We did all our art in MacPaint. We only had the basics mind, a line tool, a square tool, but we didn't complain. Feh. Younguns. In my day all we had were grunts and wild body movements, and you had to convey them to your audience in real time. Later we found we could make marks on cave walls, and the graffiti started to really distract from the conversation.
"Windows Vista's new bootmanager is a double-edged sword. It's one of the most powerful booting scripts in existence, and a far cry from the very limiting boot.ini of legacy Windows operating systems. But it overwrites the MBR without a second thought, and doesn't provide any means for users of alternate operating systems and boot managers to use their old system.
Then it is not necessarily among the most powerful. That is a absic feature among virtually all of the rest. Others do allow you to do that and more. GRUB will boot most any OS that runs on x86, allows to you install in the MBR or not in the MBR, lets you "remap" the order of drives in the system so you can put certain OSes that think they HAVE to be on the first disk. You can change it's appearance install to floppy, use it on a CD (IIRC), and more. LILO will do this as well. GRUB will allow you to edit things at boot time as well, though LILO does not. So I suppose if you cast the net wide enough to catch all boot managers then you can say it is, but then that's kinda pointless. Where is the line drawn? Top 10%, 25%? Any demarcation from 25% and below will likely result in it not being among "the most powerful in existence".
But, the point is that if the industry had spent just a few dollars (maybe pennies) more in designing the devive, they'd be saving you money and it's be worth the extra costs.
Yes by all means. Let's get rid of those stupid little LEDs on the front of all my new A/V components telling me "I'm turned off right now, but if I were turned on this light would be off". Sure the power bill effects are marginal at best, but it is the annoyance factor of all those things with lights on at night. There is no good reason the A/V center should look like Shuttle Mission Control when everything is off fer cryin out loud.
A player is extremely unlikely to make the choices and take the actions that lead to a compelling story.
They won't make the mistakes that lead to King Lear or Hamlet to their tragic ends.
You've not watched the news, have you?
They won't make the choices that take Luke Skywalker to defeating the death star (not if they have real choices that affect the storyline)
Yes they will. Remember they have no real risk to themselves. Thus they are more likely to do things they would not do "in the real world" . This is a crucial difference. If we were talking about the average joe rising to the occasion I'd have to agree. In general this will not happen. But take away all the risks and people will do many things. Consider the study that showed that people would subject others to increasingly painful electric shocks when doing so under the auspices of research. Consider how many people are "keyboard cowboys" when in the real world may be quiet and avoid confrontation. Consider the number of slashdotters who encounter what they believe to be a woman and actually try to converse with her; when in actual physical proximity lock up tighter than a Windows ME install. Take the "risk" away and people will do much more.
Add to this the likely fact that players of such games are a self-sleected group that are much more likely to make those choices in agame, and I'd say you are incorrect on this one. I've done "Pencil and paper" RPG for about 30 years. People will make both the tragic and the heroic decisions. In many cases they won't knowingly make some of them but will make the "correct" decisions to get there anyway. Indeed I and many others have taken RPG adventures and turned them directly into readable stories, and they work as such very very well.
The caveat is that the "writer" of storyliner needs to be good. As with any other game: garbage in garbage out holds sway.
The primary task of academic studies is to identify the true reason for an observed correlation.
No it isn't. The primary task is to obtain data.
and the fact that the report has been published in a respected journal means for definate that the researchers have taken steps to ensure other obvious factors - like the ones you mention - are accounted for.
Not if it is only reporting it found a correlation. Which appears to be what happened. They apparently set out to see of there was a correlation between obesity and dementia. The study found and association, not explained a known association.
Funny, and mroe than a tad ironic, that you go off on another poster drawing conclusions about something he or she has presumably not read, and then proceed to do exactly that yourself. Does this mean you hate your own post, or do you exempt yourself from your "standards"?
According to the article (you might try reading that at least), the report makes suggestions about what may be involved as causation. For all we know the parent post may be dead on in that they may make this suggestion as well. but that suggestion would not make "good press". It is clear by the article that the report did not make a conclusion as to causation, it merely noted a correlation and suggested multiple hypotheses that may show causation. More specifically it notes a decline in ability to remember a group of words.
A different article on it noted:
Researchers at Toulouse University School of Medicine in France investigated relationships between BMI and cognitive function in 2223 subjects and found that higher BMI was independently associated with lower cognitive test scores.... In addition, the study found a slight overall improvement in cognitive test scores during the 5-year time frame. "The slight improvement of cognitive test score throughout time might be somewhat surprising. This statistically, but not clinically, significant improvement could be explained by the relatively young age of our subjects, involving a low incidence of cognitive decline over a period of 5 years, but also by increased familiarization with the test at follow-up,"
Note again the lack of wording saying a high BMI caused the lower performance on the memory test. All reports on the study say that it reported a correlation. None say it studied what the potential causation is, or even that it established a causative effect.
What should be distrubing is the attitude of your post. Your attitude is one that says experts should be implicitly trusted and that "layfolk" should not think on their own or be skeptical or critical of it, even if only in the summary. If you want to bask in that point of view you are on the wrong site.
Their test-fires have gone quite well; in addition to testing paraffin/GOX, they've also test-fired salami/GOX, which actually provided more thrust than the paraffin prototype tested that particular day.:)
Before or after Mythbusters did their with salami powered rocket engine?
Nuclear power doesn't produce much waste, for the amount of energy you get out of it. But the little bit of waste it does produce is really really nasty. The waste is about 90% recyclable into more fissile material, but you need some sophisticated processing plants to do this.
First: What percentage of waste material from coal plants is recyclable? (Hint: nowhere near 70%) The part that is recyclable, is uhh well fissionable uranium. Which only counts as recyclable if you use it - otherwise it is just waste product.
Second: Your assertion that nuclear waste is "more nasty" is dubious. Given that the waste for nuclear plants is contained, and the RADIOACTIVE waste from coal-fired power plants is spread around in the atmosphere affecting everyone with lungs, I'd say it is quite dubious.
Former ORNL researchers J. P. McBride, R. E. Moore, J. P. Witherspoon, and R. E. Blanco in their article "Radiological Impact of Airborne Effluents of Coal and Nuclear Plants"Science (December 8, 1978) concluded that Americans living near coal-fired power plants are exposed to higher radiation doses than those living near nuclear power plants that meet government regulations. The population effective dose of coal burning is more than 100 times the ongoing dosage of a nuclear plant. And this is only counting the stuff spewed from the stacks.
In fact, there is more energy in the radioactive aste spewed form the stacks than there is in the burning of the coal in the first place. Talk about a waste!
From ORNL:
How does the amount of nuclear material released by coal combustion compare to the amount consumed as fuel by the U.S. nuclear power industry? According to 1982 figures, 111 American nuclear plants consumed about 540 tons of nuclear fuel, generating almost 1.1 x 10E12 kWh of electricity. During the same year, about 801 tons of uranium alone were released from American coal-fired plants. Add 1971 tons of thorium, and the release of nuclear components from coal combustion far exceeds the entire U.S. consumption of nuclear fuels. The same conclusion applies for worldwide nuclear fuel and coal combustion.
Another unrecognized problem is the gradual production of plutonium-239 through the exposure of uranium-238 in coal waste to neutrons from the air. These neutrons are produced primarily by bombardment of oxygen and nitrogen nuclei in the atmosphere by cosmic rays and from spontaneous fission of natural isotopes in soil. Because plutonium-239 is reportedly toxic in minute quantities, this process, however slow, is potentially worrisome. The radiotoxicity of plutonium-239 is 3.4 x 10E11 times that of uranium-238. Consequently, for 801 tons of uranium released in 1982, only 2.2 milligrams of plutonium-239 bred by natural processes, if those processes exist, is necessary to double the radiotoxicity estimated to be released into the biosphere that year. Only 0.075 times that amount in plutonium-240 doubles the radiotoxicity. Natural processes to produce both plutonium-239 and plutonium-240 appear to exist.
There is enough nuclear material of the right kind in coal emissions to produce nuclear bombs. This means if you (as a country) have nuclear power plant technology and coal powered plants you can actually produce nuclear bomb material without oversight or knowledge of the IAEA. Why? Coal plants are not regulated or monitored by any radiactivity concerned body.
At least 73 elements found in coal-fired plant emissions are distributed in millions of pounds of stack emissions each year. They include: aluminium, antimony, arsenic, barium, beryllium, boron, cadmium, calcium, chlorine, chromium, cobalt, copper, fluorine, iron, lead, magnesium, manganese, mercury, molybdenum, nickel, selenium, silver, sulfur, titanium, uranium, vanadium, and zinc.
-- ORNL
Then there is also the problem of methane emissions - most of which actually occur during mining and transportation of coal. And this is just the tip of the coalberg, so to speak.
So I'd say that your claim of "more nasty" is more than dubious, it is outright false. The radioactive fallout of coal includes more material than is consumed by nuclear power plants alone makes your assertion false.
Had we wanted, instead, faster and better service at the same real price (e.g. $75/month in 2006 dollars), then maybe we'd have got that. But that is apparently not what our buying habits told the cable and DSL operators we wanted.
In other words, they might be able to get you hooked up at 100Mb/s, but you'd only be able to talk to your neighbors and other people on the local subnet at that speed.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Seriously, how is it a bad thing? It may mean that we wind up with local community "subnetworks" where you get good BW and speed to your neighbors. Mmmm multi-house LAN parties.:)
Further when people have such speeds with their local neighborhood what do you think will happen to demand for increasing speed/BW outside of that LAN? Give people a taste of what they could have and they'll realize what they are missing elsewhere. Hell they could expand that first to their own network. You get the faster connection on their net, but suffer a smaller pipe to others - just as calls within are free . Again the demand for bigger pipes will be quantifiable when they see personally experience what massively larger bandwidth does.
Further if the providers offered an OPTIONAL cache service where you used their caching proxy you could see a significant boost in web browsing speed and they an see a reduced inter-network bandwidth. Perhaps they can host mirrors or join mirror networks to effectively provide the bandwidth to their clients. Hell if the local net as above was 100Mb/s I'd host a Gentoo mirror for that network. I'd probably run a few other mirrors. I'm not the only one either.
In a way it solves the chicken and egg problem. ISPs can't say they see a demand for larger pipes like that. Users don't know they could have it and don't know ho wmuch different it woudl be so the demand may not be there. Grassroots demand building 101: let them sample the goods.
Overall it isn't really different than now. I've got a decent sized network pipe but many servers I connect to simply can't support it. How would this be any different?
Excellent, I must say I am delighted to have encountered a fellow military theoretician
My experience largely involved actually pulling off the plans I had to make - from theory to my ass on the line with everyone else invovled.;) But otherwise, yes you could call me that.
Vacuum is such a feature. Thats why the next generation of civilian transport is able to tout "an hour from London to New York", with White Knight style aircraft. By punching above the atmosphere you can go anywhere on earth in small percentages of the current time. Whats more, when you are up there, fuel requirements to stay up there are negligible.
However, what provides the ability to travel that fast is the amount of fuel spent in a short amount of time. Most of the delta-v is obtained in atmo. The vacuum in this case only allows for fuel-less coasting - OMS adjustments aside; and that isn't as big of a help as you might think. The combination of rapid and high acceleration and a ballistic trajectory is the primary factor in such trips. It is the same reason artillery works. You invest (roughly) half the effort and gravity takes the rest.
The Sea Dragon would have provided this very capability, and it too relied on a ballistic trajectory. It isn't as if the transports you are talking about orbit and then land. They go up on a trajectory that with minor corrections will drop them back down where they want to go. Just like artillery.
I don't understand where you get this assumption at all, unless you are talking about blanket-blocking all communications everywhere. Or how did the first LEO satellites get up there?
Going to LEO is not the same as traveling about in LEO (with accuracy). Anything that is not on a simple free-fall or ballistic trajectory requires, to be effective, navigation references. Currently this is done by communication with other orbitals. Block that communication and your navigational ability just shrunk, in some cases being unreliable enough to be nonexistent.
In the future it may be that systems contain all that is needed to run all calculations necessary to determine position and velocity in orbit. But right now, which is the timeframe I referred to, they do not. They rely on terrestrial communications. When they are not in direct range of their base station they use satellite commo relays. Even the Shuttle relies on terrestrial communication for it's LEO maneuvering. block these out and you effectively blind what is up there now that needs to navigate anything other than it's natural (decaying) own orbital path.
It would require hundreds of thousands of satellites in order to provide full planetary field of fire all the time.
Ah, here you are thinking about spy satellite technology, where they are only really viable when looking straight down. A laser network like we are discussing can engage to the diagonal, albeit with slightly reduced effectiveness for every degree from the vertical (for terrestrial targets). High altitude targets would see less reduction in efficiency, and orbital targets none. It would hardly require many more satellites than make up the current GPS network. Also I never claimed it could hit submarines; however should those submarines attmept to engage their targets, the missiles could be shot down within seconds of clearing the water. Not that a submarine fleet would last long in the absence of a support surface fleet.
Nope, not thinking of spy technology directly. But indirectly yes you would still need such capability because weaponry has to have a targeting mechanism. In space if you can't see the targets you can't target them. This is different from ground combat of course where artillery works pretty well. This has very important implications for the claim of shooting down submarine launched missiles within seconds of launch. In order to do that you need to be able to see it, acquire it as target and engage it in seconds. If
2000: Rumsfeld is a Director on the board of ABB when it wins a $200M contract to supply N Korea with nuke reactors, though he denies knowledge of it And this is Bush's fault how, specifically? Who was in the Oval Office in 2000? That's right, it was Clinton. And so what? Care to say who set up the KDEO system, hmm? From the BBC:
Under the 1994 Agreed Framework an international consortium is building two proliferation-proof nuclear reactors and providing fuel oil for North Korea while the reactors are being built.
That's right, a 1994/1995 agreement. Clinton in office again. But you'd rather blame Bush through Rumsfeld.
Oh and you know from personal experience that all directors on a company's BoD knows all about what is going on? News flash: A large portion of them sit there for the money and don't give a rat's ass what happens otherwise. What you fail to note is that the company was a European engineering giant based in Zurich. Also:
The reactor deal was part of President Bill Clinton's policy of persuading the North Korean regime to positively engage with the west....In a statement to the American magazine Newsweek, his spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said that there "was no vote on this". A spokesman for ABB told the Guardian yesterday that "board members were informed about the project which would deliver systems and equipment for light water reactors".
So there was no vote, and the directors were not told they were selling nuclear reactors, despite the headline.
2002: Bush names N Korea part of the "Axis of Evil" So what? Are you unaware of NK's actions over the preceeding two decades? Clearly. It isn't like Bush pulled the idea that NK was bad out of his ass. Do somethign intelligent, do real research. Did you know NK ha dbeen on the list of terroist sponsoring and aiding states fo ryears prior to 2000, let alone 2002?
U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen cited North Korea as "the most significant near-term danger" in Asia in his 2000 annual defense report submitted to U.S. President Clinton and Congress. The report focused on the Taepo Dong-2 ballistic missile threat and the possibility that the missile could strike most parts of the United States.
Because of their dedication to spreading nuclear and chemical technology and pursuing a nuclear weapons program on top of it. One that predates Bush by nearly a decade. China isn't too happy about NK and it's nuke program either. They are concerned that it will trigger Japan to develop their own, or SK to allow US nukes back in.
2005: Bush violates 6-way deal with N Korea to abandon it's nuke programme by freezing N Korean financial connections and branding it a criminal state
Every wonder why or just assume you know the intimate details of the goings on?
2005
14 January: North Korea says it is willing to restart stalled talks on its nuclear programme, according to the official KCNA news agency.
19 January: Condoleezza Rice, President George W Bush's nominee as secretary of state, identifies North Korea as one of six "outposts of tyranny" where the US must help bring freedom.
10 February: North Korea says it is suspending its participation in the talks over its nuclear programme for an "indefinite period", blaming the Bush administration's intention to "antagonise, isolate and stifle it at any cost". The statement also repeats North Korea's assertion to have built nuclear weapons for self-defence.
18 April: South Korea says North Korea has shut down its Yon
Wrong-o, baby. The grandparent is correct in most of his reasoning; the only problem is that he doesn't go far enough. Space is fundamentally different from land, sea and air in that it takes only a short time to cover immense distances.
Incorrect. There is nothing inherent to Space that makes for faster transport to cover "immense distances in a short time". You might be tempted to think that the vacuum is such a feature. However, a major disadvantage of space travel is the need to also transport fuel. That means any gains due to speed there are paid for by needing to blast a shitload of fuel with you. Further compounding this is the predictability, sensitivity and general terrestrial vulnerability of launches.
Additionaly LEO transportation requires significant navigation requirements - something the US dominates at already. The US could elimiante most LEO travel right now by encoding the existing network, and/or jamming certain frequencies.
Orbital mechanics what they are the sheer number of installations needed to create the scenario you dreamed up is... well astronomical. Ground bombardment from orbital stations in the manner you describe would be an enourmous change in capability, one beyond the scope of this document. This document coveres protecting action in space, it does not cover ground bombardment. That said if such a scenario as you describe were possible in the near future it would only butress the document's conclusion of a need to make orbital attacks on space assets. The whole of military action is to deny similar action by the opponent. Indeed, this holds true down the scale of human v. human such as self-defense.
And this is the part that scares the crap out of me, the first nation to control such a network would have the ability to easily deny the creation of a similar network to any other nation, by simply shooting down the defenceless rockets when they are on the way up to deploy the satellites.
Such an act would be one of war. The resources necessary to pull off (I do happen to know perhaps more than a fair bit about this) what you describe is tremendous. It would require hundreds of thousands of satellites in order to provide full planetary field of fire all the time. ASAT (Anti-SATellite) capability is trivial to smuggle inside of a communications satellite, given the small requirements. The only power that *might* be capable of such a creation would indeed be the US, but I'm not convinced it could do it without eviscerating the existing military and probably 80% of social programs. In other words we'd have to put all eggs in this basket. This action would leave us horrendously vulnerable to an attack that did not expose itself to such an orbital scenario. There are many. Tell me how you intend such an orbital defense system to be able to strike submarines while they are under a few hundred feet of water. Don't just fantasize aout it, explore the technical and scientific aspects of your claims. You'll find they don't hold water.
We already have the ability to shoot down virtually any orbitally bound rocket we want to, we simply choose not to. We don't need a ring of satellites or space policy to do this. Just well placed naval and air assets.
The same arguments you make were essentially made about air power. You can avoid worrying about terrain, cover vast distances in far shorter times, you can bombard whole cities and infantry units from the air with impugnity and speed, the first to master the air will forever hold that superiority, and so forth.
What you are claiming is no different. You are claiming first that the US can build an orbital military system that is impervious to countermeasures, blocks all attempts to compete, is 100% effective, and can destroy any surface target it wishes at any time. Second you alledge that the document leads to this system simply because it states in plain english the intent of all military planning and action: the ability to deny movement and action to an enemy. I've
I do agree that by cutting a deal with New Delhi, the US govt essentially squashed the NPT. But then, that's what happened to the Kyoto treaty as well.
A few quibbles, but important ones. First, France - a signatory to the NPT - signed a largely identical deal this year, ahead of Bush signing it. So if you must cast a stone as to who squashed it, France would be the one.
Regarding Kyoto, the uS isn't officially a part of it as it has not been (and I suspect will never be) ratified. it was signed, but only by VP Gore. Clinton never even bothered to submit it to the Senate for ratification. Of course, the Senate voted 95-0 that it would not ratify any treaty like Kyoto. So technically and legally the US is not a signatory to it.
The NPT by itself is a relic of the cold war and extremely biased. What it basically says is that 5 countries can build and maintain as many Nuclear weapons as they want while the rest of the world should not. Ideally, if Nuclear Non Proliferation was to work, the NPT should have contained a timetable for the reduction/removal of all nuclear weapons, including those stockpiled by the big five. The NPT isn't about reducing the risk of a Nuclear Winter. Its about maintaining a military advantage and is purely political in its framework.
Bingo. NPT was to keep the US and USSR from equipping border states with nukes.
If you follow the chain of the Big 5, UK helped France (France helped Israel). USSR helped China (they eventually got cold feet but by then the die was cast). UK was involved in the US research so it is hard to actually say if it was a bit of co-development or US assisted the UK. Canada inadvertently aided Pakistan (Canada was sharing nuclear energy information, not weaponry!). It is not certain how India got their ability, though espionage w/Pakistan is a leading hypothesis. Pakistan got theirs through espionage (of the Netherlands!) The UK also aided Israel (non-confirmed nuclear weapon state), as did France.
I'm all for reducing the risk of Nuclear Proliferation, but I'm not convinced that NPT is the tool to use. What we need is for the big 5 to show the way and reduce their stockpile and then enforce the NPT.
Well that has been going on. At their zenith Soviet nuclear weapons broke 43,000 active. They are now down to something like 16000. The US's weapons broke 32,000 active, and are now down to less than a third of that total (~8000 IIRC), and even less "active" (~5000 IIRC?). To my knowledge no other country has reduced their stockpile by the percentages the US and Russia have. I'm not sure any other than US and Russia have done so significantly if at all.
To safely decom a nuclear weapon takes time and effort, and not insignificant amounts of it. To do so with thousands will take a rather long time.
A few problems with your theory: the main one is India has been nuclear since the 1970's.
We are entering dangerous times, and the Bush administration made a tragic mistake [economist.com] in its dealings with India. Washington has signed the NPT, and by the terms of the treaty, its signatories agree to ban the transfer of nuclear technology to any nation that refuses to sign the NPT. The NPT further stipulates that any signatory which has not yet developed nuclear weapons shall not pursue their development.
Since India exploded it's first nuclear weapon in 1974, they are already a nuclear power.
Let us examine the NPT, shall we? Article one: Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly; and not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, or control over such weapons or explosive devices.
Article two (direct linkage): Each non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to receive the transfer from any transferor whatsoever of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or of control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly; not to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices; and not to seek or receive any assistance in the manufacture of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.
Hmm no breach here.
Next relevant portion up... (Article 3): 2. Each State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to provide: (a) source or special fissionable material, or (b) equipment or material especially designed or prepared for the processing, use or production of special fissionable material, to any non-nuclear-weapon State for peaceful purposes, unless the source or special fissionable material shall be subject to the safeguards required by this article.
All clear here, as India is a nuclear state anyway.
And well that is it.
There is some wiggle room to say that India isn't a nuclear weapon state by terms of the treaty becuase of this line: For the purposes of this Treaty, a nuclear-weapon State is one which has manufactured and exploded a nuclear weapon or other nuclear explosive device prior to January 1, 1967.
It does not however, say anything specifically regarding dealing with non-signatories. It deals specifically with non-nuclear states. To limit it to nonproliferation to signatories would be a gaping hole. To say "non-nuclear" and avoiding the signatory requirement the hole is non-existant.
All that said, the "proliferation" of peaceful nuclear usage is specifically allowed. Period. Now if you can point to specific breaches where Bush/The US gave India nuclear weapons technology and so forth then fine. But if you want to make the claim that any nuclear assistance such as nuclear energy assistance is a bad thing and against the treaty, then the treaty has been dead for decades. The Russians and the US assisted Iran years ago (Bush the elder, Clinton) with their nuclear power, and that's just one sample. France and the UK have assisted others (France aided Iraq) in the production of nuclear energy for non-weapon uses.
I know some of you weren't even born in 1974, but that is no escuse for not learning the history of the situation before making such absurd pronouncements as Bush being responsible for India having nukes.
He's making sure other countries don't take American nuclear expansion as a signal to proliferate their own nukes, like in N Korea, Iran, India.
yeah cuz we all know that these countries weren't going there prior to Bush getting into office and only started the day Bush was declared the winner.
Hmm
1974 - India explodes first nuclear device in underground test. 1998 - India carries out nuclear tests, leading to widespread international condemnation.
From Wikipedia regarding Iran:
President Gerald Ford hesitantly signed a directive in 1976 offering Tehran the opportunity to buy and operate a U.S.-built reprocessing facility for extracting plutonium from nuclear reactor fuel. The deal was for a complete "nuclear fuel cycle", with all the proliferation risks that would entail. The Ford strategy paper said the "introduction of nuclear power will both provide for the growing needs of Iran's economy and free remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals."[4]
President Ford's team endorsed Iranian plans to build a massive nuclear energy industry, but also worked hard to complete a multi-billion-dollar deal that would have given Tehran control of large quantities of plutonium and enriched uranium -- the two pathways to a nuclear bomb. Iran, a U.S. ally then, had deep pockets and close ties to Washington. U.S. companies, including Westinghouse and General Electric, scrambled to do business there.... In 1996, the U.S. tried, without success, to block China from selling to Tehran a conversion plant. China also provided Iran with gas needed to test the uranium enrichment process.
NK was pursuing nukes as early as 1993.
13 June 1994
* North Korea withdraws from the IAEA.
2 June 1994
* Clinton decides to pursue sanctions against the North after receiving IAEA assessments. North Korea prompted the measure by declaring it would never allow IAEA inspection of two undeclared nuclear waste sites that would determine past levels of plutonium production.
June 1994
* North Korean President Kim Il Sung agrees to freeze his nation's nuclear program in exchange for Western aid and a resumption of dialogue with the United States.
1993
11 June 1993
* North Korea suspends its withdrawal from the NPT one day before it would have taken effect, but asserts IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities are no longer feasible.
12 March 1993
* North Korean Central People's Committee anounces North Korea's withdrawal from the NPT.
1992
May 1992
* IAEA initiates series of inspections to verify North Korea's inventory of nuclear materials. The agency soon discovers plutonium production discrepencies.
1991
31 December 1991
* North and South reach an agreement on a nuclear -free Korean Peninsula
19 October 1991
* US announces it will withdraw all nuclear weapons from South Korea.
1986 23 June 1986
* North Korea announces that it will refrain from testing, producing, or stockpiling nuclear weapons.
1985 12 September 1985
* North Korea signs the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
Sounds to me like Bush must have a time machine. Or perhaps there is a more rational explanation.
Not many Presidents can boast of being asleep at the wheel while another nuclear power was born
And you would have done what, exactly to prevent it? Short of invading there is little you can actually do. Are you suggesting we should have "unilaterally invaded" NK last year to prevent them from developing "the bomb"? It's easy to say someone else was asleep when you aren't in that position and have no idea what it'd take to actually stop them. Tlaks have been going on now for what, a year or two on this very subject?
They aren't a big threat to the US but what do we do if they invade the south?
Pre-nuke? Step one: wait until they unleash their massive barrage of artillery and chemical weaponry. Otherwise you get your ass handed back to you in a bowl. A small one. Mixed with the asses of everyone within a 50 mile radius of you.
Get the point? Realistically the nuclear weapons of NK don't change the invasion/defense of SK. At all.
The ones at risk right now are the Japanese and they may have to build a bomb out of self preservation.
No they don't. We can and have pledge to bomb NK in return. Not in so many words mind you. Most of the world would rapidly come to Japan's defense if NK nuked them. Do try to go beyond the knee-jerk reaction of blame the POTUS for what other countries do, and apply a at least modicum of thought to the situation. The saying goes that one can not "win" a nuclear war. However, nuclear between US or Russia, or even the UK and NK would be extremely one-sided and probably as close as is possible. At least two of those countries would be able to eliminate NK's nuclear retaliation capability in the first strike unless the materials and equipment were already outside the country.
A few highlights: January 1994: The director of the CIA estimates that North Korea may have produced one or two nuclear weapons. June 13, 1994: North Korea announces its withdrawal from the IAEA. This is distinct from pulling out of the NPT--North Korea is still required to undergo IAEA inspections as part of its NPT obligations. August 6, 1997: The United States imposes new sanctions on two additional North Korean entities for unspecified missile-proliferation activities. April 17, 1998: The United States imposes sanctions on North Korea and Pakistan in response to Pyongyang's transfer of missile technology and components to Pakistan's Khan Research Laboratory. June 16, 1998: The official Korean Central News Agency reports that Pyongyang will only end its missile technology exports if it is suitably compensated for financial losses. July 15, 1998: The bipartisan Rumsfeld Commission concludes that the United States may have "little or no warning" before facing a long-range ballistic missile threat from "rogue states," such as North Korea and Iran. December 28, 2000: President Clinton announces that he will not travel to North Korea before the end of his term, citing "insufficient time to complete the work at hand." According to a March 6 New York Times article, Clinton's national security adviser Sandy Berger was hesitant to have the president leave the country during the presidential election dispute, which he deemed "a potential 'constitutional crisis.'"
January 2, 2001: The United States imposes sanctions on North Korea's Changgwang Sinyong Corporation for violation of the Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000.* March 6, 2001: At a joint press briefing with the Swedish foreign minister, Secretary of State Colin Powell says that the administration "plan[s] to engage with North Korea to pick up where President Clinton le
First, it is seismography. Second using seismographs for this is very limited. ALL it can tell you is that the earth moved/shook. It can not tell you if it was a nuclear blast or a conventional one, or even the collapse of a very large underground installation.
So you are saying that Foley somehow managed to cause an earthquake of 3.8-4.2 magnitude on the Korean peninsula, forged a message from NK to China saying they were going to conduct the test they have been talking about for some time now, convinced the NK government to proclaim a successful test all in order to get Foley's scandal off the front page?
Maybe I'm not the norm around here but I don't buy it.
What was front page material when the Foley situation hit? Maybe Clinton's remarks and questions (legitimate or not) about his performance in office? What about the previous front page story? What was going on in Congress when it decided to "investigate" steroid usage in baseball? Does it not occur to people that maybe, just maybe, NEWs changes often, and often when not expected? It isn't called "olds" for a reason.
IMO, Chinese culture cares much about 'face', a concept of honor that requires the appearance of respect, even if we bicker shamelessly behind closed doors.
Then they should have responded immediately as you say we should have. Or is it a double standard? If you go to another country you should respect their customs when/where reasonable. However, when you wrong another you should not be expecting them to submit to your customs, rather you should accept theirs. In the case you mentioned, the Chinese should have been the ones to use the other culture. Why is it only the US is supposed to "respect" other cultures by submiting to their cultural norms rather than our own? I don't have to conform to anotehr culture's norms and expectations to respect it.
We should not, unless we have done wrong (outside of the social customs) to another culture, and then only in the specific instance. Just as other cultures should do. This notion that the US needs to always abandon it's own cultures for the sake of other cultures needs to die it's deserved death.
For additional giggles, put the following key into a Google search...
I am quite frankly suprised the result is only "286 English pages". I'd expected high, much higher. especially given that at least a few on the front page are clearly not related to the parent poster's intent.
Slashdot Mirror
We did all our art in MacPaint. We only had the basics mind, a line tool, a square tool, but we didn't complain.
Feh. Younguns. In my day all we had were grunts and wild body movements, and you had to convey them to your audience in real time. Later we found we could make marks on cave walls, and the graffiti started to really distract from the conversation.
"Windows Vista's new bootmanager is a double-edged sword. It's one of the most powerful booting scripts in existence, and a far cry from the very limiting boot.ini of legacy Windows operating systems. But it overwrites the MBR without a second thought, and doesn't provide any means for users of alternate operating systems and boot managers to use their old system.
Then it is not necessarily among the most powerful. That is a absic feature among virtually all of the rest. Others do allow you to do that and more. GRUB will boot most any OS that runs on x86, allows to you install in the MBR or not in the MBR, lets you "remap" the order of drives in the system so you can put certain OSes that think they HAVE to be on the first disk. You can change it's appearance install to floppy, use it on a CD (IIRC), and more. LILO will do this as well. GRUB will allow you to edit things at boot time as well, though LILO does not. So I suppose if you cast the net wide enough to catch all boot managers then you can say it is, but then that's kinda pointless. Where is the line drawn? Top 10%, 25%? Any demarcation from 25% and below will likely result in it not being among "the most powerful in existence".
Your PC should have a hard switch on the back, it is part of the power supply.
Factoid: if all American households would not use the stand-by mode of their TV, an entire _nuclear_ power plant can be saved on a national level. :S
Even better it could save coal usage, which puts out more radiation than nuclear plants do, and still pollutes otherwise.
But, the point is that if the industry had spent just a few dollars (maybe pennies) more in designing the devive, they'd be saving you money and it's be worth the extra costs.
Yes by all means. Let's get rid of those stupid little LEDs on the front of all my new A/V components telling me "I'm turned off right now, but if I were turned on this light would be off". Sure the power bill effects are marginal at best, but it is the annoyance factor of all those things with lights on at night. There is no good reason the A/V center should look like Shuttle Mission Control when everything is off fer cryin out loud.
A player is extremely unlikely to make the choices and take the actions that lead to a compelling story.
They won't make the mistakes that lead to King Lear or Hamlet to their tragic ends.
You've not watched the news, have you?
They won't make the choices that take Luke Skywalker to defeating the death star (not if they have real choices that affect the storyline)
Yes they will. Remember they have no real risk to themselves. Thus they are more likely to do things they would not do "in the real world" . This is a crucial difference. If we were talking about the average joe rising to the occasion I'd have to agree. In general this will not happen. But take away all the risks and people will do many things. Consider the study that showed that people would subject others to increasingly painful electric shocks when doing so under the auspices of research. Consider how many people are "keyboard cowboys" when in the real world may be quiet and avoid confrontation. Consider the number of slashdotters who encounter what they believe to be a woman and actually try to converse with her; when in actual physical proximity lock up tighter than a Windows ME install. Take the "risk" away and people will do much more.
Add to this the likely fact that players of such games are a self-sleected group that are much more likely to make those choices in agame, and I'd say you are incorrect on this one. I've done "Pencil and paper" RPG for about 30 years. People will make both the tragic and the heroic decisions. In many cases they won't knowingly make some of them but will make the "correct" decisions to get there anyway. Indeed I and many others have taken RPG adventures and turned them directly into readable stories, and they work as such very very well.
The caveat is that the "writer" of storyliner needs to be good. As with any other game: garbage in garbage out holds sway.
The primary task of academic studies is to identify the true reason for an observed correlation.
No it isn't. The primary task is to obtain data.
and the fact that the report has been published in a respected journal means for definate that the researchers have taken steps to ensure other obvious factors - like the ones you mention - are accounted for.
Not if it is only reporting it found a correlation. Which appears to be what happened. They apparently set out to see of there was a correlation between obesity and dementia. The study found and association, not explained a known association.
Funny, and mroe than a tad ironic, that you go off on another poster drawing conclusions about something he or she has presumably not read, and then proceed to do exactly that yourself. Does this mean you hate your own post, or do you exempt yourself from your "standards"?
According to the article (you might try reading that at least), the report makes suggestions about what may be involved as causation. For all we know the parent post may be dead on in that they may make this suggestion as well. but that suggestion would not make "good press". It is clear by the article that the report did not make a conclusion as to causation, it merely noted a correlation and suggested multiple hypotheses that may show causation. More specifically it notes a decline in ability to remember a group of words.
A different article on it noted:
Note again the lack of wording saying a high BMI caused the lower performance on the memory test. All reports on the study say that it reported a correlation. None say it studied what the potential causation is, or even that it established a causative effect.
What should be distrubing is the attitude of your post. Your attitude is one that says experts should be implicitly trusted and that "layfolk" should not think on their own or be skeptical or critical of it, even if only in the summary. If you want to bask in that point of view you are on the wrong site.
Their test-fires have gone quite well; in addition to testing paraffin/GOX, they've also test-fired salami/GOX, which actually provided more thrust than the paraffin prototype tested that particular day. :)
Before or after Mythbusters did their with salami powered rocket engine?
First: What percentage of waste material from coal plants is recyclable? (Hint: nowhere near 70%) The part that is recyclable, is uhh well fissionable uranium. Which only counts as recyclable if you use it - otherwise it is just waste product.
Second: Your assertion that nuclear waste is "more nasty" is dubious. Given that the waste for nuclear plants is contained, and the RADIOACTIVE waste from coal-fired power plants is spread around in the atmosphere affecting everyone with lungs, I'd say it is quite dubious.
Former ORNL researchers J. P. McBride, R. E. Moore, J. P. Witherspoon, and R. E. Blanco in their article "Radiological Impact of Airborne Effluents of Coal and Nuclear Plants"Science (December 8, 1978) concluded that Americans living near coal-fired power plants are exposed to higher radiation doses than those living near nuclear power plants that meet government regulations. The population effective dose of coal burning is more than 100 times the ongoing dosage of a nuclear plant. And this is only counting the stuff spewed from the stacks.
In fact, there is more energy in the radioactive aste spewed form the stacks than there is in the burning of the coal in the first place. Talk about a waste!
From ORNL:
There is enough nuclear material of the right kind in coal emissions to produce nuclear bombs. This means if you (as a country) have nuclear power plant technology and coal powered plants you can actually produce nuclear bomb material without oversight or knowledge of the IAEA. Why? Coal plants are not regulated or monitored by any radiactivity concerned body.
-- ORNL
Then there is also the problem of methane emissions - most of which actually occur during mining and transportation of coal. And this is just the tip of the coalberg, so to speak.
So I'd say that your claim of "more nasty" is more than dubious, it is outright false. The radioactive fallout of coal includes more material than is consumed by nuclear power plants alone makes your assertion false.
Had we wanted, instead, faster and better service at the same real price (e.g. $75/month in 2006 dollars), then maybe we'd have got that. But that is apparently not what our buying habits told the cable and DSL operators we wanted.
You can't buy what they don't offer.
In other words, they might be able to get you hooked up at 100Mb/s, but you'd only be able to talk to your neighbors and other people on the local subnet at that speed.
:)
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Seriously, how is it a bad thing? It may mean that we wind up with local community "subnetworks" where you get good BW and speed to your neighbors. Mmmm multi-house LAN parties.
Further when people have such speeds with their local neighborhood what do you think will happen to demand for increasing speed/BW outside of that LAN? Give people a taste of what they could have and they'll realize what they are missing elsewhere. Hell they could expand that first to their own network. You get the faster connection on their net, but suffer a smaller pipe to others - just as calls within are free . Again the demand for bigger pipes will be quantifiable when they see personally experience what massively larger bandwidth does.
Further if the providers offered an OPTIONAL cache service where you used their caching proxy you could see a significant boost in web browsing speed and they an see a reduced inter-network bandwidth. Perhaps they can host mirrors or join mirror networks to effectively provide the bandwidth to their clients. Hell if the local net as above was 100Mb/s I'd host a Gentoo mirror for that network. I'd probably run a few other mirrors. I'm not the only one either.
In a way it solves the chicken and egg problem. ISPs can't say they see a demand for larger pipes like that. Users don't know they could have it and don't know ho wmuch different it woudl be so the demand may not be there. Grassroots demand building 101: let them sample the goods.
Overall it isn't really different than now. I've got a decent sized network pipe but many servers I connect to simply can't support it. How would this be any different?
My experience largely involved actually pulling off the plans I had to make - from theory to my ass on the line with everyone else invovled.
Vacuum is such a feature. Thats why the next generation of civilian transport is able to tout "an hour from London to New York", with White Knight style aircraft. By punching above the atmosphere you can go anywhere on earth in small percentages of the current time. Whats more, when you are up there, fuel requirements to stay up there are negligible.
However, what provides the ability to travel that fast is the amount of fuel spent in a short amount of time. Most of the delta-v is obtained in atmo. The vacuum in this case only allows for fuel-less coasting - OMS adjustments aside; and that isn't as big of a help as you might think. The combination of rapid and high acceleration and a ballistic trajectory is the primary factor in such trips. It is the same reason artillery works. You invest (roughly) half the effort and gravity takes the rest.
The Sea Dragon would have provided this very capability, and it too relied on a ballistic trajectory. It isn't as if the transports you are talking about orbit and then land. They go up on a trajectory that with minor corrections will drop them back down where they want to go. Just like artillery.
I don't understand where you get this assumption at all, unless you are talking about blanket-blocking all communications everywhere. Or how did the first LEO satellites get up there?
Going to LEO is not the same as traveling about in LEO (with accuracy). Anything that is not on a simple free-fall or ballistic trajectory requires, to be effective, navigation references. Currently this is done by communication with other orbitals. Block that communication and your navigational ability just shrunk, in some cases being unreliable enough to be nonexistent.
In the future it may be that systems contain all that is needed to run all calculations necessary to determine position and velocity in orbit. But right now, which is the timeframe I referred to, they do not. They rely on terrestrial communications. When they are not in direct range of their base station they use satellite commo relays. Even the Shuttle relies on terrestrial communication for it's LEO maneuvering. block these out and you effectively blind what is up there now that needs to navigate anything other than it's natural (decaying) own orbital path.
Nope, not thinking of spy technology directly. But indirectly yes you would still need such capability because weaponry has to have a targeting mechanism. In space if you can't see the targets you can't target them. This is different from ground combat of course where artillery works pretty well. This has very important implications for the claim of shooting down submarine launched missiles within seconds of launch. In order to do that you need to be able to see it, acquire it as target and engage it in seconds. If
Next Nintendo will be mind controlled and called the Mii
And this is Bush's fault how, specifically? Who was in the Oval Office in 2000? That's right, it was Clinton. And so what? Care to say who set up the KDEO system, hmm?
From the BBC:
That's right, a 1994/1995 agreement. Clinton in office again. But you'd rather blame Bush through Rumsfeld.
Oh and you know from personal experience that all directors on a company's BoD knows all about what is going on? News flash: A large portion of them sit there for the money and don't give a rat's ass what happens otherwise. What you fail to note is that the company was a European engineering giant based in Zurich. Also:
So there was no vote, and the directors were not told they were selling nuclear reactors, despite the headline.
2002: Bush names N Korea part of the "Axis of Evil"
So what? Are you unaware of NK's actions over the preceeding two decades? Clearly. It isn't like Bush pulled the idea that NK was bad out of his ass. Do somethign intelligent, do real research. Did you know NK ha dbeen on the list of terroist sponsoring and aiding states fo ryears prior to 2000, let alone 2002?
Educate youself:
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/dprk/nuke/index.html
-- http://www.isis-online.org/publications/dprk/book/ chronology3.html#0200
Because of their dedication to spreading nuclear and chemical technology and pursuing a nuclear weapons program on top of it. One that predates Bush by nearly a decade. China isn't too happy about NK and it's nuke program either. They are concerned that it will trigger Japan to develop their own, or SK to allow US nukes back in.
2005: Bush violates 6-way deal with N Korea to abandon it's nuke programme by freezing N Korean financial connections and branding it a criminal state
Every wonder why or just assume you know the intimate details of the goings on?
Wrong-o, baby. The grandparent is correct in most of his reasoning; the only problem is that he doesn't go far enough. Space is fundamentally different from land, sea and air in that it takes only a short time to cover immense distances.
... well astronomical. Ground bombardment from orbital stations in the manner you describe would be an enourmous change in capability, one beyond the scope of this document. This document coveres protecting action in space, it does not cover ground bombardment. That said if such a scenario as you describe were possible in the near future it would only butress the document's conclusion of a need to make orbital attacks on space assets. The whole of military action is to deny similar action by the opponent. Indeed, this holds true down the scale of human v. human such as self-defense.
Incorrect. There is nothing inherent to Space that makes for faster transport to cover "immense distances in a short time". You might be tempted to think that the vacuum is such a feature. However, a major disadvantage of space travel is the need to also transport fuel. That means any gains due to speed there are paid for by needing to blast a shitload of fuel with you. Further compounding this is the predictability, sensitivity and general terrestrial vulnerability of launches.
Additionaly LEO transportation requires significant navigation requirements - something the US dominates at already. The US could elimiante most LEO travel right now by encoding the existing network, and/or jamming certain frequencies.
Orbital mechanics what they are the sheer number of installations needed to create the scenario you dreamed up is
And this is the part that scares the crap out of me, the first nation to control such a network would have the ability to easily deny the creation of a similar network to any other nation, by simply shooting down the defenceless rockets when they are on the way up to deploy the satellites.
Such an act would be one of war. The resources necessary to pull off (I do happen to know perhaps more than a fair bit about this) what you describe is tremendous. It would require hundreds of thousands of satellites in order to provide full planetary field of fire all the time. ASAT (Anti-SATellite) capability is trivial to smuggle inside of a communications satellite, given the small requirements. The only power that *might* be capable of such a creation would indeed be the US, but I'm not convinced it could do it without eviscerating the existing military and probably 80% of social programs. In other words we'd have to put all eggs in this basket. This action would leave us horrendously vulnerable to an attack that did not expose itself to such an orbital scenario. There are many. Tell me how you intend such an orbital defense system to be able to strike submarines while they are under a few hundred feet of water. Don't just fantasize aout it, explore the technical and scientific aspects of your claims. You'll find they don't hold water.
We already have the ability to shoot down virtually any orbitally bound rocket we want to, we simply choose not to. We don't need a ring of satellites or space policy to do this. Just well placed naval and air assets.
The same arguments you make were essentially made about air power. You can avoid worrying about terrain, cover vast distances in far shorter times, you can bombard whole cities and infantry units from the air with impugnity and speed, the first to master the air will forever hold that superiority, and so forth.
What you are claiming is no different. You are claiming first that the US can build an orbital military system that is impervious to countermeasures, blocks all attempts to compete, is 100% effective, and can destroy any surface target it wishes at any time. Second you alledge that the document leads to this system simply because it states in plain english the intent of all military planning and action: the ability to deny movement and action to an enemy. I've
I wasn't advocating transport of an entire pre-fab suburban subdivision to Mars.
The official experts did.
I do agree that by cutting a deal with New Delhi, the US govt essentially squashed the NPT. But then, that's what happened to the Kyoto treaty as well.
A few quibbles, but important ones. First, France - a signatory to the NPT - signed a largely identical deal this year, ahead of Bush signing it. So if you must cast a stone as to who squashed it, France would be the one.
Regarding Kyoto, the uS isn't officially a part of it as it has not been (and I suspect will never be) ratified. it was signed, but only by VP Gore. Clinton never even bothered to submit it to the Senate for ratification. Of course, the Senate voted 95-0 that it would not ratify any treaty like Kyoto. So technically and legally the US is not a signatory to it.
The NPT by itself is a relic of the cold war and extremely biased. What it basically says is that 5 countries can build and maintain as many Nuclear weapons as they want while the rest of the world should not. Ideally, if Nuclear Non Proliferation was to work, the NPT should have contained a timetable for the reduction/removal of all nuclear weapons, including those stockpiled by the big five. The NPT isn't about reducing the risk of a Nuclear Winter. Its about maintaining a military advantage and is purely political in its framework.
Bingo. NPT was to keep the US and USSR from equipping border states with nukes.
If you follow the chain of the Big 5, UK helped France (France helped Israel). USSR helped China (they eventually got cold feet but by then the die was cast). UK was involved in the US research so it is hard to actually say if it was a bit of co-development or US assisted the UK. Canada inadvertently aided Pakistan (Canada was sharing nuclear energy information, not weaponry!). It is not certain how India got their ability, though espionage w/Pakistan is a leading hypothesis. Pakistan got theirs through espionage (of the Netherlands!) The UK also aided Israel (non-confirmed nuclear weapon state), as did France.
I'm all for reducing the risk of Nuclear Proliferation, but I'm not convinced that NPT is the tool to use. What we need is for the big 5 to show the way and reduce their stockpile and then enforce the NPT.
Well that has been going on. At their zenith Soviet nuclear weapons broke 43,000 active. They are now down to something like 16000. The US's weapons broke 32,000 active, and are now down to less than a third of that total (~8000 IIRC), and even less "active" (~5000 IIRC?). To my knowledge no other country has reduced their stockpile by the percentages the US and Russia have. I'm not sure any other than US and Russia have done so significantly if at all.
To safely decom a nuclear weapon takes time and effort, and not insignificant amounts of it. To do so with thousands will take a rather long time.
A few problems with your theory: the main one is India has been nuclear since the 1970's.
... (Article 3):
We are entering dangerous times, and the Bush administration made a tragic mistake [economist.com] in its dealings with India. Washington has signed the NPT, and by the terms of the treaty, its signatories agree to ban the transfer of nuclear technology to any nation that refuses to sign the NPT. The NPT further stipulates that any signatory which has not yet developed nuclear weapons shall not pursue their development.
Since India exploded it's first nuclear weapon in 1974, they are already a nuclear power.
Let us examine the NPT, shall we?
Article one:
Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly; and not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, or control over such weapons or explosive devices.
Article two (direct linkage):
Each non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to receive the transfer from any transferor whatsoever of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or of control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly; not to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices; and not to seek or receive any assistance in the manufacture of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.
Hmm no breach here.
Next relevant portion up
2. Each State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to provide: (a) source or special fissionable material, or (b) equipment or material especially designed or prepared for the processing, use or production of special fissionable material, to any non-nuclear-weapon State for peaceful purposes, unless the source or special fissionable material shall be subject to the safeguards required by this article.
All clear here, as India is a nuclear state anyway.
And well that is it.
There is some wiggle room to say that India isn't a nuclear weapon state by terms of the treaty becuase of this line:
For the purposes of this Treaty, a nuclear-weapon State is one which has manufactured and exploded a nuclear weapon or other nuclear explosive device prior to January 1, 1967.
It does not however, say anything specifically regarding dealing with non-signatories. It deals specifically with non-nuclear states. To limit it to nonproliferation to signatories would be a gaping hole. To say "non-nuclear" and avoiding the signatory requirement the hole is non-existant.
All that said, the "proliferation" of peaceful nuclear usage is specifically allowed. Period. Now if you can point to specific breaches where Bush/The US gave India nuclear weapons technology and so forth then fine. But if you want to make the claim that any nuclear assistance such as nuclear energy assistance is a bad thing and against the treaty, then the treaty has been dead for decades. The Russians and the US assisted Iran years ago (Bush the elder, Clinton) with their nuclear power, and that's just one sample. France and the UK have assisted others (France aided Iraq) in the production of nuclear energy for non-weapon uses.
I know some of you weren't even born in 1974, but that is no escuse for not learning the history of the situation before making such absurd pronouncements as Bush being responsible for India having nukes.
yeah cuz we all know that these countries weren't going there prior to Bush getting into office and only started the day Bush was declared the winner.
Hmm
1974 - India explodes first nuclear device in underground test.
1998 - India carries out nuclear tests, leading to widespread international condemnation.
From Wikipedia regarding Iran:
NK was pursuing nukes as early as 1993.
Sounds to me like Bush must have a time machine. Or perhaps there is a more rational explanation.
Not many Presidents can boast of being asleep at the wheel while another nuclear power was born
And you would have done what, exactly to prevent it? Short of invading there is little you can actually do. Are you suggesting we should have "unilaterally invaded" NK last year to prevent them from developing "the bomb"? It's easy to say someone else was asleep when you aren't in that position and have no idea what it'd take to actually stop them. Tlaks have been going on now for what, a year or two on this very subject?
They aren't a big threat to the US but what do we do if they invade the south?
Pre-nuke?
Step one: wait until they unleash their massive barrage of artillery and chemical weaponry. Otherwise you get your ass handed back to you in a bowl. A small one. Mixed with the asses of everyone within a 50 mile radius of you.
Get the point? Realistically the nuclear weapons of NK don't change the invasion/defense of SK. At all.
The ones at risk right now are the Japanese and they may have to build a bomb out of self preservation.
No they don't. We can and have pledge to bomb NK in return. Not in so many words mind you. Most of the world would rapidly come to Japan's defense if NK nuked them. Do try to go beyond the knee-jerk reaction of blame the POTUS for what other countries do, and apply a at least modicum of thought to the situation. The saying goes that one can not "win" a nuclear war. However, nuclear between US or Russia, or even the UK and NK would be extremely one-sided and probably as close as is possible. At least two of those countries would be able to eliminate NK's nuclear retaliation capability in the first strike unless the materials and equipment were already outside the country.
And do educate yourself abit on the history before posting tripe:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/2604 437.stm
http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/dprkchron.as p
should be a decent starting point for you.
A few highlights:
January 1994: The director of the CIA estimates that North Korea may have produced one or two nuclear weapons.
June 13, 1994: North Korea announces its withdrawal from the IAEA. This is distinct from pulling out of the NPT--North Korea is still required to undergo IAEA inspections as part of its NPT obligations.
August 6, 1997: The United States imposes new sanctions on two additional North Korean entities for unspecified missile-proliferation activities.
April 17, 1998: The United States imposes sanctions on North Korea and Pakistan in response to Pyongyang's transfer of missile technology and components to Pakistan's Khan Research Laboratory.
June 16, 1998: The official Korean Central News Agency reports that Pyongyang will only end its missile technology exports if it is suitably compensated for financial losses.
July 15, 1998: The bipartisan Rumsfeld Commission concludes that the United States may have "little or no warning" before facing a long-range ballistic missile threat from "rogue states," such as North Korea and Iran.
December 28, 2000: President Clinton announces that he will not travel to North Korea before the end of his term, citing "insufficient time to complete the work at hand." According to a March 6 New York Times article, Clinton's national security adviser Sandy Berger was hesitant to have the president leave the country during the presidential election dispute, which he deemed "a potential 'constitutional crisis.'"
January 2, 2001: The United States imposes sanctions on North Korea's Changgwang Sinyong Corporation for violation of the Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000.*
March 6, 2001: At a joint press briefing with the Swedish foreign minister, Secretary of State Colin Powell says that the administration "plan[s] to engage with North Korea to pick up where President Clinton le
First, it is seismography. Second using seismographs for this is very limited. ALL it can tell you is that the earth moved/shook. It can not tell you if it was a nuclear blast or a conventional one, or even the collapse of a very large underground installation.
inurl:.gov confidential "do not distribute"
So you are saying that Foley somehow managed to cause an earthquake of 3.8-4.2 magnitude on the Korean peninsula, forged a message from NK to China saying they were going to conduct the test they have been talking about for some time now, convinced the NK government to proclaim a successful test all in order to get Foley's scandal off the front page?
Maybe I'm not the norm around here but I don't buy it.
What was front page material when the Foley situation hit? Maybe Clinton's remarks and questions (legitimate or not) about his performance in office? What about the previous front page story? What was going on in Congress when it decided to "investigate" steroid usage in baseball? Does it not occur to people that maybe, just maybe, NEWs changes often, and often when not expected? It isn't called "olds" for a reason.
Just what is insightful about someone saying they are scared of NK getting nukes?!?!
Can we please get a "me too" mod option so "insightful" can have it's rightful meaning again?
IMO, Chinese culture cares much about 'face', a concept of honor that requires the appearance of respect, even if we bicker shamelessly behind closed doors.
Then they should have responded immediately as you say we should have. Or is it a double standard? If you go to another country you should respect their customs when/where reasonable. However, when you wrong another you should not be expecting them to submit to your customs, rather you should accept theirs. In the case you mentioned, the Chinese should have been the ones to use the other culture. Why is it only the US is supposed to "respect" other cultures by submiting to their cultural norms rather than our own? I don't have to conform to anotehr culture's norms and expectations to respect it.
We should not, unless we have done wrong (outside of the social customs) to another culture, and then only in the specific instance. Just as other cultures should do. This notion that the US needs to always abandon it's own cultures for the sake of other cultures needs to die it's deserved death.
For additional giggles, put the following key into a Google search...
I am quite frankly suprised the result is only "286 English pages". I'd expected high, much higher. especially given that at least a few on the front page are clearly not related to the parent poster's intent.