Interesting issue you bring up, but you need to divorce yourself from the political considerations on this.
There are reasons to create a new branch of the armed services that go beyond costs. The mission and budget of the Air Force is quite big, as is their command structure. Carving out a new branch, much like the carving out the Army Air Corps, does have it's advantages. Flattening the command structure allows more flexibility and faster response times, allows for specialized training and skills to be closer to the top of the command structure, and allows for focusing appropriated budget and resources on specific areas of the mission.
Of course, there is a down side to everything. But in my opinion this idea has merit. It flattens the hierarchy at the Pentagon, allows the development and advancement of resources with specialized skills. And creates a sharper focus on a specific problem set. Rockets and satellites go one way, things that depend on wings go another. It's a natural division and there is very little overlap, so it actually makes sense to me.
Remember what happens when you flatten something: it gets wider. Have space forces be a subsidiary command of the Air Force makes sense right now because the technology simply isn't mature enough to warrant in independent command. As an independent command you add senior command staff at the political level (think White House/Pentagon) and the support staff that goes with it, scientific staff, support and logistical staff, training facilities for both basic and advanced training, OCS/academy locations, etc. So you are either relying on contractors for staffing (very expensive but politically attractive) or robbing from other branches/setting up your own training pipeline or manpower pool.
Keep it as part of the Air Force and you keep the vertical efficiency the Air Force already has. Pull from Air Force enlisted and officer recruits or existing unit, rely on the technological and institutional knowledge the Air Force already has from decades of cooperation with NASA and working on Star Wars, X-37, etc. Until it reaches a critical mass it is too inefficient and expensive to have it operating by itself.
if someone else does it, then they're bad people. Waaah-waaah-waaah. The corrupt, dishonest and hypocritical war-mongering shithole of America complaining again.
Let's really freak people out: We need a treaty that the only vessels allowed to be armed in space must be under the control of UN, staffed by a multinational crew and composed of a command crew made up primarily of people from each of the UNSC member states(for example French captain, Russian XO, American Chief engineer, Chinese Senior NCO, etc).
So, they actually publish the journal and organize conferences in meatspace, yet we are supposed to believe they are fake?
Those are not fake, they are quite real. May be we should just call them alternative to the mainstream?
Way to oppress the startups.
If they are publishing everything that is submitted without any type of peer review or adherence to scope of stated fields then it is fair to argue that they are fake journals. An "alternative" journal would be something like PLOS One as opposed to, say, the New England Journal of Medicine.
There's no good reason to move that stuff out of the Air Force at this time, because it is a small amount of activity compared to the whole. The only reason you might want to move that stuff into its own force is so that you can handicap it. Trump works for Putin, who would very much like to see our ability to manage military interests in space impaired...
Trump just wants to go down in history as the guy who created the Space Force and guarantee having spaceships named after him. I can already see it 30 years from now: President Ivanka Trump christening the launch of the first armed and manned US vessel in space: the USSFS Donald J Trump.
While you're at it, please ignore our new Space Force.
You do understand that the "Space Force" thing is likely a reaction to this kind of activity from the Russians and Chinese right? As campy as it sounds, it sure seems like an idea who's time has long since come.
The "Space Force" thing is likely a reaction of a person with declining mental faculties (see the very name "Space Force" as an example) who is determined to put his name on things and is unable to understand the bureaucratic inefficiency, financial strain, duplication of effort, and wastefulness that creating another military branch would bring. Especially one as ill-defined and rudimentary technologically as space warfare/space combat. Leave it under the auspices of the Air Force until technological capability or operational necessity warrant it's own independent command structure.
I'm sure the name "Air Force" seemed silly when it was broken off from the Army to become it's own military branch in 1947.
Not really. The RAF (Royal Air Force) had already existed since the end of WWI, and it a logical step to go from the Army Air Corps to simply Air Force. Space Force does sound like a name straight out of a campy 50's pop novel, though.
Mike Rowe did a Dirty Jobs episode featuring Coober Pedy as well. Was a pretty interesting episode, and shows just how desolate a lot of Australia really is.
Or, given the reputation for shenanigans outside the conference that these types of events have, maybe they were trying to make sure the attendees weren't doing any extracurricular hacking in their rooms.
When that shooter was allowed to carry all that hardware, unchecked, and massacred all those innocent people, that was a hotel fuck-up.
It's not like the guy was just strolling through the lobby with a couple AR-15s with 100-rd drum mags slung over his shoulder. He brought them in in bags. Even the number of bags he used, if they could even passively track how many bags he actually had, isn't excessive for Vegas with all the conventions, meetings, etc. So unless you think hotels need to start doing bag checks or xraying everything there's not much they can do.
If your app is such a malware target for your users that other stores have to warn people, then maybe you're doing something wrong, Epic.
Cheap-ass dip-shits will never get a dime from me.
It's more like the people that will blow $100s of their (parents') money on a free game to buy skins and dances are the type of people that are more likely to fall for malware and tricks.
He also drove a company that is literally synonymous with America-Harley Davidson-to start producing overseas and is now calling for a boycott as well. An American president is calling for a boycott of a flagship American brand.....
Nintendo owns the intellectual property for its games, and when people pirate them instead of buying a Nintendo Super NES Classic Edition or a downloading a copy from one of its digital storefronts, it can argue it's losing money. [...] Even when a Nintendo game isn't for sale, it's still the company's intellectual property, and it can enforce its copyright if it wants.
Emphasis mine. If they're not selling the game, then they can't be making money off of it, so obviously they can't be losing money due to copyright violations.
Disney Vault. Especially with the success of the NES/SNES classics, Nintendo is going to sit on the IP for a few years, clamp down on alternate methods of playing the old games, then rerelease the games for sale on different mediums. It's just like what Disney does with their movies where they go on sale for a few months and then wait a couple years before releasing them.
See, the good people emigrate and leave the assholes behind to kill each other and fuck up the country some more.
There's your mistake. It's not the "good people" that get out, leaving the bad people behind; the people that get out are the people who can get out. There are plenty of factors that keep people in their home country that do not preclude them from being good people. And quite often the people who have the means to get out are the assholes killing people because they've taken from other people.
I have a basic understanding of African history and what the Europeans did to them, but fuck'in A; they are gone now and have been for decades.
What's the problem?! Why so many failed states?
The problem is twofold: first of all, Europe fucked up Africa enough that it still hasn't recovered (same with the Middle East). Europe had a history in Africa of very harsh and draconian rule, often playing tribal/ethnic groups against each other which only exacerbated existing tensions. Many African states won independence only through rebellion and war, others had a long drawn out process. By the time European states had left they had extracted a significant amount of wealth and resources (as well as the technical knowledge necessary to produce said resources and wealth), leaving the new African states on their own. You had fights for power, fights to control resources, etc.
The second part is that quite often their own government screws them over. Africa is rife with corrupt or inefficient governments, both at the state and local levels, so that quite often international aid or domestically produced resources get diverted to line pockets. Weak central governments lead to criminal or militant groups controlling areas outside urban centers, political parties work with military officials to promote dynastic one-party rule (Zimbabwe, others), populist governments create inefficient or unworkable policies (SA), and violent conflicts such as in the Congo, Sierra Leone or Rwanda create lasting effects not just internally but in neighboring states as well. And being poor is not the issue; in fact, some of the states with the worst problems are rich in resources (this is known as the resource curse).
The problem with a "smaller" phone is that most consumers will expect it to also come with a smaller price. a 3" phone basically costs the same thing to produce as a 6" phone
Seeing as how an iPhone X has a 64% profit margin (>$360 to make, retails for $1k), it should be easy for a 3" phone to cost less and still maintain a healthy profit margin. Don't know why people were so excited about Apple reaching $1T, part of the reason they got so high is because they massively overcharge for their products.
As a token of appreciation, you get to choose: gunship or gunboat?
This'll really blow your mind: a gunboat refers to a type of sailing vessel while a gunship refers to aircraft. You could theoretically have a coastal bombardment ship with a complement of ground attack helicopters on board and you would have the only instance where it is possible for a boat to carry and launch a ship.
I'll have to look them up tonight. I've never heard of them, but from what you describe it sounds like complete heresy. Nothing in Revelations indicated that the end times can be or will be brought about by man. In fact, it says "no man knows the hour or the day" indicating it will be on God's time table. I often wonder how these groups call themselves Christians when there is nothing in scripture to substantiate what they believe.
The idea that the Temple must be rebuilt before the 2nd Coming can begin (or that it is a sign of the 2nd Coming) is big in evangelical circles. They don't know when it will start, but they are hell bent (pun intended) on doing everything that they believe presages the 2nd Coming. Look up dispensationalism and how it affects US foreign policy.
Instead of putting a billion dollar satellite to hold a few bombs, they'll invest that billion dollars into 30 suitcase nukes and sneak them into the States.
You don't need bombs, just a couple solid projectiles that can be put into a decaying orbit and big enough to survive reentry and slam into the ground (or even air burst). Imagine a Tunguska blast over New York....
Just launch satellites loaded with kinetic projectiles (read:big rocks) and calculate the necessary trajectories to major cities. Could even be geosynchronous if that makes it easier. Then make it known that attacking those satellites will be treated like attacking a nuclear silo, ie grounds for immediate launch/declaration of war. There, American dominance in space, achievable in only a few years. Well, US dominance until China, Russia, India, etc launch their own rock droppers, but then we are back to the status quo that we have on the ground.
If we have the technology to keep part of it at room temperature, then we should have sent actual astronauts instead.
And I am sure you are the first to volunteer to shoot around the sun at 450,000 mph for 7 years in a craft that will most likely be sent spiraling into the Sun once the mission is complete. Oh, yeah, and because the heat shield is only on one side of the craft, any error in attitude means the craft melts and you die a horribly painful but probably pretty quick death.
Top-rated EPB, a municipal broadband service run as a public utility in Chattanooga, Tenn., was one of the few bright spots for internet service. It was the only company to receive a top mark for value. It also got top marks for speed and reliability.
But we've been told there is no way a government service could give better performance at a lower price than a private company! Fake news!
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting issue you bring up, but you need to divorce yourself from the political considerations on this.
There are reasons to create a new branch of the armed services that go beyond costs. The mission and budget of the Air Force is quite big, as is their command structure. Carving out a new branch, much like the carving out the Army Air Corps, does have it's advantages. Flattening the command structure allows more flexibility and faster response times, allows for specialized training and skills to be closer to the top of the command structure, and allows for focusing appropriated budget and resources on specific areas of the mission.
Of course, there is a down side to everything. But in my opinion this idea has merit. It flattens the hierarchy at the Pentagon, allows the development and advancement of resources with specialized skills. And creates a sharper focus on a specific problem set. Rockets and satellites go one way, things that depend on wings go another. It's a natural division and there is very little overlap, so it actually makes sense to me.
Remember what happens when you flatten something: it gets wider. Have space forces be a subsidiary command of the Air Force makes sense right now because the technology simply isn't mature enough to warrant in independent command. As an independent command you add senior command staff at the political level (think White House/Pentagon) and the support staff that goes with it, scientific staff, support and logistical staff, training facilities for both basic and advanced training, OCS/academy locations, etc. So you are either relying on contractors for staffing (very expensive but politically attractive) or robbing from other branches/setting up your own training pipeline or manpower pool.
Keep it as part of the Air Force and you keep the vertical efficiency the Air Force already has. Pull from Air Force enlisted and officer recruits or existing unit, rely on the technological and institutional knowledge the Air Force already has from decades of cooperation with NASA and working on Star Wars, X-37, etc. Until it reaches a critical mass it is too inefficient and expensive to have it operating by itself.
yes, because the US also do not have any satellite destroying weapons too (please ignore that little secret satellite and those ground-space missiles)
Anyone who thinks the X-37B doesn't have a weapons payload package is deluding themselves.
if someone else does it, then they're bad people. Waaah-waaah-waaah. The corrupt, dishonest and hypocritical war-mongering shithole of America complaining again.
Let's really freak people out: We need a treaty that the only vessels allowed to be armed in space must be under the control of UN, staffed by a multinational crew and composed of a command crew made up primarily of people from each of the UNSC member states(for example French captain, Russian XO, American Chief engineer, Chinese Senior NCO, etc).
So, they actually publish the journal and organize conferences in meatspace, yet we are supposed to believe they are fake? Those are not fake, they are quite real. May be we should just call them alternative to the mainstream? Way to oppress the startups.
If they are publishing everything that is submitted without any type of peer review or adherence to scope of stated fields then it is fair to argue that they are fake journals. An "alternative" journal would be something like PLOS One as opposed to, say, the New England Journal of Medicine.
There's no good reason to move that stuff out of the Air Force at this time, because it is a small amount of activity compared to the whole. The only reason you might want to move that stuff into its own force is so that you can handicap it. Trump works for Putin, who would very much like to see our ability to manage military interests in space impaired...
Trump just wants to go down in history as the guy who created the Space Force and guarantee having spaceships named after him. I can already see it 30 years from now: President Ivanka Trump christening the launch of the first armed and manned US vessel in space: the USSFS Donald J Trump.
While you're at it, please ignore our new Space Force.
You do understand that the "Space Force" thing is likely a reaction to this kind of activity from the Russians and Chinese right? As campy as it sounds, it sure seems like an idea who's time has long since come.
The "Space Force" thing is likely a reaction of a person with declining mental faculties (see the very name "Space Force" as an example) who is determined to put his name on things and is unable to understand the bureaucratic inefficiency, financial strain, duplication of effort, and wastefulness that creating another military branch would bring. Especially one as ill-defined and rudimentary technologically as space warfare/space combat. Leave it under the auspices of the Air Force until technological capability or operational necessity warrant it's own independent command structure.
I'm sure the name "Air Force" seemed silly when it was broken off from the Army to become it's own military branch in 1947.
Not really. The RAF (Royal Air Force) had already existed since the end of WWI, and it a logical step to go from the Army Air Corps to simply Air Force. Space Force does sound like a name straight out of a campy 50's pop novel, though.
Mike Rowe did a Dirty Jobs episode featuring Coober Pedy as well. Was a pretty interesting episode, and shows just how desolate a lot of Australia really is.
Or, given the reputation for shenanigans outside the conference that these types of events have, maybe they were trying to make sure the attendees weren't doing any extracurricular hacking in their rooms.
When that shooter was allowed to carry all that hardware, unchecked, and massacred all those innocent people, that was a hotel fuck-up.
It's not like the guy was just strolling through the lobby with a couple AR-15s with 100-rd drum mags slung over his shoulder. He brought them in in bags. Even the number of bags he used, if they could even passively track how many bags he actually had, isn't excessive for Vegas with all the conventions, meetings, etc. So unless you think hotels need to start doing bag checks or xraying everything there's not much they can do.
If your app is such a malware target for your users that other stores have to warn people, then maybe you're doing something wrong, Epic.
Cheap-ass dip-shits will never get a dime from me.
It's more like the people that will blow $100s of their (parents') money on a free game to buy skins and dances are the type of people that are more likely to fall for malware and tricks.
He also drove a company that is literally synonymous with America-Harley Davidson-to start producing overseas and is now calling for a boycott as well. An American president is calling for a boycott of a flagship American brand.....
Emphasis mine. If they're not selling the game, then they can't be making money off of it, so obviously they can't be losing money due to copyright violations.
Disney Vault. Especially with the success of the NES/SNES classics, Nintendo is going to sit on the IP for a few years, clamp down on alternate methods of playing the old games, then rerelease the games for sale on different mediums. It's just like what Disney does with their movies where they go on sale for a few months and then wait a couple years before releasing them.
See, the good people emigrate and leave the assholes behind to kill each other and fuck up the country some more.
There's your mistake. It's not the "good people" that get out, leaving the bad people behind; the people that get out are the people who can get out. There are plenty of factors that keep people in their home country that do not preclude them from being good people. And quite often the people who have the means to get out are the assholes killing people because they've taken from other people.
I have a basic understanding of African history and what the Europeans did to them, but fuck'in A; they are gone now and have been for decades. What's the problem?! Why so many failed states?
The problem is twofold: first of all, Europe fucked up Africa enough that it still hasn't recovered (same with the Middle East). Europe had a history in Africa of very harsh and draconian rule, often playing tribal/ethnic groups against each other which only exacerbated existing tensions. Many African states won independence only through rebellion and war, others had a long drawn out process. By the time European states had left they had extracted a significant amount of wealth and resources (as well as the technical knowledge necessary to produce said resources and wealth), leaving the new African states on their own. You had fights for power, fights to control resources, etc.
The second part is that quite often their own government screws them over. Africa is rife with corrupt or inefficient governments, both at the state and local levels, so that quite often international aid or domestically produced resources get diverted to line pockets. Weak central governments lead to criminal or militant groups controlling areas outside urban centers, political parties work with military officials to promote dynastic one-party rule (Zimbabwe, others), populist governments create inefficient or unworkable policies (SA), and violent conflicts such as in the Congo, Sierra Leone or Rwanda create lasting effects not just internally but in neighboring states as well. And being poor is not the issue; in fact, some of the states with the worst problems are rich in resources (this is known as the resource curse).
The problem with a "smaller" phone is that most consumers will expect it to also come with a smaller price. a 3" phone basically costs the same thing to produce as a 6" phone
Seeing as how an iPhone X has a 64% profit margin (>$360 to make, retails for $1k), it should be easy for a 3" phone to cost less and still maintain a healthy profit margin. Don't know why people were so excited about Apple reaching $1T, part of the reason they got so high is because they massively overcharge for their products.
As a token of appreciation, you get to choose: gunship or gunboat?
This'll really blow your mind: a gunboat refers to a type of sailing vessel while a gunship refers to aircraft. You could theoretically have a coastal bombardment ship with a complement of ground attack helicopters on board and you would have the only instance where it is possible for a boat to carry and launch a ship.
I'll have to look them up tonight. I've never heard of them, but from what you describe it sounds like complete heresy. Nothing in Revelations indicated that the end times can be or will be brought about by man. In fact, it says "no man knows the hour or the day" indicating it will be on God's time table. I often wonder how these groups call themselves Christians when there is nothing in scripture to substantiate what they believe.
The idea that the Temple must be rebuilt before the 2nd Coming can begin (or that it is a sign of the 2nd Coming) is big in evangelical circles. They don't know when it will start, but they are hell bent (pun intended) on doing everything that they believe presages the 2nd Coming. Look up dispensationalism and how it affects US foreign policy.
Hey bro, what is Revelations?
Allegory for the fall of Rome that many modern-day Christians interpret as prediction of a still-to-come event.
The AC is pointing out that it's called Revelation, not Revelations.
Step into a Southern church sometime and you will even hear the pastor say "Revelations".
Instead of putting a billion dollar satellite to hold a few bombs, they'll invest that billion dollars into 30 suitcase nukes and sneak them into the States.
You don't need bombs, just a couple solid projectiles that can be put into a decaying orbit and big enough to survive reentry and slam into the ground (or even air burst). Imagine a Tunguska blast over New York....
Hey bro, what is Revelations?
Allegory for the fall of Rome that many modern-day Christians interpret as prediction of a still-to-come event.
Just launch satellites loaded with kinetic projectiles (read:big rocks) and calculate the necessary trajectories to major cities. Could even be geosynchronous if that makes it easier. Then make it known that attacking those satellites will be treated like attacking a nuclear silo, ie grounds for immediate launch/declaration of war. There, American dominance in space, achievable in only a few years. Well, US dominance until China, Russia, India, etc launch their own rock droppers, but then we are back to the status quo that we have on the ground.
If we have the technology to keep part of it at room temperature, then we should have sent actual astronauts instead.
And I am sure you are the first to volunteer to shoot around the sun at 450,000 mph for 7 years in a craft that will most likely be sent spiraling into the Sun once the mission is complete. Oh, yeah, and because the heat shield is only on one side of the craft, any error in attitude means the craft melts and you die a horribly painful but probably pretty quick death.
Top-rated EPB, a municipal broadband service run as a public utility in Chattanooga, Tenn., was one of the few bright spots for internet service. It was the only company to receive a top mark for value. It also got top marks for speed and reliability.
But we've been told there is no way a government service could give better performance at a lower price than a private company! Fake news!
I just enjoy telling people that they're wrong. Everyone has a hobby.
Do you by any chance wear a hat?
In the US we just have a whole generation that cant afford to buy a house