"... which delivers the same content directly to their screens."
I'm sorry, but you can't compare the recent releases on Redbox to the mostly C-grade cruft on Netflix Instant streaming.
I know it's all licensing issues, but to see it as a direct apples-to-apples threat at the moment is ludicrous. I use both; I stream most of the good stuff off Netflix and when I want a new release I go to the RedBox up the street.
This would be a great opportunity for the politicians who have been trying to tax road usage by the mile, because then the power bill would be a function of your mileage and you can just stick a tax on that and you're done.
Because nobody in their right mind is going to want a "smart" gun. I advocate for smart gun owners. In fact, I help train them. It is much more effective than the "smart gun" will ever be, and the cost will be about the same. Trying to fix stupid with technology is a losing bet.
Reliability is a sticking point when people ask advice for which gun to buy. You want it to shoot every time you pull the trigger. I'm not going to add a layer of uncertainty to a life-critical mechanical device. What if I need to use it during the winter when I'm likely to be wearing gloves? Or if it's raining and my hands are wet?
No thanks; we'll pass.
I worked with this group and I can tell you they're not into marketing, but the press people that prepared the release probably are.
The bulk of what this NRL section does is technology demonstrators. They were also the first to air drop a drone from another drone. The odd number is probably an exact accounting of the time spent on powered flight; climb, cruise and loiter segments are the most significant for accounting for energy use during flight. Gliding and coast segments are not so interesting.
Props to my old crew at NRL, and to the memory of Jim Kellog who developed the first prototype of what became the Ion Tiger.
Exactly. I had a PhD and was even proposing changes to the C++ standard, and getting them accepted, but couldn't parse and XML file. Let him go 2 weeks into his probation period.
Maybe I misunderstand the nature of these contests, but what I produce in 4 weeks is different than what I produce in 4 days. I have to make serious trade-offs that will impact the software design significantly and will not reflect what my vision would be for the "big picture" goals like clarity, maintainability, modularity, safety, error handling and all manner of best practices.
I wouldn't want a prospective employer to judge me based on the stuff I can churn out in a flash, unless that's the nature of the work they have in mind for me.
If I could swap the batteries for topped ones like propane tanks at Lowes or Walmart every two or three weeks that would be a workable proposition for me, depending on cost. These places are already all over the place and have large storage volumes to store the stock and the empties. That's a reasonable infrastructure shortcut and these outlets would love to get you in the door to buy other stuff; that's why they have Redboxes and the like. I think they'd be on board. Soon you would see refueling stations that would not need all the environmental hoops of gas stations and would just be a matter of storage volume and inventory control, as well as providing the distilled water.
If it's even half that easy I'd bet the lobbyists would fight this tooth and nail, since it would almost pull the rug from under the oil industry. I'd almost dare to be an early adopter.
Other than Windows itself, they're still second or third place in pretty much every domain they've gotten involved in that I can think of off the top of my head. Apple's been eating their lunch in the home user and mobile space. They're still behind Google in search and mobile as well, and won't hold a candle to them in cloud services, at least for a while. The console market doesn't seem to be that hot, and they're second or third there too.
I mean, they've got Exchange/Office, as mentioned by a previous poster, but generally speaking it seems to me that many of their attempts in other segments will likely continue result in burning cash to continue to be behind the lead dog. How long can that last?
Messing up Windows is like killing one of their golden geese.
addressed to me. Most people respect that in return. Does that count as a reasonable expectation of privacy? Could we apply the same standard to e-mail?
Nex year all pirate ships will look like floating disco balls.
Yes, so the IR laser bounces off and the visible light screams "Shoot here, please!". At least they can toss back a few and have a party while they're putting it together.
These things look like blocks that could eventually mature into a technology you can just swap in and out. The issue of initial deployment would be much more easily reachable if a facility just swaps used blocks for new ones. Eventually, (a "station" so to speak) only involves storing new and used cells and providing water for the process, and maybe some chips or chewing gum for on the road. Not nearly the same environmental implications and regulations of putting a fuel tank underground. You could have these stations anywhere, maybe even built into hardware stores, SuperStores, etc. I could see that as a shorter path to infrastructure development.
I remember having to make the excruciating decision of which format to rip my entire CD collection when I was building my HTPC back in 2007. I listened carefully through high-quality studio headphones at the difference and concluding that lossless was going to be the better format for my setup. If I could tell the difference through the headphones, then I figured there would be even more of a difference through my Pioneer Elite receiver and Mirage DefTech speakers.
When I hooked it up, it paid off big time. Sounds heavenly. When I sync from my HTPC to my library and play it through my Samsung Galaxy S3, I convert down to 160 or 192kbps and it sounds as good as I can expect it in a mobile format.
Point is it depends on the setup as a whole. Like any performance chain, your worst component will determine the overall system performance. Furthermore, it depends on the listener. My wife couldn't care if it's coming from my system or from her Coby boom box (WTF?), and I'm the one who's hard of hearing. Big whoop to her.
I agree to a degree. I always facepalmed every time I saw the clumsy way in which the case was presented to the people. But in the context of calling a bluff I would think it's necessary to pretend to accept the opponent's premise.
You're probably right; oil was probably a cherry on top.
Also right on Iran and Iraq being old enemies, and yes, I'd much prefer to keep them aimed at each other, that is until the whole ME explodes on account of those two. That's why I would see the U.S. weighing the long-term benefits of removing one wildcard from the equation.
The arms race "starting" is more in the context of Iraq reconstituting itself militarily after the first Gulf War, which was followed by a relative lull in their military spending, not in the absolute timescale. More of a natural extension of their long-term opposition, progressing past Iraq's use of chemical warfare of the Iran-Iraq war. That's why Saddam was stalling inspectors and making it seem like they had more to hide. This same arms race is what many people are fearing now between Iran and Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
Seems the FUD on oil and the Iraq war has proven to be quite sticky. Fact is, there are many other oil-rich countries that would have been a hell of a lot easier and convenient to take over than Iraq. Seeing as how the accusation is that the U.S. fabricated a case, it would have been just as easy to fabricate a case against any of them. If I had to plan such a thing, Venezuela would be the first to come to mind, but it's not the only one I would consider.
The war in Iraq was about one thing; Iran. Stabilizing the Middle East by reducing the amount of megalomaniacs by one. By calling Saddam's bluff (which was aimed more at Iran than the U.S.) the coalition slowed down a Middle-East arms race that was just getting started, but was going to speed up quickly once Iraq rebuilt its military capacity. One of the stated goals of the first Gulf War was to reduce their military capability for 10 years. Did the U.S. go about it the right time? Not optimal, but necessary, since it had been roughly 10 years since the first Gulf War. Did the U.S. go about it the right way? Definitely not. Rumsfeld screwed up the war strategy big time, starting with using half the troops that would have been needed for securing the borders. Nation-building and long-term occupation? No thanks; trying to quit.
North Korea presents a decent enough military threat overall, only because they've starved their people in order to pay for their military capability and have thoroughly indoctrinated them into fighting to the death to stay enslaved, but their tension with Japan and South Korea still does not amount to megalomaniac A vs megalomaniac B.
I would say most inquiries are motivated by wanting to achieve a specific technical task/goal. (eg. Get working directory C++ ). When developers enter their search queries, it's in the form of a question and the first results that come up (in my experience) are Stack Overflow entries. Official documentation is setup more like a technical reference often with only a few less than-practical examples, or examples that don't exactly fit the context of the specific technical task/goal you happen to be pursuing at the time.
I like the thorough technical reference for when I need to know all the available options and parameters, and related topics. Sometimes documentation sets also come with examples that exercise many of the practical development scenarios that closely match the developers' goals. The documentation for the toolkit I'm currently using (LEADTools) is a pretty good example of that. Otherwise if the people writing the documentation are not practical developers they may not be able to write a good enough set of use cases and examples to complement the technical reference well. So you open up a browser and search and there is pretty much the exact same question you're asking, answered in about 2 or 3 Stack Overflow entries, with suggestions, debates, links to other references, etc. Often times it's what you needed and a little more. And off you go...
The Repubs ideologically oppose the ACA because it is ideological in its conception, and practically unaffordable. Dems were hiding the real costs by doing things like not counting the Doc fix, and the bill was full of new measures that would add real costs to employers, like the extra billion per year supermarkets would have to pay for new food labeling requirements (I know, Nancy told us we didn't need to read it, so I don't blame anyone for not knowing this was in there). And what about the new taxes on medical device manufacturers? That impacts everyone!
But you give yourself away with the phrase "for-profit medical industry". Don't like profits, huh? Neither does anyone in the administration. The people who wrote and pushed this law don't like this "for-profit medical industry" or any profitable industry, for that matter, and would like to turn the whole thing eventually into a government enterprise. Like good Marxists, they want to blame the increases in costs that the consumers are currently seeing and will continue to see on the "greed" of industry, while they re-distribute wealth and buy the votes of the dependent masses. Ultimately, the private insurance industry cannot compete with a government that can borrow infinitely and would collapse. Hello, single payer system.
It's not an interpretation; it's in their own words. They give speeches plainly stating that the ultimate goal is a single payer system. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=926bPZiQhgY. Keep browsing; you'll find all their speeches. They're not exactly shy behind closed doors. Here; have some more. Donald Berwick, one of the architects of this law stated in a speech that "Excellent healthcare is, by definition, redistributional." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIK7duK9ACE.
By the way, to your last point, did you see the election results? It wasn't anywhere near a landslide and it shows that nearly half the country is against raising taxes. Maybe the same half that is not in the "protected class" and actually has to pay them?
Ultimately ACA is a spike in the heart of the economy and will only drive long term liabilities sky high. It was never meant to be paid for, because nothing is these days. That's why these "cuts", as trivial as they are, are a necessary first step.
“We are spending money we don’t have,” Mr. Bloomberg explained. “It’s not like your household. In your household, people are saying, ‘Oh, you can’t spend money you don’t have.’ That is true for your household because nobody is going to lend you an infinite amount of money. When it comes to the United States federal government, people do seem willing to lend us an infinite amount of money. Our debt is so big and so many people own it that it’s preposterous to think that they would stop selling us more. It’s the old story: If you owe the bank $50,000, you got a problem. If you owe the bank $50 million, they got a problem. And that’s a problem for the lenders. They can’t stop lending us more money.”
If we keep putting people like this in leadership, how are we to expect any improvement in the Debt or the Deficit? By the way, genius Bloomin' Idiot, it's a problem for us too. Owing money is a disadvantage, doesn't matter if you're an individual or a government which is supposed to represent and act on behalf of the individuals known as "The People".
During all the Chicken Little propaganda blitz, not a mention in any of the media outlets about the > $100B in wasteful spending that the Government Accountability Office found. Go to WSJ.com and search for the article "Billions in Bloat Uncovered in Beltway". Last week Rand Paul returned $600k in surplus operating budget back to the Treasury, up from $500k he returned last year. I'm sure there are plenty of Congressmen(women) that could do the same. I'm sure they could if more of them actually had respect for our tax dollars. How about slashing Congress' budget?
Or how about cutting down on the hundreds of millions of dollars in conferences that Gov't employees attend every year? Do conferences have to be in Vegas? Can we setup a few of these conferences in Detroit for a change, even if it's not as much fun? That is, if they're so important because of the work being done. Hmmm?
Also no mention of the fact that there is still plenty of discretion as to what each agency gets to cut. Planes won't fall out of the sky if you furlough paper pushers instead of Air Traffic Controllers.
Truth is, not every Federal employee is critical, and they are now starting to average better pay and more $100k+ workers and better benefits than the private sector. The Government shut down numerous times during Reagan's time, and nobody resorted to cannibalism because of it. Civilization is still here; for now. Notice how, up until last week, the message was all about all the different aspect of our lives that were going to break down due to these budget cuts. The President sounded like a prepper! Doesn't this tell us that we are WAAAY too dependent on government?
...the drone goes autonomous once the human controller acquires a target? Latency becomes a non-issue. Once the target's destroyed, the drone reverts to human control until another target is acquired. I assume a human pilot's situational awareness would be superior, but the drone's maneuverability might be enough to compensate. Assuming a drone would cost a fraction of a manned aircraft, especially once you include the cost of training the pilot, you could field a lot more drones. I would think their superior numbers combined with their agility would more than compensate for the lack of a human in the cockpit.
I'm by no means an expert here, just interested in your thoughts.
I'd say you're on to something. The economics might favor the autonomous drones over the manned birds if they are robust enough to keep the attrition rate below threshold of acceptability, whatever that works out to be. The part-time MIL (ManInLoop) scenario is feasible, if the sensor fusion and AI is there to get it to achieve the objective of scoring kills and avoiding getting shot down. I assume it will get there eventually and frankly, I think this has a better chance than the global 2-way high-bandwidth datalink that is robust, reliable and resistant to jamming and dynamic maneuvering. Ultimately I think the politics will trump the economics and the bleeding hearts will reduce the numbers of drone fighters during the acquisition process to the point that they will no longer be an attritable asset and the whole equation is busted.
Technologically I think the part-time approach is achievable and might yield good results, but I'd have to hear from a fighter pilot to see how they would feel about relinquishing control and just watching the fight happen. Maybe they would prefer to stay in the fight with another solution to the datalink problem I described in my original post. Maybe a Line-of-sight link between the drone fighter and an airliner full of remote pilots far enough away from the theater might be a solution. It would have to be far enough a way to keep that sitting duck safe, though.
As a drone guy myself, I love drones. Throughout my career I've designed, built, tested, simulated and built training systems for them. Just love them. I just don't think they'll be a viable air-to-air solution for at least another 25 years. I remember wanting to be a fighter pilot in my high school and college years and reading about it, everyone seemed to emphasize the pilot's situational awareness, and how it makes all the difference in air-to-air combat. This was in the days of the next generation fighters where designers were starting to focus on pilot overload with all the sophisticated systems they were having to manage in addition to flying the plane and shooting down the enemy. The 2-way datalink requirements to support that level of SA in an unmanned fighter are just not there yet, as far as I see the current state of the art. And frankly, I'm not aware of a whole lot of R&D to explore what it's going to take to get a man-in-the-loop unmanned fighter to provide that level of SA to a remote pilot. The links themselves can be pretty fickle. You can't maneuver a UAV too fast or you'll lose the datalink. Predator operators eventually have to learn how to maneuver properly to avoid satlink loss and how to deal with having to wait for the bird to regain its bearings and restore the link. I can't see how to keep a satlink going during air-to-air combat maneuvering with current datalink technology.
There are clear advantages of getting the pilot out of the cockpit, but the technology and sensor fusion isn't there to make them fully autonomous, which is the only foreseeable way to deal with the lag and bandwidth issue that precludes man-in-the-loop dogfighting today. The life support systems on a fighter plane weigh as much as a Predator and we would pretty much have to replace that weight with sensors, datalink support equipment and necessary redundant systems. And when start talking autonomous then we're going to argue about ethics, so either way, it's not going to happen any time soon. Consider how long it took the FAA to get past the point of having meetings about when they were going to have meetings. So the man-in-the-loop approach is the closest one, in my opinion. I might not be up to speed on newer technologies and research, but I'd say for now, let's do the R&D and deal with the datalink issues and 1) quantify the bandwidth, lag and maneuvering requirements and 2) see how we can satisfy those requirements and what technologies can be evolved to deal with the current limitations.
Agreed. Let's pick and choose to some degree. And let's start by choosing the people who won't start off receiving all manner of government benefits without having produced anything. Otherwise, importing only STEM workers would not give the opportunity to all the other potentially productive immigrants to get into other important fields like banking, health, education, etc.
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I'm sorry, but you can't compare the recent releases on Redbox to the mostly C-grade cruft on Netflix Instant streaming.
I know it's all licensing issues, but to see it as a direct apples-to-apples threat at the moment is ludicrous. I use both; I stream most of the good stuff off Netflix and when I want a new release I go to the RedBox up the street.
This would be a great opportunity for the politicians who have been trying to tax road usage by the mile, because then the power bill would be a function of your mileage and you can just stick a tax on that and you're done.
http://defensetech.org/2012/03/21/pics-of-the-day-the-c-130-that-collided-with-a-uav/
This was a Shadow UAV (~425 lbs).
This is with more than 1.3 million hours of UAS operations, so consider that in the context of frequency of occurrence.
Because nobody in their right mind is going to want a "smart" gun. I advocate for smart gun owners. In fact, I help train them. It is much more effective than the "smart gun" will ever be, and the cost will be about the same. Trying to fix stupid with technology is a losing bet.
Reliability is a sticking point when people ask advice for which gun to buy. You want it to shoot every time you pull the trigger. I'm not going to add a layer of uncertainty to a life-critical mechanical device. What if I need to use it during the winter when I'm likely to be wearing gloves? Or if it's raining and my hands are wet? No thanks; we'll pass.
I've always wanted to be able to text the douchebag that just cut me off and tell him/her what a douchebag he/she is.
Or be able to leave a nice little voicemail or text to tell the douchebag in the parking lot that he/she parked like a douchebag taking up two spots.
Of course I'll get a few of those myself, but it might be worth it, just for the occasional satisfaction of calling out a douchebag.
I worked with this group and I can tell you they're not into marketing, but the press people that prepared the release probably are.
The bulk of what this NRL section does is technology demonstrators. They were also the first to air drop a drone from another drone. The odd number is probably an exact accounting of the time spent on powered flight; climb, cruise and loiter segments are the most significant for accounting for energy use during flight. Gliding and coast segments are not so interesting.
Props to my old crew at NRL, and to the memory of Jim Kellog who developed the first prototype of what became the Ion Tiger.
Exactly. I had a PhD and was even proposing changes to the C++ standard, and getting them accepted, but couldn't parse and XML file. Let him go 2 weeks into his probation period.
Maybe I misunderstand the nature of these contests, but what I produce in 4 weeks is different than what I produce in 4 days. I have to make serious trade-offs that will impact the software design significantly and will not reflect what my vision would be for the "big picture" goals like clarity, maintainability, modularity, safety, error handling and all manner of best practices.
I wouldn't want a prospective employer to judge me based on the stuff I can churn out in a flash, unless that's the nature of the work they have in mind for me.
If I could swap the batteries for topped ones like propane tanks at Lowes or Walmart every two or three weeks that would be a workable proposition for me, depending on cost. These places are already all over the place and have large storage volumes to store the stock and the empties. That's a reasonable infrastructure shortcut and these outlets would love to get you in the door to buy other stuff; that's why they have Redboxes and the like. I think they'd be on board. Soon you would see refueling stations that would not need all the environmental hoops of gas stations and would just be a matter of storage volume and inventory control, as well as providing the distilled water.
If it's even half that easy I'd bet the lobbyists would fight this tooth and nail, since it would almost pull the rug from under the oil industry. I'd almost dare to be an early adopter.
Other than Windows itself, they're still second or third place in pretty much every domain they've gotten involved in that I can think of off the top of my head. Apple's been eating their lunch in the home user and mobile space. They're still behind Google in search and mobile as well, and won't hold a candle to them in cloud services, at least for a while. The console market doesn't seem to be that hot, and they're second or third there too.
I mean, they've got Exchange/Office, as mentioned by a previous poster, but generally speaking it seems to me that many of their attempts in other segments will likely continue result in burning cash to continue to be behind the lead dog. How long can that last?
Messing up Windows is like killing one of their golden geese.
addressed to me. Most people respect that in return. Does that count as a reasonable expectation of privacy? Could we apply the same standard to e-mail?
Nex year all pirate ships will look like floating disco balls.
Yes, so the IR laser bounces off and the visible light screams "Shoot here, please!". At least they can toss back a few and have a party while they're putting it together.
These things look like blocks that could eventually mature into a technology you can just swap in and out. The issue of initial deployment would be much more easily reachable if a facility just swaps used blocks for new ones. Eventually, (a "station" so to speak) only involves storing new and used cells and providing water for the process, and maybe some chips or chewing gum for on the road. Not nearly the same environmental implications and regulations of putting a fuel tank underground. You could have these stations anywhere, maybe even built into hardware stores, SuperStores, etc. I could see that as a shorter path to infrastructure development.
I remember having to make the excruciating decision of which format to rip my entire CD collection when I was building my HTPC back in 2007. I listened carefully through high-quality studio headphones at the difference and concluding that lossless was going to be the better format for my setup. If I could tell the difference through the headphones, then I figured there would be even more of a difference through my Pioneer Elite receiver and Mirage DefTech speakers.
When I hooked it up, it paid off big time. Sounds heavenly. When I sync from my HTPC to my library and play it through my Samsung Galaxy S3, I convert down to 160 or 192kbps and it sounds as good as I can expect it in a mobile format.
Point is it depends on the setup as a whole. Like any performance chain, your worst component will determine the overall system performance. Furthermore, it depends on the listener. My wife couldn't care if it's coming from my system or from her Coby boom box (WTF?), and I'm the one who's hard of hearing. Big whoop to her.
I agree to a degree. I always facepalmed every time I saw the clumsy way in which the case was presented to the people. But in the context of calling a bluff I would think it's necessary to pretend to accept the opponent's premise.
I disagree with your theory, but there's something about it I like.
You're probably right; oil was probably a cherry on top.
Also right on Iran and Iraq being old enemies, and yes, I'd much prefer to keep them aimed at each other, that is until the whole ME explodes on account of those two. That's why I would see the U.S. weighing the long-term benefits of removing one wildcard from the equation.
The arms race "starting" is more in the context of Iraq reconstituting itself militarily after the first Gulf War, which was followed by a relative lull in their military spending, not in the absolute timescale. More of a natural extension of their long-term opposition, progressing past Iraq's use of chemical warfare of the Iran-Iraq war. That's why Saddam was stalling inspectors and making it seem like they had more to hide. This same arms race is what many people are fearing now between Iran and Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
http://books.google.com/books?id=qFCkQRQApSwC&pg=PA41#v=onepage&q&f=false
Seems the FUD on oil and the Iraq war has proven to be quite sticky. Fact is, there are many other oil-rich countries that would have been a hell of a lot easier and convenient to take over than Iraq. Seeing as how the accusation is that the U.S. fabricated a case, it would have been just as easy to fabricate a case against any of them. If I had to plan such a thing, Venezuela would be the first to come to mind, but it's not the only one I would consider.
The war in Iraq was about one thing; Iran. Stabilizing the Middle East by reducing the amount of megalomaniacs by one. By calling Saddam's bluff (which was aimed more at Iran than the U.S.) the coalition slowed down a Middle-East arms race that was just getting started, but was going to speed up quickly once Iraq rebuilt its military capacity. One of the stated goals of the first Gulf War was to reduce their military capability for 10 years. Did the U.S. go about it the right time? Not optimal, but necessary, since it had been roughly 10 years since the first Gulf War. Did the U.S. go about it the right way? Definitely not. Rumsfeld screwed up the war strategy big time, starting with using half the troops that would have been needed for securing the borders. Nation-building and long-term occupation? No thanks; trying to quit.
North Korea presents a decent enough military threat overall, only because they've starved their people in order to pay for their military capability and have thoroughly indoctrinated them into fighting to the death to stay enslaved, but their tension with Japan and South Korea still does not amount to megalomaniac A vs megalomaniac B.
I would say most inquiries are motivated by wanting to achieve a specific technical task/goal. (eg. Get working directory C++ ). When developers enter their search queries, it's in the form of a question and the first results that come up (in my experience) are Stack Overflow entries. Official documentation is setup more like a technical reference often with only a few less than-practical examples, or examples that don't exactly fit the context of the specific technical task/goal you happen to be pursuing at the time.
I like the thorough technical reference for when I need to know all the available options and parameters, and related topics. Sometimes documentation sets also come with examples that exercise many of the practical development scenarios that closely match the developers' goals. The documentation for the toolkit I'm currently using (LEADTools) is a pretty good example of that. Otherwise if the people writing the documentation are not practical developers they may not be able to write a good enough set of use cases and examples to complement the technical reference well. So you open up a browser and search and there is pretty much the exact same question you're asking, answered in about 2 or 3 Stack Overflow entries, with suggestions, debates, links to other references, etc. Often times it's what you needed and a little more. And off you go...
The Repubs ideologically oppose the ACA because it is ideological in its conception, and practically unaffordable. Dems were hiding the real costs by doing things like not counting the Doc fix, and the bill was full of new measures that would add real costs to employers, like the extra billion per year supermarkets would have to pay for new food labeling requirements (I know, Nancy told us we didn't need to read it, so I don't blame anyone for not knowing this was in there). And what about the new taxes on medical device manufacturers? That impacts everyone!
But you give yourself away with the phrase "for-profit medical industry". Don't like profits, huh? Neither does anyone in the administration. The people who wrote and pushed this law don't like this "for-profit medical industry" or any profitable industry, for that matter, and would like to turn the whole thing eventually into a government enterprise. Like good Marxists, they want to blame the increases in costs that the consumers are currently seeing and will continue to see on the "greed" of industry, while they re-distribute wealth and buy the votes of the dependent masses. Ultimately, the private insurance industry cannot compete with a government that can borrow infinitely and would collapse. Hello, single payer system.
It's not an interpretation; it's in their own words. They give speeches plainly stating that the ultimate goal is a single payer system. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=926bPZiQhgY. Keep browsing; you'll find all their speeches. They're not exactly shy behind closed doors. Here; have some more. Donald Berwick, one of the architects of this law stated in a speech that "Excellent healthcare is, by definition, redistributional." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIK7duK9ACE.
By the way, to your last point, did you see the election results? It wasn't anywhere near a landslide and it shows that nearly half the country is against raising taxes. Maybe the same half that is not in the "protected class" and actually has to pay them?
Ultimately ACA is a spike in the heart of the economy and will only drive long term liabilities sky high. It was never meant to be paid for, because nothing is these days. That's why these "cuts", as trivial as they are, are a necessary first step.
A nice Keynesian quote from Michael Bloomberg:
“We are spending money we don’t have,” Mr. Bloomberg explained. “It’s not like your household. In your household, people are saying, ‘Oh, you can’t spend money you don’t have.’ That is true for your household because nobody is going to lend you an infinite amount of money. When it comes to the United States federal government, people do seem willing to lend us an infinite amount of money. Our debt is so big and so many people own it that it’s preposterous to think that they would stop selling us more. It’s the old story: If you owe the bank $50,000, you got a problem. If you owe the bank $50 million, they got a problem. And that’s a problem for the lenders. They can’t stop lending us more money.”
If we keep putting people like this in leadership, how are we to expect any improvement in the Debt or the Deficit? By the way, genius Bloomin' Idiot, it's a problem for us too. Owing money is a disadvantage, doesn't matter if you're an individual or a government which is supposed to represent and act on behalf of the individuals known as "The People".
During all the Chicken Little propaganda blitz, not a mention in any of the media outlets about the > $100B in wasteful spending that the Government Accountability Office found. Go to WSJ.com and search for the article "Billions in Bloat Uncovered in Beltway". Last week Rand Paul returned $600k in surplus operating budget back to the Treasury, up from $500k he returned last year. I'm sure there are plenty of Congressmen(women) that could do the same. I'm sure they could if more of them actually had respect for our tax dollars. How about slashing Congress' budget?
Or how about cutting down on the hundreds of millions of dollars in conferences that Gov't employees attend every year? Do conferences have to be in Vegas? Can we setup a few of these conferences in Detroit for a change, even if it's not as much fun? That is, if they're so important because of the work being done. Hmmm?
Also no mention of the fact that there is still plenty of discretion as to what each agency gets to cut. Planes won't fall out of the sky if you furlough paper pushers instead of Air Traffic Controllers.
Truth is, not every Federal employee is critical, and they are now starting to average better pay and more $100k+ workers and better benefits than the private sector. The Government shut down numerous times during Reagan's time, and nobody resorted to cannibalism because of it. Civilization is still here; for now. Notice how, up until last week, the message was all about all the different aspect of our lives that were going to break down due to these budget cuts. The President sounded like a prepper! Doesn't this tell us that we are WAAAY too dependent on government?
...the drone goes autonomous once the human controller acquires a target? Latency becomes a non-issue. Once the target's destroyed, the drone reverts to human control until another target is acquired. I assume a human pilot's situational awareness would be superior, but the drone's maneuverability might be enough to compensate. Assuming a drone would cost a fraction of a manned aircraft, especially once you include the cost of training the pilot, you could field a lot more drones. I would think their superior numbers combined with their agility would more than compensate for the lack of a human in the cockpit. I'm by no means an expert here, just interested in your thoughts.
I'd say you're on to something. The economics might favor the autonomous drones over the manned birds if they are robust enough to keep the attrition rate below threshold of acceptability, whatever that works out to be. The part-time MIL (ManInLoop) scenario is feasible, if the sensor fusion and AI is there to get it to achieve the objective of scoring kills and avoiding getting shot down. I assume it will get there eventually and frankly, I think this has a better chance than the global 2-way high-bandwidth datalink that is robust, reliable and resistant to jamming and dynamic maneuvering. Ultimately I think the politics will trump the economics and the bleeding hearts will reduce the numbers of drone fighters during the acquisition process to the point that they will no longer be an attritable asset and the whole equation is busted.
Technologically I think the part-time approach is achievable and might yield good results, but I'd have to hear from a fighter pilot to see how they would feel about relinquishing control and just watching the fight happen. Maybe they would prefer to stay in the fight with another solution to the datalink problem I described in my original post. Maybe a Line-of-sight link between the drone fighter and an airliner full of remote pilots far enough away from the theater might be a solution. It would have to be far enough a way to keep that sitting duck safe, though.
As a drone guy myself, I love drones. Throughout my career I've designed, built, tested, simulated and built training systems for them. Just love them. I just don't think they'll be a viable air-to-air solution for at least another 25 years. I remember wanting to be a fighter pilot in my high school and college years and reading about it, everyone seemed to emphasize the pilot's situational awareness, and how it makes all the difference in air-to-air combat. This was in the days of the next generation fighters where designers were starting to focus on pilot overload with all the sophisticated systems they were having to manage in addition to flying the plane and shooting down the enemy. The 2-way datalink requirements to support that level of SA in an unmanned fighter are just not there yet, as far as I see the current state of the art. And frankly, I'm not aware of a whole lot of R&D to explore what it's going to take to get a man-in-the-loop unmanned fighter to provide that level of SA to a remote pilot. The links themselves can be pretty fickle. You can't maneuver a UAV too fast or you'll lose the datalink. Predator operators eventually have to learn how to maneuver properly to avoid satlink loss and how to deal with having to wait for the bird to regain its bearings and restore the link. I can't see how to keep a satlink going during air-to-air combat maneuvering with current datalink technology.
There are clear advantages of getting the pilot out of the cockpit, but the technology and sensor fusion isn't there to make them fully autonomous, which is the only foreseeable way to deal with the lag and bandwidth issue that precludes man-in-the-loop dogfighting today. The life support systems on a fighter plane weigh as much as a Predator and we would pretty much have to replace that weight with sensors, datalink support equipment and necessary redundant systems. And when start talking autonomous then we're going to argue about ethics, so either way, it's not going to happen any time soon. Consider how long it took the FAA to get past the point of having meetings about when they were going to have meetings. So the man-in-the-loop approach is the closest one, in my opinion. I might not be up to speed on newer technologies and research, but I'd say for now, let's do the R&D and deal with the datalink issues and 1) quantify the bandwidth, lag and maneuvering requirements and 2) see how we can satisfy those requirements and what technologies can be evolved to deal with the current limitations.
Agreed. Let's pick and choose to some degree. And let's start by choosing the people who won't start off receiving all manner of government benefits without having produced anything. Otherwise, importing only STEM workers would not give the opportunity to all the other potentially productive immigrants to get into other important fields like banking, health, education, etc.