Yes, but would the AAA have been able to hit the plane in the first place?
Most likely, yes. They just put up a cloud of AAA, and anything that went through was in danger.
Would a faster, higher, stealthier plane have ever been shot at?
We had the perfect plane for that, the F117. Alternatively, we have the B2, or even the F-22. But even then, we lost a 117 over Yugoslavia, shot down by an old SA-3. Nothing beats the A-10 for close air support. Other things besides the F-35 do other kinds of missions better too.
History didn't begin with bombers or even catapults you know. Admittedly raping and pillaging tended to increase the casualty rate as well.
Regardless of the technology, purposely killing, starving and terrorizing the civilians was part of the war strategy. Now exactly the opposite is the strategy, although we can never be perfect.
It's called asymmetric warfare.
It is a known strategy. However, if they want to endanger civilians then the civilian casualties should be on them, not on us.
The critical point is who makes the decision to fire. If it's a machine, that just tweaks things in the minds of the peopl, machines going crazy, all that sci-fi stuff happening.
As far as the rate of collateral damage, it's lower now than in any point in history. While starving and terrorizing the civilian population used to be a standard tactic in warfare, we take great care to minimize civilian casualties. Given the choice of a $500 dumb bomb that will kill everybody in the vicinity, and a $35,000 smart bomb that will just kill the bad guys, we spend the money to help spare the lives. That one Hellfire now would have been a full bomber load way back when.
Of course, civilian casualties could be greatly reduced if it weren't for the standard practice of our current opponent to use them as human shields, and to otherwise attempt to blend in with them.
That sounds like time for a modernization effort. The A-10 has many upgrades through the years, mainly avionics and more recently a new wing. But go all-out. Take the same basic proven design, and do some minimal R&D for improvement. A modern engine is probably better than the one in the A-10, and I'm sure there are much better alloys availabile than there were in the late 60s to make a more survivable airframe. And I'm sure many maintenance lessons-learned can be applied to make it easier to maintain.
Basically, just re-work the plane for the modern age using current, easily-manufactured technology. Crank up production of 500 of these guys, and it'll be far cheaper than the F-35. The A-10B.
In the Iraq War, CPT Kim Campbell had fragmentation AAA go off right next to the tail on her A-10 over Baghdad, resulting in hundreds of hull piercings, basically a shredded tail. She lost her right-rear control surfaces, her right engine, and both hydraulic systems (there's a redundant one). She was able to fly back to base entirely on manual controls.
So, how would an uber-expensive F-35 do with AAA going off right next to its tail? It would have become a lawn dart.
I don't think we'll ever go full-bore on autonomous machines until AI takes a dramatic leap. We only have a few autonomous machine guns in the Korean DMZ, in an area where absolutely nobody is ever supposed to be, where people would have had to walk through a minefield to get there in the first place. IOW, anything in its field of view needs to be shot, no matter what. And even then we have people monitoring the guns.
As soon as you're talking any place a friendly or civilian could possibly be, the political fallout from a machine killing them would be unacceptable.
Once the military figures out that they can get socially maladjusted people to fly the drones
This is kind of what they already do with Special Forces. You really don't want normal people in those jobs. But it's not about a lack of emptahy, but being able to handle insane, inhuman environments, and even thrive in them.
Seriously, people want a CAR. Because it's electric doesn't mean you need to hop your designers up on LSD before work in order to have it stand out. I kind of liked the specs of the Leaf, but it has looks that turn off almost all potential buyers.
It also helps that the Tesla S was designed from scratch as an electric car. The Leaf is using basically the same platform as the Cube, so it's just a gas car with an electric chucked in. The Tesla Roadster was just an electric Elise, but it was really a limited-run testbed, and it could sell as a high-performance car at least (given it could out-accelerate a conventional Elise)
Well, didn't the CEO decide to go into that area that is doing poorly?
I was thinking of it as a new CEO coming in.
But as for starting a new division, that means the CEO created those jobs. If it doesn't work out, then at least those people had jobs for that time. If it creates a net loss for the company, his pay should take a hit too.
This salary was only token, and he took it because of his love for the company. However, his total compensation was in the billions.
Now take another CEO without such a personal attachment to his company, pulled on board, and pulls off what Steve did. What salary is he worth?
Personally though, I do think all CEOs should be paid a smaller base salary, the bulk of compensation being in direct proportion to the success of the company. However, calculation of that would be complex to account for decisions that could create high short-term profit (and thus high pay) at the expense of long-term health. For example, what Fiorina did to HP.
So we have a theoretical service-oriented company that by nature hires a lot of people at say $20 an hour and the CEO is locked to 50x that pay. A new CEO comes on board and vastly expands the business, quadruples the number of $20 an hour employees and subsequently quadruples profits for the company. This guy is still locked to $20x50? But he performed so much better, raking in four times the profits and helping the economy by hiring thousands of people. Why shouldn't he get paid more for excellent performance?
Then what if the company hires a few people whose job is to pull paperclips from piles of paper? That gets hired at $10 an hour because it is a completely talentless job. Does the CEO now have to take a 50% pay cut because of your rule?
I find it hilarious how huge companies have to lay off thousands of employees, yet the CEOs are still making their 10s of millions in salary
The reasonableness of this is, "it depends." If the company is healthy and making a lot of money, but it found an area that is not profitable and decides to liquidate or downsize it (and has no place else within the company to absorb all of those skillsets), the employees go with that. High CEO pay is perfectly in line with this.
However, if the company is hurting and they are laying off employees in order to cut costs and stay afloat, then the CEO's pay should be the first to be cut.
How about offering him 50 mil instead and keeping on 700 workers,
OTOH, if those 700 workers are making no profit for the company at all, they should be transferred to profitable positions or laid off regardless of CEO pay.
I wonder how many people would be currently employed at Apple if not for a CEO named Steve. Would there even be any?
Re:Smooth transition possible through mincome
on
Star Trek Economics
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· Score: 1
There are certainly stupid poor people but I'd say they're a small minority.
Rent-to-own places are a HUGE business serving millions. There are many businesses that survive on the fact that their mainly poor customers are financially ignorant, or just so greedy they don't mind worsening their financial position to have even more toys they can't afford. Have you heard of those credit card offers from Citi or Wells Fargo with a $45 yearly fee, 29% APR and draconian late penalties? Those are directed at poor people, not people who can easily obtain credit on much better terms.
Re:Smooth transition possible through mincome
on
Star Trek Economics
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· Score: 1
I'd like to see what happens, and how many poor people are actually stupid
The existence and continued success of rent-to-own companies across the US is pretty clear evidence they exist. Aside from whether a poor person should be spending $1,000 on a TV, instead of saving $1,000 for a TV and buying one, they have to have it now so they buy one from one of these places and pay $2,000.
and if there are any leftists such as you describe in reality.
You see them in the news every day. If there is one "disadvantaged" person, they trot him out to show how horrible their conservative opponents are.
Re:Smooth transition possible through mincome
on
Star Trek Economics
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· Score: 1
If we replace today's welfare systems with mincome,
We can't. It will work as you say by replacing all welfare systems with mincome. But a lot of people are poor not because of externalities, but because they are stupid. A portion of the population will blow that mincome on shiny new rims or a new bass boat, and have nothing left to feed their kids or heat their homes. The left will point to these poor, starving children and either demand an increase in mincome or to give more money to these poor, unfortunate people. We either end up with mincome at an unsustainable luxury level, or we have mincome parallel with the old welfare system.
Say these people should take personal responsibility for their actions, so they're screwed? Sorry, that's not in the left's program.
But this system looks pretty good. It has a camera that looks out for oncoming lights and dims them. If done really well, since it's laser, it could shape the beam to avoid oncoming cars while still lighting up the rest of the road. It would be nice if that were on all cars.
Electric gives engineers a chance to re-envision the entire design of the car, not just shove a suitcase of batteries in the back and replace the gas engine with an electric. For example, the Ford Focus Electric is, well, a Focus with an electric engine. Even the Nissan Leaf is based on the Cube platform, which was designed for gasoline engines. Even the first Tesla Roadster was basically an electric Lotus Elise.
And then you have a Tesla S, designed from the ground up to be an electric car, and doing it better than any other.
Slashdot Mirror
Most likely, yes. They just put up a cloud of AAA, and anything that went through was in danger.
We had the perfect plane for that, the F117. Alternatively, we have the B2, or even the F-22. But even then, we lost a 117 over Yugoslavia, shot down by an old SA-3. Nothing beats the A-10 for close air support. Other things besides the F-35 do other kinds of missions better too.
The wing fold should be easy, since it's designed to have the wing beyond the pylon blown off anyway.
Regardless of the technology, purposely killing, starving and terrorizing the civilians was part of the war strategy. Now exactly the opposite is the strategy, although we can never be perfect.
It is a known strategy. However, if they want to endanger civilians then the civilian casualties should be on them, not on us.
The critical point is who makes the decision to fire. If it's a machine, that just tweaks things in the minds of the peopl, machines going crazy, all that sci-fi stuff happening.
As far as the rate of collateral damage, it's lower now than in any point in history. While starving and terrorizing the civilian population used to be a standard tactic in warfare, we take great care to minimize civilian casualties. Given the choice of a $500 dumb bomb that will kill everybody in the vicinity, and a $35,000 smart bomb that will just kill the bad guys, we spend the money to help spare the lives. That one Hellfire now would have been a full bomber load way back when.
Of course, civilian casualties could be greatly reduced if it weren't for the standard practice of our current opponent to use them as human shields, and to otherwise attempt to blend in with them.
That sounds like time for a modernization effort. The A-10 has many upgrades through the years, mainly avionics and more recently a new wing. But go all-out. Take the same basic proven design, and do some minimal R&D for improvement. A modern engine is probably better than the one in the A-10, and I'm sure there are much better alloys availabile than there were in the late 60s to make a more survivable airframe. And I'm sure many maintenance lessons-learned can be applied to make it easier to maintain.
Basically, just re-work the plane for the modern age using current, easily-manufactured technology. Crank up production of 500 of these guys, and it'll be far cheaper than the F-35. The A-10B.
In the Iraq War, CPT Kim Campbell had fragmentation AAA go off right next to the tail on her A-10 over Baghdad, resulting in hundreds of hull piercings, basically a shredded tail. She lost her right-rear control surfaces, her right engine, and both hydraulic systems (there's a redundant one). She was able to fly back to base entirely on manual controls.
So, how would an uber-expensive F-35 do with AAA going off right next to its tail? It would have become a lawn dart.
I don't think we'll ever go full-bore on autonomous machines until AI takes a dramatic leap. We only have a few autonomous machine guns in the Korean DMZ, in an area where absolutely nobody is ever supposed to be, where people would have had to walk through a minefield to get there in the first place. IOW, anything in its field of view needs to be shot, no matter what. And even then we have people monitoring the guns.
As soon as you're talking any place a friendly or civilian could possibly be, the political fallout from a machine killing them would be unacceptable.
This is kind of what they already do with Special Forces. You really don't want normal people in those jobs. But it's not about a lack of emptahy, but being able to handle insane, inhuman environments, and even thrive in them.
Seriously, people want a CAR. Because it's electric doesn't mean you need to hop your designers up on LSD before work in order to have it stand out. I kind of liked the specs of the Leaf, but it has looks that turn off almost all potential buyers.
It also helps that the Tesla S was designed from scratch as an electric car. The Leaf is using basically the same platform as the Cube, so it's just a gas car with an electric chucked in. The Tesla Roadster was just an electric Elise, but it was really a limited-run testbed, and it could sell as a high-performance car at least (given it could out-accelerate a conventional Elise)
Golden parachutes need to turn to lead when the CEO took the company into a downward spiral.
They fired him a few months ago. Unfortunately, he probably got a golden parachute.
So, basically, most people should quit their jobs.
I was thinking of it as a new CEO coming in.
But as for starting a new division, that means the CEO created those jobs. If it doesn't work out, then at least those people had jobs for that time. If it creates a net loss for the company, his pay should take a hit too.
This salary was only token, and he took it because of his love for the company. However, his total compensation was in the billions.
Now take another CEO without such a personal attachment to his company, pulled on board, and pulls off what Steve did. What salary is he worth?
Personally though, I do think all CEOs should be paid a smaller base salary, the bulk of compensation being in direct proportion to the success of the company. However, calculation of that would be complex to account for decisions that could create high short-term profit (and thus high pay) at the expense of long-term health. For example, what Fiorina did to HP.
So we have a theoretical service-oriented company that by nature hires a lot of people at say $20 an hour and the CEO is locked to 50x that pay. A new CEO comes on board and vastly expands the business, quadruples the number of $20 an hour employees and subsequently quadruples profits for the company. This guy is still locked to $20x50? But he performed so much better, raking in four times the profits and helping the economy by hiring thousands of people. Why shouldn't he get paid more for excellent performance?
Then what if the company hires a few people whose job is to pull paperclips from piles of paper? That gets hired at $10 an hour because it is a completely talentless job. Does the CEO now have to take a 50% pay cut because of your rule?
The reasonableness of this is, "it depends." If the company is healthy and making a lot of money, but it found an area that is not profitable and decides to liquidate or downsize it (and has no place else within the company to absorb all of those skillsets), the employees go with that. High CEO pay is perfectly in line with this.
However, if the company is hurting and they are laying off employees in order to cut costs and stay afloat, then the CEO's pay should be the first to be cut.
OTOH, if those 700 workers are making no profit for the company at all, they should be transferred to profitable positions or laid off regardless of CEO pay.
I wonder how many people would be currently employed at Apple if not for a CEO named Steve. Would there even be any?
Rent-to-own places are a HUGE business serving millions. There are many businesses that survive on the fact that their mainly poor customers are financially ignorant, or just so greedy they don't mind worsening their financial position to have even more toys they can't afford. Have you heard of those credit card offers from Citi or Wells Fargo with a $45 yearly fee, 29% APR and draconian late penalties? Those are directed at poor people, not people who can easily obtain credit on much better terms.
The existence and continued success of rent-to-own companies across the US is pretty clear evidence they exist. Aside from whether a poor person should be spending $1,000 on a TV, instead of saving $1,000 for a TV and buying one, they have to have it now so they buy one from one of these places and pay $2,000.
You see them in the news every day. If there is one "disadvantaged" person, they trot him out to show how horrible their conservative opponents are.
We can't. It will work as you say by replacing all welfare systems with mincome. But a lot of people are poor not because of externalities, but because they are stupid. A portion of the population will blow that mincome on shiny new rims or a new bass boat, and have nothing left to feed their kids or heat their homes. The left will point to these poor, starving children and either demand an increase in mincome or to give more money to these poor, unfortunate people. We either end up with mincome at an unsustainable luxury level, or we have mincome parallel with the old welfare system.
Say these people should take personal responsibility for their actions, so they're screwed? Sorry, that's not in the left's program.
But many people can work over 10x better than the median to create things others value more, and thus make more money.
I always wondered how people in a society with no money could play poker.
He was describing the phenomenon commonly known as NIMBY.
At least they are better than the BANANA environmentalists.
Most bad HID lights are aftermarket junk.
But this system looks pretty good. It has a camera that looks out for oncoming lights and dims them. If done really well, since it's laser, it could shape the beam to avoid oncoming cars while still lighting up the rest of the road. It would be nice if that were on all cars.
Electric gives engineers a chance to re-envision the entire design of the car, not just shove a suitcase of batteries in the back and replace the gas engine with an electric. For example, the Ford Focus Electric is, well, a Focus with an electric engine. Even the Nissan Leaf is based on the Cube platform, which was designed for gasoline engines. Even the first Tesla Roadster was basically an electric Lotus Elise.
And then you have a Tesla S, designed from the ground up to be an electric car, and doing it better than any other.