Slashdot Mirror
Galileo Sends Its First Signals
VVrath writes "Galileo, the European answer to the US Military-owned GPS has sent it's first signals to ground stations in the UK and Belgium. The first satellite in the Galileo system, Giove-A was launched on December 28th 2005, and is set to be followed by a further 29 satellites by 2010. At a cost of over $4 Billion, is this system really going to offer any major advantages over GPS, or is it merely a politicised 'anything you can do we can do better' by the European Space Agency?"
"At a cost of over $4 Billion, is this system really going to offer any major advantages over GPS, or is it merely a politicised 'anything you can do we can do better' by the European Space Agency?"
If I remember correctly, Galileo is to have accuracy within centimeters. With current US-GPS the accuracy is much worse. Within a few yards, I believe.
...it's always a good idea to have redundancy.
Life is not for the lazy.
What happened with the usa requesting that they can jam the sat network when needed?
Did they get this denied or incorporated in this network?
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
it not 'anything you can do we can do better' by the European Space Agency it's 'you cannot prevent us from using this one USA' by the European Space Agency.
... and that's why it's better.
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
It is always easier to imitate than to innovate.
this isn't a chance for the EU to show off...it is just another way for the EU to become more independant, because remember, the US can shut down GPS service to the EU at any time. >tg
Yeah, because God forbid those Europeans act unilaterally on a technological matter involving their self-interest. You would think that five years of the Bush administration would have convinced the rest of the world that we always have their interests at heart. OK, that's all I wanted to say, time to cook up another batch of Freedom Fries.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
This sounds like a situation of control. Rather than sumbit to US authority (which intentionally cripples GPS accuracy for commercial uses), European nations are apparently willing to buy their own (new and improved too!).
Galileo has a bunch of advantages over GPS, like being designed to work to a higher degree of acuracy and to work inside buildings and in built-up areas. Take a look at this article http://www.gpsworld.com/gpsworld/article/articleDe tail.jsp?id=61295 for more information.
or is it merely a politicised 'anything you can do we can do better' by the European Space Agency?"
What the hell is this?? More like anybody with more than 1/2 a fuckin brain realizes its a BAD idea to have the only positioning system run by a country who has made it blatantly obvious they don't care about what any other countries feel.
One of the points, besides accuracy, is independence. Such a system is important for military uses. As the U.S. are getting more idiotic with the day, and can turn off GPS when they want, Europe has decided this is a thing worth having for yourself. And I wholeheartedly agree.
I remember reading (In PhysicsWorld published by the IoP [www.iop.org] that the political reasoning behind the GPS workalike system was basically that the United States cannot be trusted to provide GPS functionality (as happened on 9/11) in emergencies and during exceptional circumstances. As more and more businesses (and most transport) depend on GPS functionality the European Union has decided to build something more thrustworthy and the improvements are just a side-effect. In the end, both parties will benefit. There was something about jamming eachother's networks but I can't exactly remember it... anyone?
Has anybody seen that vid..."Who's next, France?, Britan?" hehehe
I guess they really think that shit huh.
Make it happen #1.
I tip toe like rats on vouge runnways.
I would think the reason is completely obvious: It's a really bad idea to have your critical infrastructure depend on something external you can't control.
In a data center, do you trust your ISP has full redundancy and will never, ever fail, decide to disconnect you or go bankrupt? Or you you use several ISPs, have an UPS and a standby generator just in case some day something does go wrong?
I know I'm probably just being silly, but I just feel the below needs to be stated anyway: How about they combine efforts to improve the current GPS system? In all seriousness, I know that the US military doesn't want to share secrets, but suppose instead of using two different systems, they were integrated. The EU could have hidden functions like the US military has in theirs, but when used uniformly, it simply boosts the current GPS's capabilities. That would benefit everyone, save EU from having to launch just as many satelites, and prevent the US military from having send more up there for reasons of lack of a decent signal. But I'm guessing the EU couldn't do this without US permission due to patent infringement?
WTF??? is this flamebait??? or are you completely and hoplessy brainwashed?
At a cost of over $4 Billion, is this system really going to offer any major advantages over GPS, or is it merely a politicised 'anything you can do we can do better' by the European Space Agency?"
What the hell is news of a new satilite navigation system passing it's first tests doing in the Politics section? Competition does not hurt, the lack of it does. Doing something better than the competition and never tolerating monopoly, Isn't that in the best traditions of a modern market economy? I cannot for the life of me imagine why it should be in our interest to allow the US-Military to monopolize the satilite navigation business. Please let's not turn this into another US vs. Europe pissing contest...
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Whether that's good or bad is an exercise for the reader to determine.
Why include such idiocy in the story? One very obvious advantage over GPS that is stated in the fucking article is that the USA reserves the right to switch GPS off. And, with ten seconds over at Wikipedia, you could find out that Galileo has a much better resolution than GPS. So mod entire story as -1, Flamebait - because there's no -5, Fucking Idiot At The Wheel option.
When the provider is US Government, it may be the only way... Still, there is no reason for Galileo to be incompatible with the existing GPS clients, that's just evil...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Had this been put in the proper category, like Hardware or Science, I'd say: Great, maybe I could get 10cm accuracy with this, GPS and GPRS combined.
But since it's politics we're discussing here, I say: how long before France, Germany and the U.K. start argueing over trivial issues. This whole European Union thing is too de-centralized, it's only a matter of time before it's torn apart.
This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is how Americans get a bad reputation as arrogant fools. I was agreeing with this poster until the "The United States of America is the greatest country in the history of the world. This Earth belongs to the US, the rest just live here." line.
Yes, the US does do great things. Yes, the US does make some mistakes (as does any country.) But to say that the world belongs to the US is just pure arrogance.
-Mike
A proud citizen of the United States of America
I am sure that this project has many advantages over GPS. While my quick Googling couldn't turn up an article, I believe that I have heard before that the current GPS system is not very redundant. The current satellites up there cannot be replaced, and the loss of a very small number of satellites would cause the entire system to go down. Extensibility and the lifespan of the Galileo project may be one of the more important issues.
If someone has more information on this GPS issue, I wouldnt mind having a refresh on it. Link please?
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
Now the wording of an article already tries to whip up nationalistic frenzy. What happened to this site? Am I the only one who remembers that /. used to be about cool open source technology? Technology that brings us together across all borders rather than drive us apart.
And it wasent even two months ago...
GPS costs money, so why should EU companies pay to US, and not to the ESA ?
Galiello is never, and more accurate
And as always, its better to have your on than to use the neighbours.
Doesn't anybody remember that our GPS system is on the brink of failure? Who knows, maybe soon we'll be borrowing their system!
Yes it is. The US has proven to be a unpredictable, unreliable partner in international politics. As long as substantial infrastructure is in those hands the world has to care. GPS, ICANN etc ...
Before complaining start paying your UN debts.
Flo
like be in denial about evolution AND global warming? Yeah I would have thought that impossible in 2006 too.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
If it's been done it isn't really impossible is it?
The world existed before 1944, look it up on the internet.
You know, any geek worth his salt has heard of the importance of redundancy in a high-dependency system.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
It's flamebait because he started out with a reasonable point - that GPS was pioneering and Galileo is refinement - and attached moronic USA cheerleading jingoism to the end of it, making it impossible to mod up his point without supporting the idiocy he attached to it.
Do you genuinely believe the USA always does the impossible?
Yep, and you're using the WWW, build at CERN (in Europe, in case you didn't know...).
Tilting at windmills, I know, but please see my sig. Grammar matters. The smart people you're supposedly trying to reach when you write are tuning out and moving on when you make errors as basic as its vs. it's.
One simple rule for its versus it's
Thanks Mike. Fortunately we have smart people like you here in Europe too and we understand that people like the original poster don't represent whole US. Unfortunately we have our own share of those people - many times bashing americans, categorizing and simplifying too much. But it's voices like you, who remind us that there's still some hope that we can get along - and that not everything is / should be competition. Hopefully one day EU and USA will be the best friends. Combined we're still somewhere around 10% of world population and we can't afford fighting against each other. Peace and love, my dear friends. And thank you Mike for your sensible words.
People mention the "jamming issues" -- here's the scoop... GPS transmits signals intended for both cilivian and military use, in distinct frequency ranges. The military one is encrypted and can (theoretically) thus only be used by the US military and its friends. In a war zone, the US military can "jam" the civilian bands while leaving the military signal intact, which from a military perspective is a Good Thing.
The originally proposed Galileo design was such that the frequency range used by Galileo's equivalent to the US civilian signal overlapped the GPS military one. Thus, if the US wanted to jam or block Galileo's civilian signal, it would also have to jam the GPS military one -- which (to the US military) is a Bad Thing.
I don't know if/how this situation was resolved. Anyone?
/* "Specialization is for insects." -Heinlein */
Slashdot should really not post simple minded flame-bait like this:
"At a cost of over $4 Billion, is this system really going to offer any major advantages over GPS, or is it merely a politicised 'anything you can do we can do better' by the European Space Agency?"
Yeah the system will offer major advantages and they are the following:
It will work when the the US decides to turn off, or disrupt the GPS. The US has never promised that it will always keep the GPS working, and why should they -- we paid for it with our tax money and the US government will always turn it off or disrupt its operation when suitable for American interests.
For example, the civilian GPS has signal has an intentionally added error in order to prevent it from being used for military purposes. Also, the civilian GPS signal gets further disrupted over war zones (such as iraq) to make it especially useless for anyone that is not the US military. Apparently, the military uses another GPS signal which is not useable by other parties.
And thats the reason why Russia already has their own alternative GPS system in place and the Europeans are building their own. It seems pretty reasonable to me.
Americans conveniently overlook the fact that Europeans have chosen to be a bit more socialist in their economic policies in order to build kinder and gentler societies. Just compare the crime rates between the USA and Europe. The Europeans have largely succeeded.
This Galileo system launched by Europe also demonstrates that Europe continues to be technologically competent and that slightly socialistic economic policies have not diminished Europe's ability to compete.
The Europeans should continue to build competitive national projects to demonstrate (1) that they can continue to compete with the USA and (2) that you do not need a huge military budget to spur innovation. Civilian budgets work just fine. The military industrial complex be damned.
And who built the infrastructure the WWW runs on? That's right.
...that having one satellite in orbit does little if anything for you, even if it is just a test sat. You need multiple satellites to do any real navigation, since only with multiple fixes can you eliminate errors in tracking, not to mention what you get when the satellite is on the other side of the world. This is a good sign, but it's just a test sat, and only one, so let's not get too excited just yet. Jules Verne (another ESA project, for the ISS) has been due for a long time, and was late even before Columbia.
Also, while Galileo receivers in general may be more accurate than, say, the GPS receiver in your PDA, high-grade GPS receivers used in military and commerical research applications can get centimeter or finer resolution - and that's with the current generation of GPS sats. There are two new, next-generation GPS sats in orbit now, with the entire constellation to be replaced over the next few years. These new sats promised even better performance. Plus, the signal of GPS that was previously military-only was recently (past two or three years) opened for civilian use, so given time to produce new receivers, I don't think you'll see great accuracy differences between GPS and Galileo (unless of course the DoD decides we can't have GPS, but I think that's more the point here anyhow).
microsofts real motto
Anything you can do we can imitate, buyout and market so heavily every media outlet sells out.
Your "land of liberty" seems to allow the President to tap anyone's phone calls for no reason. Your "land of liberty" has spent most of the last four decades imposing making the rest of the world /less/ free by imposing its will on it. That's not democracy - that's imperialism. And your "land of liberty" didn't even EXIST until fairly recently in historical terms. It's also likely to go into pretty bad decline at some point - go read a literacy study and be amazed at how many of you folk can't even read. In fact, increasingly the U.S. is _failing_ to perform a leadership role in the world, because it's completely ignoring it (apart from certain oil-rich countries that interest your oil-baron-thick-as-two-short-planks President financially).
The U.S.A. is *not* the world's leader, because the rest of us have the liberty to choose not to follow your folly.
Please get a clue.
What percentage of the UN funding is provided by the European Community? What percentage is provided by the US?
dave
p.s. I bet the Iranians are really scared of the European Community's threat to tell the UN on them...
My neighbour has a swimming pool which he says my friends or I can use any time we like (unless there's an emergency), but we're decided to put our money together and build our own swimming pool, which will be slightly better than his. For some reason he accused us of showing off when we told everyone about this, we just thought that it was best to have our own in case we're not always friends.
The Galileo GPS exists for only one reason: to fight a war against the USA. Nothing else fits the facts. They want the US not to have the off switch - why? The US has not used the off switch, and has promised never even to use the "lo rez" switch. So far they've kept that promise. Why would they break it? Only in the direst national emergency. Why then would any friend want them to be unable? They wouldn't. Only an attacker, or the friend of an attacker would want that.
There's only one category of people who have a right to be angry about this system.
;-) I'll happily use the free signal from both GPS and Galileo.
EU citizens concerned about government waste.
EU citizens should think about whether their governments have a higher priority spending issue. Most likely not; I think civilian spaces programs are a good investment, and I like the idea of Galileo.
For the rest of us, its pure gravy. We get another GPS system that costs us NOTHING
Sorry if I call it GPS, too, even though GPS is a tradename; Global Positioning System is far more descriptive than Galileo. Perhaps I should call it World Positioning System?
Anyways, I'm thrilled. Us non-Europeans (well, that's a lie, I hold British Citizenship) get a second positioning system for *free*. That means better accuracy, and higher avaliability. I bet we'll see receivers that will operate on both systems, and will get data in situations where either system will fail.
The only slightly crappy part is that you have to pay for access to the high-accuracy signal, and I'm too cheap to pay for it
How could it _ever_ possibly be bad if a government who does NOT collect taxes from you implements a free service you can take advantage of? It's not like this could hurt anyone in ANYWAY; I don't even see the dispute, other than the penis-size value.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
You're right to say there are internal disagreements and countries don't always agree. However the existence and continuance of the EU suggests that by and large the countries prefer general cooperation, and secondly, if there are two nav systems I suppose this means they've got twice as many choices. I don't think divisions within the EU tend to be as clear cut as East/West though.
Very insightful cut-through-the-BS post. And...
Competition does not hurt, the lack of it does.
That sums up the whole issue quite nicely. Thanks.
Yeah, nothing has made me feel safer than the US led attack on Iraq...
On no, my mistake, that should read "less safe".
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Would it be possible for a service like google earth to be linked with this. It would be pretty useful, since google currently tracks only US, but most european cities have their own street map sites for driving etc and realt time guidelines should be possible using a browser
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. -Nathaniel Lee
BEEP......Yeah! We da man!
Table-ized A.I.
If it's not China, it's Japan. If it's not Japan, it's Korea. Now, it's Europe. If all Slashdot is becoming is an advert for American technology and a mouthpiece for racists, I'm seriously going to have to think about removing it from my daily routine.
I seriously think Europeans and Asians should take the hint that Slashdot can be replaced with a Eurasian equivalent. Like GPS, this puts control in our hands. After all, why should an American company get all the benefits of attention and advertising revenue?
Europe and Asia are emerging as the economic and technology leaders on more fronts every day. Without our markets and technology cooperation America would be nothing. Rather than fight their nastiness, I think, it is better to turn our back. Galileo is but a beginning.
Galileo offers:
- Higher accuracy for commercial subscribers than offered by GPS.
- Non-military, muli-national control. No one country/entity can turn it off.
- Availability on Arctic and Antarctic waters. While not useful to most, apparently including the US military, it is useful for shipping and search and rescue for many European countries.
- Interoperability/compatibility with GPS. One can back up the other to offer higher availability and/or accuracy.
The only problem I can see is that they use the same frequencies. If some one jams one they are also jamming the other. Given the military capability of the countries funding both systems I can imagine such jamming will be very short lived.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
The United States of America is the greatest country in the history of the world. This Earth belongs to the US, the rest just live here.
No, the United States used to be a great country, to the extent that it even makes sense to have "countries" or "states." Now, the US has now become a fascist theocracy / police-state with a government that is so corrupt that it would be a compliment to call our capital a cesspool.
The US isn't even close to being the most free nation in the world anymore, which is terribly sad. We spend soooo much time talking about how we're "bringing freedom and liberty to Iraq" while bleeding fundamental liberties here in the US at an alarming rate. As someone put it "If Iraq needs a Constitution let's send them ours, we're not using it anymore."
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
By behaving in a high-handed manner and ignoring human rights at home and abroad, the US administration has given China the right to do the same. We are no longer in a position to preach to anyone else about their behavior. The result is that when China is the great world power, they will treat the US the way the US has treated everyone else.
There was a time when we had the chance to make the world a better, more civilized place. We have squandered that opportunity.
thats where british and french nukes come into play? ww3 or bust?
The USA are lame copycats and Russia owns the Earth. After all, isn't the fact that the USA merely copied Russia, who launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik I, proof? "Nothing like following the leader", eh? </your-logic>
Oh no! It's the Canadians!!!!
Yeah, that kindler gentler socialist society worked real well for the French...
The first is that the military don't just do things in-house, they outsource not only the construction, but the idea+concepts. As with many companies, the military probably approached a number of technical companies, providing a brief and/or provide opportunity to submit. Many companies, from the USA and other countries would submit a solution to the US military brief. The brief could be quite vague starting with "The need to be able to quickly and with reasonable accuracy, identify locations on the globe. It needs to be two way (can be on the earth and receive your numeric co-ordinates, or be given numeric co-ordinates and that relate to a unique position on the earths crust."
Then some clever folk at all these companies would come up with the actual idea that we can use existing mapping concepts such as degree co-ordinates and with some interestingly placed satellites, graph the earth's surface.
So where am I going with this? My point is that your zeal towards your country might be a little excessive, USA has contributed significantly to many technological developments, but in no regard does the USA have a monopoly on innovation or clever scientists. Factually North America is at it's most intellgent for it's ability to purchase good scientists from other countries. Which only tells me that the USA are good at poaching proven scientists.
Also your comment ignores totally that the USA was mostly a settled country, meaning that it's inhabitants are already a multicultural mix of many other countries. Living on American soil didn't bless them with extra intelligence or innovation.
To think!! Albert Einstein was a German. Boeing employs more than 153,000 people in more than 67 countries(they must think intelligence crosses boarders too). Pilkinton are English(as you look out your window without glass distortion). New Yorker Jonas Salk, son to Russian-Jewish immigrants invented the Polio Vaccine. Sony are Japanese. George de Mestral made Velcro. So yes... point made.
Whatever the merits of these points, I'm not sure how reimplementing GPS 27 years after the analogous US satellite was launched demonstrates them.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Regrettably, many Americans view Europeans as uncompetitive.
Insightful? That's total flamebait! I don't know how you can claim to generally know what the American option is...it certainly is different than anything I've ever heard. Wouldn't it be better to simply state your own views instead of masking it in this way to make it appear more important?
Who exactly is plausibly going to attack Europe if we didn't have the US to 'shield' us?
Galileo, the European answer to the US Military-owned GPS...At a cost of over $4 Billion, is this system really going to offer any major advantages over GPS
yes, it will not be controlled by the militairy. i thought that was pretty obvious.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
China
And when has the US ever cut the system off "on a whim?"
My Sysadmin Blog
The USA has always been a bit crypto fascist but it really is insane how much it seems to have *increased* since the end of the cold war.
"we believe in freedom and peace yet also we must also spend 4 times as much as china on our military per citizen"
Ahah, yeah right, bullshit. What with it being surrounded with nuclear armed Pakistan and India, it isn't ever going to get here. Even if it would, it would have nuclear armed europe. Even chinas population would be wiped out after a few armageddons.
Yeah, nothing has made me feel safer than the US led attack on Iraq..
unless you're an Iraqi that is crazy-troll-hyperbole. Cuz you seem the be forgetting 1945-1989, during which time the US paid for the defense of Europe from some pretty nasty governments. Even today the US is disproportionately footing the bill for the collective defense of western nations from Iran and North Korea. And without the monstrous bill for this military industrial complex, the US could debate between the 'kinder-gentler' socialist society mentioned above or a libertarian low-tax utopia.
But as it stands, the US doesn't really have an option of doing either. By winning the cold war, the US has made itself a target for every tyrannical regime with something to prove... and it can't cut back very much on defense in such an environment. The only hope of cutting defense spending that the US topple almost every non-deomcratic regime on the planet and replace them with European style democracies. That way these countries will no longer be able to take the extreme measures needed to raise a large military in a small country. And then the US will only have a handful of large militaires to deal with: Russia, China, India, Pakistan, etc... and those countries are the sort that pretty much would like to spend less on their military if they found a way and just compete economically with each other. And if Free Trade becomes the way of the world, economic competition can be done more cheaply (and more rationally) without a large military. This is opposed to places that could care less about economics and reason like Iran that wants to nuke all of the Jews, and North Korea where they want to be James Bond supervillans.
Since the US will one day no longer be able to afford its large military, it really must make war on potential threats now so as to avoid a world will it will be brutalized when its power falters. I'm not making this argument to justify or attack such a policy... I just think it's inevitable, and we should all just figure out how to deal with it.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
This site seems to disagree with the differences in crime rates you stated. I followed some of the supportijng links and it also apears to be acurate. Well i guess interpool only wants you to know about the stats if you are a police angency. This site hereandhere seem to back it up. It is amazing that switzerland apears to have a larger crime rate then the US. This site http://www.gunowners.org/sk0703.htm apears to say that gun ownership has the oposite effect in crime then what is popularly taunted too.
I've heard this misinterpretation about the crime rates in Europe compaired to america before. I'm not sure it is something like the chicken and egg concpet were some one thinks it should be logical to have that outcome so they just spout it or if the EU news agencies under report the crimes unlike in america were it is a guarentied ratings.
Now wait until they get together and rule the world.
Have you ever listened to conservative talk radio? That's pretty much the party line with them... I don't think you can call yourself a conservative if you don't look down on the European way of doing things.
I'm living in the South, a transplant from California... and let me tell you, the OP's assertion is pretty darn good.
Not to put fuel on the fire but I think our US citizens have forgotten the little politicised thing called "the Space Race". Sometimes comparing dick sizes isn't always a waste of resources :)
ciao
Hint: spending billions requires a real payback somewhere down the road:
e tail.jsp?id=63243
Galileo is seen as an instrument of EU independence that will also help sell French weapons. As things stand, France cannot sell GPS-supported arms outside of NATO, explained another source. This leaves out a substantial number of potential customers, and France needs to reach out to other markets -- in fact, it has made securing new arms markets a part of its national policy. http://www.gpsworld.com/gpsworld/article/articleD
A cursory review of the literature leads your statements to be fatally incorrect. Crime rates are in fact lower in the US than in many European countries.
Burglary rates for Scotland, Austria, and England and Wales are reported as higher for the entire period of 1980 through 2000. For England and Wales, this difference is as much as 50% higher crime rate per capita than the US after 1993.
Don't believe me. Check the figures yourself. I should also point out that these figures come from a UK authority, not another "American urban legend".
Military GPS is accurate to about two feet (considering our missiles keep missing by three miles, that's probably enough). Public GPS has an accuracy of about 60 feet (18 meters). Galileo starts at 1 m (public), and goes up to a couple of centimetres (commercial). It also has built-in support for emergency signals, etc.
GPS is old, and the DoD has been spending its billions (and it's a lot more than 4 billion, trust me) on ridiculous projects (that never get done, all the money ends up in the pockets of half a dozen people), instead of updating it.
Even if we boot the W-junta, we won't catch up with Europe and China in terms of technology (mainly space, biology and nuclear power production) until 2030.
What about the life time of the GPS Satelites.
...
I've heard some of them are aging and need to be replaced soon.
So it's not that bad another system is shot into space
Is four times as much an acurate description? How much are wages comparitivle with each other. How much are the costs of building supplies, buildings, amunition and such.
With the differences here, i think china could easily outspend america in thier intent without spending a larger amount of money.
Don't they have four times the number of citizens? Sounds like we're staying on par...
Why? Why would the US shut down high-resolution GPS over Europe? Because there is some risk of GPS guided cruise missles flying at the US through European territory?
No. That's insane... no such attack will happen. The only plausible situation in which GPS over Europe would be degraded is if Europe were under attack, and the US was trying to protect it.
Likewise, whatever people say about guaranteeing that Galileo's signal will never be degraded, I guarantee that Europe will want to degrade Galileo's signal if such an action would be critical to the safety of the people of the United States.
Why? Because we are friends and allies! What the hell is wrong with many of the people here? Ever heard of NATO? The US will always protect the safety and security of the European democracies, and the European democracies will do the same for the US. Don't ever doubt that. If you ever see a real threat to one, the other will snap in to action in a heartbeat.
Any disagreements between us now are temporary, and are insignificant compared to our interest in each other's well being. I am mortified that the minorities on each side of the Atlantic which disrespect those on the other side are also the loudest groups.
This Galileo system launched by Europe also demonstrates that Europe continues to be technologically competent and that slightly socialistic economic policies have not diminished Europe's ability to compete.
The Europeans should continue to build competitive national projects to demonstrate (1) that they can continue to compete with the USA and (2) that you do not need a huge military budget to spur innovation
Competitive? Innovative? The US launched its first GPS satellite in 1978. Europe launched its first GPS satellite in 2005. Enough said.
Both anthropogenic global warming, which I believe you are referring to, and evolution (or more importantly, if it was how humans came to be) are theories. Complete belief in them is unreasonable. I'm not saying they are wrong or that I don't think there is a lot of evidence supporting them, or that they are probably somewhat correct. but it is foolish to think they are definitely true. And what makes you think most of the US is "in denial" about them?
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
...it is always a good idea to have redundancy.
What happens if military receivers are stolen? Does the encryption key change?
To the European Union it doesn't matter if the Galileo system it's better or not than GPS. It's important to them being independent as it is for any country.
9/11
nice news speak
anyone beyond the border of even a city state
and despite commonly held beliefs in america and other primarily white so called christian/jewish countries
not to mention the dictator in commands statement
i would say a good reason for anyone to launch their own gps system
Who exactly is plausibly going to attack Europe if we didn't have the US to 'shield' us?
Al Queda (if it ain't muslim we ain't happy), Iran (if it's Jewish, they'll nuke it), North Korea (they see James Bond as their #1 threat), Belarus (they agree with North Korea). Two of these have nukes and want money badly, and two want nukes badly and have money.
I'm not saying that the US shields from these sorts of threats directly, it's just having the US around makes it a more attractive target for the crazy-go-down-in-flames attack.... "Dude, you got nuked by France because you nuked Liechtenstein? What the hell?"
Also if China invade Taiwan, it would suck economically for Europe... but only the US is standing by it 100%. If Iran nukes Israel, ditto, and only the US would help Israel retaliate. If North korea vaporizes Seoul who besides the US will take the millions of casualties to stop them?? And if South Korea or Taiwan go, so does your cushy tech job...
Oh, and the Baltic States, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, etc have good reason to fear a change of leadership (or heart) in the governments to the East. (and these countries are in Europe too) Why do you think these countries are so keen to make friends with the US? They know that the EU wouldn't lift a finger if Russia invaded, but the US would go crazy ape shit... Russia has a long history of dealing with people going crazy ape shit, and they respect it more than those who go measured-response-resolution-sanctions.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
per citizen
think about it
OMFG I can't believe you just said that. Just wait a decade when 50% of the earth population (IE China and India) begin to fully integrate and come into the world order. Just remember that statement of yours when the mighty stars and stripes are flapping half way up some god forsaken flagpole and people are asking US of what? I think I remember them.
when in doubt press enter and we'll figure it out later..
I see how that proves it's not complete innovation, but how does that state a lack of competitiveness? If you could retract your 'nuff said' statement I'd be interested to hear...
Galileo, however, also allows for hardware to send data to the sattelites, and this opens up a number of possibilities.
I do love "!" but not as much as I love "..."...
I dont know the opinions of most of the US, I do know that its the only major western nation that has serious doubts about the likliehood of both theories being true enough to teach in schools. Of course, both theories need to be challenged, but if 99% of scientists agree on A, its not sensible to give A and B equal weight in education. :D
And obviously my post is a much needed rebuttal to the "america fuck yeah" parent
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Not until after breakfast.
it wasn't to really to avoid secret prisons
it was about saving capitalism
opposing party political systems are not democracies
in a real and true democracy there can be no representation in lieu of the people
which is independent of the economic system they choose implement
I am very happy that this can happend! This is the greatest combat that is actually forbidden by the majority of the human population. This is the most important think that we should understand as soon as possible. This represents the future of the humanity. And in 2005 it looks that there is again a politicised 'anything you can do we can do better' like somedy told before. What's that? -- I want to be "Interesting," and even "Cool" here. What the hell happens to me yesterday?
Thanks for visiting my Web site! Post your comments on my forum!
Whether it is the Internet you are surfing on now,
Where is Tim Berners-Lee from? Which research organisation was he working for when he invented HTTP/HTML?
--paulj
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
Will GPS still work if the receiver is in low earth orbit? Say 60 to 100 miles up? Would it be reliable as far as the 3d positioning?
That'll be a Geography 101 retake for you son..
Here is Australia, I get very tired of reports that Galileo "competes" with GPS. Surely it's a huge upgrade, complementary and a transition to an international, civilian-based system. Please don't give the U.S. a reputation for being bloody myopic.
paleoflatus
It'd also be interesting to compare individual states' crime rates with countries in Europe. After all, what's legal in my state (NH) is not always legal in Massachusetts. And our crime rate is so much lower than their's it's funny.
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
Can you honestly say that turning the system off on 9/11 was "on a whim?" Do you think the ESA would keep the system going if a European nation suffered an attack like 9/11?
My Sysadmin Blog
Now check the figures for murder and violent crime between the EU and the US and I think you'll see a somewhat different picture. Then look at how many of the deaths in the US were caused by guns and then have a think on why the burglary rates in the US are lower. I think I know which of those I would rather have a lower rate of.
Per citizen kinda means /per citizen/. 4 times as much per citizen is 4 times as much, however many citizens eother country has.
Why the hell was the parent modded "troll" Does anyone not know what Starwars is? You know, the idea of using balistic missles to take down satcom system in space? Regan, cold war....starwars?!
He wasn't making a reference to the movie series.
Life is not for the lazy.
It's not a "test" satellite. It's there to start broadcasting on the frequencies the ITU set aside for the system. Failure to use the frequencies by a certain date this year would have led to the ITU withdrawing the frequency allocation.
K.
The blog you point to seems to choose the figures that back its theory up. From the same papers it cites as source[1], you can read:
e venth.html
Homicides / 100.000 inhabitants 1999
US: 4.55
France: 1.63
Germany: 1.22
Italy: 1.4
Switzerland: 1.25
[1]http://www.unodc.org/unodc/crime_cicp_survey_s
Maybe you should actually read up on the system. It's not a reimplementation of GPS; it's a much better version.
Stupid trolls...
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
That's a joke, guys. "Why do you hate America?" is the archetypal ignorant talking-point-fixated Republican response to the slightest criticism of US foreign policy, so that's what I posted. There's an excellent Tom Tomorrow cartoon on the same theme.
Jeez, I somehow got the idea people here were smarter than that.
Guess not.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Americans conveniently overlook the fact that Europeans have chosen to be a bit more socialist in their economic policies in order to build kinder and gentler societies. Just compare the crime rates between the USA and Europe. The Europeans have largely succeeded.
I'm sorry, but that is complete BS. London's violent crime rates are worse than ANY part of the United States. All of our crime put together is less, on average, than London's violent crimes. Thats ALL of our crime vs just London's violent.
Scotland's violent crime rate is more than double the US's.
Seems many people jumped all over your "lower crime rate" BS, and posted several sites stating statistics, like this one
Obviously you're European, which is why you have the "we're better than the US" snobbish attitude that most European's have towards their "brutish" cousins in the US. Too bad your opinion isn't backed by fact.
-- If we don't stand up for our rights, now, there will be no right to stand up for them later.
We don't hate America.
We just don't trust the American Government...
you know, the one promoting the 'One Planet, One God, One Country, and the Holy Dollar to bind them all'
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Hey, only 1 administration ago (well 1.5 more like it ;-) I as a European thought we were best friends, or at least close friends. Then some of you voted for this Bush guy and he started saying some nasty things about us and our neighbours. So yeah, we're a bit miffed right now. And then it became re-election time and we thought "oh they will throw out that nast man for sure!" but you didn't! So what are we to think? ;-)
We were once willing to go nuclear to avoid secret prisons, torture, and indefinite detention. What happened?
Somewhere America lost "more free" as one of its goals and replaced it with "more safe". I realized this when the DEA accused Canada of being too loose with its laws and spending too little on police. At that point we lost the title "Land of the Free", to be replaced with "Land of the Not Quite As Free As Those In Canada".
Yea, yea, it's off topic. I didn't write this for the benefit of the moderators.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
Roughly 90% of the worlds inventions in use today were invented by the British and Europeans in Victorian times, with the majority of those inventions being British, yet, you don't hear them go on-and-on-and-on about it. Everything since then has been improvement. Slow, painstaking, improvement.
America invents the oh-so-obvious one-click payment system, and they boast and swagger about it as if the global economy depended on it. This is a razor thin step away from nationalistic propaganda of the worst kind. If anyone else invents anything, it's a threat to be sneered at or trade-sanctioned.
America richly deserves its pariah status among civilised people.
Did you bother to read the comments on the first linked site? I ask because it should become clear that the blog over-simplifies the statistics - elements of truth and lies. Do you really believe that crime statistics across populations can be summarized in two pages?
Your own government has enormous databases available to be browsed, so give it shot and note the effort taken to appropriately partition the numbers for a better overall perspective.
Finally, who the hell goes to a partisan site for numerical support?
Well... how about checking some official and non-propaganda sites? I was really wondering (as a european feeling possibly overly safe at home?) wether these statistics might actually be true. Go check for yourself:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/hmrt.htm which is from the US department of justice and claims the murder rate in the us for 2002 is 6.1 cases per 100.000.
A little more difficult to understand might be the official german site (as its in german...), but easy enough: the word "mord" means "murder", and the number of cases for 2002 in the table is cited as 873. As we have 80 Million people in Germany that amounts to a rate of 1.1 per 100.000. So the US has nearly 6 times the murder rate of that in germany. Here is the link to the official german statistics (the BKA is the german version of the FBI): http://www.bka.de/pks/pks2002/p_3_01.pdf
Btw. the table on the top of the page includes the number of attempted homicides in red, the number of sucessul ones in blue. Without so many guns available, obviously (and luckily) most murder attempts are doomed to fail.
Phew. So I can still feel safe here ;-)
Fighting wars to prevent wars - is just plain idiocy.
Sure. But fighting wars to prevent potential enemies isn't. Eliminate all dangerous states and replace them with democracies structured in such a way to make it very difficult for them to wage war. Then advocate free trade, with disputes mediated by an international organization and you take away a reason for other powerful states to make war on you. Then you can get buy with a minimal army.
Just look at history and you can see the value of such a plan.
The US *government* (note: not the PEOPLE) are a bunch of fairly dangerous hippocrites at best.
"We want free trade!" (unless of course, we're talking subsidising our farmers so that they can produce "cheaper" than 3rd world countries.
The US is a democracy ruled by a congress full of people both for and against free trade. On some issues one side wins and on other issues the other side wins. This isn't hypocrisy, it is democracy. And if it is so hard to pass laws that hurt a few farmers in a democracy, how hard would it be for a democratic Iran to nuke Israel and bring about a response sure to kill millions of Iranians?
When an Iranian president calls out for wiping Israel off the map - "What an outrage". When Pat Robertson calls for the US to assassinate Robert Chavez "He's just a loony"
Pat Robertson is just a guy with a TV show that says crazy things because he seems to be suffering from some sort of dementia. Just this past year he has said things offensive to Venezuela, Israel, and Pennsylvania. He asks God to smite people all of the time. Now, the Iranian president (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) is a crazy old man who participated in the holding of the hostages from the American embassy when he was younger, and is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. If Pat Robertson did either of those things, he would be thrown in jail in two heartbeats.
And Pat Roberstson's comments have been sparking outrage in the US for years... to claim that more than a small percentage of Americans aren't outraged by him is a gross distortion of the truth.
And while I AM absolutely grateful that the US helped free Germany 60 years ago...
I guess the US freed Germany from fascism and communism, but neglected to light the beacons of logic and reason. How the hell is Pat Robertson as big a threat as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad??
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
The French economy grew 0.7 percent in the 2005 third quarter. There were WEEKS of riots. A horrible attack on a passenger train on new years, etc etc etc (no one on the train put up a fight in their own defense, you can keep your gentler society) Real kind and gentle: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id= 30&objectid=10362567
p e-wave-in-sweden.html
e ws/2006/01/12/nsacr12.xml
More of that wacky kinder society, this time from the United State's dear friend Sweden: http://fjordman.blogspot.com/2005/12/immigrant-ra
The EU countries can be more socialist and build these "kinder and gentler societies" because they outsourced their defense to the United States. I, as a tax payer over here, pay for these gentler nations defense as well as their scorn and condescension. The United States fucked up badly in two ways after WWII. 1. The Marshall Plan (I.e. we should have let Europe starve) 2. If we had to have a Marshall Plan we shouldn't have provided for Europe's security against the Soviets. If Europe had to pay for its own defense the nanny states would never have been born, birthrates would be high, and the west would not be in decline.
How's the birthrate amongst non-immigrants in Europe? Take a look. These wonderful kinder and gentler nations don't reproduce. Never a good sign... How about that work week? 35hours to create jobs doesn't spell success to me. It spells -quagmire- one of economy at least. How's Germany doing now that they switched to the Euro? That's right, non stop recession as they connot lower interest rates. What's France's government spending per GDP? Ya, in the range of unsustainable. How about the pensions?
Europe won't be gentle for long. People go to jail for having the wrong political beliefs. People go to jail simply for annoying other people. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/n
So genetle in fact that the EC isn't answerable to the foolish electorate. More fun is guaranteed given that fact. Let's check back w/ one another in 20yrs. It'll be a hoot.
Despite the obvious applications for this technology, I wonder how long it will be before governments cannot resist the urge to combine this technology with RFID tagged ID cards? This could become the ultimate big brother society.
You're right! We should wait until they do so... and then wait 5 years to make the satellites and put them up there... just in time to see the US occupational force taking over Holland and the International Courts for putting an American on the stand for example. ;-)
It is amazing that switzerland apears to have a larger crime rate then the US. This site http://www.gunowners.org/sk0703.htm apears to say that gun ownership has the oposite effect in crime then what is popularly taunted too.
It's funny how ignorant you are. Your sources are highly biased and you even succeeded to counter your own assertions.
Switzerland and Finland have most guns per person in Europe. In Switzerland many of the guns people have are military grade. That's because militia personnel are required to keep their guns at home as part of their military obligations. So how do you explain that even though people in Switzerland have powerful guns at their homes, there's still according to your sources a higher crime rate than in US? Weren't the guns supposed to lower the crime rate?
In Finland guns are mostly hunting rifles. Virtually nobody in big cities owns a hand gun. I'm from Finland, and can guarantee you that the low crime rate is not because people in the country side own guns, it's mostly because Finland is a very socialistic country when compared to US or even Switzerland. We take care of our poor, so they don't have to steal from other people to make a living. We also give a decent education to our poor, so they have a chance to get a decent job.
Nonetheless, if I were going to make the OP's point (which, again, I'm not interested in arguing) I'd point to, say, Nokia or Philips instead. Honestly, if you look at the Galileo site, even they don't present it as anything especially novel.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
What kind of maroon is this guy that he is so completely out of touch with world politics? I realize that /. by nature and design is a US-centric website but this kind of story seems to indicate a willful self-delusion with respect to America's new role in the world.
Zonk: The ESA built Gallileo because America can no longer be trusted not to f*** Europe over. When America was a reliable ally and setting up a GPS system was really expensive and risky, it did not make sense to build two. Now that America is "leveraging it's might" (breaking treaties, attacking countries and making frequent economic threats) and the cost and risk of such a system are much more attractive, Europe would be stupid not to build one (ditto for China). This isn't dick-waving, just political reality.
Is there any chance that car GPS navigation systems will come down in price because of this? Right now a decent one is $500+.
It is important to note that Giove-A is NOT the 'first satellite in the system', it is only a TEST satellite, for TESTING purposes. As the system stands, no useful navigation can be made with just one satellite (as you need multiple signals to correct errors).
The original intentions of ESA was to make Giove-A a testing satellite providing signals back to ground stations throughout the life of it's 2 year mission. This particular satellite will not be part of the fully functional Galileo system.
On another note, we need a moderation system for articles: -1, Flamebait; -2, Wrong Section; -3, Submitter-knows-fuck-all-about-the-subject.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
- Galileo should offer greater accuracy - down to a metre and less
- Greater penetration - in urban centres, inside buildings, and under trees
- Faster coordinate fix
- It will be able to tell users if there are major errors that could compromise performance.
- Users will also benefit enormously from the agreement between Europe and the US to make their sat-nav systems compatible and "interoperable"
No, it's just political maneuvering....This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
Shouldn't the charactization of "nerd" or "geek" be synonymous with a bit more intelligent and ability to reason beyond hateful partisan belief structures? Yet, here we are discussing a short paragraph with little merit that was approved by ostensibly a responsible editor on this site. The only avenue explored by the submitter was $4 billion to be spent because the EU (how many countries?) unanimously agreed on being petty. Is that the only hypothesis available to the submitter and editor? More suprising is the number of participants who support this simple minded analysis.
The confirmation bias even when based on a single unsupported contention appears to over-ride the capacity of a significant number of visitors to this site. Nerds indeed - lacking a sensible level of curiosity for more data or even the basic skills to reason that this submission was a troll and should be dismissed.
And who colonised the land the infrastructure was built on? That's right.
err, the data doesn't back it up at all:
I ndex.htm) shows interesting results (sometimes different from the official result), but you have to remember that it is just a survey on roughly a thousand people per country (not every people responding), meaning that the number are potentialy off by 1 or 2% (and when the number or classification show result in the 1 per 1000, those are meaningless).
:)
Grand total of recorded crimes for the year 1999
Switzerland: 4,355.74 per 100,000 inhabitants
United States of America: 8,517.19 per 100,000 inhabitants
Though, those are official number, the International Crime Victim Survey (http://ruljis.leidenuniv.nl/group/jfcr/www/icvs/
Just to say that it is hard to mesure the quality of a society
One thing I have never understood is national pride. Mike, I'm sure you've done some things in your life that you can be proud of, but how can you take pride in something of which you had little or no part? It's like people taking pride in local sports teams -- how is geography a valid basis for identity?
Sure, you can show support the American system of government, which is to varying degrees responsible for much of the innovation within America's borders, whether through direct funding or creating/not-stifling an environment amenable to research. Being proud of it, however, is the same as taking credit for it, which is entirely unfounded.
Maybe, maybe, you can be proud of specific boons brought to pass with the help of officials you voted for, but unless you're a king-maker, lobbyist, or you otherwise devoted a significant degree of time to rallying support for a candidate, your claim to pride (except personal pride in being able to recognize a good candidate) is pretty baseless.
from the link: "Also, our murder rate is high largely due to the multicultural nature of our society. Inner city blacks, members of a distinct subculture, have a vastly higher criminal and victim homicide rate than our society as an average:"
thats wonderful. i dont know where to begin with the logic flaws in this 'argument'.
in fact, why should i begin?
its just another example of the pathetically idiotic typical slashdot view of the world.
impenetrable to reason. you cant force a pig to do ballet and you cant force a slashdotter to use logic.
Fuck yeah!
I believe overall crime rates aren't that far off, but America has a much higher violent crime rate. That is what I read in my CrimLaw book a few days ago. Not sure if the data you all are finding collaborates that or not.
And who colonised the land the infrastructure was built on?
Well, there were a few adventurers, but the bulk of them were people forced out through oppression or shipped out after being named criminals by corrupt lords and monarchs.
That is, of course, if you leave out all of the indentured servanets and African slaves who were forced to go. (And though we've got an appalling history with that, guess who we inherited it from? Hint: It wasn't American ships transporting slaves.)
Geez, the signal to noise ratio is geeting to be worse in /. than it is/was in Usenet. Nastier too.
You mean, as good of a version as the replacement GPS satellites that the US putting up are?
,but the replacement satellites that the US puts up has nearly the exact same specs accuracy-wise as the Galileo system. They're direct complements.
Sure, they're better than the 20 year old version orbiting around
Troll?
imitation
n.
1. The act or an instance of imitating.
2. Something derived or copied from an original.
innovation
n.
1. The act of introducing something new.
2. Something newly introduced.
It is easy to fault the submitter for posting this flame bait, but it is Zonk's fault for letting it through. And I suspect this is not the first time Zonk has done something like this, and CmdrTaco has let him.
http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700. html#2005
Is the US waiting for the 9th inning?
Extrapolate on a global scale...go on...you can do it.
At a cost of over $4 Billion, is this system really going to offer any major advantages over GPS, or is it merely a politicised 'anything you can do we can do better' by the European Space Agency?"
Shouldn't that say anything you can do we can do 28 years later ?
- Just because we CAN do a thing, does not mean we SHOULD do that thing.
I'll admit, that though this article is provocative, I am VERY GLAD that Slashdot isn't just about open source technology. The Nerds & Geeks that frequent this site tend to be intelligent, educated, and opinionated. Makes for some excellent dialogue, information, and insight.
As has been stated before many times, i get more out of the comments than the actual articles. Be the comment a profound example of someone who should have been selected out by the Darwin Awards having jumped into the Gene Pool when the lifeguard wasn't looking or be it insight that some professors are paid millions to come up with in think tanks... i am enlightened. If nothing else, to realize there really are people out there that [insert whatever adjective here (such as smart, racist, profound, plagerizing, etc)].
Why does the EU's Galileo project bother so many Americans? It won't take anything away from the existing GPS, and may even improve it (at EU expense). So what's the gripe?
Who was the idiot that modded the parent down? The quote comes directly from the article referenced. Get real. The parent at least did some research and was making a valid argument. Hmmm, guess it wasn't PC.
> It is amazing that switzerland apears to have a larger crime rate then the US.
You will be more amazed to know that we actually risk to go to jail if we tell you the reason for the elevated crime-rate.
The original post is as much flamebait as this one...
I say we build a fairer multi-national run slashdot community.
Human evolution is taught in US schools. Very Conservative christians, mainly from Southern areas but also some spots in the midwest, are opposed to the theory on Religious grounds and do not want their kids exposed to it. However, they don't make up a majority of people or hold a majority viewpoint.
As for anthropolic global warming, I can't comment on that because I feel that we aren't causing the warming. I feel that way because the Earth is a complex system, and we don't know enough about climate and the mechanisms for change to adequately say its human activity that is causing it. For all we know, the global warming/cooling cycle is linked to a number of conditions, one of which is human activity.
Contributing? Yes. There is no doubt that man is contributing to the problem. To say that we're causing the problem, though, is just arrogance.
And yes, I realize that anthropomorphic global warming is a popular belief. But just because it is a popular belief doesn't make it right.
My Sysadmin Blog
"[...]is this system really going to offer any major advantages
over GPS,..."
Yes
"...or is it merely a politicised 'anything you can do we can
do better' by the European Space Agency?"
No
According to prophecy
History is loaded with great countries which don't exist anymore.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
violent crime rate maybe a key issue here but i was responding to some GP who was making a blanket statment that European countries are more socialist and therefore have less crime.
It apears that statment isn't correct. Looking at the figures, there is no relation between crimes being reported as to the standards of the data colected and how socialist the country tend to be. Also it apears that while gun control has an effect on certain types of crime, it isn't the magic cureall for crime reduction it is being taunted as.
Tim Berners-Lee is *from* London, he invented it while he was in CERN (switzerland) and he now lives in the US, I think.
One thing to keep in mind:
What kind of crime is being committed? Being pickpocketed isn't nice, but a lot less drastic than being shot dead.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Regrettably, many Americans view Europeans as uncompetitive.
Cites? Sources? A single sociological study published in an accredited, peer-reviewed journal? Or did you just pull this anecdotal piece of shit directly out of your ass and present it as fact?
The American urban legend says
No, YOU say that. Probably because you're an idiot who believes that whatever he thinks must be true, the facts be damned. Good christ, what a moron....
Americans conveniently overlook the fact
Yep, looks like I was right. Hey, get back to us when you're done congratulating yourself in the mirror over presenting your tripe as truth. Asshole.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
You are twice as likely to die in a traffic accident than we are to be killed with a gun. Gun-crimes do not worry us; we avoid the crime-ridden inner cities where most gun-crimes occur. And if we do go there, we can defend ourselves; we haven't been made impotent by our government and are not defenseless.
...
However, it is very difficult to avoid places where there are cars
Not sure Galileo could be classified as an demonstration of technological prowess. After all, it is 30 years later. I suspect China could easily create a GPS system too if they felt the need. Not saying Europe is technologically inferior, just noting that the ability to create a sat-nav system doesn't exactly make a great poster child.
That said, I applaud any amount of money Europe spends on this kind of thing, particularly as it related to the military. Since I consider Europe to be a eternal ally of the US when the rubber hits the road, it's nice for them to start sharing the bill a bit when it comes to this kind of thing.
Your mindless blathering about the 'new American fascists' is amusing. If there really were fascists running this country your sorry ass would have already been whisked out of your place of residence and into the back of a car for making your posting here and you'd be enroute to a discussion about your erroneous political beliefs and any of your friends who might share similar erroneous political beliefs. You'd then be treated to reeducation until you had admitted the error of your ways and striven towards and achieved political correctness or had shown yourself to be an irredeemable antisocial element intent on destroying the fabric of society and requiring that society take the necessary actions to defend itself from you.
Interesting, and conversely I suppose you are unable to understand why citizens of a given nation would feel shame at atrocities done in their names? Same thing, isn't it? "I personally didn't exterminate all those folks belonging to group A, that was just some governmental decision that I'm completely seperate from as I'm not a king-maker". Being a proud member of *any* group, nationality, society, club, association, etc is not dependant only on what you've *directly* done for the group, but that you've added your voice to the greater chorus of which you're a part, and helped to navigate your group in a direction you believe to be right and/or your belief in that groups agenda, goals or potential (feel free to add to the list).
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
Wou mean, as good of a version as the replacement GPS satellites that the US putting up are?
Yes - why on earth is the US doing that? They can just use Galileo after all.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Americans conveniently overlook the fact that Europeans have chosen to be a bit more socialist in their economic policies in order to build kinder and gentler societies. Just compare the crime rates between the USA and Europe. The Europeans have largely succeeded.
Keep talking like that, and I'm gonna have to open up a Texas-sized can of whoopass!
I think I need a new sig here.
It is amazing that switzerland apears to have a larger crime rate then the US.
It is well known Switzerland (like Sweden and other similar "socialists" countries) has a higher *reported* crime rate than the US. It is also well-known that this does not show a difference in actual crime rate, but in willingness to report crime.
Check out the stats for crimes which are (more or less) reliably estimated, such as homicides.
This site http://www.gunowners.org/sk0703.htm apears to say that gun ownership has the oposite effect in crime
Well, coincidence, right in the middle of this page there is a big table that gives you precisely these statistics ! How convenient !
Annual homicides per 100K inhabitants :
Switzerland: 2.7
Denmark: 4.9
France: 1.1
Israel: 1.4
Japan: 0.6
U.S.: 7.4 (tadaam !)
So you might ask, how come that you can find such damning data on a site called "gunowner.org" ? And how can they use them to support the idea that gun control = higher crimes ? Easy: they conflate homicides with suicides ! When you add suicides to homicides, you find fewer victims in the US than in other countries ! Ergo, gun control kills people, QED !
The crackpots who put this page up also seem to think that Hitler and Stalin's genocides should be included in crime statistics. Apparently this brings homicide rates in Europe to about 400000/year (yup, 400K) over the last 70 years, which clearly indicates that European gun control laws kill people !
Thomas-
PS: Not that those stats should be taken as gospel or anything. If Denmark has 5 times as many homicides as France, I'm the Pope.
Which is, since we are, indisuptiably, the #1 economic, technological and military power in the world, and have been #1 or close since the turn of the century (pace all those with knowledge of german technology before wwII) we have a hard time admitting that things here are not well. Coupled with the normal chauvinism generated by nationalism, and you have a situation where most americans are unable to accept facts that put us in a bad light, not to mention the people who rationalize our poor economy to make thier jobs bearable.
Since the 1970s, the upper x% of wage earners (X ~ 1 - 5) have had their real disposalbe income double; the bottom y% of wage earners have seen their real income grow modestly (y ~ 20-40%; modest ~ 15%)
So, part of the hatred to europe - and you are quite correct that it is rampant, although not perhaps a majority - is displaced anger at the poor performance of the economy. Many of the people who have bought into the myth of the american system - work hard and get rewards - are unable to accept that that is a myth, and that they have not gotten rewards, and to justify this belief, genrate hostility toward things like the superior social conditions in europe.
What's really stupid is that, fundamentally, the two systems aren't that much different. Europeans spend a great deal of money on social welfare, which the conservatives here say makes them non-competitive. I can actually, to some degree, buy that argument.
However, you can't say that America is better in any significant way. Instead of spending huge amounts of money on social programs, we spend absolutely obscene amounts of money on the military. Money we don't even have... we are borrowing incredibly heavily to finance our war machine. (and you people are giving us the wealth to do it!) Both are consumption items; money spent on welfare or the military is just gone, consumed. It can't be used for investment or research. And it's no longer in the taxpayers' pocketbooks for them to use themselves. Our taxes, in essence, is organized theft of the population at gunpoint.... to make more guns.
The only reason the US standard of living isn't a lot lower is because we're borrowing from our children to live high on the hog... we'll have guns AND butter, dammit. Somehow, I don't think our kids are going to be willing to pay our debts.
There's an old aphorism, "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime." Europe seems kind of stuck in the fish-giving stage.
The US, on the other hand, appears to subscribe to the theory, "If you have the biggest guns, you can just take all the goddamn fish you want."
Perusing the DoJ report you linked to, it shows that in 1999, you were about 1.5 times more likely to have your house robbed or car stolen in the UK, but twice as likely to be raped and 4 times more likely to be murdered in the US (using the reported/1000 population rates). While the totals of all these show an overall rate in the UK as 1.45 times higher in the UK, the difference is nearly entirely in property crimes.
What was your point again?
-- Cerebus
It's not making any more insightful comment than those that are nil?
There is another navigation system called Glonass. It is controlled by Russia. In fact, many professional GPS receivers receive both GPS and Glonass signals.
http://www.glonass-center.ru/frame_e.html
6.1 per 100.000 and 1.1 per 100.000 ? Thats alot... and what with the crazy 6 significant digits... I think you are mixing your systems. If you are going for SI (in English), use periods to designat the decimal point, and not as separaters.
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
Get the facts about Taiwan. One million Taiwanese have voluntarily emigrated to China. The Taiwanese view being ruled by Beijing as just an inconvenience if they can earn a lot of money.
Don't sacrifice American lives or money to prevent a mere inconvenience for Taiwanese scum.
Have you ever listened to NPR? How does the fact that right leaning talk radio leans to the right prove the OP's point?
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
The reason: Muslim immigrants.
(I can say it, because I'm in that 'facist police state', the USA)
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
+2 insightful... then -4 overrated (why overrated... because that is less likely to be meta-moderated unfair). This sort of moderator abuse is become more and more common on slashdot lately. If people keep abusing the moderation system to silence opposing views, then it will destroy the freewheeling forum of slashdot at its best and turn it into some sort of lame clique.
:)
Here's an idea... if you don't like my opinions, use the friend system to hide my comments. If you don't like one of my posts, you won't really get anything out of my other posts... so just mark me and others you don't like down as a foe... then you'll have you're own private slashdot experience where no one disagrees with you
Maybe moderation shouldn't be anonymous anymore.. and let me turn off all moderations from a person on my foe list -- so that I don't loose other people's contrary voices when I read stories.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Rapes: 6.26 (CH) - 32.05 (USA)
Robberies: 37.00 (CH) - 147.36 (USA)
I was wondering if I was in the wrong country, but in the end, I feel I'm not mistaken by feeling safe here in Switzerland (short: CH). I've lived in Paris (in France, not the US), and I was born and raised in the Netherlands, and I feel safer here than practically all other places...
Before we get suckered any further, we should remember that this is just another Zonk propaganda piece. The guy publishes tripe, then adds his own insulting comments to the mix to stir up the pot. He's like a little kid throwing rocks into a bee hive just to piss off the bees.
I'm doing something I've never done before: culling his stories in my preferences. I've had enough of this wanker to last me a lifetime.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Of course it's something to downplay and ignore - it's rivaling US after all...
And, as for $99 missile guidance systems... When you have time, count missiles shot and people killed for, say, four countries. For example,
China,
US,
North Korea,
Russia.
After this little exercise, think again.. How dangerous is that plaything in whose hands?
For those lazy to count. North Korea would MAYBE kill some people with their missiles, but one of countries mentioned actually is doing it all the time.
http://opencm3.net, http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/
Why is there a post like the parent at +2? Moderators!
Oops... right you are. And this in my first post to /. ---> eternal shame ;-)
But I suppose one could get the idea, and the relation 6.1 to 1.1 stays the same however one might interpret my 100.000 ...
I was curious whether these statistics were true, so I went to my university library to check the interpol books (since you can't look at them online)
I think that site is playing games with statistics, or at least not looking at the meaning of them closely enough.
The numbers they quote are correct, but maybe misinterpreted. (note I did not have the exact same year as them). The bottom row on the tables is for 'total number of crimes according to national crime statistics', and they approximately match the numbers on that site. (Does this mean crime statistics according to interpol or the gov't of that country? The book has no legend to tell me.)
However, the table also has listings by crime type, and the US scores consistently higher than the european countries I looked at in almost every single category. The numbers in the columns don't add up to the value in the bottom row, so I'm not sure what that bottom row actually means. The US has multiple times as many homicides, for example. One thing european countries seemed to have more of was sex offenses, interestingly.
Anyway, that site is based on the numbers in the bottom row, but it's not clear to me what they actually mean, and all the other numbers point to higher crime in the US. I only looked briefly though, the library was closing (6:00 on a sunday)
Wou mean, as good of a version as the replacement GPS satellites that the US putting up are?
Yes - why on earth is the US doing that? They can just use Galileo after all.
Best Post.
I hereby invent the "Best Post" reply.
we avoid the crime-ridden inner cities where most gun-crimes occur. And if we do go there, we can defend ourselves; we haven't been made impotent by our government and are not defenseless.
20-and-some million people disagrees with you and it doesn't avoid New York, hell, they live there.
Do you really feel impotent witout a gun? In the rest of the world we have dicks, we don't need guns to avoid feeling impotent.
And you can believe me. If people don't have a gun, you don't need it either. Problem starts when people own a gun, not before. Actualy, psychologicaly the one with a gun is sooner to be scared than one without (but the other side is armed too as you pointed out), which often causes sensles shooting. Hey, that sounds like US description.
Take car as some kind of natural selection. There are accidents in US too, or do you avoid roads as well as NY.
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
This is silly bickering. All nations contain people, which all suck just as bad. Europe's histroty is nothing but countless wars, most of which were pointless. The US has a history shorter but comparably bad (wiping out natives, proxy wars, etc.). The only completely true statement one can make about one being better than the other is that the US is more involved with the world right now, so we fuck up more, but also do more good things. Europe doesn't do much anymore, so they fuck up less, but also don't do as much good. The US is alot bigger than most other nations (in terms of power and money) so all of the charicteristics that all nations have are simply very exaggerated in the US. For an interesting site on how countries and other groups view themselves, see http://zompist.com/amercult.html. As a Texan, please look at the Texas part of it, we do get a VERY unfair international image (Since when was being a cowboy bad? They were supposed to be heroes, fearless enforcers of peace in a land of lawlessness).
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
"Hello world"
Actualy even your own piece of Earth was stolen from Indians and gained trough blood and war. You don't have your own language. And you don't even have typical features to be defineable.
God I love those american movies where they say someone has "scandinavian features", "african" etc. In every part of the world people have some generic features to be recogniseable.
What about US features, how could we for example describe typical US citizen? Two legs, not blue, two eyes forming various angles, does not quack but speaks some random language?
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
Obviously you're American, which is why you have the "we're better than the EU" snobbish attitude that most Americans have towards their "decadent" cousins in the EU. Too bad your opinion isn't backed by fact.
Ballistic missiles are largely, well, ballistic as you say. But modern ICBMs do need sophisticated guidance systems.
MIRV systems, multiple warheads delivered by one missile, do deviate from a purely ballistic course during the midcourse phase (sub-orbital flight between liftoff and re-entry). This is to help deploy the multiple warheads on different targets. The warhead bus uses small rocket engines to follow its pre-programmed course. Navigation was originally via inertial guidance or celestial tracking, but newer warhead buses use GPS.
Even single-warhead weapons need some sort of guidance in order to compensate for the effects of local gravity anomalies. Again, military-grade GPS is the preferred method.
Tactical ballistic missiles need guidance packages, too. The Scud, considered crude by modern standards, uses intertial guidance to control moveable surfaces on its fins during boost phase. Once its motor shuts off, however, gravity is in charge, as you have noted. Still, more recent tactical weapons have terminal phase guidance systems, so even these deviate from a purely ballistic mode of operation.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
"Each other, for starters. You Europeans were a goddamn bloody bunch, with major wars going back every decade for as long as history has been recorded. This ended when the US came along and cut your balls off by crushing the Axis powers and parking our military all across Europe."
Yes, before that you were too busy murdering the Indians and enslaving your population. When that stopped you had to look for excitement elsewhere. So you waited until the USSR overcame the Axis, at extremely high cost of lifes, and just before the end snug in with a few hundred thousand troops and proclaimed yourself the Great Liberator.
"This made engaging the US a prerequisite to starting any European war, and defeating the US military was too high a bar for anyone to really consider trying."
Uh huh, right, that's why we never had some "close ones" where the nukes almost went flying.
1) The RF Freq. used needed to be used or lost to the EU.
2) Not run by the US.
Nothing as petty as 'anything you can do we can do better'.
The moderators are restless
Obviously you are American or Brittish, otherwise you wouldn't have made the assumption that the UK == Europe. I even doubt a Brit would do that, as they tend to call the continent 'Europe' now and then, distinctivaly marking it as 'the others'.
We should be comparing American states with European countries. I think we would see that there doesn't seem to be any correllation at all. Any serious comparison would have to compensate for population density and other factors, and even then it would be difficult.
Obviously it was a humorless mod who made another knee-jerker. That's /. for you.
My reply was to a post that said I seem to think they didn't succeed at anything by this other then burdoning thier citizens. I came to this conclusion by comparing crime rates as he asked. Others in this thread are skirting around this issue because one of the links I provided was from a pro-gun-site. I posted that after I found links in the original site to be dead. Concentrating on different types of crime does nothing to negate the fact that "reported" crime is higher in EU countries then the US. They may not be as violent but they are still crimes.
So asuming your stats are corect,(I believe you have no reason to lie but i didn't check), We can make any number of statments about this. One might be that if you are lucky enough not to kill yourself, you are less likley to get killed by others while more likley to have some crime comitted agasint you in EU countries then USA. Don't confuse some site i linked to, with me arguing that gun control kills. It was just support that the crime rates are higher or the same in some situations.
You wouldn't happen to be wearing a Brown Shirt, wouldcha?
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
One of the first applications of Galileo is expected to be road congestion charging/taxation. Car drivers will be charged when they enter the downtown, et cetera.
It's part of the normal replacement process (GPS satellites, and in fact all satellites, need to be replaced every 20 years or so), so it has only a marginal cost over the regular replacement satellites.
I read the internet for the articles.
So were do we stand on this? We are both right but you apear to be countering an argument I didn't make. Less murders doens't make less crime it makes less murders. Maybe the reason i used propaganda sites was because a google seach showed them when i was searching for crime rates and not murder rates. Now in case you werent' following this thread long enough, i will elaborate on why i was commenting. The GP made the statment So i lookeed at the crime rates and found them to be the oposite of what we should think acording to that statment. Only focusing on portions of the crime rate doesn't change the entire position of the crime rate is larger per capa in some (most)EU countries then USA.
At a cost of over $4 Billion, is this system really going to offer any major advantages over GPS, or is it merely a politicised 'anything you can do we can do better' by the European Space Agency?"
So far I've heard three things:
- Accuracy
- Not military dependent; won't risk being shut down partially if the US military says so
- Cheaper (? I heard it anyway, unsure of by how much or why)
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
> or is it merely a politicised 'anything you can do we can do better' by the European Space Agency?"
Military-owned: they can and will shut it down whenever they think it is necessary. What will airplanes do then? There have been really bad accidents because of that. I thought you Americans like freedom? How does that go together with a military-owned GPS system? Plus: it won't have an artificially limited resolution.
I think you might need to re-read my post and look at the links I provided. Notice i said links and not link? I figured I should point that out because I did link to the site you linked to and referenced the same report.
This thread has blossomed into a few relevent posts and alot of knee jerk "it cannot be right" replies. No place in my post or the GP did I or the GP reference homicides. We were talking about crime rates and while homicides are included in those stats, they don't change them from the number being reported because they are part of what was reported already.
--I understand having to tell people to RTFA but RTFP?
I have a true story to share that may illustrate the difference.
A friend of mine had two native american friends visit her in a 20k people town in western Austria. She noted they were wearing subglasses outside, even when the weather was overcast. They explained this was so they didn't get into fights with people who mind being looked at. Baffled, she remarked that she'd never heard of anyone wearing sunglasses for that reason, least of all in her town. "So", they asked "what's your murder and homicide rate here?" At first, she didn't even grasp the idea there could be an average number of killings per year in a given town. The last murder in this one had been when she was a small child, over 30 years ago.
in 1999, you were about 1.5 times more likely to have your house robbed or car stolen in the UK, but twice as likely to be raped and 4 times more likely to be murdered in the US (using the reported/1000 population rates)
You can't say Americans are not more violent than other people?
No!
All those people killed in shootings in America?
Shootings. That doesn't mean Americans are more violent than other people. We're just better shots.
The GPS as we know it is US military controlled. GPS is needed now, everywhere. US is not what is used to be. Hence, need for European GPS clone.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
Different population sizes. Think about that.
Disclaimer: IANAL. This post is, however, legal advice, and creates an attorney-client relationship.
EU growth rates are stagnant and have been so for a long time, western European countries are breeding themselves out of existance, and the EU is militarily impotent.
If by "kindler and gentler" you mean "weak, dying, impotent, and cowering behind the military shield of the US", well, I guess you are spot on.
Even your demonstration of "technological competence" is merely a me-too copycat. Here is a pop quiz for you. What was the most important French invention of the twentieth century? I have asked this many times, and the only good answer I have ever heard was the bikini. Seriously.
You are correct, I did not really counter your argument, I merely responded to the contents of your links. Please let me explain my train of thought to you, so you might see, why I did that:
When following your links (I take the first one as an example), first there are the number of total crimes and I could not imagine how you would count that and what kind of crimes such a broad statistic would include. Everything from speeding to murder? Obviously, that might depend heavily on local laws. And as another poster pointed out, maybe some types of crimes are more likely to be reported in one society than in another. But thats a whole different story and I only wanted to point out, why I retreated from comparing total crime numbers to murderers.
Your first link immediately goes on to quote homicides, and there I had one easily comparable crime, which would be defined equally in probably all societies. So I easily compared those.
Also, especially the gunowners link refers most prominently to homicides. So mostly the contents of those links made me post my answer...
And, by the way: I definitely prefer a society where things were stolen from me 5 times and I were killed 0 times, to one where I only lose 1 item to theft while being killed in the process... but that kind of argument is quite inflammatory, so I should immediately apologize for it :-)
We have higher incomes, higher growth, a far stronger military, are not breeding ourselves out of existence, and are being invaded by relatively benign Mexicans rather than hostile Muslims. We have the most innovative economy in the world, far more natural resources than Europe, the best university system, and consistently turn out most of the world's most innovative products and services.
Europe has some nice artwork and old buildings, though.
Just because Rush says it doesn't make it false.
Having a republic or democracy is not enough. Peaceful, free and prosperous countries pretty much need a government created by the US or the UK. For Example: Germany, France, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, New Zealan, India.
"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
Crackpot.org?
We lost 250,000 soldiers liberating Europe's pathetic "#$. Go tell a real D-Day survivor that we just hung back and let the Reds do the dirty-work. I quadruple-dog dare you.
Up to it? I did not think so.
Btw, most native Americans died due to their lack of immunity to Eurasian diseases such as smallpox. This was an inevitable accident given the meeting of these cultures. Hyper-isolated events where someone may have done this on purpose made no difference, as every tribe was going to get hit with these diseases sooner or later.
Country A has 100 citizens
Country B has 20 citizens
Country A spends 10 dollar per citizen
Country B spends 40 dollars per citizen
Country A spends 1000 dollars
Country B spends 800 dollars
Who is spending more?
Very simple mathematics.
While Galileo is an improvement over GPS in many ways, the main issue is that the EU doesn't trust the US, and with damned good reason. The EU states need a system they can count on to be available at all times, not just when the US feels like sharing.
Articles like this embarrass me as an American. If it was the other way around, and the EU had a monopoly on global positioning systems, do you think we would hesitate for a second to launch our own? Any state or power bloc with the ability to launch such a system almost certainly will do so in order to avoid dependency on a potentially hostile foreign power.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
There's an old aphorism, "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime." Europe seems kind of stuck in the fish-giving stage.
.. etc), and it has threatened to do that to many more (Microsoft?). And is there really much difference between having large sections of the economy run by the state, and large sections of the economy given special treatment by the state for lucrative military contracts as is the case in the USA (Boeing, LM etc) ?
You can't teach everyone to fish, especially not if they were in an road or workplace accident and had to get their hands amputated. But that said, your portrayal is an exaggeration. European economies are all free market economies, with a degree - some more than others - of state ownership of a limited number of corporations and utilities. I am not sure it is so clear that you can say "socialist-ish economies are doomed to failure". European economies with heavy state involvement have gone up and down for sure since WW2, but have any of them really experienced the kind of serious hit that the USA did during the depression in the 1930s - a depression that was ultimately cleared up (I know this point is disputed) by good old fashioned state intervention ?
State ownership exists in the USA too (Amtrak; Tennessee Valley Authority; etc) but obviously not on the same scale as in somewhere like France (Renault, SNCF etc). But one big difference in the USA was/is that the large corporations were still huge overbearing inefficient monopolies - and from where I'm sitting, it looks like it would have made no difference whether they were state owned or not. In the big cases the government had to step in to break them up (AT&T, Standard Oil
Country A has 100 citizens
Country B has 25 citizens
Country A spends 10 dollar per citizen
Country B spends 40 dollars per citizen
Country A spends 1000 dollars
Country B spends 1000 dollars
Who is spending more?
Very simple mathematics. Very little thinking needed, either.
Another 'trend' in US property crime statistics is that often unless the victim can prove that the property was intentionally stolen, the police are systematically and fraudulently classifying the thefts instead as 'lost property' to reduce their reported crime rates.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
Kim Jong Il likely won't be firing any of those missiles at hostile places. They will need the accuracy near his targets. In order for any of these software upgrades to make sense, they would have to be distortable near potential missile targets. I would bet that the US government has the capability to distort the signal within seconds over potential targets.
If the US government has thought things through, they've made GPS remappable in emergency situations. So instead of that $99 guidance system being a benefit to lunatic dictators, it is now a remote control in the hands of the US govt. This could be used to fool the missiles into thinking they're over a target such as Tokyo when in reality they're harmlessly over the ocean or harmfully in Pyongyang.
In practice the next-generation GNSS receivers will be dual-constellation, and will use BOTH of the GPS and Gailieo ranging signals. The combined constellation of 54 satellites (24 GPS + 30 Galileo) will have advantages in terms of satellite availability ( number of satellites above a certain elevation angle), and the geometry (more satellites to chose from will allow the choise of a better dilution of precision, therefore better position accuracy for given range measurement errors). Ultimately this will benefit consumers, especially in built up areas, more than either system on its own.
Also, these data colections are comprised by a general reporting mechanism. It is a survey that asumes certain activities fall within certain classifications and that they are ilegal in these countries. Going over the speed limit isn't going to inflate these numbers. You can find the reporting critaria here.
An interesting note might be that the same survey reports homicides with guns. Whle the homicid rate in 1999 (down after a reletivly higher period just before)was a 4.55 in the US, and 1.22 in germany, there was a number of 2.25 unsuccesful homicide attempt while the US didn't list unsuccesful homicides. If we make a big leap and asume that attempted and completed homicides in the US were reported together, germany would have had 3.47 homicidal acts compared to the US's 4.55. Still safer in germany but,
Asuming reasons other then I sugested for why the US didn't submit thier attempted homicide report are incorect, only a little over half the homicides were empowered by the use of a gun. This suggests that the reasons for the murders were more complexed then the availability of firearms. although acording to the site you linked to the succesfulenss of these homicide might have increase because of the amount of guns on the street.
I guess we need to ask if it is just as bad to try and kill someone as it is to actualy kill them. Remember the intention was to "kill a person" not "try to kill" them. I guess all this proves is that we still have bad people living in our societies and we havn't been able to fix that part of the equasion. Definatley guns aren't helping (might not be hurting either) and social programs might be helping but aren't the answer yet.
Before I go any further, I am from Germany and I don't like wars. And I still wonder why the US govt ever decided to go into Iraq (was a really, really bad idea IMHO)
The US has the only military capable of getting any significant military on the ground in crises regions within a reasonable timespan.
Little insert:
At a middle eastern conference someone (French guy) pointed out that Europe will soon military capability enabeling them to put 2500 troups (fighting, not including logistics personel) on the ground in any part of the world within a week. So one of the Arabian guys said that this is nice, but they are in need of a protecting power able to do more than 10 times within 24 hours.
So if a crises would arise, like Iran being much closer to nuclear capability that Israel finall decides to put an end to it and sends in a couple of bombers. Situation escalates and Turkey (NATO power, EU and Israel friendly) gets attacked along the way. Who will step in? But the Iranians were smart and put Galileo receivers in their missle guidence systems. So you want American troops protecting Europe getting attacked by missles that are aided by European technology?
I am very suspicous of American motives in Iraq and other places, but there are some facts that cannot be ignored, like US troops guarding the line between North Korea and free democratic South Korea. If they get suddenly attacked, should they be forced to dial up Eurocrats in Brussel (there was a reason why many Europeans voted against the constitution, not because they are against Europe!) to kindly ask them to swith off Galileo in Korea only to find out that sundays are off in Europe?
Usually there are more supportive comments about US soldiers on Slashdot. At the moment I only see hothead European liberal types. The latter would usually be my kinda comments.
I can understand personal shame when one recognizes that he or she personally fell short of their moral obligation to help prevent such atrocities. Pride or shame from group identity is the irrational cruft of an age gone by.
You've thought this out pretty well and come up with something I wish was true. I have to say, though, you're giving the government a lot more credit than it's due. On top of the fact that this wasn't implemented, messing with GPS signals is simply too dangerous and tricky. It's used by all manner of military and civilians, both American and ally (as well as some hostile), not to exclude special forces, regular ground forces, downed aircrews, and still-in-the-air aircrews. It's a crucial navigational tool for many people and organizations, and even the slightest GPS outage could have huge ramifications. It is MUCH easier to pop up some AAA and patriot missile batteries than to risk screwing with GPS in a given area. It's even more dangerous to do it in a war zone, and a great way to get your own people killed.
Not to mention President Clinton turning off selective availability in 2000 for these very reasons.
I know it makes people nervous that President Bush could have the capability of turning off their precious GPS, but they have to realize American leadership has long known it's a bad idea, and has no intention of turning it off. We can rarely stop our adversaries from using the technologies we develop, we just have to try to delay it. It's been delayed for a long time now, but that battle is over. Now we're too busying trying to stop people from getting high-power lasers, newer NVG technology, and things that can shoot down american aircraft.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
WTF?
"Each other, for starters. You Europeans were a goddamn bloody bunch, with major wars going back every decade for as long as history has been recorded. This ended when the US came along and cut your balls off by crushing the Axis powers and parking our military all across Europe."
1: In 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland (Sept. 1st), America was working out how it was going to manage a relationship with a Nazi controlled Europe as it only expected Britain to hold out for 3 weeks after the "inevitable" defeat of the RAF in the Battle of Britain. Hitler's biggest mistake, if anything, was to turn and attack the Soviet Union (22nd June 1941) splitting his forces across another front on top of the Western and North African wars that were already in progress. If Britain had fallen in 1939, Europe would have been fucked anyway so the phrase "This ended when the US came along and cut your balls off by crushing the Axis powers and parking our military all across Europe" which negates the contributions of all the other allied powers is an insult to the millions of non-Americans who died in that war as well as being an expression of an obscene level of arrogance.
Your tone also suggest America's involvement was a totally selfless act despite the fact that America entered the war wholesale after it had been attacked by Japan and Germany had made a declaration of War against it. You also neglect to mention the arrangements from which America benefited, i.e. technology transfers including Radar, the jet engine, the cavity magnetron, Azdic, etc. and, post-war, faster than sound technology (developed by Miles Aircraft Corp and used by Bell to build the X-1, sideways looking terrain following all weather radar (developed for the BAC TSR 2 Nuclear strike aircraft - used in the cruise missile) and more that I can't be arsed to list. On top of this, America gained access to a global span of British territory for military use as part of Lease Lend as well being in a position to isolate itself from Communist Russia by transferring any fighting with the USSR away from Alaska which would be a bitch because no-one wants to fight a war at -40 in an environment where everything that moves leaves a trail that can be spotted from the air and into region that could form a handy missile launching platform close to the intended target.
"This made engaging the US a prerequisite to starting any European war, and defeating the US military was too high a bar for anyone to really consider trying."
Er, Nope.
The world's leaders understanding that there were enough thermonuclear warheads on both sides to blow the entire planet up stopped another war from starting.
"As a consequence, most of Europe has allowed its military to degrade into near-uselessness."
The ex-Axis forces were deliberately prevented from having an army large enough to cause any trouble while what was left of allied Europe had been so bombed to shit that it was bankrupt and couldn't have supported the kind of Army needed to fight a war. One country is notable as having actually come out of WW2 richer than when it went in primarily through selling arms to it's allies under the guise of Lease Lend opening up potential lines of argument as to whether it was an alliance or a business arrangement.
"Muslims are usually looking for wars"
What the fuck are you on? That is just the sort of statement made from a position of such supreme ignorance that it borders on being not worth answering.
Muslims and Christians have existing next door to each other for several thousand years. In fact, when the christian crusaders commissioned to fight a "holy" war in the middle east arrived, the cities they found under Muslim control contained mixed populations of Christian, Muslim and Jews and the laws enacted within the cities prevented anyone from attacking a holy building of any denomination. The rulers of the Muslim lands also endorsed the crusaders activities as a holy war and offered them food and shelter within the hous
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
About 10 years ago, when visiting an air force base in Australia (as a journalist) I asked about the clear navigational dome on some of the older aircraft. I expected to hear a response about how the aircraft in service were all so old that they predated more modern navigation methods, but was suprised to hear,
"The US government may be able to turn off the GPS system, but they still can't turn off the stars".
They were serious. This pretty much illustrated to me that most countries don't trust the GPS system for critical purposes.
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
The US has invaded soverign nations and killed tens ( perhaps hundreds ) of thousands of innocent people on a whim.
The US bombed Pakistan in the last few days on a whim.
The US has engaged in hundreds of acts of torture on a whim.
They have done, and continue to do much worse than merely 'cutting the system off'.
Ergo, the neccessity of removing the US influence over GPS is valid and desirable.
If we received a credible threat of a GPS guided enemy missile attack, the president would likely degrade GPS's accuracy in the area.
Sure, it's going to be a problem, but if the choice is between that and a nuke hitting a major city...
On the other hand, I feel that a container nuke is the bigger threat. Put a nuke in a sealed container, and pay to have it transhipped through a major port, and set it off while there.
I don't read AC A human right
Well, in fact you can't compare crime rates between countries with different laws and different "crimes"... A crime in USA may not be a crime in Spain (e.g. downloading copyrigthed music over the Internet for personal, non-lucrative use is legal in Spain and not in USA (not sure if it's a crime but it's not legal)), as well as a crime in Spain may not be a crime in USA (owning a gun).
So, if you want to compare apples with apples, you should compare equal crimes. Murder is a good choice, rape or sexual aggression would be ok, too.
English is not my native language. Corrections are not only welcome but encouraged. Thanks.
-Walenzack.
Actualy these crime rates are equal crimes.
Certain crime are considered to fall into certain catagories and those crimes are ilegal in all the countries. Roberies-burglaries, murders, attempted murders, rapes, embezlement, drug related and such along those lines. They are all criminal activities. Speeding violations and not paying taxes aren't going to effect the numbers.
One of the reasons why the US pays a lot more money than the Europeans do for defense is that the US is also paying for the European's defense: we shared a somewhat more equitable share of the load back during the Cold War when there was a functional German army which would have comprised much of the first line of defense against the Soviet armored spearhead, but after the Soviet Union collapse Europe decided to pare defense budgets down substantially and spend the savings on further increasing the size of the welfare state. Its currently so bad that Europe would be just structurally incapable of, e.g., removing a local tin-pot genocidal dictator (Milosevic, etc) without US assistance, to say nothing of actually mounting a significant campaign overseas. The Brits are probably in a better shape than the continent (marginally), and France can still push around impoverished African nations which have air forces which would fit on a municipal airport in Idaho and leave room to spare, but by and large Europe is incapable of providing for its own defense.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Whether it is the Internet you are surfing on now,
Where is Tim Berners-Lee from? Which research organisation was he working for when he invented HTTP/HTML?
Internet != WWW
Can't they think of an original name? I thought Galileo died in Jupiter!
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Really? So if you were a player for the winning team in the world cup, you don't think you'd feel a bit of pride even if you didn't personally score the winning goal? The reason people feel pride in their citizenship is that they are a part of something, even if their main contribution is paying their taxes and not killing their neighbors with an axe. They played a part in accomplishing something they believe in that couldn't have been done alone. It seems to me that the irrational position is belonging to a group that you're either apathetic towards or ashamed of. If I hit that point, it's time for a new nationality, but for now I think the one I have still has potential. Like it or not, unless you're a hermit living in some uncharted no-man's land, you are part of a larger group. If your membership in that group doesn't mean anything to you, perhaps you're in the wrong one.
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
I couldn't find any figures for Austria in the article you linked. Or did you mean Australia? That's a bigger difference than US and Canada.
b4n from Vienna, Austria
So, in these wonderfull socialist guncontrol happy countries the argument stands as if you count the people who cannot take it anymore and kill themselves, you get a higher rate then if you don't count them so we have to seperate them.
Are you trying to say that suicide is a crime? because otherwise I cannot say how you'd possibly have the option of counting them in the country's crime rate.
Even though they don't like to own up to it, the EU has informally turned the US into its bogeyman to shore up its own unity. This was an inevitable consequence of creating the EU, as its myriad of contradictions cannot be bound together without invoking a common threat against which to unite.
What's amazed me is that the US continues to subsidize its vilifier the EU, through support for NATO. If the Euros want to bash the hand that protects them, let them do it on their own dime. NATO is obsolete, and needs to be dismantled. Its enemy doesn't exist more, and it's really just a militarized White Man's Club. And within those kinds of clubs, the less gentrified Americans tend to be looked down upon.
The US needs to pull the plug on NATO. Then let's how the Europeans use their Galileo or their 3-day workweek to bail themselves out of the trouble that history knows they like to get themselves into.
This Galileo system launched by Europe also demonstrates that Europe continues to be technologically competent
No, it just shows that Europe is officially 20 years behind the USA.
It amazed me how people got all excited when China put a man in space. "China is on par with the USA now! Oh my, what are we going to do???!!!!" People, that just means that China has finally been able to do what the USA did 40 years ago!
I've been wanting our troops out of your country for an entire decade. South Korea, Japan, Germany, Italy, Bosnia, Kosovo. You don't want 'em, and I don't want 'em there.
So, your "American troops protecting Europe getting attacked by missles that are aided by European technology" issue would be solved.
A very good point, no doubt it will continue to be flamed by Americans. There is a rest of the world out there, like it or not.
---
Laughable... who invented TCP/IP and Ethernet?
There really are no "marginal cost[s]" when it comes to space travel. (at the moment at least, or in the near future)
The reasons why the US would never use the European system and the reasons the European system is going up are pretty much the same: We (America) wanna be able to turn it off, whenever we feel like it.
You can't pilot planes on a system that might shut off if some nation across the ocean suddenly thinks "THERE BE TERRORISTS ABOUT!"
I respond to your sigs
You see what happens when the US and Israel attack Iran and screws over a huge amount of oil going to Europe and China and Japan elsewhere. You'll see who's an ally or not. NATO will half collapse overnight and become irreparably broken. hint: the US is increasingly becoming ostracized around the world. People do *not* like what our so called leaders have been doing lately. Plus, they righteously can see that gee dubya is *nuts* and has surrounded himself with people even nuttier. You are going to see oil skyrocket on the world market and investors dumping dollars as fast as they can. Then it will get worse from there. Bad worse, unimaginable worse. We haven't even approached the amount of global mistrust and ill will that the neocon crazies are capable of producing. And the neolibs are such wimps at the top and have so many of their own scandals yet to surface that they will let it happen, just like they let the iraq war happen.
Sure it is a crime. It is taking a life and thats a crime in most civilised countries.
One a side note, the thought of including suicide wasn't realy to defend it as a crime. It was more or less a sarcastic hint that if these socialist type states are so great then why is the suicide count so high. But nontheless, If you kill yourself or someone else it is basicaly murder, you are displacing agresion to the point of taking a life.
I'm interested to find the ocuntry were suicide isn't a crime.
Dude. A kid steals a candy bar and thats a crime. In some countries having sex with the wrong people is a crime (homosexuality, etc.).
I would any day of the week take homocide statistics over a general 'crime' rate in choosing where I want to live, or how safe I judge my society.
Obviously you're American, which is why you have the "we're better than the EU" snobbish attitude that most Americans have towards their "decadent" cousins in the EU. Too bad your opinion isn't backed by fact.
I'm glad you're man enough to reply as Anonymous. I'm sorry my dialog upset you. Apparently you think so highly of yourself, you can't see your own faults. Anoniminity being one of them.
-- If we don't stand up for our rights, now, there will be no right to stand up for them later.
Who invented packet switching, the premise upon which IP builds?
You think ARPANet was somehow the *only* packet-switched computer network in the 70s/80s? Ever heard of Cyclades? You think the internet was the only widely deployed computer information network? Ever hear of 'Minitel'?
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
Both are consumption items; money spent on welfare or the military is just gone, consumed. It can't be used for investment or research. And it's no longer in the taxpayers' pocketbooks for them to use themselves. Our taxes, in essence, is organized theft of the population at gunpoint.... to make more guns.
There is a great quote by Eisenhower on that very subject.
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."
To me it seems like a sad indictment on our modern world that it has become so right-wing that a Republican president from the 50s now sounds like a "bleeding-heart liberal".
Blessed are the 1337, for they shall pwn the earth.
These crime are specific in whats gettign reported.
This doesn't change the fact that the post and the post it was in reply to was compairing the crime rates. Take gettign raped or someone constantly mugging you on your way to work over someone getting killed. Thats your choice but homicides aren't whats being talked about here.
What's your definition of getting pretty fucking close? As far as I know no elections were cancelled in the US and I recall that some were actually added to the world of politics in those so-called conquered nations.
There are perfectly fine reasons to be concerned about a numbr of policies of the Bush administration, including foreign operations, but my thumb of rule is that in a country where 49% cries fascism and walks freely, there is very little of it.
Taking a life? The life's mine, it should be mine to do with as I choose, at least if I'm mentally capable to make such a decision.
In most countries the state has stolen their civilians' lives by not allowing them humane deaths in the face of incurable illness. I'd rather pay more tax.
Suicide is not a crime in the Netherlands. Euthanasia under strict guidelines is legal. Assisting a suicide can be a crime.
I'd like to find the country that has the death penalty for attempted suicide.
Regards,
Tob
I think many people would argue about the UK being a part of Europe... from both the east and west side of the channel.
The UK is very very very different from the rest of Europe... and after years of Thatcherism, can hardly be categorised as a socialist state.
and tell me where it justifies violence or killing. Bottom line, NOWHERE in the Quran does it say that taking life is sanctioned by any higher authority.
Well it all depends what people believe or choose to believe or interpret.
Please read The end of Faith by Sam Harris.Pretty interesting. Especially pages 108-129. He makes a very good case in saying that the koran is far more open to violent/repressive interpretation than the other books.
One thing we might be able to say, is that, since you're allowed to shoot [a burglar] in your house in the US, these figures back up the theory that it is much less attractive to rob a house in the US than it is in the UK :-)
Burglary rates for Scotland, Austria, and England and Wales are reported as higher for the entire period of 1980 through 2000. For England and Wales, this difference is as much as 50% higher crime rate per capita than the US after 1993.
Don't believe me. Check the figures yourself. I should also point out that these figures come from a UK authority, not another "American urban legend".
Unless both the rate of people reporting crimes to the police and the mechanisms for compiling the figures are the same you may be making a "apples and oranges" comparison. In some cases even comparing figures for different years from the same country can be of little meaning.
You should always take politically sensitive statistics originating from governments with a large pinch of salt.
Like you stuck to the USSR or the Iraq/Saddam Hussein? At one time, even Osama bin Laden was an "ally" (when he was running a Taliban Group for the CIA). Not to mention Ho-Chi Min when he was still fighting the japanese occupation during WW2.
The term "US ally" has come to mean "Youe are -Temporaryly- useful for us, but we'll drop you like a hot potato when
Realizing this (and acting accordingly) is not paranoid.
Something which is unlikely to be restricted to either theft or police in the US.
Also if this is happening systematically it may not be the police officers who deal directly with the public who are responsible.
The UK is very very very different from the rest of Europe... and after years of Thatcherism, can hardly be categorised as a socialist state.
The meaning of political adjectives. Even the apparently simple "left" and "right", is highly dependent on geography.
Our debt/GDP ratio is hardly unusual, and we have much better growth and demographic trends than they do.
Go figure I always thought we entered WWII because of Pearl Harbor.
/.?
Now I want you to go find one of the families of one of those 250,000 men and women, and call their grandparent "chicken feed". Do you have the courage of your convictions? Or are you going to hide here in the obscurity of
Also, stopping an advance is a long way from winning. Without the two-front invasion, Germany and USSR probably would have called it a draw.
2) Assume you have some: Would you rather bury them and await your enemy pants down -- or would you rather use them? Saddam had nothing to loose
3) Well bashing France, Germany and Russia reveals your true nacionalsts attitude. Voting for peace seems to be a bad thing, huh? "In dubio pro reo" is only for cowards, isn't it?
4) People of good old europe predicted, that using your army in Irak, Iran, Syria
You know Europe? You know that the USA is the MAIN interfering force in the world for at least 50 years now -- they are not only interfering with politics, but with their army -- which involves killing people -- and with their intelligence, like building terrorist camps to make the commies a hard life
20-and-some million people disagrees with you and it doesn't avoid New York, hell, they live there.
...
...
It is almost impossible to get a license to carry a gun in NYC. So, obviously it must be perfectly safe to go anywhere there in the city since no one is allowed to carry guns.
Do you really feel impotent witout a gun? In the rest of the world we have dicks, we don't need guns to avoid feeling impotent.
Your dick must be impressive. If someone came at me with a gun or a knife, my dick wouldn't protect me.
I don't live in a world of fear. I know that I won't be helpless if someone with a knife/gun comes at me. I have confidence in my ability to protect myself. Most of the time I forget to bring a gun with me. I probably won't ever need it, but you never know what can happen
And, before you think I'm just another cowboy, pulling that gun would be a last resort. Even if I'm legally in the right, my lawyer bills would bankrupt me. But it is better to be bankrupt than dead.
Take car as some kind of natural selection. There are accidents in US too, or do you avoid roads as well as NY.
I don't avoid roads, I even ride a motorcycle. When I'm in a car, however, I protect myself by wearing a seatbelt and on a motorcycle I wear a helmet. I probably won't ever need it, but you never know what can happen
when I think about Windows and Linux. Why have Linux from the EU if the US already has Windows? (Hey, if the article can be trolling, so can I)
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
That's great and all, but the important issue is, does the new satalite run Linux?
Also, consider this: America created Windows, Europe created Linux.
The deal with the EU is not, "Anything you can do we can do better," but it's, "Well, yeah we can do better, but by how many *times* better."
speaking as a criminal lawyer, the most accurate way of judging relative rates of crime is by comparing similar scenarios. I feel pretty sure that comparing Waco Texas to say London Britain will enable you to show that more guns means less crime. You need to compare like with like. I have no idea whether more guns really do cause less crime. Frankly, I can't be bothered to check it out. What I do know is that more guns and access to them is more likely to lead to crazy people shooting everyone else. Comparing Switzerland to the USA does not make any sense. The guns held by the Swiss are held as part of the militia requirements. From what I know of the Swiss, those guns are likely to be held in secure gun cabinets with no access to anyone but the militia man. In the USA, at least one state that I know of, I think it's Texas, allows unrestricted gun ownership of virtually any kind of handgun, and does not enforce any kind of proper training and storage.
actualy, after making that post i decided to attemp to find any modern country that was legal in. Apearently all of Europe and parts of north america allows you to kill yourself if you want to without violating a crime. It is still not legal in some places for anyone to help you though. I though this was amazing considering the amount of resources that are spent every year trying to stop people from commiting suicide. Even in Europe.
In ohio, were I live, the police or hospital can claim your apearently suicidal and hold you for 36 hours until they assess if you are suicidal or not. I have heard of people going in and just claiming they wanted to kill themselve so they could get a vacation on the sixth floor for a week or two. Being legal to kill yourself must be a reason why the suicide rate in Europe is higher then in america.
There used to be a joke about suicide being the only crime, that if succesfully commited, would never get prosecuted.
In this perspective, just have a look there:
The United States has the highest prison population rate in the world, some 686 per 100,000 of the national population, followed by the Cayman Islands (664), Russia (638), Belarus (554), Kazakhstan (522), Turkmenistan (489), Belize (459), Bahamas (447), Suriname (437) and Dominica (420).
However, more than three-fifths of countries (62.5%) have rates below 150 per 100,000. (The United Kingdom's rate of 139 per 100,000 of the national population places it above the midpoint in the World List; it is now the highest among countries of the European Union.)
Well. I am not positively impressed by the US of A in this case, to say the least. No, I am not impressed by China either. Is capital punishment an attempt to somewhat empty those jails in both cases?
I am not Remy Mouton, unfortunately: http://remy.mouton.free.fr/art/
The current GPS and GLONASS global navigation systems cannot tell within the second if the system works properly. The Galileo system tries to solve this issue. This has major impact for the aeronautical industry, because this allows the airplane seperation distance to decrease from 80nm over the atlantic ocean to less then 1 nautical mile. Hence more planes could fly and with a better route, => safe fuel. Safety critical systems need to know whether a system is working properly. And for this reason only the 4 billion euros of investment are totaly worth it!
Well, politics tend to change face.
Remember when Iraq (incl. Saddam) was an allie of US?
Just out of curiosity (since you mention "civilised countries"), are you pro-death-penalty?
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
However, you can't say that America is better in any significant way. Instead of spending huge amounts of money on social programs, we spend absolutely obscene amounts of money on the military. Money we don't even have... we are borrowing incredibly heavily to finance our war machine.
You think we *aren't* spending huge amounts of money on social programs? We're spending much more on entitlement programs on our "war machine." Take a look at the budget and reassess your view of what the federal government spends its money on. If you find the current level of defense spending "absolutely obscene," just look at how much money goes to the elderly alone through Social Security.
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof of this theorem that this sig is too small to contain.
Because we don't have guns to kill burglars.
Any suspension of democracy to the extent you describe would definitely not be tolerated by US citizens, nor by present US allies, even in the case of such an attack.
When it comes to Afghanistan and Iraq, it's also very easy to cherry-pick bad news. Major parts of each country are actually quiet and have not seen any kind of hostile action for years now.
Was opposition to Hitler in 1933 near 49%? I'd have to check on that, but that's probably hard to say because people weren't as vocal nor had the ability to communicate as we have these days.
Either way.. I suspect there will be elections in the US in 2008 and that none of the above will come true.
Well, yes it did.
How many dead in the French riots?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
> is this system really going to offer any major advantages over GPS, or is it merely a politicised 'anything you can do we can do better' by the European Space Agency?"
They're the same thing, aren't they?
If it does have advantages (which it does), then we can do better...
/Sarcasm
/Sarcasm
So we don't hate America but distrust your government is Troll ?
So was the right answer :
"We do hate America, but just can't stop loving your nice, caring government ?"
And a good day to you, Mr Crack Sniffing Mod !
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
I don't think so. The fact that it's legal does not make much difference in practice. Doctors will still keep you from killing you if they think you are not mentally capable to make a balanced decision. And wanting to kill yourself is in general a good indicator of being incapable (exceptions excluded of course).
I have no idea why reported suicide rates are higher here. Perhaps it is just an artificial difference cause by the fact that it's illegal (and immoral!) in the US, resulting in underreporting suicide. I know that a few decades ago it was much more common here for doctors to lie about the cause of death to save the family embarrasment.
This is the age old misunderstanding that forbidding something makes it occur less.
- The Netherlands has very permissive abortion laws, Ireland very restrictive. Ireland has (used to have? see note 1) much higher abortion rates. It is commonly thought that there's an indirect cause and effect where more restrictive morals reduce education.
- The Netherlands has a very different drug policy, separating soft (marihuana and friends) and hard (coke, heroine) drugs. Because of that we have fewer drugs related problems. Result may not be much less drugs use (don't know recent statistics), but it does mean the problems are better managed.
Regards,
Tob
Note 1: Teenage pregnancy rates have gone up enormously recently. This has been mostly due to 'foreign' (what's the english word for allochtoon, non-aboriginal?) population. I don't know if abortion rates have gone up at the same time.
I believe the figure was two (not counting the two trigerring the event), with considerable and widespread (not localized, very strange) property destruction. I assume you suggesting that the French "kinder, gentler" socialist society was responsible for that low figure. I would assert that a more accurate perception would be that the rioters seemed focused on the destruction of property, and the police force seemed relatively unable or unwilling to do anything about it. For full disclosure, of course, the L.A. Riots of 1992 caused at least 38 deaths (still checking on figure) and many, many of them were police shootings. Much of this figure is no doubt a reflection of both the overly harsh response by the LAPD, and the rioters seemed unusually willing to fire at the police. You will no doubt assert that these killings are a reflection of the failure of the American people to establish a "kinder, gentler" socialist society. On a side note, I keep trying to write "kindler" in lieu of "kinder", very frustrating.
pro-death-penalty? Not realy. But i am all for making sure the criminal never hurts a person again. I suppose there might be some situation were i think the death penalty might be worthy but not many.
Uhhh....Weimar Germany experienced an even more disastrous depression at THE SAME TIME we did in the US. And really, Roosevelt's make-work bullcrap didn't get us out of the depression, World War 2 did.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Since you're the Good Guys out to Save the World, please can you do us all a favour and remove Robert Mugabe from power when you've finished tidying up the Middle East and North Korea?
Stick Men
Yeah, but note the weasely use of "per capita". China has 4 times as many people as the US. Dunno if his claim is accurate, but even if it is, all he's really saying is that they spend the same as we do.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
"... defeating the US military was too high a bar for anyone to really consider trying."
:)
This statement would make Rambo proud
I would say that this very American attitude comes from watching too many action movies. Let's not forget that the US failed to achieve victory in Vietnam and now Iraq. Considering the level of sophistication those two countries have, I wouldn't presume that holding off the US Army is an impossible task for any country with a sufficiently sized and properly trained army.
Just don't forget the history that as you say, the Soviets are the ones that actually won WW2 due to Hitler's insistence on taking Stalingrad and spent his resources there instead of going for the oil fields which was his original intention. By that time, the western front was considered weak by Germany and thus they underestimated the various resistances and England. On D-Day, about the only real fighting force the German had was in Utah beach (which was incidentally the beach that was landed by US troops and shown in various movies to great effect), and that force was even on standby. Rommel correctly assessed the threat from the west but Hitler chose to ignore it. Since the western front was poorly defended, the allied could practically just waltzes through France and into Berlin if not for the petty bickering between Montgomery and Patton about who takes credit for what that takes more allied life than any plan by Hitler could (look up operation Market Garden by Montgomery). No, the US did not "save the European asses". They did help as did other allied countries such as Australia, but the majority of the fighting in WW2 was done by the Soviets. Giving the credit of winning WW2 to the US alone is not fair. The unlikely victory by the RAF in the battle of britain is the one that triggers US help, if I'm not mistaken. If the RAF had lost, I wouldn't think the US would ever enter Eurpoean theater. War history is much more complicated than what the TV and movies told us. Sadly, reading has become unhip in many young people today, the result of which clearly showed.
I was taken aback by the cheap shot at Muslims in the grandparent post. If I remember my history correctly, the "Holy war" was King Richard of England's doing due to his fondness of wars. The muslims only defended their land as any people on their right mind would do. What would you expect them to do? Just welcome their new overlords?
I was taken aback by the cheap shot at Muslims in the grandparent post. If I remember my history correctly, the "Holy war" was King Richard of England's doing due to his fondness of wars. The muslims only defended their land as any people on their right mind would do. What would you expect them to do? Just welcome their new overlords?
Why is it that whenever anyone wants to defend muslims and impugn christians they have to go back several centuries? I'll let you ponder the significance of that.
In terms of making Rambo proud, didn't you ever hear the old comment that NATO was to "Keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down."? It worked.
As for WW2, nothing you wrote is new information to me. It still remains true that the material contributions of the Lend-Lease program, and the military involvement of the US in WW2 were decisive in an ultimate allied victory.
People like to point out that the Russians lost 17 million in WW2, so they must have done the most work. The same folk also convienently forget to mention that the russians had a rifle and 10 bullets for every two soldiers and a chain of command that would murder conscripts who didn't seem dedicated enough.
As for what the US military failed to achieve... in vietnam our soldiers were shackled by a series of over-involved and too hesitant administrations. The military was never told to win, they were ordered to play tit-for-tat escalation games and kept fighting with one hand behind their backs. We did not lose vietnam to VC military prowess, we lost because we lacked the will to prosecute the affair as a war. The reasons we played tit for tat games and why we were even there will be debated for decades more, but all along we had the capability to win. That means little without the will to win.
In terms of Iraq, you need to pay attention to a few more information sources. The popular media would have you believe it's a lost cause, when progress is continuous. I don't care to be your educator in this instance, but WW@ had a history of holdouts as well, who ultimately gave up after a few years.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Actualy the rioters were mostly focussed on having a good time - setting fire to cars and chucking bricks at the thugs of the "brigade anti-criminalite".
The riots stopped when it got too cold outside.
Why yes, I do live in the Paris Suburbs. (One bus & one sports hall burned in my commune).
(The funniest moment of the riots was when we were leaving the annual Pig fair with our kids and we found 30 CRS hanging around the bus stop. Very appropriate).
(Of the two reported deaths, one was nothing to do with the riots - a guy was beaten to death for his fancy digital camera around the time of the riots, but it happened during the day and all the riots were at night.)
Watch this Heartland Institute video
It isn't a crime in the UK since 1961. Do you think it's right, someone trying attempted suicide, should be thrown in prison for a crime. Right, that's going to help that person get better - i.e. less likely to kill himself/herself?
Killing onself shouldn't be a crime - sure it's taking a life, but it's your own life, your own decision and affects yourself only. Shooting someone else, on the other hand, isn't the victim's decision (if not assisted suicide) and you're affecting someone else's life. That should be a crime. Simple as that. Of course, if the victim was obviously trying to kill you, that's a different thing obviously.
I always see it in terms of Jesus and Mohammed sitting on a cloud discussing worldly events along the lines of:
J: Dad ALMIGHTY! All I did was go down there and tell then to love their enemy and exercise forgiveness and all they do is spend all there time using me and the old man to justify kicking the shit out of each other.
M: Yeah, I know what you mean. I mean, where did all this 75 virgins bollocks come from? Surely if your giving out rewards 75 hot chicks with an in-depth knowledge of the Karma Sutra would be far more appropriate.
J: Absolutely. I just get so so fed up with blokes in frocks spouting out that this is a just war 'cos my dad told 'em so. I mean get a grip mankind, God don't take sides particularly if you're armed and picking on the small guy and he certainly doesn't talk to politicians as they're demented enough as it is without voices popping into their heads every five minutes.
M: True. Wouldn't fancy going there again in a hurry nowadays though. If they found out who you were they'd probably have you nailed to something wihtin 5 seconds of exiting the womb to stop you screwing up their dodgy deals.
J: Yeahhhh..... It's a hard eternal life isn't it.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
1) What's a CRS? 2) Killed for a fancy Digicam? I could have sworn somebody in another thread said that such wealth disparities did not exist because of Europe's socialist economies, and as such crimes like that didn't occur. Hmmm...
You are twice as likely to die in a traffic accident than we are to be killed with a gun. Gun-crimes do not worry us; we avoid the crime-ridden inner cities where most gun-crimes occur.
...
Those being some of the places where the "war" part of the "war on (some) drugs" is taking place.
And if we do go there, we can defend ourselves; we haven't been made impotent by our government and are not defenseless.
At least for the moment, dosn't stop the US Government trying.
However, it is very difficult to avoid places where there are cars
Especially where you have urban areas apparently designed for the private car first.
You wrote six paragraphs based mostly on what you imagine my attitudes to be, not on what I wrote. I will not respond to any of them, because you wrote them as an answer to the "dfenstrate" demon floating in your head, generated as a result of reading a pro-american paragraph that didn't have a five page disclaimer on 'root causes', 'multicultural apreciation', and 'apologizing for being an American.'
If you wish, you may try again, based only on what I wrote. For your convienence, I've reposted it in non-flamebait form. Although far less fun to write, you may find it helpful.
1.Europe had a long, colorful history of warring amongst themselves.
2.The US material contribution in the form of Lend-Lease, as well as the US contribution of manpower to europe (and victory in the pacific) was decisive in ending WW2.
3. Europe hasn't spent much time killing each other since the US installed dozens of bases across the continent. (we may argue about the precise cause and effect relationship, but not the timing of the installation of US bases and the cessation of western european wars)
4. No European nation, besides possibly Britain, currently has the werewithal to conduct a war by itself.
5. Social welfare spending now comprises a vast majority of European government spending.
6. With the dismally low birthrates, generous benefits, already high taxes, and early retirement ages you see across much of europe, many social welfare goverments face a bleak future financially.
7. The folks who are counting on this socialism will not be happy when the system collapses. This may lead to a bloody revolution, and we've seen a few of these in europe in the past 100 years or so.
8. Several countries around Europe have let in millions of muslims, who also pose violent challenges to those very countries. The prime example is France, who tolerated a week of muslim riots and car burnings, and had a bunch of muslim youths rampage through a train from Nice, performing gang rapes, beatings, and threatening anyone who started to call the police about it- and the police subsequently did little about it when they were summoned. Switzerland has a rising crime rate due almost soley to Muslim immigrants, and the netherlands had a film director murdered for making a film critical of muslims and their treatment of women (IIRC).
9. A google search would turn up several instances of bloody muslim borders(IE, They're usually looking for wars). Here's a list to start you off, with nothing more than a decade old: Sudan, Checnya,Phillipines, Indonesia, the Balkans. That entire 'jihad' thing kind of propels this along.
Would you like to try again? Don't read between the lines, read the lines themselves, or you may find yourself writing a novel based on little but your own sense of superiority.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Instead of spending huge amounts of money on social programs, we spend absolutely obscene amounts of money on the military. Money we don't even have... we are borrowing incredibly heavily to finance our war machine.
The US may spend huge amounts of money on the military, but it dosn't appear to buy much. Be it the inability of the USAF/NORAD to react effectivly to the first "live" threat or soldiers being sent to war without basic equiptment.
Real Americans keep guns for fear of the government, not the populous.
And is there really much difference between having large sections of the economy run by the state, and large sections of the economy given special treatment by the state for lucrative military contracts as is the case in the USA (Boeing, LM etc) ?
The difference between state ownership and "corporate welfare" of supposedly private companies (especially if it is to the point where they'd otherwise go bankrupt) is that the former is more likely to give public accountability than the latter.
Well... how about checking some official and non-propaganda sites?
First you'd need to find a government which didn't use propaganda, good luck. What you need is disinterested third party observations.
A little more difficult to understand might be the official german site (as its in german...), but easy enough: the word "mord" means "murder",
It might mean "murder" in common usage. But are the legal definitions identical?
I'd like to find the country that has the death penalty for attempted suicide.
Probably the same one which has a "choose how you will die" form of execution and accepts "old age" as a valid answer.
"Why is it that whenever anyone wants to defend muslims and impugn christians they have to go back several centuries? I'll let you ponder the significance of that."
Aside from the colonisation of Muslim countries in the 19th century? The support of a Saudi Regime that oppresses its own population? Wonder why "Cough"oil.... The use of their land as a fighting ground in wars that they had no interest in? The creation and funding of a regional super power that was built on land forcibly taken from Muslim countries when Britain formed Israel and I'm a born and bred christian Englishman and even I can see the reason why they're still fighting. You don't have to go back to the crusades to find reasons for Muslims to hate the West. We put in a lot of groundwork over the years to build up that much hatred and contempt and it's a miracle that there are actually so few of them that really want to attack us.
"As for what the US military failed to achieve... in vietnam our soldiers were shackled by a series of over-involved and too hesitant administrations."
In the case of Vietnam, this is undeniable. The decisive point in the Vietnam war was congresses' refusal to approve the OC commanding US forces' request for 150,000 extra troops after the Tet offensive. Counter to the commonly held view, Tet was a major defeat for the Viet-Min (Viet-Cong is a made up name from the Pentagon's press office invented to make them sound scarier - seems fair, King Min sounds like a comedy character) and they lost a significant percentage of their soldiers. Had Congress had the balls to follow through with the extra troops it's almost certain that the war would have been a great victory for the US.
However, this leads to questioning whether or not the US would have had the determination required to stay the course in Europe if the soviets had invaded. After all, the regional spat that was Vietnam was a war against communism and ultimately the US public lost the will to fight on once middle class white kids started getting drafted instead of the Ghetto bred cannon fodder that led the way into action.
Had a US/Soviet war kicked off there's no guarantee than Communist China and Russia wouldn't have buried the hatchet and there's a lot to be said for weight of numbers when you're population's a billion even of you do arrive on donkeys.
Anyway, my original point wasn't that US involvment wasn't an important factor but that there were many important factors some of equal importance, e.g. Radar, the Battle of Britain, Dunkirk. Station X and the decryption of German signals. U.S. Involvement shortened the war without a doubt but at the top of the list I would place the fact that Hitler was, at the end of the day, a fuck up merchant. I've had an earfull for saying this in the past along the lines of "He couldn't have conquered Europe if he was that bad" but most of the German victories happened as a result of Hitler saying "Lets invade and his generals going off and doing it. What Hitler was, was an effective orator and figurehead who could raise rabble at a Quaker meeting if he wanted. Germany's biggest defeats resulted from Hitler's direct involvement in the actions of the German armies i.e. telling Rommel to fight to the last instead of retreating and regrouping in North Africa, insisting that German troops "Fight to the death" instead of retreating from Stalingrad, etc..
Towards the end of the war, the British Special Operations Executive palnned an assassination attempt on Hitler's life named Operation Foxleigh. It boiled down to dropping a sniper into the Hitler's bavarian mountain retreat where he was known to walk, unescorted every morning. The decision was taken not to assassinate him because the Allies had decided that Hitler was more of a liability to the Germans alive than dead. Like all politicians who are happy to send their countries youth off to a premature death, Hitler was quite happy to take the salutes, cheers and all the credit in exchange for a bit of second rate mouthing off while those
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
So um... you are advocating stealing more money from American citizens? You do realize that EVERY penny owed by the government to the people was originally PAID to the government by the people. Right? So you are advocating taking all that money that people were forced to pay for their own retirements and spending it on something else...
:(
The government gets off easy enough with Social Security as it is: I pay $100 in tax and 40 years later, I get $100 back... but that $100 is now worth about $30 in current dollars. And you want to steal my $30 that I was forced to put aside in a government "bank" for my retirement? I think you are ignorant of what Social Security is and how it works.
I knew this kind of crisis was going to occur. I remember back in the 80s, I recall hearing about Congress yelling and screaming about how there were all these billions or trillions of dollars sitting around doing nothing in the Social Security fund. The solution was to allow the Social Security funds to mingle with the general funds. Congress put it up to a vote, and even I as a child, could see how bad of idea it was... and even I as a child knew that they were going to pass it into law.
Now, we have the current situation where Social Security does not have enough funds and ignorant folks like you and the parent poster saying that the government should finish looting those funds so that there is nothing left at all. I have news for you: If you are paying taxes, that little line called FICA is money that you are paying into the Social Security fund. It is being taken from you by force because you are not trusted to save enough for your own retirement.
Do you see now why your views on Social Security are so absurd? You have been viewing it as a drain on government finances when in reality, the money needed for Social Security has already been taken from you and me. The problem is that Social Security funds are being accounted for within the context of the general fund.
strike
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Park your country next to a 3rd world country and we'll see how well you do...
So if I'm paying $400 a month for rent, and $350 a month for food, I'm spending "huge amounts of money" on rent?
7 .pdf . And Britain isn't exactly what I'd call a pacifist state.
The fact that you're literally comparing the dollar amounts between defence and social spending is troubling. Defence spending shouldn't even be on the same order of magnitude as social spending. Take a look at Britain's budget, http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/91D/93/ACF12D
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
It is almost impossible to get a license to carry a gun in NYC. So, obviously it must be perfectly safe to go anywhere there in the city since no one is allowed to carry guns.
...
...
With so much criminal there? I guess criminals don't respect the law:)
Your dick must be impressive. If someone came at me with a gun or a knife, my dick wouldn't protect me.
Yes, it is and I don't need a gun in our coutry even the least.
I don't live in a world of fear. I know that I won't be helpless if someone with a knife/gun comes at me. I have confidence in my ability to protect myself. Most of the time I forget to bring a gun with me. I probably won't ever need it, but you never know what can happen
Sad, you even think about someone approaching you with a gun/knife to you. In all my life I don't know one case where it happened to anyone I know.
And, before you think I'm just another cowboy, pulling that gun would be a last resort. Even if I'm legally in the right, my lawyer bills would bankrupt me. But it is better to be bankrupt than dead.
Yes, but only when judging by standards in our country, you are a cowboy. Except two hunters and one policeman I don't know anyone with a gun.
I don't avoid roads, I even ride a motorcycle. When I'm in a car, however, I protect myself by wearing a seatbelt and on a motorcycle I wear a helmet. I probably won't ever need it, but you never know what can happen
[sarcasm] Woow, that is soooo sophisticated, now if only the rest of the world would start doing it. [/sarcasm]
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
The fact that you're literally comparing the dollar amounts between defence and social spending is troubling. Defence spending shouldn't even be on the same order of magnitude as social spending. Take a look at Britain's budget, http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/91D/93/ACF12D7 .pdf . And Britain isn't exactly what I'd call a pacifist state.
Britain isn't a pacifist state, but it isn't a superpower either. There's a lot of wasteful spending that goes on for defense, but a big reason for why Europe can spend less on its military is that the US spends so much on its own. Whether or not you agree with the war in Iraq, the fact that the US does have a powerful military is a big deterrent to dictators who'd like to do various international mischief. China can't invade Taiwan primarily because the US Navy is there. North Korea can't invade its southern neighbor because the US would take action; even though the UN was the official body that countered the north's first attack, the vast majority of non-Korean troops in the UN force came from the US. There are many other similar examples.
In a nutshell, my point is that the military gives teeth to the words of the US and Europe, and in many cases this serves an indirect social purpose in itself. That's not to say there aren't exceptions or waste in the military; I'm just saying that Europe can have a smaller military because the US has a bigger one. Having such a large military requires a lot of money.
As far as social programs go, most of these programs are designed to make up for a lack of financial planning and/or discipline on the part of individuals. For example, if everyone was wise enough to invest their money in a retirement account, Social Security would be unnecessary. Unfortunately, Americans save only 2% of their incomes (compare this with the Chinese, who save 40%), and thus when they reach retirement, they expect the rest of the public to pick up the tab. Entitlement programs cause people to take less care of themselves and expect everyone else to take care of their own problems. Obviously there are some legitimately poor people who ought to be helped, but with excessive social programs you get things like the enormous unemployment in Germany.
In short, we *are* spending huge amounts of money on social programs. Frankly, I find it somewhat ridiculous that we spend half of our tax dollars on taking care of people who could take care of themselves.
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof of this theorem that this sig is too small to contain.
Uhhh....Weimar Germany experienced an even more disastrous depression at THE SAME TIME we did in the US.
That might have been something to do with recovering from a war while everyone recalling the loans they gave you due to the knock-on effects of the depression in the USA.
And really, Roosevelt's make-work bullcrap didn't get us out of the depression, World War 2 did.
I agree with you. But it's not like Roosevelt's changes were undone rapidly - his legacy still lives on.
I agree with that.
That said, I have mixed opinions on the subject. look at what, eg, Bell Labs achieved during the time when AT&T was so huge. You have to ask yourself - they had this vast money machine in the form of a telephone network, and they could squash anyone who tried to intervene - so why did they feel the need to do so much pioneering research even though there was little chance that they stood to gain directly from it ?
Whether or not you agree with the war in Iraq, the fact that the US does have a powerful military is a big deterrent to dictators who'd like to do various international mischief. China can't invade Taiwan primarily because the US Navy is there. North Korea can't invade its southern neighbor because the US would take action; even though the UN was the official body that countered the north's first attack, the vast majority of non-Korean troops in the UN force came from the US. There are many other similar examples.
This sounds a lot like an altruistic argument to me. The libertarian response is, "So what if China invades Taiwan? So what if NK invades SK?" I wouldn't personally posit that argument, but I also don't see the sense in spending something like six times (last time I checked) more than any other nation on the planet for defence. It strikes me as beyond paranoid. If we want to be world police, we can do it without maintaining a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons and researching new ones. Don't even get me started on missile defence. At any rate, I'd say feeding the hungry and providing AIDS medicine to Africa are both much higher "international altruism" priorities than sticking our fingers into every foreign situation we feel like meddling in.
I'm just saying that Europe can have a smaller military because the US has a bigger one.
So if the US slashed its defence budget in half, do you really think the EU would beef theirs up a proportional amount to compensate?
As far as social programs go, most of these programs are designed to make up for a lack of financial planning and/or discipline on the part of individuals. For example, if everyone was wise enough to invest their money in a retirement account, Social Security would be unnecessary.
Good example. Since you imply that everyone is clearly not wise enough, I'd say you just provided the justification for Social Security.
Frankly, I find it somewhat ridiculous that we spend half of our tax dollars on taking care of people who could take care of themselves.
Well, this is a pretty fundamental disagreement, as I've had this argument many times. I have two mostly independent responses.
First, asserting that the poor ought to just "do better", and "not be poor" (which is what you're asserting when you say they "could" take care of themselves) is such an obvious dead-end to me that I have trouble understanding the popularity of the meme in America (and it's a very American attitude). Is it so they can feel better about all the wise decisions they've made to avoid poverty? Maybe it's because while I was growing up in a trailer park, I noticed this phenomenon: the worst trailer trash raised the worst kids. Pretty simple, huh? What do you get when someone was either poor from the start or made bad decisions and became poor? Oftentimes you get an abusive drunk who raises a disadvantaged child. Who will be poor. Ad nauseum. Admonishing people to not be poor doesn't change who they are, who they know, the life they know, and the way they were raised. However, providing them with a decent standard of living can make all the difference for their children. With such huge correlations between income and all sorts of negative behavior, I'd think giving money away to improve future social conditions is a no-brainer. A lot of sociologists agree with this, but we're talking about society here, what do they know?
Your point about people failing to plan for their future is completely missing the forest for the trees. You can yell at people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps until the cows come home, but until you provide them with boots in the first place, there's not much that can be done. If virtually everyone you knew growing up turned to dealing drugs for money, and you had a lousy education with no prospects, how likely are you to be a productive member of society? I don't
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
True. There is something about the geography of Europe (a large peninsula) and its many, many different cultural centres that have invited conflict in the past, beit over resources, religion, ideology, etc. Some of those conflicts are still fresh, especially in the minds of those living in the Balkans (Former Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey etc.)
2.The US material contribution in the form of Lend-Lease, as well as the US contribution of manpower to europe (and victory in the pacific) was decisive in ending WW2.
Partially True. As a previous poster mentioned, the Soviet Union had a hell of a lot to do with it as well, in exhausting the Nazi War Machine. Others have mentioned the contribution from the rest of the (then) British Empire, and don't forget China either. As for the lend lease, it crippled the economies of what to become Western Europe for over a decade. The help was welcome, of course, but it was not unique and the price was high.
3. Europe hasn't spent much time killing each other since the US installed dozens of bases across the continent. (we may argue about the precise cause and effect relationship, but not the timing of the installation of US bases and the cessation of western european wars)
True, but simply because they happened at the same time - they are simply Not Related. It is glaringly obvious that the primary reason for peace, in Western Europe to begin with, is due to the number of economic alliances that sprung up after WWII, in contrast to the ever shifting military alliances that led to what we call WWI. France and Germany made peace, with a vow to never war again, and through agencies such as EFTA and the EEC (and later the EU and, yes, even NATO) war in Western Europe became, and still is, unthinkable. US military bases have *nothing* to do with it.
4. No European nation, besides possibly Britain, currently has the werewithal to conduct a war by itself.
True, but we simply don't want to. The Falklands War was a legacy of Empire - every other military adventure has been coalition based (even the Iraq debacle falls into this category, just). This whole European Experiment thing means that we try to do things together, to eradicate the conflicts of the past.
5. Social welfare spending now comprises a vast majority of European government spending.
True. You'll find that a lot of us are rather proud of the fact that we use the engines of state to look after the weak, the sick, the poor and the disadvantaged. The systems of doing so are, of course, not perfect, and there is a lot of diversity between the various countries (compare, say, Sweden and the UK in terms of social provision and taxes) but there is a common belief that those who Can should help those who Can't.
6. With the dismally low birthrates, generous benefits, already high taxes, and early retirement ages you see across much of europe, many social welfare goverments face a bleak future financially.
True. It is an increasingly difficult issue to deal with. Our healthcare systems mean that we keep people alive longer, with better quality of life, and our emancipation of women has meant that they have the means to control their own fertility. We are struggling with the results of these and other social programmes, as we, on the whole, choose to try to improve the lives of our citizens. It's a sea-change in the way societies work, and all changes have consequences.
7. The folks who are counting on this socialism will not be happy when the system collapses. This may lead to a bloody revolution, and we've seen a few of these in europe in the past 100 years or so.
Piffle. Utter Piffle. There's a theme here to my post - in that Europe has changed out of all recognition from the days of bloody revolution. If you want recent revolutions, look at Czechoslovakia, Romania, the Baltics and Ukraine. Sure, some blood was spilled, but for dem
Each other, for starters. You Europeans were a goddamn bloody bunch, with major wars going back every decade for as long as history has been recorded..
We seem to be forgetting the numerous wars fought by the U.S. -- not least against the Native American's who you murdered and stole their land, against your own people in a civil war, against Canada, and Mexico (and annexing a big chunk of their country).
And when there wasn't any more land to spread into on the U.S. continent... off abroad to do some conquering. Don't lecture Europeans on being bloodthirsty, you capitalist pigdog.
And also WW1 and the ruinous terms of the Treaty of Versailles, but so what? The original claim that the US depression was somehow unique is still false. There were PLENTY of economic depressions both localized and multinational throughout history. The Vienna stock collapse of 1873 started a depression that lasted 23 years!
I agree with you. But it's not like Roosevelt's changes were undone rapidly - his legacy still lives on.
True, and unfortunate. I certainly would never say that Roosevelt's bread and circuses weren't monumentally far-reaching in scope-- they just didn't do squat to get us out of the great depression.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Yes, I'm glad you pointed out how I was wrong when I said that the United States is and always was a selfless, peaceful nation.
Oh, wait. You said that. I didn't. I wrote about Europe, attacking the peaceful, secure fantasies they harbor about themselves.
The trouble with reading between the lines is that in your conceit, you read things that are neither literally there, nor even intended or implied.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Actually, I think we agree on more than you think. Let me explain why.
This sounds a lot like an altruistic argument to me. The libertarian response is, "So what if China invades Taiwan? So what if NK invades SK?" I wouldn't personally posit that argument, but I also don't see the sense in spending something like six times (last time I checked) more than any other nation on the planet for defence. It strikes me as beyond paranoid.
It is an altruistic argument. There are two reasons why we should care about China invading Taiwan. First is altruistic; if "all men are created equal," then the value of Taiwanese lives should be just as important as American lives. The US is in the unique position of being the world's sole superpower, and I think it has an obligation to use its force for the good of the world, not just its own. Second, if China is allowed to expand unchecked, this is a serious threat to American national security as well.
I'm also in favor of spending every dollar we can to help with things like AIDS in Africa. In foreign policy, sometimes spending money on medicine and aid is the best way to save lives, sometimes diplomacy is the best way, and sometimes taking military action is necessary to save lives. That doesn't mean we can do one and leave out the others (though we obviously prefer the first two).
I agree that missile defense is basically useless, and there are lots of waste in defense dollars. But I do stand behind the idea that as long as there are dangerous undemocratic regimes in the world, there needs to be a democratic power strong enough to keep these states in check.
So if the US slashed its defence budget in half, do you really think the EU would beef theirs up a proportional amount to compensate?
No, at least not immediately. But I do think we would see rogue states acting more boldly and the world would become more dangerous. Perhaps after a while, in response to this destabilization, Europe would begin increasing its defense spending.
First, asserting that the poor ought to just "do better", and "not be poor" (which is what you're asserting when you say they "could" take care of themselves) is such an obvious dead-end to me that I have trouble understanding the popularity of the meme in America (and it's a very American attitude). Is it so they can feel better about all the wise decisions they've made to avoid poverty? Maybe it's because while I was growing up in a trailer park, I noticed this phenomenon: the worst trailer trash raised the worst kids.
I absolutely agree with you that many people are born into a disadvantage in society. What I'm saying is that simply giving people money, as in the case of Social Security, is just papering over the real problem, and if you keep doing this, you will end up spending tons of money without really fixing much. Since we're on Slashdot, the analogy would be having a memory leak in your program, and instead fixing it, you just buy more and more RAM. Yes, you're program runs, but it's (A) expensive and (B) an ugly kludge. The problem in the American public is a lack of financial planning, and instead of plugging the "money leak" we're just throwing more money at it.
Your point about people failing to plan for their future is completely missing the forest for the trees. You can yell at people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps until the cows come home, but until you provide them with boots in the first place, there's not much that can be done.
Again, my problem is *not* with kids born at a disadvantage. Although I'm generally libertarian on economic issues, I would support a near 100% inheritance tax. Why? In an ideal world, if you're born in a rich family, you should have no more of an advantage than a kid born in a poor family. Such a tax would probably make a true libertarian's stomach turn, but I think it's perfectly reasonable and good. Society has every obligation to level the playing field at child hood. I know it
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof of this theorem that this sig is too small to contain.
I found that link or a link simular to it after i made that post.
I don't think anyone killing themslef is in a good state of mind. Sur eit would weed some of the dumber people out who want to do it for kicks but i would guess that the majority of people commiting suicide is mentaly impared at the time they are contemplating it. Making it ilegal doens't put them in prison but gets them help.
I am honestly amazed that it isn't a crime to commit suicide yet we spend so much money on trying to stop it. OTOH, i do see how we spend so much effort on stoping people from smoking while keeping it legal so we can collect tax money from it. Maybe it isn't that odd after all.
At some point in 1944, we could have dropped out of the war and Russia would have been able to finish the war (and vice versa). I would guess this date was after June, however. Yes, this implies that our men who were dying late in the war were dying as much to prevent the spread of communism as they were dying to defeat Hitler. I fail to see how this denigrates their memory in any way, given the horrors that communism produced. Also, do you have any citations that the "hold back the Reds" mentality was playing a significant role in policy decisions as early as June '44? I cannot recall having seen such. It clearly played a role in '45, but not that big of one. With or without the communism issue, we were going to finish the job.
I admit I am not an expert on this matter. I have more interest in the Pacific theatre (for obvious reasons, if you care to do some research), though you are right that it was smaller (about a third of the deaths, mostly in China).
I do not normally give out my name on message boards. However, I have given you access to my job, my place of work, and the obvious fact that I am a native speaker of English. That narrows me down to about six people on earth - far fewer than "Stephen Ma" does.
What was our original point? Oh, that in your haste to insult America, you insulted vets, too - which I rightly noted that you wouldn't dare do to their faces.
The US already owned the fields in Iraq before the war through the UN oil for food program - which the French (amoung others) were skimming off of. Security was by provided by Saddam and he did a very good job at it. If you think it was about oil, then you have fallen prey to propaganda. It was all about the 30+ UN resolutions over 20+ years, the last one of which drew a line threatening military action and was unanimously approved (yes, unanimously, even France voted for it). Bush simply said that if you threaten action then you had better follow through if they don't comply. Otherwise the organization means nothing (and he said so at the time). They didn't so he invaded based on the broken cease fire agreement of 1991 making it a legal invasion. Truth be known, even France was going to invade with the US. It is just that they wanted to give Iraq more time. Turns out they probably waited too long as it was. Opposition to the war probably had more to do with OIL, however.
Turning off GPS is also funny. So many things in the world depend on it. To turn it off would be a lot like cutting ones right leg off. Yea you could do it, it wouldn't be in your best interest to do that however. Galileo simply adds more un-needed radio crap to what we already have. As if we have un-used bandwidth out there.
Actualy behaved pretty well during the riots, (ignoring the little incident where they launched CS gas grenades into a mosque during prayers). Most of the trouble was caused by the cowboys in the "brigade anti-criminalite", driving around the suburbs in unmarked cars shooting rubber bullets at anyone they saw.
(French joke - when the iman & congregation showed the the CS gas grenades that the CRS had fired into the mosque the minister of the interior (Nicholas Sarkozy) said "well, its the same model that our guys are issued with, but I can't be sure it was one of them that launched it". Riposte by youth: "Well, the bricks that were thrown at the police were the same kind we have, but I can't be sure it was us that threw them").
Watch this Heartland Institute video
you might try digg - the feedback isn't as good as /. (no threading) but the editorial selection is at least free from the /. editor's rather obvious biases
Who or what exactly is the imminent threat facing Europe that the Americans so generously provide defense against? Since the Cold War, how many times was Europe attacked and defended by the United States, and by whom?
I've heard this argument applied to Canada, as well. I've seen idiots on CNN and Fox claim that Canada is defenseless without the US. One moron even claimed that Canada "needs the American nuclear shield" to protect it. Nuclear shield? What the fuck is that? Did I miss that day in physics class? When did H-bombs begin providing defense against an attack in progress? The thing these idiots forget is that the only country in the world that has ever attacked Canada on its own soil WAS THE US. One Fox goon claimed that Norway could conquer Canada if it wasn't for the US. This would be true, if Norway had any motivation for attacking Canada. Canada doesn't have a large military, not because the US defends it, but because they don't have enemies that post a threat of attack (other than the US). Remember, 9/11 happened in New York, not Toronto. That wasn't a coincidence.
Nuclear shield! Are these people born that stupid, or are they trained before they're allowed on the news?
Swoogan
sigs are for losers...and ppl who can think of one.
Can't string this out too long as I wish to dedicate some time to the software patent issue, letter writing etc.
Anyhow, point 1 is undeniable but given that for the last two thousand years beating the crap out of each other was the accepted method of settling disputes I don't see this behaviour as being any different from the tribal wars of Africa, South America, The far east and practically every other continent. What made Europe different was scale due to the high population density, cultural and religious alliances and the ease of attacking a country that shares the same continent.
I still think that lease-lend was a vital component among many vital components and although important in the overall victory, it was the sum of the contributions that won the war not a single contribution from any particular party.
I can't help that think that the Marshall plan to rebuild Germany after war was the single most valuable contribution to peace. This was a definite sign that lessons had been learnt and saved the defeated axis from developing the victim mentality that made it so easy for Hitler to lead them into another conflict. Once nukes came on the scene and the MAD concept took hold only a true madman would have started a full scale European war.
I suspect that Britain and the rest of Europe for that matter has reached a point where it doesn't want any more wars. Ultimately, all the last two millenia of fighting has produced is a whole lot of misery and death whereas trade has serverd us as a much better master. The Balkans conflict was triggered by Tito's death and 50 years worth of bottled up anger over who sided with who in WW2. Funnily enough though, the instigators were christian Serbia and the Bosnian Muslims took most of the flak in that one.
Yep, social welfare does make up the majority of the European budget but we've spent a thousand + years years wallowing in shit and poverty while a tiny percent of the population held all the wealth propped up by corrupt barons and a church that swam in wealth while it's congregations starved. The wealth imbalance shifted through the industrial revolution to the point where rich factory and land owners joined the aristocracy while the rest of us wallowed in shit and poverty. In the end, people just got sick of working their wallowing in shit and poverty and being paid peanuts with the added bonus of a job and income that could disappear overnight leaving them freezing on the street. While Margaret Thatcher demonised the unions I can't help but think that they and the labour movement did far more good in the long run than harm. Despite being the biggest drain on tax payers money, the NHS is still seen by the majority of the British public as sacred and while few would sanction scrounging from the state, I suspect the majority of European citizens would favour welfare for all over extreme wealth for the few any day.
Funnily enough though, we now seem to be going backwards into a world where corporate billionaire kings supported by baron politicans are concentrating the wealth in their own pockets while credit companies hold the peasents in indentured service, slaving to pay of the credit bills they run up to buy their third new TV in two years. Funny thing progress isn't it.
The UK still runs a pretty effective welfare system despite Thatcher's legacy although pensions are a problem. Given that IBM and other US corporations have had problems in that field I don't think that this can be seen as a purely European problem. Long term, Europe will no doubt have to follow the UK down a more American style economic line and there will be turmoil as there was in the UK during the 1980s but rivers of blood flowing through the streets is an unlikely scenario. If the successful recovery of the UK economy between 1970 and now was to be repeated across the EU the potential is there for a rapid surge in economic strength that would make the EU a force to be dealt with instead of the disparate bickering bunch of nations that it currently is. Inc
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
Correct. Systematic is not grass-roots. I'm not one, but I don't imagine that a beat cop gives a crap about statistics.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
"You Europeans...", you apparently can't write what you mean, or you can't read what you've previously written. In either case, it was a large slice of hypocrisy from a moron.
Now you are being absurdly ahistorical. Please find me any scholar that would agree to such a claim. I am also confused at to which "Europeans" you are referring to. The Brits? Yes, they were in it with us. Surely not the French - they were busy spitting on our soldiers' graves. The Italians? They were incompetent regardless of whose side they were on. Swiss and Spanish? You could either give them credit for being smart enough to stay out of it, or cowards for turning a blind eye to Hitler's mania. In any case, Europe was not winning the war when we entered it, and we were helping from the beginning, so your statement is wrong twice over. I'll give some creds to all those in Northern and Eastern Europe who at least put up a fight before they got Panzered, but they weren't much of a factor in '44-45. At least they did better than the French.
Calling a dead man's sacrifice "chicken feed" is an insult, along with much of the remainder of your post.
is definitely not a measure of a nation's accomplishments, nor is it even a measure of sacrifice - it is only a measure of loss. I am sure many more Americans would have died if more than just Pearl Harbor and a few Alaskan islands were attacked (the ridiculous balloon attacks I am simply ignoring). Would such a scenario someone increase our right to claim our accomplishments?
It is simple. We liberated half of Europe during WWII. One can debate, however, which jack-booted thugs we liberated it from. I fail to see how this makes a difference. On top of that, we liberated Japan from its own insane rulers and helped turn it into one of the most productive, peaceful nations on earth.
It isn't our fault Europe is ineffectual - it is theirs and no other's. It matters little. With their current social policies and attitude, they will breed themselves into total irrelevance in two generations.
Either a direct choice to give something up, or an indirect choice to take the risk. I am sure a great many Russians made sacrifices, but not in direct proportion to deaths. Many of their deaths were civilians and conscripts, for example. On the other hand, virtually all of the American deaths would qualify as a sacrifice, as those men and women made the choice.
Yes, Russia was a critical element in WWII. However, I think you underestimate the importance of the US and Britain. It sure didn't sure Russia to have a large part of the Wehrmacht on the other side of the continent, bombs raining down in Germany, the Nazi naval power decimated, and Japan tied up on Russia's backside.
However, I don't give Russia much credit for their victory. One-slave master stealing from another is hardly something worth acknowledging.
"It's a crucial navigational tool for many people and organizations, and even the slightest GPS outage could have huge ramifications."
That's why having another, independent system (Galileo) would come in handy. If GPS goes down for *any* reason, Americans will be able to switch to Galileo. Competition's always healthy.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
who died did not choose a risk - it came to them. Read what I wrote - I clearly said many of them did make heroic sacrifices. However, I doubt they were inherently any more heroic than the French. The Russians fought not because they were braver, but because they could. It takes much less courage to step up to an even-odds fight than to fight a battle you know you will lose. France surrendered because the alternative was annihilation. Russia did not face that choice.
I will give the Russians credit for playing a major role in defeating Germany. Have I ever denied this? However, I would not count them as contributing to any meaningful sort of "victory" for humanity - they were as bad as what they replaced. It was the United States and Britain who brought the most good out of WWII - and we have every right to be proud of it.
It's a demonstrator and can only transmit on one each of its three frequencies at the same time.
Its lifetime is only two years, and the first four satellites in the constellation will be launched in 2008.
Will be followed by a second demonstrator, partly in order to keep the allocated frequencies in use. (Stop using them for two years and you lose the rights to them.)