The PX turned into a big scam for people that were no longer in the service or friend and family.
I grew up on the Reservation and a friend's mother was a nurse. Well she was technically a Lt. Commander in the Naval Reserve who made around 58K a year and was not uniformed.
So when it was time to go shopping, her sons and thier friends would drive down to the PX at Ellsworth AFB and shop on the tax payer's dime.
As for Infantry not getting to see combat unless they are special forces...that's not accurate.
Most of the forces in-country in Somalia were 10th Mountain Division. In Desert Storm there were tens of thousands of Mech Infantry troops on the ground. In Afghanistan right now there are 82nd troopers. And in the coming fight with Iraq there are going to be around 30,000 non-SF combat soldiers on the ground from the Army and USMC.
What is pristine and holy about crapholes like an antartic ice plain or mosquito filled Alaska bogs?
Why isn't anyone complaining about Egyptian expansion into the Sahara and destruction of the pristine desert? Why hasn't anyone taken Iraq to task for the destruction of the swamps around Basra?
"Weapons planned the MQ-9A Predator B include the AGM-114 Hellfire II laser-guided air-to-surface missile to attack stationary ground targets. By the end of 2003 the Air Force intends to evaluate Raytheon's FIM-92 Stinger missile in the air-to-air role. By 2005 the Air Force plans to add the GBU-38 500 lb Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM). The service then intends to integrate the 500 lb GBU-12 laser-guided bomb with the air vehicle. Other direct-attack weapons such as Raytheon's AGM-65 Maverick air-to-surface missile remain options, while air-to-air weapons like Raytheon's AIM-9 Sidewinder and AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile may also be evaluated at some point."
They've used Hellfires in Afghanistan and Yemen.
What is a Hellfire?
Hellfire is a family of air-launched anti-tank weapons with either laser or millimeter wave radar guidence. The missile can hit a target out to around 8km. It is effective against any known armor system on any armored vehicle.
From video shown on CNN, it appears that a UAV which was shot down in Iraq fired back with it's own AAM, so Predator must already be operational with Stinger AAMs.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/m un itions/hpm.htm
"High-power microwave (HPM) sources have been under investigation for several years as potential weapons for a variety of combat, sabotage, and terrorist applications. Due to classification restrictions, details of this work are relatively unknown outside the military community and its contractors. A key point to recognize is the insidious nature of HPM. Due to the gigahertz-band frequencies (4 to 20 GHz) involved, HPM has the capability to penetrate not only radio front-ends, but also the most minute shielding penetrations throughout the equipment. At sufficiently high levels, as discussed, the potential exists for significant damage to devices and circuits. For these reasons, HPM should be of interest to the broad spectrum of EMC practitioners."
"As with a conventional munition, a microwave munition is a "single shot" munition that has a similar blast and fragmentation radius. However, while the explosion produces a blast, the primary mission is to generate the energy that powers the microwave device. Thus, for a microwave munition, the primary kill mechanism is the microwave energy, which greatly increases the radius and the footprint by, in some cases, several orders of magnitude. For example, a 2000-pound microwave munition will have a minimum radius of approximately 200 meters, or footprint of approximately 126,000 square meters."
Vietnam, what about the crimes and human rights violations by the North Vietnamese?
I'm bothered that the United States is singled out for thier accidents, "crimes and human rights violations" and no one else is called on the carpet for it.
American, French and Moroccian prisoners were tortured and in some cases held after fighting ended in Cong Truong 5, Thanh Tri and Cuu Loc prisons as part of the Proselytizing Bureau.
The North Vietnamese National Liberation Front assassinated 36,000 South Vietnamese and abducted another 58,000. During Tet, when the city of Hue was occupied by the NVA, they killed 5,000 people and threw them into mass graves.
During a modern lethal war things happen, soliders get out of control, but don't for one minute think the Americans or Allied soldiers are the only ones out there doing bad things.
If one has a fender/bender with a Buick, a geek and 5 thousand dollars of plastic and gyros don't get turned into a bloody mess.
A biker on a bike with no lights/reflectors is at fault.
A old man with lights off is at fault.
A idiot on a Segway...is a terrible legal grey area. Who sues who, who is at fault? Are they peds? Cars? Bikes?
Here in Portland we have street crossings where people have right of way and cars/bikes have to stop. Where is a Segway? A ped? A bike? A car? All three? A Big Wheel?
12 miles an hour, motorized vehicle, operators with no protective gear = Lawsuits.
First time a Segway wacks a ped or biker on the sidewalk, who sues who?
First time a Segway runs a stopsign/redlight and gets hit by a Yukon, who sues who?
It has a motor, it can move three times faster than people can walk and weighs 60-70 pounds, it should require a licence, protective gear and the same safety accessories a motorbike/scooter/ATV has.
Hell, if I have a 500cc Honda 4x4 ATV with reflectors and lights I can't drive it on sidewalks or streets. Same should hold true for Segway.
I live in Portland OR but own property in central South Dakota.
I've driven Portland or Eugene to South Dakota about everywhichway one can.
I've driven Portland-Denver about 16 different ways and once I drove from west Kansas to Pensacola Florida in a day, a 23 hour day.
I attended the University of South Dakota and did a 820 mile round trip every weekend to go home. In 1992-93 there wasn't a whole lot on the radio along I-90 in South Dakota, theres more now.
In Feb/March of 2002 I drove from Portland-Rapid City-Eagle Butte SD 5 times.
"Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. has received approval from the Federal Communications Commission to transfer control of its operating licenses in connection with its recapitalization."
Sirus has 1.26 billion dollars of debt. XM has 500 million dollars of debt.
You get out in Idaho on Highway 12 between Walla Walla and Missoula, and theres NOTHING day or night on FM/AM for 95% of the 200 mile trip.
I suppose if you went crazy with whips on the truck/car you could pull something down, but most mortals will hear nothing.
You get out in in Crow/Cheynne country between Hardin MT and Belle Fourche SD and you'll hear nothing on FM, and might if the atmo is right pick up KSL on AM an hour after dark, and might catch a skip from Oklahoma or Mexico for a few miles.
North out of Pierre on Highway 63 in SD and you might get lucky and hear some skips from Dallas or SLC.
Get out in Montana/Wyoming, eastern Oregon, south Utah, north Nevada and you'll be out of luck for much of anything.
One time I was driving I-90 from South Dakota west and in Montana I set the radio on AM to seek. It went for 2 hours without finding a signal to lock on.
Anthrax, Columbine, the Cole, the French Tanker were all smuggled nuclear devices? I missed that somehow.
Before 9/11 I say a large building go down, in Oklahoma City and 2 of them nearly get taken down in Africa.
There is always going to be money. I mean the IRA wasn't funded by Saudi oil money. The Aryan Nation isn't funded by peope with deep pockets. Saudi oil money has less to do with Al Qadea funding than a neo-feudal religous movement does.
Petroleum production and distrobution accounts for between 1.4 and 2.1 percent of the Global GDP. Renewable, locally generated power will not change the economic powers much.
The Persian Gulf will revert to a backwater, Venuzela and Mexico will have some problems as well, thats about it.
Actually he stopped making any sort of sense along time ago, like Dvorak, Katz, and most of the Salon crew he stopped making sense or being original sometime between the 2000 election and the planes smashing into buildings.
With the exception of his stuff about long range 802.11b, Cringely just doesn't matter. Its about the same as looking to Wired for insight these days.
"Apple has made a virtue of doing exactly this with MacOS-X, heralding its Mach kernel and BSD roots. Couldn't Microsoft do the same? The last I looked, Rick Rashid was still a Sr. Vice-President and head of Microsoft Research -- the same Rick Rashid who, as a professor at Carnegie-Mellon Univerisity, was responsible for Mach in the first place. No biggie."
No biggie? It took Apple from June of 1997 to August of 2001 to move about 75% of it's OS functionality from Classic to X, yea MS is bigger with more coders and more money, but it's also a much bigger project with many times more compatability issues to have to sort out. It'd be a biggie.
I read the piece. It's about a pipe-dream and J.X.C's knowledge of DOS history. It's pointless.
If it's so much easier, why are Israel, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, China, India, and Pakistan all spending billions of dollars on SRBMs, MRBMs, SLBMs, ICBMs and Cruise Missiles?
For that matter, why did the United States, France, Soviet Union and United Kingdom hundreds of billions of dollars on missile systems?
Other than the battlefield ADMs (which are all old and decaying) a nuke isn't light and portable. If they were that easy, then the Soviets would have taken Western Europe and the US out in the mid 70s when the technology came out.
Alternative energy really doesn't have anything at all to do with North Korean leadership to pay back the US, South Korea and Japan for what happened in the Second World War and the last 50 years in Asia.
Even with solar power everywhere and Mr. Fusions in every DeLorean, some neo-feudal Nutjobs would have found a reason to blow people up with 757s, and somewhere in the DPRK there would be ICBM tests going on.
The Chinese Leadership's view that the western Pacific should be a Red Chinese Co-Prosperity Sphere doesn't have anything to do with a lack of alternative energy.
Same goes to the soldiers of NATO, Japanese Self-Defence forces, the RoK, Oz, NZ, Russia, Fiji, IDF, Kuwait, and everyone else that sacrifices for the good of everyone in thier nation and other nations.
If the BMD can hit just 1 out of 8 missiles, then when 16 ICBMs come flying for the West Coast of the NA or Europe, each heading for a 1 million+ area, then 2 million people don't die. Would you rather that we save some money and let extra people die?
That kind of arguement holds about as much water as someone in 1942 saying, "Don't free the Jews from Hitler, why there'll only be 2 million left and it's going to cost us 5 times as much money as the Great War and the New Deal cost."
Only when the framework for peace is dependant on Mutually Assured Distruction is a DEFENCE bad. When it's civilization vs. DPRK or the local nutjobs that have taken over a couple SS-25 mobile launchers, BMD is a good thing.
In 1913 the US Bureau of Mines said oil would run out in 1924. In 1939 and then again in 1951 the Department of the Interior said oil would run out in 13 years.
The US Geological Survey said in 2000 that "Since 1981, each of the last four (gas/oil assessments) has shown a slight increase in the combinded volume of identified resources and undiscovered resources."
It's not a hand and fast fact that we will "run" out of oil/coal/gas.
Since 1975 the total coal reserve has gone from enough coal for 218 years to 230 years even though coal use increased 31%. Some estimate than there is enough coal for 1,500 years at 2000 useage levels.
If US and Canadian tar sand is exploited fully, the proven oil reserves may be extended by 50%. If oil shale is exploited, there is as much as 240 times the oil there as in proven petroleum reserves, or as much as 8 times more than all the gas/oil/peat/coal/tar sands put togeather.
The US has a GDP of 10 trillion dollars and a 1.8 trillion dollar Federal Budget. The United States can afford to go to Mars right now, and it can afford to fight two land wars in Asia at the same time.
Even with the current weak economy, the US has a much stronger economy and a more stable world than that which exsisted in 1961.
What about when the military gives control of a military institution to civilians.
In the US the military gave control of the nuclear weapon production to the Department of Energy. Control of nuclear weapons in the US is in the hands of civilians.
You claim the military is taking over civilian institutions, in the case of NASA/NACA/USAF, NASA took experimental and space flight over from the Air Force, so since then we've had USAF/NRO/DMA working on thier own launchers, thier own testing facilities, thier own optics as NASA does the same thing. It's obvious that USAF and NASA should work togeather since the paths are the same. It's not as if systems designed for the military never get into the hands of civilians. Humvees, A-10 engines, M-16s, megalithic ship building, GPS and a host of other things have crossed the line from military to civilian.
USAF has deeper pockets and better large-scale project management than NASA has, so they should run the program for a next-gen shuttle.
In the case of space systems, no one is saying USAF is going to destroy external enemies with a launch vehicle. The fact is, the Air Force has a real tangable need and use for a SST replacement, NASA doesn't know what the hell it's doing. Thus USAF should be the one to do it.
As for fascism, I've been to fascist countries and studied it, the US has a LONG way to go if it's even going to be a fraction fascist.
That's what pushed NASA and the Soviet program in the first place, and there is nothing wrong with using increased defense spending to fund technology. It's what drove pretty much every advancement in aviation, ships, cargo handling, communications, materials science, and aerodynamics in the last 100 years. And in the US intergration of the races in the military happened before the private sector intergrated. Military doesn't always mean bad.
All the early launchers were based on MRBM/ICBMs, getting a man in space simply meant you had the throw-weight to get a bigger fusion bomb to New York or Moscow. Back in the 50s and 60s fusion bombs were big.
Joint USAF/NASA work pushed technology in the 1960s. What became Skylab was going to be an Air Force Orbital Workshop. In Chuck Yeager's bio he talks about training pilots with F-104s modified to manouver with thrusters the same way that Dyna-Soars or X-15s would operate as they went to orbit.
The Soviets worked on the same sorts of military stations. Even MIr was designed to have a military application.
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/mir.htm
"The original Spektr design was to be armed with Oktava interceptor rockets and equipped with sensors to identify and track ballistic missile re-entry vehicles as well as discriminate decoys. In 1992, as directed by the Soviet Union's military and political leadership, all work on such projects was discontinued. The Spektr module was mothballed, then later converted into a civilian platform, partially funded by the United States."
"Minister of Defence Ustinov requested that the Americans be challenged. As a 'warning shot' the Terra-3 complex was used to track the space shuttle Challenger with a low power laser on 10 October 1984. This caused malfunctions to on-board equipment and temporary blinding of the crew, leading to a US diplomatic protest."
The difference right now at NASA is that the USAF wants an orbital vehicle as well for sat delivery/recon/weapons deployment. They have the pockets and project management abilities NASA doesn't have.
After all, USAF was first to go supersonic with X-1. First to go to Mach 2 with X-1A, first to launch a vehicle get it into space and land it with X-15, first with a lifting body with Dynasoar, etc.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/orbitalexpress-02 a. html
So when it comes time to write the checks for something that will cost as much as the replacement for SST comes around, USAF will be able to say it has a greater need. Love it or hate it, when it comes down to it, National Defense and Intelligence Gathering gets the bucks. Launching rats and sunflowers for 10 days at a time doesn't really seem like a good spending of 5 billion dollars to Senators.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/star li ght.htm
USAF/NSA/NRO/DMA/CIA/DIA want to launch a number of birds. Discoverer II calls for 24 new birds. Future Imagery Architecture calls for up to two dozen.
Currently the US has around a dozen spy sats, so within the next decade the number could increase to around fifty. If one looks at articles about the follow-on to B-52/B-1/B-2 it seems more and more likely that USAF will move to an "Orient Express" type aircraft, or even launch conventional weapons from LEO.
I just think that since the DoD is going great guns with more and more systems in space, thats where a reusable launch vehicle will be.
The problem with jamming GPS munitions is the fact that the aircraft dropping a GPS bomb has GPS up above the jamming.
The aircraft is connected to the bomb in flight with a databus. The plane gives the weapon updated location via the bus up to the point of release.
The bomb knows where it was, the bomb also has a ballistics computer updating the rate of decent and distance to target.
So when the weapon gets into the jamming region, it still knows where it was when it was dropped, and knows how fast/far is dropped and where the target was. The weapon still falls relativly close to the target, the CEP just increases.
I've read the CEP doubles when GPS is off/jammed. Which is still much better than a dumb iron bomb.
http://www.darpa.mil/spo/programs/gpsguidancepac ka ge.htm
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/m un itions/jdam.htm
"Once released, the bomb's INS/GPS will take over and guide the bomb to its target regardless of weather. Guidance is accomplished via the tight coupling of an accurate Global Positioning System (GPS) with a 3-axis Inertial Navigation System (INS). The Guidance Control Unit (GCU) provides accurate guidance in both GPS-aided INS modes of operation (13 meter (m) Circular Error Probable (CEP)) and INS-only modes of operation (30 m CEP). INS only is defined as GPS quality hand-off from the aircraft with GPS unavailable to the weapon (e.g. GPS jammed). In the event JDAM is unable to receive GPS signals after launch for any reason, jamming or otherwise, the INS will provide rate and acceleration measurements which the weapon software will develop into a navigation solution."
http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/1998/news_re le ase_980423n.htm
"A new anti-jam Global Positioning System (GPS) developed by Boeing has successfully defeated jammed environments in two successive drop tests, allowing the test vehicles to strike well within their designated target areas."
"In the most recent test, the AGTFT test vehicle was dropped into a high-power GPS-jammer environment from 44,000 feet and achieved direct military code GPS acquisition within 8 seconds. While descending through wind shears of up to 110 mph, the test vehicle continued to track GPS satellites in the jammed environment and ultimately struck within 6 meters of the target.
In an earlier test, the AGTFT test vehicle was dropped from 44,000 feet into a low-power GPS-jammer environment and achieved direct military code GPS acquisition within 12 seconds. The test vehicle descended in the jammed environment through wind shears of up to 105 mph, continuously tracking GPS satellites and striking within 3 meters of the target."
Slashdot Mirror
The PX turned into a big scam for people that were no longer in the service or friend and family.
:)
I grew up on the Reservation and a friend's mother was a nurse. Well she was technically a Lt. Commander in the Naval Reserve who made around 58K a year and was not uniformed.
So when it was time to go shopping, her sons and thier friends would drive down to the PX at Ellsworth AFB and shop on the tax payer's dime.
As for Infantry not getting to see combat unless they are special forces...that's not accurate.
Most of the forces in-country in Somalia were 10th Mountain Division. In Desert Storm there were tens of thousands of Mech Infantry troops on the ground. In Afghanistan right now there are 82nd troopers. And in the coming fight with Iraq there are going to be around 30,000 non-SF combat soldiers on the ground from the Army and USMC.
And thanks for your service weatherman
I've been MUSHing for about 11 years now and I've heard (seen - whatever) very, very, very few people refer to a MOO in this context.
MUSH/MUD/MUX/MUCK/MU* yes, MOO no.
I almost never seen references to MOOs, but the M** world can be kind of Balkenized and isolated from the other types.
For example, I use PennMUSH, everyone I've worked with uses Penn, and I've never been on a TinyMUSH, but I know there are alot out there.
I'll stick by my thousands of MOO = Master of Orion.
Umm, MOO stands for Master of Orion in the minds of thousands of times more people than MOO stands for MUD Object Oriented.
m oo/
Right there - Gamespy Hall of Fame - MOO
http://www.gamespy.com/halloffame/january01/
Under Google Web Directory
Games > Video Games > Strategy > Turn-Based > Master of Orion Series - 15
Games > Internet > MUDs > Servers > MOO - 3
I feel your pain however, I run a MUSH.
Pristine?
What is pristine and holy about crapholes like an antartic ice plain or mosquito filled Alaska bogs?
Why isn't anyone complaining about Egyptian expansion into the Sahara and destruction of the pristine desert? Why hasn't anyone taken Iraq to task for the destruction of the swamps around Basra?
Very light armaments on the Predator?
"Weapons planned the MQ-9A Predator B include the AGM-114 Hellfire II laser-guided air-to-surface missile to attack stationary ground targets. By the end of 2003 the Air Force intends to evaluate Raytheon's FIM-92 Stinger missile in the air-to-air role. By 2005 the Air Force plans to add the GBU-38 500 lb Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM). The service then intends to integrate the 500 lb GBU-12 laser-guided bomb with the air vehicle. Other direct-attack weapons such as Raytheon's AGM-65 Maverick air-to-surface missile remain options, while air-to-air weapons like Raytheon's AIM-9 Sidewinder and AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile may also be evaluated at some point."
They've used Hellfires in Afghanistan and Yemen.
What is a Hellfire?
Hellfire is a family of air-launched anti-tank weapons with either laser or millimeter wave radar guidence. The missile can hit a target out to around 8km. It is effective against any known armor system on any armored vehicle.
From video shown on CNN, it appears that a UAV which was shot down in Iraq fired back with it's own AAM, so Predator must already be operational with Stinger AAMs.
These are not "very light armaments".
It's as safe as lighting going off.
m un itions/hpm.htm
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/
"High-power microwave (HPM) sources have been under investigation for several years as potential weapons for a variety of combat, sabotage, and terrorist applications. Due to classification restrictions, details of this work are relatively unknown outside the military community and its contractors. A key point to recognize is the insidious nature of HPM. Due to the gigahertz-band frequencies (4 to 20 GHz) involved, HPM has the capability to penetrate not only radio front-ends, but also the most minute shielding penetrations throughout the equipment. At sufficiently high levels, as discussed, the potential exists for significant damage to devices and circuits. For these reasons, HPM should be of interest to the broad spectrum of EMC practitioners."
"As with a conventional munition, a microwave munition is a "single shot" munition that has a similar blast and fragmentation radius. However, while the explosion produces a blast, the primary mission is to generate the energy that powers the microwave device. Thus, for a microwave munition, the primary kill mechanism is the microwave energy, which greatly increases the radius and the footprint by, in some cases, several orders of magnitude. For example, a 2000-pound microwave munition will have a minimum radius of approximately 200 meters, or footprint of approximately 126,000 square meters."
Vietnam, what about the crimes and human rights violations by the North Vietnamese?
I'm bothered that the United States is singled out for thier accidents, "crimes and human rights violations" and no one else is called on the carpet for it.
American, French and Moroccian prisoners were tortured and in some cases held after fighting ended in Cong Truong 5, Thanh Tri and Cuu Loc prisons as part of the Proselytizing Bureau.
The North Vietnamese National Liberation Front assassinated 36,000 South Vietnamese and abducted another 58,000. During Tet, when the city of Hue was occupied by the NVA, they killed 5,000 people and threw them into mass graves.
During a modern lethal war things happen, soliders get out of control, but don't for one minute think the Americans or Allied soldiers are the only ones out there doing bad things.
If one has a fender/bender with a Buick, a geek and 5 thousand dollars of plastic and gyros don't get turned into a bloody mess.
A biker on a bike with no lights/reflectors is at fault.
A old man with lights off is at fault.
A idiot on a Segway...is a terrible legal grey area. Who sues who, who is at fault? Are they peds? Cars? Bikes?
Here in Portland we have street crossings where people have right of way and cars/bikes have to stop. Where is a Segway? A ped? A bike? A car? All three? A Big Wheel?
Ban them from everywhere.
12 miles an hour, motorized vehicle, operators with no protective gear = Lawsuits.
First time a Segway wacks a ped or biker on the sidewalk, who sues who?
First time a Segway runs a stopsign/redlight and gets hit by a Yukon, who sues who?
It has a motor, it can move three times faster than people can walk and weighs 60-70 pounds, it should require a licence, protective gear and the same safety accessories a motorbike/scooter/ATV has.
Hell, if I have a 500cc Honda 4x4 ATV with reflectors and lights I can't drive it on sidewalks or streets. Same should hold true for Segway.
Saw a Segway friday evening in Portland OR.
The operator was driving down the street at night.
No lights. No reflectors. Grey vehicle out in traffic and no helmet on operator.
I'd ban the damned things too.
I live in Portland OR but own property in central South Dakota.
I've driven Portland or Eugene to South Dakota about everywhichway one can.
I've driven Portland-Denver about 16 different ways and once I drove from west Kansas to Pensacola Florida in a day, a 23 hour day.
I attended the University of South Dakota and did a 820 mile round trip every weekend to go home. In 1992-93 there wasn't a whole lot on the radio along I-90 in South Dakota, theres more now.
In Feb/March of 2002 I drove from Portland-Rapid City-Eagle Butte SD 5 times.
I do it for fun.
XM now has Honda and 360,000 subscribers.
Sirus is getting ready to sell it's birds.
"Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. has received approval from the Federal Communications Commission to transfer control of its operating licenses in connection with its recapitalization."
Sirus has 1.26 billion dollars of debt.
XM has 500 million dollars of debt.
You get out in Idaho on Highway 12 between Walla Walla and Missoula, and theres NOTHING day or night on FM/AM for 95% of the 200 mile trip.
I suppose if you went crazy with whips on the truck/car you could pull something down, but most mortals will hear nothing.
You get out in in Crow/Cheynne country between Hardin MT and Belle Fourche SD and you'll hear nothing on FM, and might if the atmo is right pick up KSL on AM an hour after dark, and might catch a skip from Oklahoma or Mexico for a few miles.
North out of Pierre on Highway 63 in SD and you might get lucky and hear some skips from Dallas or SLC.
Get out in Montana/Wyoming, eastern Oregon, south Utah, north Nevada and you'll be out of luck for much of anything.
One time I was driving I-90 from South Dakota west and in Montana I set the radio on AM to seek. It went for 2 hours without finding a signal to lock on.
Anthrax, Columbine, the Cole, the French Tanker were all smuggled nuclear devices? I missed that somehow.
Before 9/11 I say a large building go down, in Oklahoma City and 2 of them nearly get taken down in Africa.
There is always going to be money. I mean the IRA wasn't funded by Saudi oil money. The Aryan Nation isn't funded by peope with deep pockets. Saudi oil money has less to do with Al Qadea funding than a neo-feudal religous movement does.
Petroleum production and distrobution accounts for between 1.4 and 2.1 percent of the Global GDP. Renewable, locally generated power will not change the economic powers much.
The Persian Gulf will revert to a backwater, Venuzela and Mexico will have some problems as well, thats about it.
I'm sorry, but has lost it.
Actually he stopped making any sort of sense along time ago, like Dvorak, Katz, and most of the Salon crew he stopped making sense or being original sometime between the 2000 election and the planes smashing into buildings.
With the exception of his stuff about long range 802.11b, Cringely just doesn't matter. Its about the same as looking to Wired for insight these days.
"Apple has made a virtue of doing exactly this with MacOS-X, heralding its Mach kernel and BSD roots. Couldn't Microsoft do the same? The last I looked, Rick Rashid was still a Sr. Vice-President and head of Microsoft Research -- the same Rick Rashid who, as a professor at Carnegie-Mellon Univerisity, was responsible for Mach in the first place. No biggie."
No biggie? It took Apple from June of 1997 to August of 2001 to move about 75% of it's OS functionality from Classic to X, yea MS is bigger with more coders and more money, but it's also a much bigger project with many times more compatability issues to have to sort out. It'd be a biggie.
I read the piece. It's about a pipe-dream and J.X.C's knowledge of DOS history. It's pointless.
Are we?
According to who?
I've yet to see a smuggled weapon go off.
If it's so much easier, why are Israel, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, China, India, and Pakistan all spending billions of dollars on SRBMs, MRBMs, SLBMs, ICBMs and Cruise Missiles?
For that matter, why did the United States, France, Soviet Union and United Kingdom hundreds of billions of dollars on missile systems?
Other than the battlefield ADMs (which are all old and decaying) a nuke isn't light and portable. If they were that easy, then the Soviets would have taken Western Europe and the US out in the mid 70s when the technology came out.
Alternative energy really doesn't have anything at all to do with North Korean leadership to pay back the US, South Korea and Japan for what happened in the Second World War and the last 50 years in Asia.
Even with solar power everywhere and Mr. Fusions in every DeLorean, some neo-feudal Nutjobs would have found a reason to blow people up with 757s, and somewhere in the DPRK there would be ICBM tests going on.
The Chinese Leadership's view that the western Pacific should be a Red Chinese Co-Prosperity Sphere doesn't have anything to do with a lack of alternative energy.
Hey. Thank you for your service.
Same goes to the soldiers of NATO, Japanese Self-Defence forces, the RoK, Oz, NZ, Russia, Fiji, IDF, Kuwait, and everyone else that sacrifices for the good of everyone in thier nation and other nations.
I can answer that.
If the BMD can hit just 1 out of 8 missiles, then when 16 ICBMs come flying for the West Coast of the NA or Europe, each heading for a 1 million+ area, then 2 million people don't die. Would you rather that we save some money and let extra people die?
That kind of arguement holds about as much water as someone in 1942 saying, "Don't free the Jews from Hitler, why there'll only be 2 million left and it's going to cost us 5 times as much money as the Great War and the New Deal cost."
Only when the framework for peace is dependant on Mutually Assured Distruction is a DEFENCE bad. When it's civilization vs. DPRK or the local nutjobs that have taken over a couple SS-25 mobile launchers, BMD is a good thing.
Numbers for resource depletion are a little off.
In 1913 the US Bureau of Mines said oil would run out in 1924. In 1939 and then again in 1951 the Department of the Interior said oil would run out in 13 years.
The US Geological Survey said in 2000 that "Since 1981, each of the last four (gas/oil assessments) has shown a slight increase in the combinded volume of identified resources and undiscovered resources."
It's not a hand and fast fact that we will "run" out of oil/coal/gas.
Since 1975 the total coal reserve has gone from enough coal for 218 years to 230 years even though coal use increased 31%. Some estimate than there is enough coal for 1,500 years at 2000 useage levels.
If US and Canadian tar sand is exploited fully, the proven oil reserves may be extended by 50%. If oil shale is exploited, there is as much as 240 times the oil there as in proven petroleum reserves, or as much as 8 times more than all the gas/oil/peat/coal/tar sands put togeather.
It is possible.
The US has a GDP of 10 trillion dollars and a 1.8 trillion dollar Federal Budget. The United States can afford to go to Mars right now, and it can afford to fight two land wars in Asia at the same time.
Even with the current weak economy, the US has a much stronger economy and a more stable world than that which exsisted in 1961.
What about when the military gives control of a military institution to civilians.
In the US the military gave control of the nuclear weapon production to the Department of Energy. Control of nuclear weapons in the US is in the hands of civilians.
You claim the military is taking over civilian institutions, in the case of NASA/NACA/USAF, NASA took experimental and space flight over from the Air Force, so since then we've had USAF/NRO/DMA working on thier own launchers, thier own testing facilities, thier own optics as NASA does the same thing. It's obvious that USAF and NASA should work togeather since the paths are the same. It's not as if systems designed for the military never get into the hands of civilians. Humvees, A-10 engines, M-16s, megalithic ship building, GPS and a host of other things have crossed the line from military to civilian.
USAF has deeper pockets and better large-scale project management than NASA has, so they should run the program for a next-gen shuttle.
In the case of space systems, no one is saying USAF is going to destroy external enemies with a launch vehicle. The fact is, the Air Force has a real tangable need and use for a SST replacement, NASA doesn't know what the hell it's doing. Thus USAF should be the one to do it.
As for fascism, I've been to fascist countries and studied it, the US has a LONG way to go if it's even going to be a fraction fascist.
That's what pushed NASA and the Soviet program in the first place, and there is nothing wrong with using increased defense spending to fund technology. It's what drove pretty much every advancement in aviation, ships, cargo handling, communications, materials science, and aerodynamics in the last 100 years. And in the US intergration of the races in the military happened before the private sector intergrated. Military doesn't always mean bad.
p ://www.astronautix.com/craft/mol.htma stronautix.com/craft/speginal.htmr onautix.com/craft/usb.htm. com/craft/terra3.htm
All the early launchers were based on MRBM/ICBMs, getting a man in space simply meant you had the throw-weight to get a bigger fusion bomb to New York or Moscow. Back in the 50s and 60s fusion bombs were big.
Joint USAF/NASA work pushed technology in the 1960s. What became Skylab was going to be an Air Force Orbital Workshop. In Chuck Yeager's bio he talks about training pilots with F-104s modified to manouver with thrusters the same way that Dyna-Soars or X-15s would operate as they went to orbit.
The Soviets worked on the same sorts of military stations. Even MIr was designed to have a military application.
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/mir.htm
"The original Spektr design was to be armed with Oktava interceptor rockets and equipped with sensors to identify and track ballistic missile re-entry vehicles as well as discriminate decoys. In 1992, as directed by the Soviet Union's military and political leadership, all work on such projects was discontinued. The Spektr module was mothballed, then later converted into a civilian platform, partially funded by the United States."
"Minister of Defence Ustinov requested that the Americans be challenged. As a 'warning shot' the Terra-3 complex was used to track the space shuttle Challenger with a low power laser on 10 October 1984. This caused malfunctions to on-board equipment and temporary blinding of the crew, leading to a US diplomatic protest."
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/almaz.htm
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The difference right now at NASA is that the USAF wants an orbital vehicle as well for sat delivery/recon/weapons deployment. They have the pockets and project management abilities NASA doesn't have.
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After all, USAF was first to go supersonic with X-1. First to go to Mach 2 with X-1A, first to launch a vehicle get it into space and land it with X-15, first with a lifting body with Dynasoar, etc.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/orbitalexpress-0
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=45
So when it comes time to write the checks for something that will cost as much as the replacement for SST comes around, USAF will be able to say it has a greater need. Love it or hate it, when it comes down to it, National Defense and Intelligence Gathering gets the bucks. Launching rats and sunflowers for 10 days at a time doesn't really seem like a good spending of 5 billion dollars to Senators.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/sta
USAF/NSA/NRO/DMA/CIA/DIA want to launch a number of birds. Discoverer II calls for 24 new birds. Future Imagery Architecture calls for up to two dozen.
Currently the US has around a dozen spy sats, so within the next decade the number could increase to around fifty. If one looks at articles about the follow-on to B-52/B-1/B-2 it seems more and more likely that USAF will move to an "Orient Express" type aircraft, or even launch conventional weapons from LEO.
I just think that since the DoD is going great guns with more and more systems in space, thats where a reusable launch vehicle will be.
For ops like that, there will be TV Mavericks or SLAM-ERs as an option. If it's a radar/AAA/SAM, use HARM.
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Or AGM-142 Popeyes, or something else from the bullpen.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/
US/UK in South Watch have taken to dropping bombs filled with concreate mix on urban AAA/SAM/Radar targets to avoid civilian casualties since 1999.
JDAM are nice and cheap, but they aren't the only thing that can be used in a jamming rich environment.
The problem with jamming GPS munitions is the fact that the aircraft dropping a GPS bomb has GPS up above the jamming.
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The aircraft is connected to the bomb in flight with a databus. The plane gives the weapon updated location via the bus up to the point of release.
The bomb knows where it was, the bomb also has a ballistics computer updating the rate of decent and distance to target.
So when the weapon gets into the jamming region, it still knows where it was when it was dropped, and knows how fast/far is dropped and where the target was. The weapon still falls relativly close to the target, the CEP just increases.
I've read the CEP doubles when GPS is off/jammed. Which is still much better than a dumb iron bomb.
http://www.google.com/search?q=jdam+gps+jamming
http://www.darpa.mil/spo/programs/gpsguidancepa
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/
"Once released, the bomb's INS/GPS will take over and guide the bomb to its target regardless of weather. Guidance is accomplished via the tight coupling of an accurate Global Positioning System (GPS) with a 3-axis Inertial Navigation System (INS). The Guidance Control Unit (GCU) provides accurate guidance in both GPS-aided INS modes of operation (13 meter (m) Circular Error Probable (CEP)) and INS-only modes of operation (30 m CEP). INS only is defined as GPS quality hand-off from the aircraft with GPS unavailable to the weapon (e.g. GPS jammed). In the event JDAM is unable to receive GPS signals after launch for any reason, jamming or otherwise, the INS will provide rate and acceleration measurements which the weapon software will develop into a navigation solution."
http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/1998/news_r
"A new anti-jam Global Positioning System (GPS) developed by Boeing has successfully defeated jammed environments in two successive drop tests, allowing the test vehicles to strike well within their designated target areas."
"In the most recent test, the AGTFT test vehicle was dropped into a high-power GPS-jammer environment from 44,000 feet and achieved direct military code GPS acquisition within 8 seconds. While descending through wind shears of up to 110 mph, the test vehicle continued to track GPS satellites in the jammed environment and ultimately struck within 6 meters of the target.
In an earlier test, the AGTFT test vehicle was dropped from 44,000 feet into a low-power GPS-jammer environment and achieved direct military code GPS acquisition within 12 seconds. The test vehicle descended in the jammed environment through wind shears of up to 105 mph, continuously tracking GPS satellites and striking within 3 meters of the target."
Those tests were conducted in 1998.