Or European, or Japanese, or Chinese... shall I go on? The list is pretty damn long. Its bloody human nature to do this. We pretty much cannot help ourselves. Currently America is at the top of the heap, but very few (any?) of the others who are also near the top can claim a pure as the driven snow background.
Do you think that if humans go out into space there will suddenly become more noble creatures? They will be the same humans that we have here on earth, and act the same way. You must be a fan of Star Trek, where it appears that they have found a way to rip testosterone from males and whatever makes women so bitchy and catty. If I had to pick any thing that would be a good representation, it would be something like Babylon 5, where politics and greed are readly apparent.
Properly coded (which is the hard part) This is the important part. Seeing as how the crypto changes on a daily basis for the military IFF and considering how carefully protected that crypto is, this does not really concern me.
Not F-15s, F-14s and F-18s were the aircraft on the deck during the movie. F15s are land based Air Force aircraft. Though that whole scene made we want to stand up and yell BS. Those aircraft were shown firing way too close to the carrier. Every ship in that battlegroup should have been at GQ, given the current state of events. Her AEGIS equiped escorts should have seen those aircraft and been vectoring interceptors.
Though I will defend you on the AWACS bit. check out http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/e-2.htm . E-2 Hawkeye and E-3 Sentry are both AWACS, neither has exclusive rights to the title. AWACS is just the mission that the aircraft performs, not a descriptor of a specific airframe.
or something like that. Gotta love TV in that they can create a TV show that is focused on commercials. There are actually some pretty amusing and origional commercials out there.
Well.. The article did say that when religion got involved disputes were more likely. And nothing can describe the vi-emacs camps as being anything but loyal members of a particular cult.
"I don't. What do they actually do that helps anyone? Why the need for "intel" -- aside from military adventuring, dissent suppression, and occasional government-overthrowing?" Anti-Terrorism, preventing other countries "military adventuring", and countering other countries intel agencies (surely you do not think that we are the only people who do this sort of thing, maybe they all are not as world reaching as ours, but they are out there) Even if we stopped engaging in those activities, it wouldn't make us safer. The world is interconnected, and certain countries toppling or not does effect the American people.
"Another good point -- what do the NSA do for anyone? Surely all the smart people doing cryptanalysis and whatnot for them could be doing something more constructive." The idea of intel agencies is that you will not hear of everything that they do. In addition to having systems in place so that they can monitor the electronic activities of people, orgs, and countries who could pose a threat to safety of the US people they also provide a fair amount of support to other government agencies. ie Guidence on how to secure your systems so that other nations have a harder time getting into our systems.
And I must say that on behalf of the members of the US intelligence field (of which I am not a member), I consider it an insult that you are implying that they are not productive or constructive members of this society. These people have served, and died, to protect this country. I severly doubt that you have contributed (and sacrificed, there is a reason these people are called civil servents) as much to this society as these people have.
The CIA mission is to gather intelligence and provide advice to the leadership of the US. Maybe they need occasional moral steering, but the general need for their mission will not go away. And the CIA is special because they are meant to be the primary human intelligence (HUMINT) agency (as opposed to the NSA, which is an electronic intel (ELINT) agency) Incidents like 9/11/2001 show that they do let things slip past, but I shudder to think of what would be done to us without them out there intercepting things.
Do you have a suggestion for a replacement? The rest of the world would not stop spying if we suddenly stopped doing it. Would you rather that intel come in through military intelligence agencies?
Haven't we learned that this concept fails. TV networks would feel no need to support this, because it would cut into add revenue. The actual VCR replacement piece of Tivo is not the piece that I find most interesting about these devices. I wouldn't hold your breath awaiting the demise of this concept. Its more like they have opened up the doorway for this concept.
It would force them to get out. See the world around them. Maybe even.. socialize IRL with other people who share their interests. At the very least they wouldn't be sitting at home, snarfing Doritos and guzzling Mountain Dew.
#3 - Ah, the idea that I have seen in several SF stories. Instead of tossing the fuel tank so that it burns up, empty, clean and pressurize it to serve as additional space. I really like this idea. Ultimate in recycling.... we already paid to get it to where it is, why the heck should we throw it away. If not now, then later. Tether them to the ISS (which should have kept the name "Freedom", but apparently the name would have offended some of our foreign partners (though why we would want to partner with people who find freedom an offensive word I have no idea)) and use them sometime in the future. Not like it would have cost any extra.
Why would that be a waste? We are talking about a location from which you could employ weapons with a very low risk of the weapons platform being taken out (nobody has an active ASAT system in place right now..... Though if I really hated the US this would be my main goal...... US effectiveness would take a nosedive if someone ever nails our GPS, Spy and Comm satelites.... one might say that in a way we already have weapons out there, in the form of those satelites.) The best would be nothing more than guided steel beams(or the like) dropped from orbit. Maybe get the raw materials from the moon(from the earth is awefully expensive). This would be the ultimate kinetic kill weapon, and aside from the cost of getting it there (Could be mittigated by using lunar materials) it would also be very cost effective.
Actually it could lead to an interesting inter-service fight over who gets to run it. Army arguing that you would use it to attack land targets, as they move slowly. Air Force arguing that space is a natural extension of their territory. And Navy arguing that it is theirs, since of course you need to use spaceships to get to the facility. (with the marines by the side asking what the hell is a laser?)
Of course, to set this up you need a certain infrastructure to set things up, during which you have probably built a system to send minerals to LEO. Not to hard to change that to rain flaming objects down on your enemy's head (this the marines would understand.... "Use rock to smash enemy... Me understand").
in one of the movies they had this fake commercial where the criminal was trying to steal the car and the the cars active defense was locking him in and electrocuting him. Then all you had to do was open the door, let the BG fall out of the car and drive away. Sometimes it feels like we are heading that way. They now have the option of adding flame thrower type stuff to cars in South Africa to prevent carjackings. Car Wars, here we come.
soo.... You support car thieves? Anything that makes thieves think twice about taking my stuff is a good thing. Particularily since there is no way to accidentally get caught by this ploy (hardly anybody accidentally steals a car. The only scenario that they could accidentally take the car is if the car looks like it is theirs, and their key somehow makes it work. And even then you could explain it away.). Anyway, I think this vehicle is being used by Arlington cops, and seeing as Arlington is not DC then you shouldn't have any problems.
Gas Guzzler tax only applies to automobiles. Some genius along the way acceded to the idea that SUV are not automobiles, they are light trucks, hence exempt from that requirement. This whole situation might correct itself soon anyway, with a greatly increased price for fuel that has not been contaminated by radiation.
"Someone who sits around and obsesses about a Japanese kid show" Missed the point of the previous post. There are kiddie shows (Sailor Moon, Pokemon, DBZ, etc). But there are plenty of shows that are not. Many shows run at prime time and cover all genre's, heavy Science Fiction (Legend of Galactic Hero), soap opera (Maison Ikkou), etc. Japan just happen to use animation for more purposes than we do here. But I am probably talking to a wall here, so why am bothering to reply, since in your simple mind everything Anime is a "kiddie show."
No, we didn't use any EMP devices. The only neat toy that you might be thinking of was a specialized bomb that was used on power distribution facilites. It basically a chaff bomb, with strips set so that the electrical systems would short circuit and be destroyed, without any harm to anyone. People around the target definately were happy we used that instead of 500-2000 pound bombs.
Hell, we accidentally used an EMP device on ourselves during the early testing in the 50's. Just detonate a largish nuke in the upper atmosphere and watch things grind down. They used this premise to explain why everything went to hell in the tv show "Dark Angel". Standard procedure in the MAD WWIII scenarios would include several devices to do high atmosphere dets to disrupt C4I assets. I shudder to think about the effects on the US if someone did this. (luckily this requires a fairly high tech base) Not too much stuff out there thats hardened anymore, even in military circles.
Our missiles are more functional than anyone elses. The main reason that the Soviets had 3-4 times more weapons was that their accuracy was that much worse. Their CAP (Circular Area of Probability) was much higher than ours. So instead of upping the accuracy they upped the missiles per target to increase the chance of destruction. And because our weapons were more accurate we didn't have to develop weapons of the sheer size that the Soviets made. Not that any of this impacts on why a person like Saddam is developing, he would be happy to hit the country that he is aiming at, since whackos like him are more likely to use it.
This would be the ultimate end for people bitching about reality. "Lets see you do that rocket assisted jump in real life..... " And would sure take the wind out of those annoying snipers in these type of games, if they had to face a real sniper.
Never. As a matter of fact we are sqeezing down ever more than before. The US Navy, and DOD soon thereafter, will not even allow non-citizens to work on non-sensitive but mission critical systems, which will futher sqeeze people with conflicted loyalties away from our important systems. It's very simple, I do not trust a non-citizen to place as much effort into the defense of my country as I and other citizens will. If bad things happen to the US, I am pretty much going down with the ship, as I cannot see myself living anywhere else. (and unlike many, I have relatives and friends elsewhere, and have traveled extensively)
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Or European, or Japanese, or Chinese... shall I go on? The list is pretty damn long. Its bloody human nature to do this. We pretty much cannot help ourselves. Currently America is at the top of the heap, but very few (any?) of the others who are also near the top can claim a pure as the driven snow background.
Do you think that if humans go out into space there will suddenly become more noble creatures? They will be the same humans that we have here on earth, and act the same way. You must be a fan of Star Trek, where it appears that they have found a way to rip testosterone from males and whatever makes women so bitchy and catty. If I had to pick any thing that would be a good representation, it would be something like Babylon 5, where politics and greed are readly apparent.
Properly coded (which is the hard part) This is the important part. Seeing as how the crypto changes on a daily basis for the military IFF and considering how carefully protected that crypto is, this does not really concern me.
Care to back up that biological weapon assertion? That was broken up in the 70's.
Not F-15s, F-14s and F-18s were the aircraft on the deck during the movie. F15s are land based Air Force aircraft.
Though that whole scene made we want to stand up and yell BS. Those aircraft were shown firing way too close to the carrier. Every ship in that battlegroup should have been at GQ, given the current state of events. Her AEGIS equiped escorts should have seen those aircraft and been vectoring interceptors.
Though I will defend you on the AWACS bit. check out http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/e-2.htm . E-2 Hawkeye and E-3 Sentry are both AWACS, neither has exclusive rights to the title. AWACS is just the mission that the aircraft performs, not a descriptor of a specific airframe.
or something like that. Gotta love TV in that they can create a TV show that is focused on commercials. There are actually some pretty amusing and origional commercials out there.
Well.. The article did say that when religion got involved disputes were more likely. And nothing can describe the vi-emacs camps as being anything but loyal members of a particular cult.
That space someday will be that crowded. Right now it seems like everyone is content to huddle around in LEO.
"I don't. What do they actually do that helps anyone? Why the need for "intel" -- aside from military adventuring, dissent suppression, and occasional government-overthrowing?"
Anti-Terrorism, preventing other countries "military adventuring", and countering other countries intel agencies (surely you do not think that we are the only people who do this sort of thing, maybe they all are not as world reaching as ours, but they are out there) Even if we stopped engaging in those activities, it wouldn't make us safer. The world is interconnected, and certain countries toppling or not does effect the American people.
"Another good point -- what do the NSA do for anyone? Surely all the smart people doing cryptanalysis and whatnot for them could be doing something more constructive."
The idea of intel agencies is that you will not hear of everything that they do. In addition to having systems in place so that they can monitor the electronic activities of people, orgs, and countries who could pose a threat to safety of the US people they also provide a fair amount of support to other government agencies. ie Guidence on how to secure your systems so that other nations have a harder time getting into our systems.
And I must say that on behalf of the members of the US intelligence field (of which I am not a member), I consider it an insult that you are implying that they are not productive or constructive members of this society. These people have served, and died, to protect this country. I severly doubt that you have contributed (and sacrificed, there is a reason these people are called civil servents) as much to this society as these people have.
The CIA mission is to gather intelligence and provide advice to the leadership of the US. Maybe they need occasional moral steering, but the general need for their mission will not go away. And the CIA is special because they are meant to be the primary human intelligence (HUMINT) agency (as opposed to the NSA, which is an electronic intel (ELINT) agency) Incidents like 9/11/2001 show that they do let things slip past, but I shudder to think of what would be done to us without them out there intercepting things.
Do you have a suggestion for a replacement? The rest of the world would not stop spying if we suddenly stopped doing it. Would you rather that intel come in through military intelligence agencies?
Haven't we learned that this concept fails. TV networks would feel no need to support this, because it would cut into add revenue. The actual VCR replacement piece of Tivo is not the piece that I find most interesting about these devices.
I wouldn't hold your breath awaiting the demise of this concept. Its more like they have opened up the doorway for this concept.
It would force them to get out. See the world around them. Maybe even .. socialize IRL with other people who share their interests. At the very least they wouldn't be sitting at home, snarfing Doritos and guzzling Mountain Dew.
#3 - Ah, the idea that I have seen in several SF stories. Instead of tossing the fuel tank so that it burns up, empty, clean and pressurize it to serve as additional space. I really like this idea. Ultimate in recycling.... we already paid to get it to where it is, why the heck should we throw it away. If not now, then later. Tether them to the ISS (which should have kept the name "Freedom", but apparently the name would have offended some of our foreign partners (though why we would want to partner with people who find freedom an offensive word I have no idea)) and use them sometime in the future. Not like it would have cost any extra.
Why would that be a waste? We are talking about a location from which you could employ weapons with a very low risk of the weapons platform being taken out (nobody has an active ASAT system in place right now..... Though if I really hated the US this would be my main goal...... US effectiveness would take a nosedive if someone ever nails our GPS, Spy and Comm satelites.... one might say that in a way we already have weapons out there, in the form of those satelites.)
The best would be nothing more than guided steel beams(or the like) dropped from orbit. Maybe get the raw materials from the moon(from the earth is awefully expensive). This would be the ultimate kinetic kill weapon, and aside from the cost of getting it there (Could be mittigated by using lunar materials) it would also be very cost effective.
Actually it could lead to an interesting inter-service fight over who gets to run it. Army arguing that you would use it to attack land targets, as they move slowly. Air Force arguing that space is a natural extension of their territory. And Navy arguing that it is theirs, since of course you need to use spaceships to get to the facility. (with the marines by the side asking what the hell is a laser?)
Of course, to set this up you need a certain infrastructure to set things up, during which you have probably built a system to send minerals to LEO. Not to hard to change that to rain flaming objects down on your enemy's head (this the marines would understand.... "Use rock to smash enemy... Me understand").
in one of the movies they had this fake commercial where the criminal was trying to steal the car and the the cars active defense was locking him in and electrocuting him. Then all you had to do was open the door, let the BG fall out of the car and drive away.
Sometimes it feels like we are heading that way. They now have the option of adding flame thrower type stuff to cars in South Africa to prevent carjackings.
Car Wars, here we come.
soo.... You support car thieves? Anything that makes thieves think twice about taking my stuff is a good thing. Particularily since there is no way to accidentally get caught by this ploy (hardly anybody accidentally steals a car. The only scenario that they could accidentally take the car is if the car looks like it is theirs, and their key somehow makes it work. And even then you could explain it away.). Anyway, I think this vehicle is being used by Arlington cops, and seeing as Arlington is not DC then you shouldn't have any problems.
Gas Guzzler tax only applies to automobiles. Some genius along the way acceded to the idea that SUV are not automobiles, they are light trucks, hence exempt from that requirement.
This whole situation might correct itself soon anyway, with a greatly increased price for fuel that has not been contaminated by radiation.
"Someone who sits around and obsesses about a Japanese kid show"
Missed the point of the previous post. There are kiddie shows (Sailor Moon, Pokemon, DBZ, etc). But there are plenty of shows that are not. Many shows run at prime time and cover all genre's, heavy Science Fiction (Legend of Galactic Hero), soap opera (Maison Ikkou), etc. Japan just happen to use animation for more purposes than we do here.
But I am probably talking to a wall here, so why am bothering to reply, since in your simple mind everything Anime is a "kiddie show."
Except when the techies are placed in special pay banded positions, where the mandatory promotions are replaced by performance based criteria.
No, we didn't use any EMP devices. The only neat toy that you might be thinking of was a specialized bomb that was used on power distribution facilites. It basically a chaff bomb, with strips set so that the electrical systems would short circuit and be destroyed, without any harm to anyone. People around the target definately were happy we used that instead of 500-2000 pound bombs.
Hell, we accidentally used an EMP device on ourselves during the early testing in the 50's. Just detonate a largish nuke in the upper atmosphere and watch things grind down. They used this premise to explain why everything went to hell in the tv show "Dark Angel". Standard procedure in the MAD WWIII scenarios would include several devices to do high atmosphere dets to disrupt C4I assets. I shudder to think about the effects on the US if someone did this. (luckily this requires a fairly high tech base) Not too much stuff out there thats hardened anymore, even in military circles.
Our missiles are more functional than anyone elses. The main reason that the Soviets had 3-4 times more weapons was that their accuracy was that much worse. Their CAP (Circular Area of Probability) was much higher than ours. So instead of upping the accuracy they upped the missiles per target to increase the chance of destruction. And because our weapons were more accurate we didn't have to develop weapons of the sheer size that the Soviets made.
Not that any of this impacts on why a person like Saddam is developing, he would be happy to hit the country that he is aiming at, since whackos like him are more likely to use it.
This would be the ultimate end for people bitching about reality. "Lets see you do that rocket assisted jump in real life..... " And would sure take the wind out of those annoying snipers in these type of games, if they had to face a real sniper.
Never. As a matter of fact we are sqeezing down ever more than before. The US Navy, and DOD soon thereafter, will not even allow non-citizens to work on non-sensitive but mission critical systems, which will futher sqeeze people with conflicted loyalties away from our important systems. It's very simple, I do not trust a non-citizen to place as much effort into the defense of my country as I and other citizens will. If bad things happen to the US, I am pretty much going down with the ship, as I cannot see myself living anywhere else. (and unlike many, I have relatives and friends elsewhere, and have traveled extensively)