At my work, we're all stoked about the new Apple Remote Admin, 500 dollars for a sitelicence and it does the work of 5000-10000 dollar Windows software.
Through out the Second World War, the Allies were refered to was the United Nations. The establishment of the United Nations charter in 1945 was simply taking the preexisting structure and giving it a peacetime organization.
When the leaders of the Allies would meet at Potsdam, you had a majority of the United Nations meeting. Those nations, the United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, France, China, are the nations that would become the United Nations Security Council.
The United Nations divided the Koreas. Not the US and Soviets.
The United Nations divided East and West Germany between the US, UK, France and Soviets.
The United Nations decided on the spliting of Palestine that resulted in the Israeli War of Independance, but that split was based on League of Nations decrees from before the Second World War.
The Korean War wasn't just a US vs China and Korea civil war. It was the United Nations against North Korea and Communist China.
The United States also consuled with NATO, Australia and South Korea about using tactical nukes during the sieges of Hue City and Khe Sanh and recently it's come out that Nixon wanted to use them in to bring North Vietnam to the Peace Talks.
The United States was ready to use atomic weapons in Taiwan if Communist China invaded in the 50s and 60s, the Soviets nearly used them during the '59-'60 border war with China and China nearly used them during the 1980 invasion of Vietman.
The Reagan administration offered to use a nuke to "warn" the Soviets in oh, '81-'82.
And the best non-use of nuclear weapons was when the Soviets asked the United States for permission to nuke the Chinese nuclear facilities and even offered to have a joint nuking of the site. Nixon declined.
I'm sure there were more events than these that the Americans, French, Chinese and Russian talked about using nukes, but I can't think of anymore.
The weapons that are being proposed, sub-kiloton, are not the same "Bomb" as those developed in those heady days of MAD and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
These weapons are cleaner than anything used in World War Two, smaller than anything used in World War Two and very capable of being a good deterant to people that might use Biological or Chemical weapons against a nuclear armed foe.
The reason I say they might be deter a foe is, the weapons that the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Russia and China have now are too big and thus unusable from a political point of view. A smaller weapon that is actually usable from a tactical standpoint would actually be more humane than many of the systems in use now.
Had the Allies used a few small nuclear devices during the Gulf War in 1991 or Desert Fox in 1998 against hardened Iraqi facilites would have ended Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological dreams and allowed the United Nations to end the sanctions.
Small tactical nuclear devices DO NOT move the world closer to "midnight". SS-25 Satan's with 20 megaton warheads and Trident D-5s with 10 225 kiloton warheads do.
"non stop dvd playback. now its 2002 and no apple laptop can do that, and i think no comperable highend PeeCee (Wintell) laptop sporting dvd, firewire, fast cpu, etc can play a movie on one battery."
I can watch a 2 hour DVD on my PowerBook G4 at full brightness on one battery.
It would help if the value of grain by the bushel had ever increased.
Right now the price of Hard Red Winter Wheat is the same per bushel as it was in 1902.
Meanwhile, the cost of a tractor or a harvester has increased by about 10,000 percent.
Actually, the amount of money paid American farmers isn't that much, and it keeps farms from going under and being turned into range land or housing developments.
It helps keep the price of bread at the store the same decade after decade.
No, I.G. Farben isn't to blame for poison gas, just like DuPont isn't to blame for Napalm, nor is Pantex to blame for W-80 atomic warheads, nor is Colt to blame for the M-1911, nor is Dell to blame for a Dimension that is involved in a DoS attack.
A tool is a tool. The person, organization or government that wields the tool is 100% responsable for it's use.
Freedom isn't taken away by a company or a tool, it's taken away by those that wield the tool, be it a person, government, NGO whomever uses the tool.
The maker isn't responsable for the use of the tool, but the maker is responsable for the tool being safe to use and to do what they said it would do.
I'm not sure why people are so shocked/outraged/stunned/hurt by Cisco working with China on a firewall.
"After reading about how the Chinese got Cisco, et al to cooperate in the Great Firewall, I had the realization: War is just a matter of lining up all the smart people on both sides, the side with the most driven and smart people will win."
Cisco is a company, if someone comes to them with a project, and offers them money, why would they say no? Because of the "Freedom" they are taking away from the Chinese people? Nonsense.
The freedom isn't taken away by companies, it's taken away by the Government. If China is putting up a firewall, don't blame Cisco for it, blame the Chinese Government for it. If people in India lose the right to a rice because ADM patented it in India, don't blame ADM, blame the Indian government for it.
It seems to me that it's much easier and "hip" to blame a Company for the woes that befall someone than the Government of the Country in which it happens.
Except in the United States, everything is blamed on the Government of the United States, even when they have nothing to do with it.
From what I know about CPU construction, I'd say that those gigahertz CPUs are from material science and lithography advances. Not from space based laser work.
The COIL laser in the 747 testbed and the coming AC-130, as well as the new anti-rocket Israeli laser are offshoots of the Star Wars spending.
I stand by my statement that government funding of science, while helps, is not a sure fire way to get a technology off the ground, as we can see by Fusion and space based laser weapons.
Goverment funding helps, but throwing money at a problem will not always solve the problem.
Sometimes people think dollars (Yen, Pounds, Euro) will solve a problem if thrown at the problem like chaff from a wheat harvester. It doesn't always work that way.
Yes, China is communist, which means that it will get into a spending race with the West, and go broke inside of 20 years if the Soviet Union was any indicatior.
The United States funds science. Or have you missed all the posts about DARPA, and NASA?
Or have you heard of the National Institutes for Science or Cancer?
Industry funds research, there are tax breaks coming for more research spending, but some don't want it to happen, they call that Corporate Welfare. They are the Greens and the far Left in the Democratic Party, and the "Libertarians".
China won't have money because it has 1.2 billion people to feed, and a healthy interest in capturing Taiwan and perhaps establishing a Co-Prosperity Sphere in Asia.
I would say science is futher along in the United States, France, UK, Germany and Holland that it could ever be in China or the Soviet Union.
Re:Too many predictions focused on AI that is far
on
A Timeline of the Future
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I say it's very optomistic.
People are looking at AI and computers and expecting the curve to continue.
Look at the history of aviation. There was a slow start, a huge leap about 40 years after the technology was developed, 10-15 years of epic advances, then a slow period of slight advancements.
Example - when the 707 came out in the late 1950s, it was the first technically successful jet for commerican airline use. At the time, everyone thought that within 20 years everything would be supersonic, like the military was. There would be great heavy-life flying wings and supercrusiers. What Boeing engineers in the 1950s would have thought the 707 and B-52 would be the mainstay of military and commercial transport for 25 and 55 years respectfully? The 707 just stopped being produced for the military in 1999, the E-8 Mercury was in production for the US Navy and Air Force. The JStar recon aircraft is a 707/E-8. The B-52 will be in service for 30-40 more years.
After the 707 was the 747, which has been in service for 30 years. When the 747 came out, everyone thought it was a stop-gap till the Concorde and Boeing SST came into service in the early 80s. Right now Boeing is looking at 15-25 more years of 747 production. The 777 is nothing more than a stretched and widened 2 engine 707.
Example 2 - Fighter aircraft.
The ultimate Mach 2 fighter in the 1960s was the F-4 Phantom II from McDonald Douglas. It came into United States Navy, Marine and Air Force service in 1964. The late 1940s and the 1950s were filled with jet aircraft designs that had a life span of 2-4 years. The Phantom filled a void created by retiring a number of Navy/Marine and USAF models. It was to remain in service till it was replaced in a few years by the F-X and F-AX programs. The F-AX or what became the FB-111 didn't work for the Navy, and was turned into a bomber for the USAF, so the F-4 remained in service. Then the F-14 program to replace the F-4 didn't work as a bomber, so the F-4 remained on as a strike aircraft. The Marines didn't want the F-14, so they kept the F-4 as a fighter-bomber. The USAF got the F-15 in the early 70s, but kept the F-4 around until the mid 1990s, after they had replaced the F-111 with F-15s, yes the F-4 outlived one of it's replacements.
What was the point of the F-4 history? To illustrate that just because advances have come quickly in the past, does not mean that they will always come as fast in the future.
I think computers are at that point where aviation was in the 1950s, we are at the brink of advancement and from here on out there will be a long period of refinement in the architecture and refinement. Yes, transisters will increase, and advances will be made, but just like in armored vehicles, internal combustion motors and aviation, once you get to a point, the cost of complexity to advance the systems will slow down the advances.
The entire United States economy is just a hair over 9 trillion dollars with the United States Federal Budget coming in at 3 trillion.
GDP: purchasing power parity - $9.963 trillion
Taiwan has a GDP of 386 billion and South Korea has a GDP of 764 billion.
So I really, reall doubt that any nation in Asia is putting "trillions" in nano technology.
Government funding of science, while helps, is not a sure fire way to get a technology off the ground, as we can see by Fusion and space based laser weapons.
From your comment about the Mac OS X and 9 CDs that come with Macs, I get the feeling you are trying to say they are machine specific, thus an iMac CD won't work in a PowerBook.
While that was true in the past, I find that the current 9 and X CDs will work in all Macs that can take the OS.
At work I use an iBook OS 9.2.2 and OS 10.1.2 CD to do everything from Beige G3s to PowerBook G4s. The custom software is in the other bundled CDs. Ever since the Summer of 2001 I've found the CDs that ship with hardware to be machine independant.
The first one is the price. It's simply more expensive than DDR Ram as far as I can see.
Secondly, it appears to me that we are getting to the spliting hairs, angels dancing on a needle level here with RAM. Unless it dramaticly increases my boot time, time to do things in a word processor, makes mySQL fly like a greased dolphin, gives me kickass FPS in UT, or makes my G4 fill my bowl with Fruit Loops in the morning, I'm not going to spend one cent more for RAM than I have to.
If RDRAM is 101 dollars for 256 and DDR is 100 dollars for 256, I'm going to go with the DDR and the hardware that supports it.
Even if funding and manpower was increased 100 fold in Afghanistan, the mines would not be cleared for 1,000-10,000 years (depends on the estimate of mines you go with).
So just using men, will not solve the problem.
I will touch on your anti-tank points.
1. Tank ruins vegetation - Moot point since you can't farm or work mine fields anyway. Plus once it's plowed, you can put that land into use right away or replant it.
2. Tank has to be serviced. The Taliban and Northern Alliance showed that you can have armor in the field for 10 years with minimal service, it's not that big of downside.
3. You couple the mechanized de-mining with people and you can get those thrown up mines.
4. It's quicker to clear a lane with armor than people, that's why the United States, UK, Russians, Koreans, Indians, Pakistanis all have mechanized mine breeching units.
I have trouble with the men are faster than machines because there was just a thread on one of my mailing lists about this, and all the US and UK combat engineers on it said howmuch faster and more efficent armor is for clearing a lane.
20,000 mines cleared, zero operators killed, 0 miles remaining.
It's better to go a combination of technology, people and animals for clearing mine fields, that's what Israel does to clear the Golan fields left over from the 67 and 73 war. Goats are an effective way to clear a mine field and add some carrion for the local scavanger wildlife.
The reason the US refused to sign the ban on land mines is because they refused to give an exemption for the Korean DMZ. The United States and RoK have between 2-3.5 million miles in the DMZ, and since the North Koreans refused to sign it, it was...
1. A tactical liability to remove the mines
2. An expensive and time consuming prospect in a potentionally hostile area.
The Anti-Missile Shield isn't meant to defend against airplanes or Ryder trucks with explosives, it's to defend against North Korean and Chinese missiles, both nations are working on or have ICBMs that can hit the US, but are in such small numbers that the ABM system would be a good defense. I think the US plan is to get into a spending race with China and bankrupt them like the US did to the Soviets. Having the ABM system will let the US start to pair down the number of ICBMs and SLBMs as well. And it'll advance the science of small, G resistant rocket systems.
The United States and UK already have tanks for clearing mine lanes.
The US uses an M-1 with a set of front and angled front plows with angled tops so all of the blast is shunted foreward. So you take 3 of these and clear a lane.
The Royal Engineers came up with a rocket powered harpoon with a length of detcord that they used to clear lanes in the Gulf War.
This system will be good for places with widly scattered mines and mine fields after hostilities, but in places where there are still active fields that are mapped and maintaned, like the Korea DMZ, this will not be an effective breaching tool for any operational military.
Driven by the Engineers?
on
Inside Intel
·
· Score: 1
All my buddies that work in Intel Engineering say is that the Marketing guys push the dates, scream for clockspeed and fudge the press press releases.
Theres nothing interesting in this post, just a view from Portland about what I hear coming out of Jones Farm and Ronler Acres.
Actually, the most revolutionary thing at Intel is the strides they are taking in the field of fab design.
Those examples are anecdotal evidence. So I'll throw in my own.
Bottom of the line Sony 5 Disk changer from 1992, had it for 9 years, used it for 3-8 hours a day, every day for 9 years. It's still running. At work we had a 18 month old top of the line NAD, and a top of the line Denon, they burn out after 18 months like clockwork.
The "planned obsolencence" thing has been bouncing around since WW2, my great-grandfather used to use it as an excuse in the 70s, it's just that, an excuse. The fact of the matter is that the majority of optical drives come from the same factories, even if you get a $900 one, it's the same gear as in the $300 one and thats what fails 90% of the time in a system.
The fact of the matter is, modern systems are simply more vulerable to shock, static and mosture than older systems.
When I say Car, I mean the UK mag, Car, playboy for cars, so I'm reading about cars that I can't even get in the States, and the Computer books, they'll know I'm not a threat, it's all Mac OS and OS X stuff;).
But yea, I'm failing Paranoia 101, but I have alot of stuff on Nazi and Aerospace consperiacy, so I'm doing better in Area 51 Paranoia 337.
Slashdot Mirror
At my work, we're all stoked about the new Apple Remote Admin, 500 dollars for a sitelicence and it does the work of 5000-10000 dollar Windows software.
It'll do OS 8, 9 and X.
Yes and no.
Through out the Second World War, the Allies were refered to was the United Nations. The establishment of the United Nations charter in 1945 was simply taking the preexisting structure and giving it a peacetime organization.
When the leaders of the Allies would meet at Potsdam, you had a majority of the United Nations meeting. Those nations, the United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, France, China, are the nations that would become the United Nations Security Council.
I'm a big fan of the North Korean News, found the link off Drudge.
There's been some really fun stuff on there. Like anytime they talk about the USS Pueblo.
If you are interested in reading about the DPRK, here is a really good three part piece.
http://www.atimes.com/koreas/DC08Dg01.html
The United Nations divided the Koreas. Not the US and Soviets.
The United Nations divided East and West Germany between the US, UK, France and Soviets.
The United Nations decided on the spliting of Palestine that resulted in the Israeli War of Independance, but that split was based on League of Nations decrees from before the Second World War.
The Korean War wasn't just a US vs China and Korea civil war. It was the United Nations against North Korea and Communist China.
The United States also consuled with NATO, Australia and South Korea about using tactical nukes during the sieges of Hue City and Khe Sanh and recently it's come out that Nixon wanted to use them in to bring North Vietnam to the Peace Talks.
The United States was ready to use atomic weapons in Taiwan if Communist China invaded in the 50s and 60s, the Soviets nearly used them during the '59-'60 border war with China and China nearly used them during the 1980 invasion of Vietman.
The Reagan administration offered to use a nuke to "warn" the Soviets in oh, '81-'82.
And the best non-use of nuclear weapons was when the Soviets asked the United States for permission to nuke the Chinese nuclear facilities and even offered to have a joint nuking of the site. Nixon declined.
I'm sure there were more events than these that the Americans, French, Chinese and Russian talked about using nukes, but I can't think of anymore.
The weapons that are being proposed, sub-kiloton, are not the same "Bomb" as those developed in those heady days of MAD and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
These weapons are cleaner than anything used in World War Two, smaller than anything used in World War Two and very capable of being a good deterant to people that might use Biological or Chemical weapons against a nuclear armed foe.
The reason I say they might be deter a foe is, the weapons that the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Russia and China have now are too big and thus unusable from a political point of view. A smaller weapon that is actually usable from a tactical standpoint would actually be more humane than many of the systems in use now.
Had the Allies used a few small nuclear devices during the Gulf War in 1991 or Desert Fox in 1998 against hardened Iraqi facilites would have ended Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological dreams and allowed the United Nations to end the sanctions.
Small tactical nuclear devices DO NOT move the world closer to "midnight". SS-25 Satan's with 20 megaton warheads and Trident D-5s with 10 225 kiloton warheads do.
"non stop dvd playback.
now its 2002 and no apple laptop can do that, and i think no comperable highend PeeCee (Wintell) laptop sporting dvd, firewire, fast cpu, etc can play a movie on one battery."
I can watch a 2 hour DVD on my PowerBook G4 at full brightness on one battery.
It would help if the value of grain by the bushel had ever increased.
Right now the price of Hard Red Winter Wheat is the same per bushel as it was in 1902.
Meanwhile, the cost of a tractor or a harvester has increased by about 10,000 percent.
Actually, the amount of money paid American farmers isn't that much, and it keeps farms from going under and being turned into range land or housing developments.
It helps keep the price of bread at the store the same decade after decade.
No, I.G. Farben isn't to blame for poison gas, just like DuPont isn't to blame for Napalm, nor is Pantex to blame for W-80 atomic warheads, nor is Colt to blame for the M-1911, nor is Dell to blame for a Dimension that is involved in a DoS attack.
A tool is a tool. The person, organization or government that wields the tool is 100% responsable for it's use.
Freedom isn't taken away by a company or a tool, it's taken away by those that wield the tool, be it a person, government, NGO whomever uses the tool.
The maker isn't responsable for the use of the tool, but the maker is responsable for the tool being safe to use and to do what they said it would do.
I'm not sure why people are so shocked/outraged/stunned/hurt by Cisco working with China on a firewall.
"After reading about how the Chinese got Cisco, et al to cooperate in the Great Firewall, I had the realization: War is just a matter of lining up all the smart people on both sides, the side with the most driven and smart people will win."
Cisco is a company, if someone comes to them with a project, and offers them money, why would they say no? Because of the "Freedom" they are taking away from the Chinese people? Nonsense.
The freedom isn't taken away by companies, it's taken away by the Government. If China is putting up a firewall, don't blame Cisco for it, blame the Chinese Government for it. If people in India lose the right to a rice because ADM patented it in India, don't blame ADM, blame the Indian government for it.
It seems to me that it's much easier and "hip" to blame a Company for the woes that befall someone than the Government of the Country in which it happens.
Except in the United States, everything is blamed on the Government of the United States, even when they have nothing to do with it.
Yea better not unhook your DSL you slacker :)
From what I know about CPU construction, I'd say that those gigahertz CPUs are from material science and lithography advances. Not from space based laser work.
The COIL laser in the 747 testbed and the coming AC-130, as well as the new anti-rocket Israeli laser are offshoots of the Star Wars spending.
I stand by my statement that government funding of science, while helps, is not a sure fire way to get a technology off the ground, as we can see by Fusion and space based laser weapons.
Goverment funding helps, but throwing money at a problem will not always solve the problem.
Sometimes people think dollars (Yen, Pounds, Euro) will solve a problem if thrown at the problem like chaff from a wheat harvester. It doesn't always work that way.
Yes, China is communist, which means that it will get into a spending race with the West, and go broke inside of 20 years if the Soviet Union was any indicatior.
The United States funds science. Or have you missed all the posts about DARPA, and NASA?
Or have you heard of the National Institutes for Science or Cancer?
Industry funds research, there are tax breaks coming for more research spending, but some don't want it to happen, they call that Corporate Welfare. They are the Greens and the far Left in the Democratic Party, and the "Libertarians".
China won't have money because it has 1.2 billion people to feed, and a healthy interest in capturing Taiwan and perhaps establishing a Co-Prosperity Sphere in Asia.
I would say science is futher along in the United States, France, UK, Germany and Holland that it could ever be in China or the Soviet Union.
I say it's very optomistic.
People are looking at AI and computers and expecting the curve to continue.
Look at the history of aviation. There was a slow start, a huge leap about 40 years after the technology was developed, 10-15 years of epic advances, then a slow period of slight advancements.
Example - when the 707 came out in the late 1950s, it was the first technically successful jet for commerican airline use. At the time, everyone thought that within 20 years everything would be supersonic, like the military was. There would be great heavy-life flying wings and supercrusiers. What Boeing engineers in the 1950s would have thought the 707 and B-52 would be the mainstay of military and commercial transport for 25 and 55 years respectfully? The 707 just stopped being produced for the military in 1999, the E-8 Mercury was in production for the US Navy and Air Force. The JStar recon aircraft is a 707/E-8. The B-52 will be in service for 30-40 more years.
After the 707 was the 747, which has been in service for 30 years. When the 747 came out, everyone thought it was a stop-gap till the Concorde and Boeing SST came into service in the early 80s. Right now Boeing is looking at 15-25 more years of 747 production. The 777 is nothing more than a stretched and widened 2 engine 707.
Example 2 - Fighter aircraft.
The ultimate Mach 2 fighter in the 1960s was the F-4 Phantom II from McDonald Douglas. It came into United States Navy, Marine and Air Force service in 1964. The late 1940s and the 1950s were filled with jet aircraft designs that had a life span of 2-4 years. The Phantom filled a void created by retiring a number of Navy/Marine and USAF models. It was to remain in service till it was replaced in a few years by the F-X and F-AX programs. The F-AX or what became the FB-111 didn't work for the Navy, and was turned into a bomber for the USAF, so the F-4 remained in service. Then the F-14 program to replace the F-4 didn't work as a bomber, so the F-4 remained on as a strike aircraft. The Marines didn't want the F-14, so they kept the F-4 as a fighter-bomber. The USAF got the F-15 in the early 70s, but kept the F-4 around until the mid 1990s, after they had replaced the F-111 with F-15s, yes the F-4 outlived one of it's replacements.
What was the point of the F-4 history? To illustrate that just because advances have come quickly in the past, does not mean that they will always come as fast in the future.
I think computers are at that point where aviation was in the 1950s, we are at the brink of advancement and from here on out there will be a long period of refinement in the architecture and refinement. Yes, transisters will increase, and advances will be made, but just like in armored vehicles, internal combustion motors and aviation, once you get to a point, the cost of complexity to advance the systems will slow down the advances.
No way.
The entire United States economy is just a hair over 9 trillion dollars with the United States Federal Budget coming in at 3 trillion.
GDP: purchasing power parity - $9.963 trillion
Taiwan has a GDP of 386 billion and South Korea has a GDP of 764 billion.
So I really, reall doubt that any nation in Asia is putting "trillions" in nano technology.
Government funding of science, while helps, is not a sure fire way to get a technology off the ground, as we can see by Fusion and space based laser weapons.
From your comment about the Mac OS X and 9 CDs that come with Macs, I get the feeling you are trying to say they are machine specific, thus an iMac CD won't work in a PowerBook.
While that was true in the past, I find that the current 9 and X CDs will work in all Macs that can take the OS.
At work I use an iBook OS 9.2.2 and OS 10.1.2 CD to do everything from Beige G3s to PowerBook G4s. The custom software is in the other bundled CDs. Ever since the Summer of 2001 I've found the CDs that ship with hardware to be machine independant.
I have a few problems with RDRAM.
The first one is the price. It's simply more expensive than DDR Ram as far as I can see.
Secondly, it appears to me that we are getting to the spliting hairs, angels dancing on a needle level here with RAM. Unless it dramaticly increases my boot time, time to do things in a word processor, makes mySQL fly like a greased dolphin, gives me kickass FPS in UT, or makes my G4 fill my bowl with Fruit Loops in the morning, I'm not going to spend one cent more for RAM than I have to.
If RDRAM is 101 dollars for 256 and DDR is 100 dollars for 256, I'm going to go with the DDR and the hardware that supports it.
Even if funding and manpower was increased 100 fold in Afghanistan, the mines would not be cleared for 1,000-10,000 years (depends on the estimate of mines you go with).
So just using men, will not solve the problem.
I will touch on your anti-tank points.
1. Tank ruins vegetation - Moot point since you can't farm or work mine fields anyway. Plus once it's plowed, you can put that land into use right away or replant it.
2. Tank has to be serviced. The Taliban and Northern Alliance showed that you can have armor in the field for 10 years with minimal service, it's not that big of downside.
3. You couple the mechanized de-mining with people and you can get those thrown up mines.
4. It's quicker to clear a lane with armor than people, that's why the United States, UK, Russians, Koreans, Indians, Pakistanis all have mechanized mine breeching units.
I have trouble with the men are faster than machines because there was just a thread on one of my mailing lists about this, and all the US and UK combat engineers on it said howmuch faster and more efficent armor is for clearing a lane.
alt. C
1 million spent on tech, 25,000 spent on locals.
20,000 mines cleared, zero operators killed, 0 miles remaining.
It's better to go a combination of technology, people and animals for clearing mine fields, that's what Israel does to clear the Golan fields left over from the 67 and 73 war. Goats are an effective way to clear a mine field and add some carrion for the local scavanger wildlife.
The reason the US refused to sign the ban on land mines is because they refused to give an exemption for the Korean DMZ. The United States and RoK have between 2-3.5 million miles in the DMZ, and since the North Koreans refused to sign it, it was...
1. A tactical liability to remove the mines
2. An expensive and time consuming prospect in a potentionally hostile area.
The Anti-Missile Shield isn't meant to defend against airplanes or Ryder trucks with explosives, it's to defend against North Korean and Chinese missiles, both nations are working on or have ICBMs that can hit the US, but are in such small numbers that the ABM system would be a good defense. I think the US plan is to get into a spending race with China and bankrupt them like the US did to the Soviets. Having the ABM system will let the US start to pair down the number of ICBMs and SLBMs as well. And it'll advance the science of small, G resistant rocket systems.
I think it's better to spend millions of dollars on a technical solution than to loose six people to mines.
In the Gulf War, 11 of the US dead were lost to mines or clearing mines in southern Iraq or Kuwait.
The United States and UK already have tanks for clearing mine lanes.
The US uses an M-1 with a set of front and angled front plows with angled tops so all of the blast is shunted foreward. So you take 3 of these and clear a lane.
The Royal Engineers came up with a rocket powered harpoon with a length of detcord that they used to clear lanes in the Gulf War.
This system will be good for places with widly scattered mines and mine fields after hostilities, but in places where there are still active fields that are mapped and maintaned, like the Korea DMZ, this will not be an effective breaching tool for any operational military.
All my buddies that work in Intel Engineering say is that the Marketing guys push the dates, scream for clockspeed and fudge the press press releases.
Theres nothing interesting in this post, just a view from Portland about what I hear coming out of Jones Farm and Ronler Acres.
Actually, the most revolutionary thing at Intel is the strides they are taking in the field of fab design.
Nonsense.
Those examples are anecdotal evidence. So I'll throw in my own.
Bottom of the line Sony 5 Disk changer from 1992, had it for 9 years, used it for 3-8 hours a day, every day for 9 years. It's still running. At work we had a 18 month old top of the line NAD, and a top of the line Denon, they burn out after 18 months like clockwork.
The "planned obsolencence" thing has been bouncing around since WW2, my great-grandfather used to use it as an excuse in the 70s, it's just that, an excuse. The fact of the matter is that the majority of optical drives come from the same factories, even if you get a $900 one, it's the same gear as in the $300 one and thats what fails 90% of the time in a system.
The fact of the matter is, modern systems are simply more vulerable to shock, static and mosture than older systems.
When I say Car, I mean the UK mag, Car, playboy for cars, so I'm reading about cars that I can't even get in the States, and the Computer books, they'll know I'm not a threat, it's all Mac OS and OS X stuff ;).
But yea, I'm failing Paranoia 101, but I have alot of stuff on Nazi and Aerospace consperiacy, so I'm doing better in Area 51 Paranoia 337.