The military GPS you have experience with is "red key".
"Black key" achitecture allows for unclassified cyrpto keys and hardware.
OK, now we're getting somewhere. You should've been this specific in your previous posts. It would've saved us both some time. There are still a few issues though:
It says the hardware is unclassified, even when keyed, but its design still requires DOD approval. Do potential users still need DOD approval and/or security clearances? The whitepaper itself is titled and aimed specifically towards Military Ranges and NASA Facilities. It also says the receivers are available to the more commercial, non-secure oriented sector. This still sounds like they're talking about government agencies only, just ones who aren't directly warfighting units. There's a difference between commercial users and the more commercial-oriented sector.
The purpose of the new GPS-PPS receivers is meant as a countermeasure to jamming and/or spoofing of the C/A-Code signal. The whitepaper even predicates the ability to acquire the P-Code signal in the event of intentional or unintentional jamming of the C/A-Code signal. And its use of scare quotes around "direct" military P(Y)-Code signal acquisition is ambiguous. It implies that the receiver is not truly decoding the P signal, but nonetheless using it somehow to counteract the jamming.
Can these receivers be used for more than just timing and synchronization? As I understand it, the purpose for having an additional encrypted signal (and Selective Availability, when it was still activated) is to prevent GPS from being used against us, i.e. an explosives-laden Cessna with GPS guidance (the poor-man's cruise missile). I admit I don't know what sort of time accuracy is required for these types of applications. My computers use ntp to periodically synchronize their clocks, but only because I like having the correct time (and the hardware clock in one of my computers is slow). That's plenty accurate for my needs.
I not sure how you got it into your head that you're an authority on this subject, but you're 100% wrong.
I didn't claim to be any kind of authority, I'm just writing what I know from my own experience and research. My original post was from memory, but this time I did some quick Google searches to backup my claims with some evidence. Anyone could learn this information on their own. However, I do know a few things about GPS:
I've used several civilian GPS receivers, from handheld models for hiking or hunting, to a marine model mounted on a boat for fishing, to aircraft mounted models. In a geography class I took in college, we did some labs to observe variation in GPS readings, both over time at one location, and at the same time at different locations. It was very interesting.
I'm a surveyor by trade, and have used different types of differential GPS surveying, like post-processing, telemetry-based, and now real-time kinetic.
I'm an Air Force veteran, and have training and field experience with the Rockwell PLGR handheld (the term handheld being used very loosely) GPS receiver, which can decode the P signal when using the decryption key. (Read this [scroll down to multi-color highlighted paragraph] to see how carefully the key is protected.)
I still don't claim to be any kind of expert on GPS, but I probably know more than your average person.
I'm not about to give out anymore information than is publicly availible on the 'net, but I suggest you start with those two sites. The Zyfer site has a number of highly informative PDF's.
My point is that they DO give out military GPS receivers (and codes, duh) for select non-military applications. The first site was one which sells these revievers.
Did you actually read any of the PDFs on the site you reference? The very first PDF on the page has this to say:
Under FEATURES -> GPS Reveiver:
Standard 8-channel C/A
Optional SAASM PPS (for approved users)
Under the model description: the FEI-Zyfer GSync can provide you with either Standard Positioning Service (SPS) GPS or the very latest in GPS technology SAASM PPS GPS receivers (for DoD authorized users only).
Under SPECIFICATIONS -> Reference Options: Standard GPS (SPS C/A) 8 channel, (L1) SAASM GPS (PPS, C/A P-Y) For approved users (L1/L2)
So the evidence you're citing actually undermines the point you were trying to make.
If you look at the lists on that second page, you can see a list of projects which have these recievers.
The projects listed on that page are DOD projects. Obviously, the corporations manufacturing the devices need access to the decryption key to test their products. But, like all defense contractors working on classified projects, every employee who needs access has to obtain the appropriate DOD security clearance.
Q: Which of the states are most closely associated with the space industry?
A: Texas (Houston, home of NASA) and Florida (site of the Kennedy Space Centre [sic]).
Those sites you mentioned are where some of the NASA facilities are located (don't forget Vandenberg AFB in CA), but most of the money actually goes to the defense contractors who build everything. They're located in many different states, in addition to the ones previously mentioned.
Besides, all the US Supreme Court did was tell the FL Supreme Court to stop making the rules up as they go. Three separate recounts by media and others after the election confirmed that Bush won the Florida votes. Regarding the butterfly ballots in West Palm Beach County:
They were designed and approved by Democrats.
Sample ballots were mailed to every household with detailed instructions.
Pat Buchanan got 30,000 votes there in the Republican primary, so is it unreasonable to think that 3000 would vote for him in the general election?
Your first link is just a GPS receiver available for either civil or military use.
Your second link just tells which part of the US government is responsible for controlling access to GPS security devices.
What was your point exactly?
Even if someone had a GPS reciever capable of deccrypting the military P code, it couldn't function without the key. And as I said before, and as your second link points out, it's classified, so they don't just give it to just anyone.
BTW, the US hasn't completely ruled out using SA, this is why they are allowing military GPS receivers in certain non-military critical infrastructure applications.
It's not a matter of military vs. non-military receivers. Every GPS receiver picks up the same signal, and understands the CA (coarse acquisition) code. The only difference is that military receivers can also understand the P (precision) code, which is encrypted. The encryption is classified, and changes frequently. Each change requires the new key to be downloaded to military receivers. The key is not given out to just anybody; they need the proper security clearance and a need-to-know.
Military GPS receivers aren't being used in non-military critical infrastructure applications, but the receivers they are using are probably more accurate than standard military GPS receivers. This is possible using differential GPS, i.e. comparing the GPS signal you're receiving with another receiver placed over a known geographic position (either post-processing the data or by telemetry). Anyone could buy a decent GPS surveying system for a few thousand $$ that gets 1 cm accuracy when stationary, or 1 m accuracy in real-time.
Mongols destroyed the ancient Chinese civilization. China used to the one of the top civilizations at that time (along with India, Egypt, etc) but it was destroyed.
You don't know what you're talking about. Ancient China was never destroyed. It just fell into a time of internal strife and civil war known as the Period of the Warring States. Later, the Han Dynasty was harassed from the north by nomadic steppe people known as the Xiongnu, who were Turkic, not Mongols.
The Mongols didn't become important until the early 13th Century, when a Mongol named Temujin, now known by his title, Genghis Khan, united the many Mongol tribes, and eventually Turkic and other nomadic steppe peoples. He never completely conquered China; it was his grandson, Kublai Khan, who accomplished that. However, rather than destroying China, he adopted Chinese culture and kept their bureacracy and system of governance in place. This didn't last long though, as the Yuan Dynasty he founded left China in the late 14th Century.
The Communists came to power on a nationalist platform. Most Chinese didn't even know what communism was yet there was massive support for the Communists. The reason was because it was a nationalist movement (like many so-called Communist or Marixst groups).
No, most Chinese probably did know what communism was, since there had been a Communist Party since the early 1920s, which gradually gained support. The Chinese Civil War was between the Nationalists and Communists. They had a truce during WW II to fight the Japanese, but continued fighting until 1949, when the Communists took over mainland China.
The Communists basically kicked Japan (and other foreign interests) out.
No, after Japan unconditionally surrendered to the US, they left China.
While Windows NT did have an OS/2 subsystem, it was one of a few. NT also had a DOS, Win16, POSIX, and its native Win32 subsystem.
NT is not merely OS/2 v3 renamed, it's a completely new OS, written from scratch. It has more in common with its architect's previous creation, VMS, than with OS/2.
On a side note, the very first version of NT released was 3.1, as a marketing ploy. They didn't want people to think it was a lesser version than their desktop version of Windows.
Selective Availability has already been disabled since May 1, 2000. The DOD stated they don't intend to turn it back on, even in the case of war. They said they can disable GPS in a specific region if needed.
Yes, it's quite easy to jam the signal locally. All you need to do is transmit a stronger signal in the same frequency band. This could be either a brute-strength transmission of noise to prevent GPS receivers from working (very easy), or transmission of signals that imitate GPS satellites, giving GPS receivers erroneous readings (much more difficult).
Is china working on a similar system?
I don't know if China is, but Russia already has a similar system called GLONASS.
As a European, I want our economy to be strong and united, and our defense force strong and not reliant on a third party.
I don't see how the Galileo system will help the EU economy, only hurt it. Some European countries are in deep financial crises already.
This is not because I envy the USA. It is because I live in Europe, and even if the USA says that it'll propect us in the case of a third world war, I'd much rather the EU had it's own capabilities because the USA has shown itself to be increasingly unilateral in its actions.
I'm all for it. Europe has gotten a (practically) free-ride for too long. It's avoided spending much on defense only because the US was taking up the slack.
Also, I'd argue that World War III is already over, it was the Cold War. There are also good arguments to consider the current War on Terrorism to be World War IV. Its scope and breadth certainly qualifies.
I thought I was reading a well reasoned, rational comment, until I got to your second point. It went downhill from there.
Point 2: USA DOES remove dictators but it also creates them. In some sense, if USA (or for that matter other interventionist countries) did not intervene in the affairs of others, the world would be better off. You'll have a hard time finding the last dictator that USA did not support, train, fund, or help in the past. Most of the dictators/tyrants/etc that USA has attempted to eliminate have been its own creations. This is clearly the case with Saddam Hussein and Usama bin Laden, but it also extends to many others like Manuel Noreiga (CIA asset).
We didn't create any of those 3. We did support Saddam in the Iran/Iraq war, but he was already in power. We did fund some of the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, but not directly bin Laden. Noriega was a CIA asset, but we captured him when he went astray. I'm not going to defend every action of the US, because many of them (including these partially) were extremely short-sighted and ultimately bad decisions.
That's why I'm impressed with Bush's new foreign policy. He overturned decades of ultra-pragmatic, Realpolitik thinking in his speech to the National Endowment for Democracy. Bush admitted that 60 years of pandering to dictators and tyrants for short-term gains has been a failure, and that freedom and democracy will be the overarching concerns now. It remains to be seen how he will implement this policy, and if it will last past his presidency.
You are either an American or one that is brainwashed by US propaganda. When you live under the control of the empire (yes, USA is an imperialist), everything the government does seems to be towards good when in fact it isn't.
I guess I'm not brainwashed, since I don't think everything the US government is good. If you think the US is an empire, you've got a serious misunderstanding of that word. We had a brief flirtation with empire at the turn of the 20th century, and it didn't fit well. So we went back to what America's been doing since its inception, toppling empires.
US government and its imperialism is similar. When you are within the borders of the empire, it is hard to discern reality from propaganda.
I spent several years outside the US, and it reinforced my belief in the ideals of America.
We're doing quite a poor job. All the 'humanitarian' things we've done also has an ulterior motive. I know it sounds cynical, but there looks like there's more evidence to support that than refute it.
Our humanitarian interventions didn't have ulterior motives, just motives. We chose to intervene in some cases and not others based on our national interests. This is how every country justifies its actions. Ulterior motives imply that we had secret motives besides the publicly stated ones.
We're not helping peace in Israel and Palestine, or else we'd be more like Europe and condemn the apartheid wall and Israeli airstrikes in civillian areas. Bush is too quiet, because he doesn't want to upset the Christian/Jewish/Zionist voters. He's not hard enough on Sharon
The Bush administration is against the wall Israel is building. Last month they announced they decided to deduct money from Israeli loan guarantees because of it. Besides, I'm extremely thankful we're not more like Europe.
We're not helping in Afghanistan, and when we do we are doing it for our own interests and not theirs. Go read "Dude, where's my country?" and you'll see how Afghanistan is a mess of special interests, oil pipelines, and skeletons in Bush's closet.
Actually, we are helping in Afghanistan. Not as much as I'd like, but more than anyone else has. And, like I said above, of course it's for our own interests. No country ever acts out of pure altruism.
If you're gullible enough to believe Michael Moore, I've got a bridge I want to sell you. Here's an article about his (lack of) intellectual honesty, and here's a list of some of the egregious errors in the book you cited.
We're not giving jobs to Iraqis. In fact, we fired everyone in the army, instantly putting thousands out of jobs, and making thousands of 6-person families unemployed. That made about 250,000 people (soldiers and their families they support) into enemies instantly.
Disbanding the Iraqi army so quickly was a mistake. Jay Garner, the guy who did it, has admitted as much. That didn't necessarily make many enemies though. The people fighting us in Iraq now aren't the poor, lower class conscripts that made up the bulk of the Iraqi army. They're either hard-core Ba'athists, militant Islamists, or foreigners.
Not only that, but instead of hiring Iraqis to rebuild the country like after the first Gulf War (Iraq has a very high percentage of Civil engineers), the US hired US companies, specifically Halliburton, to do the job. While it cost something like $50,000 to rebuild a bridge after the first Gulf War, using only Iraqi resources, it will supposedly cost millions for Halliburton to do it. Who's going to bleed in debt from this? Certainly not the US, the cost will be passed on to the Iraqis, who will go from a not-badly-off country to a poor one.
Luckily there aren't many bridges to repair. The US contracts are being paid strictly from US funds. Some Congress members tried to make $20B of the $87B bill a loan to Iraq, but thinking heads prevailed.
Maybe you should consider the extreme limits of both approach to understand the assymetry: 0 guns means 0 crimes commited with firearms.
That isn't even a reasonable argument. Just passing a law that outlaws guns doesn't mean there will be no guns. For that to happen, it would require either 100% voluntary compliance or 100% enforcement of the law, neither of which is at all feasible.
Besides, even if some utopia had no guns, it would eliminate only firearm related crimes, not all crimes. Banning guns would have the effect of allowing the physically strong to prey on the weak, young, and elderly.
100% saturation might mean a) slightly more crime b) sam amount of crime c) slightly less crime.
Which answer do you think is more likely? Personally, I believe there would be less crime, if people were proficient in the use of their firearms. Unlike the last case, this would level the playing field, so the less physically strong would have sufficient force to deter attackers. Also, other people around could intervene. If nothing else, a fully armed society would be a very polite society.
By the same token, it seems plausible that people would commit less burglary if there was a good chance that the homeowners would have firearms, but again, the data does not support that line of reasoning.
That isn't quite accurate. In (at least American) English, there's a minor semantic difference between burglary and robbery. They're basically the same crime, i.e. entering a house or building for the purpose of theft. The difference is that burglary is stealing from an unoccupied place, and robbery is stealing from an occupied place, by force or coercion. In the US, the FBI categorizes burglary as a property crime, and robbery as a violent crime.
I've seen statistics which illustrate the effect of firearm ownership on these crimes by comparing rates of these crimes between the UK and the US. I don't remember the aggregate comparisons, but the proportion of burglaries to robberies was what really stood out.
In the UK, where there are rather strict gun control laws, robberies greatly outnumber burglaries. The robberies weren't necessarily committed with firearms, as a knife can be sufficient coercion when the victims are unarmed.
In the US, with less gun control laws, the opposite was the case: burglaries greatly outnumber robberies, as criminals would rather not take the chance that their victims may be armed, so they find places that aren't currently occupied.
So you're happy to use a certain n word that used to be used commonly around the world to describe "african americans"?
No, and it's disingenuous to imply as much. There's a huge difference between merely standing up to political correctness and the racist remark you're insinuating.
I would refer to the person as simply an American.
Besides, the term you're suggesting was not exclusive to that group. In the large waves of immigration in the late 19th Century, it was also directed towards the Irish, Italians, Serbs, and other Catholics and southern Europeans. There's no longer really any discrimination towards these groups now, though. We're still working on reconciliation with other ethnicities.
USian implies a resident of the US, which covers a smaller geographical area than America. UKian implies a resident of the UK, which covers a larger geographical area than Britain.
No, in common usage throughout the world, the word America used by itself is the country aka USA. If America is prefixed with North or South, then it refers to the aforementioned continents.
You'll find that UKian is used just as frequently as USian online, and for the same reason -- they're both more finely grained than American and British respectively.
I don't frequent a lot of UK sites, but I often read articles in.uk domains that were linked from/. or blogs. I don't recall ever seeing UKian before. But I have seen USian used many times on/. before, usually pejoratively.
The reason you don't see PRCian is that China is the geographical area in which the Chinese people live. The same isn't true of the UK or the US. Thus they're reasonable abbreviations. Live with it.
I will live with it. I was just pointing out the absurdity of using certain labels. As a wise man once said: You can call me anything you want, just don't call me late for dinner.
There's a significant minority of Catholic Irish in the N. Ireland who take offence to being called British.
I'd refer to them as Irish. I was merely making an analogy.
Don't forget, Great Britain is England, Scotland and Wales. (Britain just England and Wales, I think). No mention of the Irish province. The soveriegn nation is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, shortened to United Kingdom or UK. This is why UKian is more PC than Briton or British.
I realize the UK is made up of a few distinct ethnic identities. But, I actually can't ever recall seeing UKian before, although I've seen USian used several times on/. (usually in a pejorative sense). Besides, I have no interest, and will spend little energy, trying to be politically correct.
My wife's cousin considers himself American, but most definitely not USian. He's a N. American, and a citizen of Canada. Of course, USians make the word American synonymous with people from the US and fail to see how this overlooks others on the same continent.
We aren't the only ones who consider American synonymous with people from the US, that's the language used commonly around the world.
BTW, I'm a Englishman and Briton living in Canada who's also lived in the US... so I think I can speak with some authority on this.
I'm an American who's lived in England and traveled extensively around the world. But I won't pretend to speak with any sort of authority on the issue. I'm just pointing out the absurdity of using certain labels.
Many of those in central/south america object ot the use of "American" to mean those from the US... as do us Canadians, often.. though we are too laid back to care.
I know several people from Central and South America, and they would almost all identify themselves as Latin or South American, respectively, rather than just American. Actually, many of them would probably identify themselves by country (i.e. Guatemalan, Brazilian, etc.) before a regional/continental affiliation.
I also know many people from Canada and Mexico, who identify themselves as Canadians and Mexicans. I've never heard anybody identify themselves as North American.
The History Channel did a wonderful documentary about this misunderstood period of time hosted by Terry Jones. I highly recommend it.
I've seen the first part of it, but I'd hardly call it wonderful, and it isn't going to clear up any misunderstanding either. It oversimplifies complicated issues too much, and they obviously don't understand Christian theology.
Actually that's a common mistranslation of 1 Tim 6:10 from the King James Version. A more accurate translation is "the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil" (NIV or NKJV).
In Arabic, 123 would be read as "three and twenty and one hundred". This means that it is written from right to left, just like the rest of the language. Europeans, eager to read things from left to right, interpret that as "one hundred and twenty three", leaving the digits in the same order, but reversing the reading order.
The other poster who responded to corrected this. In Arabic numbers are written and read left-to-right (with one minor exception, they read the ones before the tens), unlike the rest of their script.
Unlike what many would like to think, Hebrew is not an ancient language. Biblical Hebrew is, of course. However, while biblical Hebrew does use the decimal system more or less, it counts like the arabs (starting from the units, and advancing upwards). The writing notation resembles the roman one, and was not decimal.
The only difference between Biblical Hebrew and Modern Hebrew is the addition of many new words for things that didn't exist in Biblical times, i.e. telephones, airplanes, computers, etc. Also, in daily spoken usage, substitute and foreign words and slang are probably pretty common, like most modern languages. Even in English, nobody speaks proper written English; they use contractions, slang, etc.
On informal forums like/., I use the terms "Americans", "USians", "Seppos", "Yanks" and the like pretty much interchangeably and at random. I don't consider them to be - and hence don't use them with the intention of being - derogatory or derisive. But then again I'm an Aussie and we call ourselves and others all sorts of nasty names without ill intent, so I can see how others might not realise that.
Having said that, I was under the impression "Americans" was not technically the right word because it theoretically included residents of both North *and* South America. My understand is "The United States of America" is designated name for the home country of people generally referred to as "Americans", but technically the term "Americans" also includes those indigenous to Canada, Mexico, etc, etc. Thus, "USians" - as a slang term - is a reasonable abbreviation.
"USians" is most definitely not a reasonable abbreviation. It's akin to calling someone from the United Kingdom a "UKian" instead of British, or someone from the People's Republic of China a "PRCian" instead if Chinese.
While all residents of North and South America could conceivably be called Americans, it would not be accurate in many contexts. When someone is referred to as African, Asian, or European, it's often in regards to ethnicity, not political citizenship. There are people who are ethnically American, usually called Native Americans, or the unfortunate name American Indians (a misleading name that stuck since some early explorers thought they'd reached India).
However, the only country with America in its name is the USA. People from Canada are Canadians, and people from Mexico are Mexican; so people from the United States of America are American.
Taco could spend his days adding new features to the moderation system... or he could appease some HTML fetishists by performing an expensive rewrite that results in the same look and no new features.
I don't think CmdrTaco spends much time doing either.
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It says the hardware is unclassified, even when keyed, but its design still requires DOD approval. Do potential users still need DOD approval and/or security clearances? The whitepaper itself is titled and aimed specifically towards Military Ranges and NASA Facilities. It also says the receivers are available to the more commercial, non-secure oriented sector. This still sounds like they're talking about government agencies only, just ones who aren't directly warfighting units. There's a difference between commercial users and the more commercial-oriented sector.
The purpose of the new GPS-PPS receivers is meant as a countermeasure to jamming and/or spoofing of the C/A-Code signal. The whitepaper even predicates the ability to acquire the P-Code signal in the event of intentional or unintentional jamming of the C/A-Code signal. And its use of scare quotes around "direct" military P(Y)-Code signal acquisition is ambiguous. It implies that the receiver is not truly decoding the P signal, but nonetheless using it somehow to counteract the jamming.
Can these receivers be used for more than just timing and synchronization? As I understand it, the purpose for having an additional encrypted signal (and Selective Availability, when it was still activated) is to prevent GPS from being used against us, i.e. an explosives-laden Cessna with GPS guidance (the poor-man's cruise missile). I admit I don't know what sort of time accuracy is required for these types of applications. My computers use ntp to periodically synchronize their clocks, but only because I like having the correct time (and the hardware clock in one of my computers is slow). That's plenty accurate for my needs.
I didn't claim to be any kind of authority, I'm just writing what I know from my own experience and research. My original post was from memory, but this time I did some quick Google searches to backup my claims with some evidence. Anyone could learn this information on their own. However, I do know a few things about GPS:
I still don't claim to be any kind of expert on GPS, but I probably know more than your average person.
Did you actually read any of the PDFs on the site you reference? The very first PDF on the page has this to say:
SAASM GPS (PPS, C/A P-Y) For approved users (L1/L2)
So the evidence you're citing actually undermines the point you were trying to make.
The projects listed on that page are DOD projects. Obviously, the corporations manufacturing the devices need access to the decryption key to test their products. But, like all defense contractors working on classified projects, every employee who needs access has to obtain the appropriate DOD security clearance.
Besides, all the US Supreme Court did was tell the FL Supreme Court to stop making the rules up as they go. Three separate recounts by media and others after the election confirmed that Bush won the Florida votes. Regarding the butterfly ballots in West Palm Beach County:
Your first link is just a GPS receiver available for either civil or military use.
Your second link just tells which part of the US government is responsible for controlling access to GPS security devices.
What was your point exactly?
Even if someone had a GPS reciever capable of deccrypting the military P code, it couldn't function without the key. And as I said before, and as your second link points out, it's classified, so they don't just give it to just anyone.
Military GPS receivers aren't being used in non-military critical infrastructure applications, but the receivers they are using are probably more accurate than standard military GPS receivers. This is possible using differential GPS, i.e. comparing the GPS signal you're receiving with another receiver placed over a known geographic position (either post-processing the data or by telemetry). Anyone could buy a decent GPS surveying system for a few thousand $$ that gets 1 cm accuracy when stationary, or 1 m accuracy in real-time.
The Mongols didn't become important until the early 13th Century, when a Mongol named Temujin, now known by his title, Genghis Khan, united the many Mongol tribes, and eventually Turkic and other nomadic steppe peoples. He never completely conquered China; it was his grandson, Kublai Khan, who accomplished that. However, rather than destroying China, he adopted Chinese culture and kept their bureacracy and system of governance in place. This didn't last long though, as the Yuan Dynasty he founded left China in the late 14th Century.
No, most Chinese probably did know what communism was, since there had been a Communist Party since the early 1920s, which gradually gained support. The Chinese Civil War was between the Nationalists and Communists. They had a truce during WW II to fight the Japanese, but continued fighting until 1949, when the Communists took over mainland China.
No, after Japan unconditionally surrendered to the US, they left China.
The parent post was correct.
While Windows NT did have an OS/2 subsystem, it was one of a few. NT also had a DOS, Win16, POSIX, and its native Win32 subsystem.
NT is not merely OS/2 v3 renamed, it's a completely new OS, written from scratch. It has more in common with its architect's previous creation, VMS, than with OS/2.
On a side note, the very first version of NT released was 3.1, as a marketing ploy. They didn't want people to think it was a lesser version than their desktop version of Windows.
Selective Availability has already been disabled since May 1, 2000. The DOD stated they don't intend to turn it back on, even in the case of war. They said they can disable GPS in a specific region if needed.
I don't know if China is, but Russia already has a similar system called GLONASS.
I'm all for it. Europe has gotten a (practically) free-ride for too long. It's avoided spending much on defense only because the US was taking up the slack.
Also, I'd argue that World War III is already over, it was the Cold War. There are also good arguments to consider the current War on Terrorism to be World War IV. Its scope and breadth certainly qualifies.
We didn't create any of those 3. We did support Saddam in the Iran/Iraq war, but he was already in power. We did fund some of the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, but not directly bin Laden. Noriega was a CIA asset, but we captured him when he went astray. I'm not going to defend every action of the US, because many of them (including these partially) were extremely short-sighted and ultimately bad decisions.
That's why I'm impressed with Bush's new foreign policy. He overturned decades of ultra-pragmatic, Realpolitik thinking in his speech to the National Endowment for Democracy. Bush admitted that 60 years of pandering to dictators and tyrants for short-term gains has been a failure, and that freedom and democracy will be the overarching concerns now. It remains to be seen how he will implement this policy, and if it will last past his presidency.
I guess I'm not brainwashed, since I don't think everything the US government is good. If you think the US is an empire, you've got a serious misunderstanding of that word. We had a brief flirtation with empire at the turn of the 20th century, and it didn't fit well. So we went back to what America's been doing since its inception, toppling empires.
I spent several years outside the US, and it reinforced my belief in the ideals of America.
The Bush administration is against the wall Israel is building. Last month they announced they decided to deduct money from Israeli loan guarantees because of it. Besides, I'm extremely thankful we're not more like Europe.
Actually, we are helping in Afghanistan. Not as much as I'd like, but more than anyone else has. And, like I said above, of course it's for our own interests. No country ever acts out of pure altruism.
If you're gullible enough to believe Michael Moore, I've got a bridge I want to sell you. Here's an article about his (lack of) intellectual honesty, and here's a list of some of the egregious errors in the book you cited.
Disbanding the Iraqi army so quickly was a mistake. Jay Garner, the guy who did it, has admitted as much. That didn't necessarily make many enemies though. The people fighting us in Iraq now aren't the poor, lower class conscripts that made up the bulk of the Iraqi army. They're either hard-core Ba'athists, militant Islamists, or foreigners.
Luckily there aren't many bridges to repair. The US contracts are being paid strictly from US funds. Some Congress members tried to make $20B of the $87B bill a loan to Iraq, but thinking heads prevailed.
Besides, even if some utopia had no guns, it would eliminate only firearm related crimes, not all crimes. Banning guns would have the effect of allowing the physically strong to prey on the weak, young, and elderly.
Which answer do you think is more likely? Personally, I believe there would be less crime, if people were proficient in the use of their firearms. Unlike the last case, this would level the playing field, so the less physically strong would have sufficient force to deter attackers. Also, other people around could intervene. If nothing else, a fully armed society would be a very polite society.
I've seen statistics which illustrate the effect of firearm ownership on these crimes by comparing rates of these crimes between the UK and the US. I don't remember the aggregate comparisons, but the proportion of burglaries to robberies was what really stood out.
In the UK, where there are rather strict gun control laws, robberies greatly outnumber burglaries. The robberies weren't necessarily committed with firearms, as a knife can be sufficient coercion when the victims are unarmed.
In the US, with less gun control laws, the opposite was the case: burglaries greatly outnumber robberies, as criminals would rather not take the chance that their victims may be armed, so they find places that aren't currently occupied.
In what sense? I'm not sure I understand what you're asking.
I would refer to the person as simply an American.
Besides, the term you're suggesting was not exclusive to that group. In the large waves of immigration in the late 19th Century, it was also directed towards the Irish, Italians, Serbs, and other Catholics and southern Europeans. There's no longer really any discrimination towards these groups now, though. We're still working on reconciliation with other ethnicities.
I don't frequent a lot of UK sites, but I often read articles in
I will live with it. I was just pointing out the absurdity of using certain labels. As a wise man once said: You can call me anything you want, just don't call me late for dinner.
I realize the UK is made up of a few distinct ethnic identities. But, I actually can't ever recall seeing UKian before, although I've seen USian used several times on
We aren't the only ones who consider American synonymous with people from the US, that's the language used commonly around the world.
I'm an American who's lived in England and traveled extensively around the world. But I won't pretend to speak with any sort of authority on the issue. I'm just pointing out the absurdity of using certain labels.
I also know many people from Canada and Mexico, who identify themselves as Canadians and Mexicans. I've never heard anybody identify themselves as North American.
The only difference between Biblical Hebrew and Modern Hebrew is the addition of many new words for things that didn't exist in Biblical times, i.e. telephones, airplanes, computers, etc. Also, in daily spoken usage, substitute and foreign words and slang are probably pretty common, like most modern languages. Even in English, nobody speaks proper written English; they use contractions, slang, etc.
While all residents of North and South America could conceivably be called Americans, it would not be accurate in many contexts. When someone is referred to as African, Asian, or European, it's often in regards to ethnicity, not political citizenship. There are people who are ethnically American, usually called Native Americans, or the unfortunate name American Indians (a misleading name that stuck since some early explorers thought they'd reached India).
However, the only country with America in its name is the USA. People from Canada are Canadians, and people from Mexico are Mexican; so people from the United States of America are American.
Except Al Gore lost the election himself, fair and square.