Bush administration has anything to do with American interest has not been following the news recently. Americans tend to support their administration in times of war (which is a very big reason why there was a war at all) and Europeans tend to reduce the war to "Operation Iraqi Liberation" or OIL in short.
e n/gol/14874/ 1.html
I read a very interesting article about American part yesterday:
http://www.heise.de/tp/english/kolumn
But domestic politics was a major reason for foreign politics on both sides of the Atlantic ocean. Schröder (of Germany) would not have been reelected without the war and his opposition to it (the election was very close and many believe that his statement that no German soldier would ever, even with UN support, set a foot on Iraq, given in September last year was the last little bit he needed to win). Putin only opposed the US because of domestic pressure and Chirac has huge problems with a corruption scandal (much like Cheney and Haliburton, just much much bigger) that threatens to take him over.
I also don't understand how Galileo would make any difference in the current military situation, where the US military budget is 45% of the worlds military budget at the moment and is sharply increasing to 50% next year and most likely more the following years.
There has never been world peace. There was a brief period in time (44 years), where two blocks threatened to destroy the world if one would attack the other and the number of proxy wars that were fought was slightly lower than the number of "normal" wars we have right now.
I think of GPS vs Galileo more like KDE vs Gnome.
Compared to the prior 20 or so years yes.
Nixon pulled the US out of Vietnam.
Nixon opened up to China.
Nixon was responsible for de-escalating the cold war during the era of "detante".
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
"numerous people I know who work hard for eight hours a day and are still worse off than an unemployed European."
Get to work, you lazy good-for-nothing.
Your kind is the death of civilization. I hope you aren't allowed to breed.
Yup, I overlooked this one. But on the biometric stuff, the EU and member state have not yet decided, but the PNAC boys already did it for us. Machine readable PLUS biometrics (I may have the year wrong, it's possibly 2005).
As for pure EU citizenship, amen brother! Pay your taxes once in any given place, earn a voice to decide on what these taxes are for. I'm afraid we're still in for another round of Moses In the Desert, sadly.
19:36 27/5/2546
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;)
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... ; ) ...
TOPIC: Innovation
it's about time those dummies in europe did something else then just produce p0rn, mad cows and stupid politiciens
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a handy device combining a PC, a mobile-phone and a (not-so-important) gps device. *kidding*
of course their is WI-FI and of course it's got a Gigabit-ethernet connection port. dummy.
Now:
imagine your GUI is the surface of the world.
this device would replace the mouse-interface completely!
so to speak a mouse and the planet-surface would be your mouse-pad
you can throw it around with your friend. no more strings for straight walls. get a friend and throw the
handy device around to mark the corners of your in-future-to-be mansion...
get localisation where your friend is (blockable). make calls. send receive messages. with
build in GPS-capability the poor router won't have to send your message around half the world
you can map your whole life. where you have been... what you did where... what ideas you got when you where staring at the pyramids... you can log all this and when you get home download it to your multi-screen super-computer. so like this no-one will forget where he eat and got diaareeha or
where he found the last coin on the street ; )
thanks to this device we could get a real-time life-log-device
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The problem with GPS satellites is that they make rather easy targets because they are so precisely located.
The only defense against an impending attack would be to degrade or turn off the system, but that would be ineffective if a second precision navigation system is available.
So, what this all means is that a GPS war seems unavoidable because whoever shoots first wins, unless they both shoot at the same time.
And since no GPS means no hi-tech wars, what next: slingshots?
So you would rather we had stayed out of the European conflict?
That's what it comes down to. Without US support, Europe would have been run by nazis or communists. We get blasted for doing nothing or doing it too late or doing it too soon. No one ever says "Thanks". Didn't Rudyard Kipling have something to say about that fellow named Tommy?
Every other of your arguments is besides the point.
Infuriate left and right
Without US financial support, Britain would have been bankrupt after the first year.
And it's still besides the point -- why does everyone point fingers at the US for being late, if we had no effect? Would you rather we had come in sooner, or not at all?
Sure am tired of saving Europe's cowardly ass.
Infuriate left and right
I must be in the wrong discussion. I thought this was about the new European satellite navigation system, but apparently this is where Americans and Europeans tell each other how much the other place sucks.
irb(main):001:0>
That's why Bush is planning to build space-lasers etc.
Europe and the rest of the world would be foolish to let any one country control damn near anything, including a global positioning system. It is a better thing for world peace as it establishes some kind of balance of power.
Chris
I think you'll find that's why we are culturally opposed to war.
n/t
Besides, you should try to Google for wars started by the US over the last two hundred years some time.
World peace is an ideal the world cannot afford.
... ( extremely violent reprisal, iow STFU! )
As long as man will compete with its own kind in any domains, world peace will only be reachable thru the barrel of a gun.
( I sound like a capitalist dog, but that's the unfortunate truth, and i don't like it! )
Everytime i hear the words "world peace" coming from an American, i just feel like
Since the demise of the Russian GLONASS system, GPS is the only game in town.
What happened to GLONASS? I know people were using it as recently as a couple of years ago. When and why did it shut down?
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
Hey man, I didn't start the talk about invading a European country, that was you. The bit about conquering France by learning German was a throwaway line. I'm feeling a little puckish this morning.
As for the USSR and Gorbachev, they're both on the trash heap of history, put there by the U.S. Gorbachev realized the USSR couldn't compete when the U.S. put IRBMs in Europe. Thank you Ronald Reagan!
China? Well, I will admit that today's China looks a lot like yesterday's Germany. Around 1938, I think. I don't know how that's going to shake out. I mean, the PLA basically owns the government, having saved it at Tiananmen, and gets to dictate a lot of how the government works - especially in the area of foreign relations. We'll just have to wait.
I will say, however, that free elections in Taiwan despite PRC saber rattling are a good development.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
I mean, we spent 50 years burying the USSR, one of the greatest evils ever recorded in the history on humanity.
Now we're taking care of the smaller items, in order of importance.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
It will be a pleasure for us to nuke you.
Really.
Pleasure.
That's it.
Thank God!!! Maybe the next time the American people want independence the French will tell them to go fsck themselves!
---------
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
The point being that we are damned if e do and damned if we don't The world screams at us for not saving their butts soon enough and ofor saving their butts too soon, and never thanks us for the actual butt saving without sneering behind their hands how it would have been so much better if we'd done it sooner.
That's what makes me wish we had stayed isloationist and let Europe go to their own little hell.
That's what makes me almost think Shrub did the right thing.
I am sick and tired of European hyprocrisy at complaining about us saving butts.
Every other argument dragged in is irrelevant to wishing you folk would just cut the crap.
Infuriate left and right
Well, let's not forget that the Galileo system is more accurate than the GPS that's already been around for some years. And we can expect to see new devices using the so called Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) that use the signals of both GPS and Galileo to get the location of your Porsche or Mercedes even more exactly. Another plus is that more satellites in the orbit means more reliability in citys. To find out where you are, you need a direct line-of-sight to several satellites at once (I think the number was 4, three for the position and one for the time signal -- sorry, if this is wrong). If there are more satellites the chance you're seeing one is higher. EADS (European Aeronautics Defense and Space) might have some more information about Galileo.
You should be, Mr. '1889'. Stop whining and start packing whenever you feel like it, --it *IS* a free country.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
We already have Microsoft Windows. The world doesn't need another OS!
Ok, I'll bite:
Bankruptcy laws were changed to allow collection efforts against individuals who were suspected of abusing of the system, not to make bankruptcy easier to hide.
Your "basically bankrupt" argument makes the laughably ignorant "what did we ever do for the French" arguments look good by comparison. The U.S. has a TEN TRILLION dollar ANNUAL GDP. It is FAR more productive and larger than the next closest economy, which is Japan. It is hardly bankrupt because it spends less than ten percent of a THREE TRILLION dollar federal budget paying interest on a 6 trillion dollar debt.
Our unemployment is at 6%. Germany, the so-called powerhouse of Europe, is at 15% and climbing. Whose broke?
Since your ignorance of history and bankruptcy laws is somehow surpassed by your ignorance of international trade: Buying stuff (and giving people in other lands a job) is not the same as getting "support", but I can understand how you would be confused since most Euros live in socialist paradises where expensive things like a crappy higher education, crappy healthcare, and industries which need big subsidies to stay in business are bought for them via massive income taxes.
Historical revisionism at its best ...
...
Russia ?!
Did you ever heard of the German-Soviet Pact ?
*technically* WWII only finished with the end of the Berlin Wall and yes, those US nukes mantained peace in Europe until then
Hmmm...looks like I better get ready to add a new color to my flag...
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
*technicaly* the US were neutral in the Iran-Iraq war ...
they even had some *connections* with Iran (remember the Iran-Contra scandal?)
The single major arms supplier of weapons to IRAQ at the time, was, yes France ...
i must admit that the Portuguese education system is not that great ...
...
...
if the poster hadn 't be asleep at the history classes he would know that Portugal (and, yes, also Spain) always had an *Atlantic tradition*
Regarding the rest of the post - it is an unfortunate sign of the times
I guess that's chicken scratch right? Is this the crap they teach you in public schools nowadays? Your ignorance of history is as shocking as your assumption that you are a master of it.
Poland was invaded on *both* sides in 1939, not 1945. The U.S. was committed to defending democracy and freedom because it paid up, showed up, and turned the tide, unlike the French, who just gave up in a few weeks. (That is the real reason why most of Europe was in Axis hands by the middle of 1940.) U.S. ships were running wolfpack blockades since 1939. What you think of as the holocaust didn't start until months after the Wannasee conferance, which was in 1942. As for your reliably wrong revisionism regarding the post war world, the U.S. only had three nuclear weapons at the time, and it used one in the dessert and two on Japan. It certainly could NOT have done anything more than bluffed the Soviets who already occupied 3/4's of Western Europe and enjoyed a massive superiority both in armor and men, all while the U.S. still had business to attend to out in the Pacific.
Didn't see too much help rolling them up either, although we were grateful for the help. Idiots like you obviously aren't.
get real, did they have a choice ?
Amazing... so the Normande Battle didn 't happened, the Battle of Britain also didn 't happened, the thousands of US *volunteers* that figthed in Europe (mainly joining the RAF) before US formally entered in thye war were a collective ilusion and the Plan Marshal was an invention of some revisionist pro american historians ...
Are you drunk or what ?
does this mean anything to you ?...
..
go back to school and leran something before coming here with radical leftish propaganda
afaik NASA is one of the major investors and funders of private development not only in US but even in Europe ...
...
...
There also European and even Portuguese firms subcontracting to them
If ESA have some rellative sucess it is because they are the *exception* to the rule! They *usually* cooperate with both the US and the remains of the former USSR
Regarding *competition* GPS is *free* and non-proprietary ; Will the *european* alternative be ?
If the US can turn off GPS for anyone but the US military, we certainly need Galileo. That will at least ensure the US does not turn off GPS for the rest of us.
Stop the brainwash
Well, actually, yes.
I mean, we have an actual free press to keep the Government honest.
Well, no, in reality, we have an actual free press to keep Republican administrations honest.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Well, it doesn't help that in living memory the Germans pillaged and burned across this part of the world. They invaded to support their incompetent allies, the Italians, who invaded first.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
...to the fact that the US keeps coming to Europe's aid over and over and the more we do it, the less a lot of eurotrash seem to appreciate it.
When the next hitler comes to europe (and he will because europe is seething in hidden racism), we're not going to help.
We're going to laugh.
"Interesting that none of you morons has any knowledge of the multitude of peaceful Islamic communtities around the world"
Riiiiiight, animal.
More likely, its so rare that you have to look hard to find them.
What other relgion says "you must kill those who do not beleive as we do". In its holy book.
What other religion prints t-shirts glorifying terrorism.
Back in the cage, animal.
Its clear you hate the US.
And what pisses you off is that no one cares. No one cares what an unemployed, overeducated wanker thinks about the US.
Even you mum tries to ignore you, but seeing as how you're still living in her flat in your 30's, its freakin' embarassing.
Now go get a job, lazy good-for-nothing.
Poland was invaded on *both* sides in 1939, not 1945.
read the post, I said Poland was invaded in 1939 not 1945. I'm half Polish, my wife is Polish, I speak fluent Polish, I've seen the bullet holes in the post office in Gdansk from the first shots fired in WW2. The US (and Britain) shamelessly abandoned Poland to Stalin. Maybe in 1945 the US only had 3 atomic bombs, but the USSR didn't get even one until 1949. The US could have had dozens by then (probably did). Many people (including Bertrand Russell, if you've heard of him) in the 1950s wondered why the US didn't use such a golden opportunity to defeat Stalin. (And as for having 3 bombs and wasting 2 of them on a country that was already clearly close to defeat...what does that tell you about long-term strategic planning?)
The U.S. was committed to defending democracy and freedom because it paid up, showed up, and turned the tide, unlike the French, who just gave up in a few weeks.
The French didn't just give up. They lost. So did the British. The British also had troops in France, and they were beaten back just as quickly (Dunkirk). The plain fact is that the German army was by far the best in the world at the time. The reason that the US and UK weren't defeated by Germany at the start of the war is simple. Neither of them have a land border with Germany.
What you think of as the holocaust didn't start until months after the Wannasee conferance, which was in 1942.
What do you mean by "what I think of as the holocaust". Ask my grandfather what he thought. He was the only survivor in his family. Ask my aunt, who worked to help reconstruct postwar Germany . The fact that industrial-scale murder didn't start until a couple of years after the Jews were herded into ghettos and forced to work as slaves with practically no food is hardly to the Nazi's favour. Moreover the allies knew what was going on, and they knew which train tracks led to the concentration camps. They could have dramatically slowed down the holocaust by bombing them. They did NOTHING to stop the holocaust during the war. That's shameful.
It certainly could NOT have done anything more than bluffed the Soviets who already occupied 3/4's of Western Europe and enjoyed a massive superiority both in armor and men
The USSR did not occupy any of western Europe with the exception of Germany as far west as Berling (and Berlin is in eastern Germany). And the reason that Eastern Europe became communist was because Roosevelt, against Churchill's advice, trusted Stalin when he promised to allow the countries "liberated" by the soviets to have free elections. It was a question of willpower as much as musclepower.
Oh, and by the way, the Russians were also fighting the Japanese (indeed technically they're still at war over some disputed islands.) Not to mention the Chinese, they had a part to play in the victory too.
Didn't see too much help rolling them up either, although we were grateful for the help.
I'll tell my uncle who spent 4 years in a Japanese PoW camp to thank you for your kind sentiments. I'm sure that the British scientists who helped develop the bomb will likewise be grateful.
Is this the crap they teach you in public schools nowadays? Your ignorance of history is as shocking as your assumption that you are a master of it.
I don't normally bring this up, but seeing as how you choose to insult my intelligence and my schooling, you're right, I did go to public school (that's the British term for prep schools). Then I went to Cambridge, where I graduated second in my year, then I won a fellowship to do my masters in Harvard, and now I'm in law school. (and yes, I did work in the real world in between.) So I think my education and intelligence stack up pretty well against most people. But even if I am an idiot, calling me names isn't the way to win the argument.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
It's a nice little loophole that governments are using to get away with military aggression without the humiliation of large opposition in parliaments.
Maybe you're not aware that the US is the only parliamentary country that goes to war regularly? The attitude that war is an everyday thing that happens now and then is uniquely American. The rest of the civilized world abhores war in a way most Americans have no idea of.
"You judge an entire set of people because of the actions of one of them?"
First of all "british" is not a race, its a nationality.
Second of all, the original poster said England doesn't breed extremists. This was shown to be false.
Saddam Hussein isn't the issue. Its the issue of Muslimgs a violent subspecies of human. Its a problem Marky, and you need to admit it before you can find a cure.
Now go back to bed.
Sir,
You seem intent on ignoring the obvious...the French and Germans hold more sway in the UN Councils than in the real-world, so it is likely that the food-for-oil program was set up as a political "gimme" to the French.
That said, the French had everything to lose from Saddam Hussein being forced out.
Therefore, their objection was not principled in any way, but was in fact a product of self-interest.
Therefore a reasonable person can conclude that while the American stand may or may not have been principled, but the French certainly weren't. So at worst the Yanks were equal to the french, and there's a 50% chance they were better.
So please, bash the Americans all you want, but try not to defend the French. There's no logical basis for it.
"Would you rely on the European GPS if it were the only game in town?"
No, because like all EU stuff, it works fine in the lab, but fails in key situations.
All the good engineers left a long time ago, or work for BMW.
"Now because of a single issue that they 'dared' disagree with the US on, the Bush administration has been making noises about how they no longer consider them to really be allies."
Not true.
The french went out of their way to oppose the war. Oppose at any cost.
The french decided to pick this fight, and not out of principles, but out of business interests.
So you're just whining about the rest. The truth is the Europeans have neither the will or the ability to do what's right.
And you're frightend of people who do.
That's why Europe is becoming irrelevant. China, US, and Russia are relevant. You're a quaint antique.
I mean, how much qualification does a study like this need.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
"I am not German, I am European. "
A man without a country and a passion might as well be dead.
I wish you long life; it appears you'll be miserable most of it.
"The United States has "promised" us that they will invade us if "we" ever convict an American of such things"
Liar. No such thing every happened.
" I'd rather be there than the US"
So would we. So would we.
Equally, you could turn this around. I'd imagine more Europeans have thanked the US's involvement in WW2 than the US has thanked, for instance, Britain, for holding the Nazi's at bay.
Furthermore, if Europe did get taken over by the Nazi's (even though the UK had won the Battle of Britain and North Africa whilst the USSR was fighting them in the east, let's assume that without the US, this would magically not have happened), then who do you think would be next? It was in the US's interests to fight.
And Europians rarely complain about the US saving their butts. There's way too many other things to complain about after all. How about the US's hypocrisy when it comes to the Geneva Convention? What about the US's hypocrisy about Free Markets when it regularly puts up trade barriers (not to mention laws like the DMCA)? What about the US childishly cutting ties with countries like France and Germany, simply because they disagreed with the US over Iraq (where are those WMD anyway...)? What about the Kyoto Agreement? Then there's the darker side of American foreign policy; Greece is still pissed off at the US for that whole "let's instigate a coup" deal in 1967. Better to have a fascist dictator than a democratically elected socialist government!
No country is perfect. Countries consist of people, after all, and we all know how error-prone they are. But the US is really not a country that can take the moral high ground when talking about hypocrisy. Not that I'm saying the US is in any way worse than any country in Europe; hell, Turkey and Germany have commited genocide on a far larger scale than the US has. In fact, the US has generally very adequately represented democracy and freedom for quite a long time. But it isn't perfect, and mistakes have been made.
People should forgive such errors, and are wrong if they continue to blame the US for past mistakes. But putting on a "holier-than-thou" attitude doesn't really help people forget and forgive past disagreements.
" but those airplanes are no/not much better then their western allies/rivals airplanes. The latest version of the F18 has a slightly lower mission-success-percentage (in training drills) than for example the EF2000 (European plane) or the SU-27 (amazing russian plane.. generally considered one of the finest planes ever built)"
Ha ha ha ha ha ha haha. You're killing me.
The US military equipment right now is a *generation* ahead of virtually anything else deployed in force on the planet today.
That's no bullshit.
The europeans don't have a widely deployed piece of equipment that the equal of anything.
Go up and down the line...F14, F15, F16, F18... all the best in class.
But the key is training. Our people actually fly training missions. Thousands of aircraft and pilots.
You're missing a big point. We can afford to have the best military and we want the best military. The french haven't produced a competitive aircraft since WW I. The british have their momements, but their equipment is basically frozen in time circa 1978. They have great troops, but not a lot of them.
Go up and down the line. Attack submarines...the best, particularly since the Russians had to basically park theirs because of the cost.
Dude, get a clue. Our military is so far ahead that if the EU starts deploying now, it will be 50-60 years until you could pull even, assuming that the US stood still.
You're lost, and we're not stopping.
We're gonna come at you, we're not going to stop. You're done for. The EU will be a colony of the US before the end of the 21st century.
And what's funny... you'll love it.
I liked your comment, even if no one modded it up, shame really. Even though you did exaggerate a little: I wouldn't really call US expansionist policies 'global domination', it seems more like global influence and control, almost more sinister. At least with global domination nuts most everyone can see them coming a mile away. :P
Oh my! Where to take issue with such a deranged mind?
Well, first, I'm perfectly willing to argue on the facts. I'm about to do so, so pay attention. It'll be a useful lesson to you.
That said, the fact is that adbuster presents only a single side, a side where the U.S. is an evil ogre threatening the world. For example, the war against Japan makes no mention of Pearl Harbor, nor of Okinawa and the Kamikaze. How can you take Adbusters, if it leaves out Pearl Harbor, or Okinawa, or the Rape of Nanking (read the book, it's interesting, and pretty much the only Americans involved were missionaries trying to rescue the innocent).
Stalin? A Hitler who survived.
My methods? I've yet to starve the Ukraine.
You're pretty ignorant, aren't you?
668: Neighbour of the Beast
the demonstrated leftist way is to murder the dissenters in pursuit of the higher aim.
Adbusters is part of this. Adbusters is evil. Get used to it.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
"And as for having 3 bombs and wasting 2 of them on a country that was already clearly close to defeat...what does that tell you about long-term strategic planning?"
:
I'm half Japanese, half Okinawan, and lemme tell you, dropping those two bombs was the best f*cking thing the US could've done at that point (for both the long and short term). The ground campaigns that savaged Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa resulted in hundreds of thousands of casualties. Hell, nearly 10% of the civilian population of Okinawa was killed in the fighting. And Okinawa had only 130,000 Japanese defenders (who were, btw, outnumbered by more than 3:1). Japan itself had over 2 million troops defending it, nearly all of whom would have fought to the death (~98% of the Japanese troops on Iwojima and Okinawa were KIA). Civilian casualties would have been much higher, as a significant portion of the civilian population would have also fought to the death to defend the homeland.
Projected stats of an invasion (as given to FDR, with the exception of the civ casualty estimate)
US casualties: 1 million
Japanese military casualties: 2 million
Japanese civilian casualties: 1-4 million
A ground war would have easily resulted in two orders of magnitude more death, and three orders of magnitude more damage to the country's critical infrastructure than the bombs. Japan would have been literally blown back into the stone age (that's pretty much what happened to Okinawa).
As far as strictly US interests are concerned, however, even disregarding the massive loss of enemy combatant/civilian life, the US casualties would have decimated the US's ability to project military force in the East Asian theater. Hold back on the bomb in order to force the Soviets and we have no effective military with which to force them. At that point in time, the bomb was more of a psychological weapon than anything else. Even dropped on the largest Soviet troop concentration, it would have barely scratched them. Japan only surrendered for fear that we had many nukes. The Soviets knew we had only 3 to begin with.
In short, there really wasn't anything the US could do to force Russia to withdraw from what would become the satellite nations aside from initiating a prolonged and mutually devastating WWIII within weeks of VJ (the Russian industrial machine was putting out 50+ T-37's a day at that point, IIRC. Any longer than a few months and they would have a hopelessly superior land force).
"I'm sure that the British scientists who helped develop the bomb will likewise be grateful."
Do you mean Klaus Fuchs? He helped the Soviets far more than he helped the US.
Ever watch Patton, he wanted to arm every able bodied German in 6/45 to go kill as many Russians as they could. Ike, and the civilian leadership wanted no such thing and so we had the Cold War.
There were plenty of factions that wanted to kill every last commie on the planet in 1945, but Ike listened to the communists/socialists that FDR had installed during his reign of terror. They are the reason that Eastern Europe and the people of Red China, Vietnam, and Cuba have had to suffer communist dictators.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Good for comercializm - I'm interested in the price and quality of the handheld units vs. GPS.
Good for quality - talk about the US screwing with the GPS satlites during the Iraqi war and the potential conflict to follow (North Korea's nuclear conflict or government-topling war with Iran, take your pick) I would welcome a system that doesn't get continually tampered with.
Bad for the space program - yet another 30 pieces of orbiting debris to cause potentially catastrophic damage to space vessels.
The GEEK shall inherit the earth...
... about the legal equality of states?
No?
I thought so.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Harrison was a great craftsman.
Not in the same league.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... if the US was consistent.
I will not repeat here the long list of murderous dictators and despots that the US has supported or enthroned during the years.
And in any case, what gives the US any right to decide which dictators are OK and which ones are not?
And then people in the US were asking "why us" the 9/11. Pursuing a policy that only fullfills your interests no matter what is bound to create animosity.
Your goverment is brilliant. They are now using now the results of such policies to curtail your own cherised freedoms. I would laugh if it wa not so pathetic and dangerous.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... it means the project will fail.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If I was a company/country using a global positioning system of any kind, I would love to know that I have alternatives if the system I am using fails, is turned off or degrades for wahatever reasons.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
GPS was put there by this company er.. its name escapes me... er .. I will remember it... er....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There is not a single Socialist European country, in all of the EU the free movement and comercialization of goods and Labour is assured as well as is private property.
Sorry to bust your prejudice bubble buddy.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
An European that belives dependency is a desirable thing to pursue.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Let me see now. Did I offer restrictions on application? No.
Your comment is an empty.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
You: "I do agree that the list in question is accurate"
Me: It isn't. It tells 50%, or less, of the truth, in all cases. You seem to be aware of the facts surrounding Peral Harbor. Your agreement with adcritic suggests ignorance of the rest of its "facts".
As for the rest. My mother was Irish, my father was American, I was born in England. I grew up in France, Germany, England, Ireland, and the USA. I speak French, Japanese, Irish Gaelic, and English. My wife's from Trinidad. So save me the multicultural sermon, please.
I apologize for missing your irony.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
You're angry, aren't you.
(Oh, I'm sorry, did I fail to grasp your English?)
668: Neighbour of the Beast
If we don't look up they can't see our faces, right?
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
Let's think about this a minute:
Less power = more security
If you want your neighborhood to be more secure, you INCREASE the POWER of the police and courts (with checks and balances, of course). Now replace the word "neighboorhood" with "world." Since the UN is a pitifully IMPOTENT body (not to mention filled with autocratic authoritarian countries - and by this I mean truly autocratic, not just whiny 'the US is autocratic' rhetoric), SOMEONE needs to actually be in charge. Two rival superpowers, which these satellites will help to develop, will NOT help security.
Just look at what FRANCE is DOING in AFRICA. And has been doing, for that matter.
Matt