The action that has had the biggest effect on shutting down Al Qaeda operations around the world was not the invasion of Iraq, nor that of Afghanistan. It was to follow the money trail and cut off their operatives as much as possible.
Of course this was never going to be 100% successful but AQ has had to move their financing much further underground & render it much less efficient.
All things are relative, friend. I never said that upstates contribution would seem important compared to the rest of the citys budget, just that NYC has usually taken more than it's share & that what may be considered pocket change in the budget of a lower state county can be an important sum for a rural upstate county.
The classic New Yorker cartoon which reduced the rest of the state beyond Orange & Putnam counties to a mere line is a faithful representation of how many inhabitants of the city views the rest of the state. The tendancy for well educated urbanites to consider themselves more deserving than their less educated rural neighbors is not considered universally just. Don't be surprised when these attitudes produce resentment.
However, Ion drives efficiency over chemical reaction trusters is often more than offset by the fact that it is much more efficient to use your propellant when deep in a gravity well than it is to do so over the breadth of the mission. Ion drives also force you to make multiple passes through earths van-allen belts which increases the shielding needed to protect the electronics.
When you subtract the energy needed to boost the reaction mass used mid-cruise out of low orbit & the additional shielding, ion drives do not look quite so efficient anymore.
I'm probably feeding the troll here, but just maybe he'll learn something of which he was ignorant...
You do not remember the doomed emancipationist movements in upstate NY that sought to split the state in two. I do. I also had friends that missed school for days because the state didn't have the money for snowplow maintainance. NYC ran major deficits for decades. I grew up with 7% sales tax. Now that NYC is no longer running a deficit, this has now been reduced to 4%. Coincidence, maybe?
People like you in NYC looking down their noses & telling the hicks that they should just shut up & do as they're told are part of the problem. Putting part the investment of installing the windmills into upstate infrastructure would silence many of the local critics, but that's politically unpalatable.
The urban disconnection from rural America is no myth. It's largely what got GWB reelected.
Having grown up in upstate NY, there's also a knee jerk reaction to having to contribute anything which would help New York City more than it would the locals. Over the past 50 years, NTC has usually recieved much more in benefits than it has paid back in taxes to the rest of the state. Upstate NY has been shafted many times and lots of people feel resentment.
Much of upstate NY is really rural and many people can still remember how difficult it was to get on the grid and some people still aren't. When the electric co tells you for decades that you're too far for them to pull a line to connect you, it is understandable that they resist when they finally want to do so just so they can connect the windmills that they want to install on your neigbors hill.
Lastly, don't forget that this is pretty close to Amish country. These people are no strangers to wanting to live lives unspoiled by modern technology.
Slimboxes are now into their third generation and have been 802.11b & 802.11g since they came out with the V2 over a year ago. The 802.11b only status of V1 slimboxes was the reason I didn't buy one. I've been very happy with my V2.
It's 8.3in thickness, 40lb weight, and difficult screen rotation are also definite design handicaps. If I want a monster with good color performance on my desk I'll just buy a CRT...
Not quite. While the Antitrust settlement gave AOL a seven-year, royalty-free license it does not force AOL to use IE if they decide that it is no longer in their best interest. Having MS on their board however...
So? The only reason diesels are cheaper in France & much of Europe is that taxes are much lower for diesel than for gasoline. Remove this artificial prop & diesel sales fall to 10-20% of their current levels. From the studies I've seen, biodiesel is no more energy efficient than ethanol. It's a great prop for subsidizing farmers but by no means is it a solution the the coming energy crisis.
Not so: My references are in a number of books at home (Biography of Bomber Harris, Official History Of the 8th AF), but there were three main objectives in the Dresden Raid: - Destroying the rail centers. - Depriving the War factories near Dresden from their workforce by dehousing them. - Degrade the german workforce in nearby cities through shock.
While many current day revisionists try to relabel the latter two objectives as "non-military", they were almost universally accepted at the time. To those who had lived through the blitz & given the inaccuracy of WW2 bomb strikes, the bombing of city centers was a legitimate objective.
I meta-moderated down the idiot who labeled that as insightful.
Legalizing the murder of any elected official is a one way street to repression of super-stalinian proportions. The only ones who would run for office would be those had an existing defense organisation: CEO's of major corporations & mafia bosses (as if there's any difference...). It's stupidity incarnate. These are NOT the people we need to represent us.
The proliferation of stupid uses of fingerprints is just going to backfire & render all uses insecure. This article describes how easy is would be to make back up copies of all the fingerprints you would need to fool these devices. All you need is a relatively clean copy of a print...
Microsoft's TCPA testbed is called the XBox. Note that the only ways to boot linux on the Xbox are to use a Mod chip or to use a buffer overflow exploit of a MS signed game. To me, MS's definition is perfectly clear and excludes open software.
"They need someone that they can sue if something goes hugely wrong and they lose everything due to an operating system glitch."
Red-Herring: No-one, I repeat, No-one has ever successfully sued MS for damages after something went hugely wrong due to a bug in Windows. According to the Windows Terms of Use, damages are limited to what was paid for Windows.
"His promise: Longhorn, the next version of the Windows operating system, will make malicious software (malware) that gets onto computers without the users' knowledge 'a thing of the past'."
By using TCPA to lock out all non Microsoft authorized software & just coincidentally eliminate the open software threat to the Microsoft Monopoly.
Occupants of Zarya were dead meat if anything went wrong with the landing rockets, so it's not like crew capsules don't have their own problems. I like the idea of winged soft landings & reusable crew modules as long as they are not using thousands of people to remanufacture them each time (as they do with the shuttle).
Personally, I was a Delta-Clipper fan (Until Nasa Borged it), but if you RTFA, you may note that they look to be simplifying the crew return vehicle to a minimum. It's a reusable crew return module, not another shuttle: There is no cargo bay. Engines & much on orbit infrastructure are behind the module much as they were in the Apollo CM. This may actually be a good compromise between shuttle complexity & modules.
Wings bring you cross range & soft landing. Capsules are fine when you can: - Use throwaway capsules and - Send a carrier battle group to the south pacific or - Land on a few thousand square miles of (mostly flat) steppes.
We no longer have the carrier groups free to recover in mid ocean. Recovering in salt water blows the reusable option in any case (The SRB's are DUMB and almost 100% remanufactured). I disagree with much of what Nasa does, but they moved to reusable winged vehicles over a quarter century ago for good reasons.
If you're going to use stupid analogies to push an off-topic political point, try telling the truth: - Strawman A: The USA "protects everybodys interests by sitting on the UN". Where has the USA said this exactly? Do you have a clear citation of this phrase in an official document or are you just blowing smoke? - Strawman B: "and then using it's veto". Which veto would that be? The U.N. security council veto? More smoke: The USA has never used it's veto on the world court. It has terminated it's consent to surrender it's sovereignty to the world court.
When countries like Libya can become chairman of the U.N.'s Human rights committee the USA recognizes that the international burocracies are being perverted from their initial aims. Why should the world court be any different?
So, by your yardstick, Switzerland which has cleaner parks, great transportation & a higher standard of living than France should be a socialist paradise on earth, n'est pas? As it isn't, your equating Socialism with what make France a nice place to live is illogical. I could just as easily equate dogshit all over the sidewalks as deriving from socialism.
Comparing democratic France to Communist East Germany is extremely disingenous & at best badly informed. As a dual national who grew up in the states & then who has lived in France since the 80's allow me to correct you some of your misconceptions on living in Paris (because clearly you were in Paris & not in the country or any of the myriad other cities where public transport is less available).
Health care appears inexpensivce in France for three reasons: - Doctors are not subject to malpractice suits & thus the insurance premiums here the way they are in the states (Positive side: health care is less expensive overall. Negative Side: Much of the french medical profession treats their patients like vets do and bad doctors are allowed to continue practicing. My nephew died because of an incompetant ObGyn - multiple condemnations for malpractice, yet he is allowed to continue). - Nurses are paid little more than streetsweepers (Positive side: Health care is less expensive overall. Negative Side: There is a growing deficit of nurses in France. 5% of all positions are currently unfilled and given that 20% will be retiring in the next 10 years with few replacements in the pipeline it's not going to be getting better). - The French taxpayer foot's 90% or your bill. (Positive side: Health care appears less expensive overall to people in France temporarily. Negative Side: France's social security budget is perennially in deficit and needs to be bailed out every one or two years to the tune of billions of Euros. Live here for more than a year and you'll discover that new taxes (RDS, ISF, etc) come every 2-3 years and that our standard of living diminishes every time).
The One major advantage I see in France's approach to health that doesn't have a downside is that the government refuses to authorize new medication on the market if they consider it to be overpriced. Thus, the pharmacutical conglomerates are not charging the max that the market can bear.
The rail system & mass transit are subsidised to the point that people living in the center of our large cities can indeed move around easily, much as I do when I'm in New York, Wash DC, Chicago, etc. The perennial transport strikes by civil servants with guarenteed jobs & an early pension mean you cannot count on them working when you need them. If both your home & jobe are not in the town center, have fun during your 2 hour commutes. I bought a motorcycle & abandoned the metro after loosing a client due to strikes. The number of scooters & motorcycles has more than doubled over the past 10 years because many have done the same as I have.
Public space in the center of Paris is much like that of WDC: Pleasant & highly policed. European custom has been to push the poor out into the suburbs. Sure, the parks inside Paris are free, but if you're poor you'll have to take a bus then the Metro for over an hour to enjoy them.
So, you didn't feel threatened in the center of Paris? Spend some time in St Denis Garches or any of the poorer neigborhoods just outside Paris. Just don't show any exterior signes of wealth or be willing to surrender them. Don't try calling for the police: They only come in groups of 20 or more as their mere presence is considered to be an invasion by the criminal elements who respond by throwing bricks from their 6'th floor appartments.
I'm glad you enjoyed that government mandated 35hr work week. In the IT sector most people actually LOST time off as management's response was very often to abrogate all the previously privately negotiated vacation days (bye bye 5 days off after 5 years). Salaries (but not
Sveasoft will revoke your paid acces to their site (& ban your IP) if you redistribute beta versions of their alchemy firmware. I'd have absolutely no problems with this if they would deliver a non beta alchemy build back into the public domain. Alchemy has been in beta for over 9 months.
I'm not a Sveasoft subscriber yet as I'm will not to pay 20$ to someone who will not contribute willingly back to the community. Once Alchemy is freely distributable, my check will be in the mail (unless it take him so long to release it that other more open builds have surpassed it.
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The action that has had the biggest effect on shutting down Al Qaeda operations around the world was not the invasion of Iraq, nor that of Afghanistan. It was to follow the money trail and cut off their operatives as much as possible.
Of course this was never going to be 100% successful but AQ has had to move their financing much further underground & render it much less efficient.
Translation:
We'd really like in on some of the millions of dollars the Government is spending on New Orleans...
The same thing that happened to Dmitry Sklyarov when he entered the USA after breaking Adobe's Ebook protection...
Jail time, then public outrage & finally a sentance that lets "the criminal" free while dissuading anyone else from attempting the same act.
All things are relative, friend. I never said that upstates contribution would seem important compared to the rest of the citys budget, just that NYC has usually taken more than it's share & that what may be considered pocket change in the budget of a lower state county can be an important sum for a rural upstate county.
The classic New Yorker cartoon which reduced the rest of the state beyond Orange & Putnam counties to a mere line is a faithful representation of how many inhabitants of the city views the rest of the state. The tendancy for well educated urbanites to consider themselves more deserving than their less educated rural neighbors is not considered universally just. Don't be surprised when these attitudes produce resentment.
However, Ion drives efficiency over chemical reaction trusters is often more than offset by the fact that it is much more efficient to use your propellant when deep in a gravity well than it is to do so over the breadth of the mission. Ion drives also force you to make multiple passes through earths van-allen belts which increases the shielding needed to protect the electronics.
When you subtract the energy needed to boost the reaction mass used mid-cruise out of low orbit & the additional shielding, ion drives do not look quite so efficient anymore.
I'm probably feeding the troll here, but just maybe he'll learn something of which he was ignorant...
You do not remember the doomed emancipationist movements in upstate NY that sought to split the state in two. I do. I also had friends that missed school for days because the state didn't have the money for snowplow maintainance. NYC ran major deficits for decades. I grew up with 7% sales tax. Now that NYC is no longer running a deficit, this has now been reduced to 4%. Coincidence, maybe?
People like you in NYC looking down their noses & telling the hicks that they should just shut up & do as they're told are part of the problem. Putting part the investment of installing the windmills into upstate infrastructure would silence many of the local critics, but that's politically unpalatable.
The urban disconnection from rural America is no myth. It's largely what got GWB reelected.
Having grown up in upstate NY, there's also a knee jerk reaction to having to contribute anything which would help New York City more than it would the locals. Over the past 50 years, NTC has usually recieved much more in benefits than it has paid back in taxes to the rest of the state. Upstate NY has been shafted many times and lots of people feel resentment.
Much of upstate NY is really rural and many people can still remember how difficult it was to get on the grid and some people still aren't. When the electric co tells you for decades that you're too far for them to pull a line to connect you, it is understandable that they resist when they finally want to do so just so they can connect the windmills that they want to install on your neigbors hill.
Lastly, don't forget that this is pretty close to Amish country. These people are no strangers to wanting to live lives unspoiled by modern technology.
Slimboxes are now into their third generation and have been 802.11b & 802.11g since they came out with the V2 over a year ago. The 802.11b only status of V1 slimboxes was the reason I didn't buy one. I've been very happy with my V2.
It's 8.3in thickness, 40lb weight, and difficult screen rotation are also definite design handicaps. If I want a monster with good color performance on my desk I'll just buy a CRT...
Not quite. While the Antitrust settlement gave AOL a seven-year, royalty-free license it does not force AOL to use IE if they decide that it is no longer in their best interest. Having MS on their board however...
More probably, buying into AOL is a good way for Microsoft to ensure that AOL never abandons IE for Mozilla...
So? The only reason diesels are cheaper in France & much of Europe is that taxes are much lower for diesel than for gasoline. Remove this artificial prop & diesel sales fall to 10-20% of their current levels. From the studies I've seen, biodiesel is no more energy efficient than ethanol. It's a great prop for subsidizing farmers but by no means is it a solution the the coming energy crisis.
Not so: My references are in a number of books at home (Biography of Bomber Harris, Official History Of the 8th AF), but there were three main objectives in the Dresden Raid:
- Destroying the rail centers.
- Depriving the War factories near Dresden from their workforce by dehousing them.
- Degrade the german workforce in nearby cities through shock.
While many current day revisionists try to relabel the latter two objectives as "non-military", they were almost universally accepted at the time. To those who had lived through the blitz & given the inaccuracy of WW2 bomb strikes, the bombing of city centers was a legitimate objective.
I meta-moderated down the idiot who labeled that as insightful.
Legalizing the murder of any elected official is a one way street to repression of super-stalinian proportions. The only ones who would run for office would be those had an existing defense organisation: CEO's of major corporations & mafia bosses (as if there's any difference...). It's stupidity incarnate. These are NOT the people we need to represent us.
The proliferation of stupid uses of fingerprints is just going to backfire & render all uses insecure.
This article describes how easy is would be to make back up copies of all the fingerprints you would need to fool these devices. All you need is a relatively clean copy of a print...
Here's the list of Sys-Con's publications according to their web site: .NET Developer's Journal
- IT Solutions Guide
- Information Storage & Security Journal
- JDJ
- Web Services Journal (XML Journal)
-
- LinuxWorld Magazine
- MX Developer's Journal
- ColdFusion Developer's Journal
- XML-Journal
- Wireless Business & Technology
- WebSphere Journal
- PowerBuilder Developer's Journal
- Eclipse Developer's Journal
Microsoft's TCPA testbed is called the XBox. Note that the only ways to boot linux on the Xbox are to use a Mod chip or to use a buffer overflow exploit of a MS signed game. To me, MS's definition is perfectly clear and excludes open software.
Red-Herring: No-one, I repeat, No-one has ever successfully sued MS for damages after something went hugely wrong due to a bug in Windows. According to the Windows Terms of Use, damages are limited to what was paid for Windows.
By using TCPA to lock out all non Microsoft authorized software & just coincidentally eliminate the open software threat to the Microsoft Monopoly.
Sorry, I refuse to play along...
Occupants of Zarya were dead meat if anything went wrong with the landing rockets, so it's not like crew capsules don't have their own problems. I like the idea of winged soft landings & reusable crew modules as long as they are not using thousands of people to remanufacture them each time (as they do with the shuttle).
Personally, I was a Delta-Clipper fan (Until Nasa Borged it), but if you RTFA, you may note that they look to be simplifying the crew return vehicle to a minimum. It's a reusable crew return module, not another shuttle: There is no cargo bay. Engines & much on orbit infrastructure are behind the module much as they were in the Apollo CM. This may actually be a good compromise between shuttle complexity & modules.
Wings bring you cross range & soft landing. Capsules are fine when you can:
- Use throwaway capsules and
- Send a carrier battle group to the south pacific or
- Land on a few thousand square miles of (mostly flat) steppes.
We no longer have the carrier groups free to recover in mid ocean. Recovering in salt water blows the reusable option in any case (The SRB's are DUMB and almost 100% remanufactured). I disagree with much of what Nasa does, but they moved to reusable winged vehicles over a quarter century ago for good reasons.
Anonymous Coward in truth...
If you're going to use stupid analogies to push an off-topic political point, try telling the truth:
- Strawman A: The USA "protects everybodys interests by sitting on the UN". Where has the USA said this exactly? Do you have a clear citation of this phrase in an official document or are you just blowing smoke?
- Strawman B: "and then using it's veto". Which veto would that be? The U.N. security council veto? More smoke: The USA has never used it's veto on the world court. It has terminated it's consent to surrender it's sovereignty to the world court.
When countries like Libya can become chairman of the U.N.'s Human rights committee the USA recognizes that the international burocracies are being perverted from their initial aims. Why should the world court be any different?
So, by your yardstick, Switzerland which has cleaner parks, great transportation & a higher standard of living than France should be a socialist paradise on earth, n'est pas? As it isn't, your equating Socialism with what make France a nice place to live is illogical. I could just as easily equate dogshit all over the sidewalks as deriving from socialism.
Comparing democratic France to Communist East Germany is extremely disingenous & at best badly informed. As a dual national who grew up in the states & then who has lived in France since the 80's allow me to correct you some of your misconceptions on living in Paris (because clearly you were in Paris & not in the country or any of the myriad other cities where public transport is less available).
Health care appears inexpensivce in France for three reasons:
- Doctors are not subject to malpractice suits & thus the insurance premiums here the way they are in the states (Positive side: health care is less expensive overall. Negative Side: Much of the french medical profession treats their patients like vets do and bad doctors are allowed to continue practicing. My nephew died because of an incompetant ObGyn - multiple condemnations for malpractice, yet he is allowed to continue).
- Nurses are paid little more than streetsweepers (Positive side: Health care is less expensive overall. Negative Side: There is a growing deficit of nurses in France. 5% of all positions are currently unfilled and given that 20% will be retiring in the next 10 years with few replacements in the pipeline it's not going to be getting better).
- The French taxpayer foot's 90% or your bill. (Positive side: Health care appears less expensive overall to people in France temporarily. Negative Side: France's social security budget is perennially in deficit and needs to be bailed out every one or two years to the tune of billions of Euros. Live here for more than a year and you'll discover that new taxes (RDS, ISF, etc) come every 2-3 years and that our standard of living diminishes every time).
The One major advantage I see in France's approach to health that doesn't have a downside is that the government refuses to authorize new medication on the market if they consider it to be overpriced. Thus, the pharmacutical conglomerates are not charging the max that the market can bear.
The rail system & mass transit are subsidised to the point that people living in the center of our large cities can indeed move around easily, much as I do when I'm in New York, Wash DC, Chicago, etc. The perennial transport strikes by civil servants with guarenteed jobs & an early pension mean you cannot count on them working when you need them. If both your home & jobe are not in the town center, have fun during your 2 hour commutes. I bought a motorcycle & abandoned the metro after loosing a client due to strikes. The number of scooters & motorcycles has more than doubled over the past 10 years because many have done the same as I have.
Public space in the center of Paris is much like that of WDC: Pleasant & highly policed. European custom has been to push the poor out into the suburbs. Sure, the parks inside Paris are free, but if you're poor you'll have to take a bus then the Metro for over an hour to enjoy them.
So, you didn't feel threatened in the center of Paris? Spend some time in St Denis Garches or any of the poorer neigborhoods just outside Paris. Just don't show any exterior signes of wealth or be willing to surrender them. Don't try calling for the police: They only come in groups of 20 or more as their mere presence is considered to be an invasion by the criminal elements who respond by throwing bricks from their 6'th floor appartments.
I'm glad you enjoyed that government mandated 35hr work week. In the IT sector most people actually LOST time off as management's response was very often to abrogate all the previously privately negotiated vacation days (bye bye 5 days off after 5 years). Salaries (but not
Sveasoft will revoke your paid acces to their site (& ban your IP) if you redistribute beta versions of their alchemy firmware. I'd have absolutely no problems with this if they would deliver a non beta alchemy build back into the public domain. Alchemy has been in beta for over 9 months.
I'm not a Sveasoft subscriber yet as I'm will not to pay 20$ to someone who will not contribute willingly back to the community. Once Alchemy is freely distributable, my check will be in the mail (unless it take him so long to release it that other more open builds have surpassed it.