In addition, IBM shares recovered almost all their 6.4 percent loss within a month!
You don't understand. That recovery should have been an additional increase from the pre-decline price. These investors should not be even, they should be up 6.4%. Don't you understand that if stocks go down someone did something wrong and needs to be sued?
There is no real business opportunity for US or European companies in China. If your business is major infrastructure or major industry you will experience a decline in business once sufficient experience and technology has been transferred to Chinese partners. Ex GE moves some jet engine manufacturing to China to sell to Chinese airlines while the Chinese government is simultaneously releasing its 10 year plan to replace foreign designed aviation components with domestically "designed" components.
The NSA is a convenient public excuse for China doing what it had planned to do all along.
Worst case scenario would mean that Finnish army would collapse within weeks of the conflict and go into guerrilla warfare mode, which would mean that cities and their infrastructure would become controlled by Red Army. That means that destruction of any city infrastructure would be a key NATO priority. This would have to be done in a way that would be quick enough to inflict necessary damage before Red army was in the cities to avoid NATO vs Warsaw Pact war. That means using tactical nuclear weapons.
The article seems pretty clear that targeting of normal city infrastructure was not part of the plan. Only infrastructure of military value: bridges, airfields, ports, etc. Certainly some civilians may be close to these. However the use of tactical nuclear weapons, weapons of low yield, suggests that civilians were in fact considered. If there were truly no consideration of civilians or the desire to destroy all city infrastructure then strategic nuclear weapons, the high yield city killers, would have been selected. And as the author concedes, identified targets were not necessarily even going to be hit with nukes.
With respect to avoiding Red Army casualties, again that seems contrary to the article. The article indicates nukes were unlikely to be used unless the US was facing an imminent attack or had been attacked. A desire to limit Red Army casualties makes no sense in this context. Plus the plan refers to strikes on infrastructure that was "about to" or "had been" captured, that does not suggest a Red Army at a safe distance.
But when you get right down to it, a search is required to find a particular paper letter in a mass of other paper letters while it's in the post office system.
That analogy is off on a tangent, we are not talking about intercepting a particular letter or email. The topic is recording meta data, in other words recording the addresses on the front of an envelope. My understanding is that letters already go through optical sorting, the envelope imaged and recognition is applied to the address. It would take little effort to record that address.
... If yahoo.com's hard drives were public, David Kernell would not have committed any infraction at all for reading Sarah Palin's email....
That is an even worse analogy, even farther off on a tangent. No one is talking about reading the contents of mail or email. That has been made clear repeatedly in this thread. All that is being discussed is the recording of the meta data, to and from addresses.
Telephone call routing information is not public. Letter routing information is not public. Packet routing information is not public. Email routing information is not public. Package routing information is not public. Metadata is not public.
"The Mail Isolation program is really just a super-beefed-up version of the USPS "mail covers" program that has been around for about a century, explains the Times. Mail covers are warrantless requests for photos of the outside of specific recipients’ mail.
Basically, a law enforcement agency fills out the request, and for 30 days (extendable to 120 days), it receives scans of all mail related to the subject of the request. Only the outside of the mail is provided, as opening mail would require a warrant. Authorities maintain that no warrant is needed for information on the outside of a piece of mail, as there can be no reasonable expectation of privacy. The USPS can deny a mail covers request, but rarely does." http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130703/12551523709/old-school-metadata-still-being-harvested-usps-turned-over-to-law-enforcementsecurity-agencies-request.shtml
Going into an ISP and recording all the to/from fields or going into the phone company and recording all the phone numbers connected in a call would seem analogous.
"It remains unknown in what kind of situations the superpowers would have resorted to their nuclear arsenal. By the mid 1960s the use of tactical nuclear weapons had become an increasingly remote possibility despite the fact that the United States had approximately 7,000 stored in Europe. It is unlikely that the U.S.A would have used them for purposes other than repelling or preventing an attack against herself.
It is hard to build a reliable picture of comprehensive plans and their exact nature since documents have come to light only randomly, and those that have are incomplete. (And practically nothing definite is known about the Soviet plans.) What is obvious, however, is that in the event of the outbreak of a war, all listed targets would not have been attacked automatically and all the bombs used would not have carried nuclear warheads."
Basically the idea in that this routing information has been made public...This idea got extended to email
Which makes absolutely no sense...
How is that? The routing information, addresses on snail mail envelope or to/from fields in the email, must be disclosed to 3rd parties for routing and delivery.
There is no constitutional prohibition against investigating you. Looking at you is how probably cause for a warrant is found. Certain things you say and do are considered public information, in "plain sight". My understanding is that routing information that you shared with a 3rd party falls into this plain sight. Routing information being the addresses on an envelope, the to/from fields of an email, the two phone numbers in a telephone call,... The content of the envelope, the email, the phone call, that's a different story and where a warrant becomes necessary.
The fact that you are mailing letters to your co-conspirators is not protected,
Not sure I follow.
Let me put the text here "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Not seeing 'only except data we can sorta see anyway'. Which is metadata.
Note the words "secure" and "search". The addressee on the envelope is in plain sight. It is not considered secure nor is a search required to discover it. Basically the idea in that this routing information has been made public. This is what the courts have determined. This idea got extended to email, the routing information, to and from fields, have been made public. Now the content of the email, that is supposed to be like the content of the envelope, private until a warrant is obtained.
For phones the two numbers connected are considered public routing information and the conversation itself the private contents.
I am not a lawyer and the above is just a casual paraphrasing.
They aren't actually breaking the law now with metadata collection. The courts have ruled on that. You might wish they were, but they aren't.
If they're searching the communications (or "papers") of American citizens...
That's the point, metadata collection is not supposed to include the content of conversations. The metadata collected is not considered the citizen's data, it is being considered the phone company's data. What two phone numbers were connected and for how many seconds. That is all the metadata is **supposed** to be.
That said, I am not claiming that two phone numbers and a time duration are all that has been collected without warrants.
Its not that I am not hearing what you are saying. Its that the Finnish author's work that you are paraphrasing is saying something different.
It was to largely AVOID hitting USSR/Warsaw pact forces, and hit infrastructure BEFORE tanks arrived.
The original Finnish author was clear, the plan was hit targets under threat of **imminent** capture or already captured. Imminent would mean the tanks are basically there.
NATO would need to essentially level key cities very quickly, before USSR tanks reached them.
According to the original Finnish author the targets were bridges, air fields and ports. Leveling cities was not part of the plan. Low yield tactical nukes were to be used to limit damage to local civilians.
Conventional weapons were/are simply not powerful enough for the task.
That is also contradicting that original Finnish author that indicated that targets such as bridges would probably be first hit with conventional weapons rather than tactical nukes.
Finnish answer to this threat was very pragmatic, as usual. Ever since the plan came to light back in Cold War, every new building had to include a bomb shelter.
According to the original Finnish author, with US encouragement. Again, the US wanted to limit damage to civilians in these WW3 scenarios.
NATO didn't really care about finnish population in any way, it just wanted to destroy the infrastructure before USSR would arrive, and so you'd build shelters everywhere and try to save as many people as possible.
That is an erroneous portrayal of the original Finnish author's work.
Are gun owners required to be in the militia? Is the State free to draft gun owners?
According to U.S. Federal Law all U.S. able bodied adult males up to a certain age are in the "inactive" Federal Militia. "Inactive" means that there is no requirement to gather or train. Many states have similar laws regarding the state militias. The federal law also makes it clear that the militia is not the National Guard since that upper age limit is increased if a person had ever served in the "active" military forces. The National Guard is an "active" force since it meets and trains regularly and its training is dictated by the U.S. Army.
Automatically being in the Federal Militia is part of the legal basis for the draft. In a technical sense you are being "transferred" from the inactive militia to the active duty reserve (IIRC) force.
Also note that there is an inactive reserve, meaning after you leave the military you no longer have to meet or train but the military still owns your butt for some time frame. They can immediately return you to active duty in the event of a pressing need.
In general the U.S. military has the following components according the federal law (IIRC):
Regular Forces
Active Reserve Forces
Inactive Reserve Forces
National Guard (normally under command of state, can be transferred to federal authority, training dictated by feds)
Active Militia
Inactive Militia (all able bodied males of a certain age range automatically belong)
Is the money from an initial sale worth any less? Sales are sales.
Unless you are using sales as a metric to judge the quality of a game, then pre and post word-of-mouth sales are very different.
And to date D3 has over 14 million units sold.
I have never argued whether D3 is in fact a bad, good or superb game. I'm just arguing that record breaking initial sales (pre word-of-mouth) is not evidence of quality, rather it is evidence of reputation.
Not answering tank rush with nukes. Attacking key infrastructure with nukes to deny USSR its usage.
No, answering tank rushes, not merely an abstract threat. The infrastructure identified as *potential* targets for low yield tactical nukes were bridges, airfields and ports and the context imminent capture or after capture in a WW3 scenario. Hell Norway and Sweden were even on board. Norway was going to use its fighters to clear a path for US bombers, and if the US provided a tactical nuke Norway was even willing to deliver it to the Finnish target with one of its fighters.
Again, its a plan, a plan probably intentionally leaked/stolen as part of a deterrent/bluff campaign. During the cold war the US probably had plans on nuking every spot on the planet under some contingency. There were probably plans to nuke US territory if seized by the Soviets. The Finnish author who broke the story even admits that it was highly unlikely the US would have actually used the nukes in the event of a Soviet incursion, that a Soviet attack on US forces would probably have been necessary for the US to go nuclear.
D3 was the fastest selling PC game of all time and didn't just break PC sales records, it destroyed them. But yeah, other than that I can see why you'd think it would cause blizzard to fail...
You are merely quoting initial sales before word of mouth appraisals got going. Initial sales are largely based upon reputation, the actual value of the game itself is a minor factor. You have to look at sales once word of mouth appraisals of the game are flowing to determine a game's actual value.
D3 may very well be a big success. But you are not really offering evidence of that. You are really offering evidence of the success of D2 and WoW and their effect on D3 day one sales. Well, that and the fact that the D3 beta was not a disaster. I suppose a truly disastrous beta could have squandered the D2 and WoW good will. However less-than-big success in the beta would not derail the D2 and WoW good will.
Making the Russians *think* you may respond to a tank rush with nukes is one thing. Doing so is something completely different.
I was all prepared to ask if the Finnish word for "bluff" is xxxxx but then Google translate says the Finish word is "bluffi". That really undermines the attempt at humor.
Finland is not exactly pro Russian. They fought against the Russians in WW2. They even partially allied themselves to Nazi Germany in order to better fight the Russians.
Finland will spy on Russian traffic just like Sweden. Finland will also probably share interesting things with the US, the only question is whether all traffic will be monitored by the US.
Actually, no. Since we know from the Snowden leaks that the Swedish FRA is in cahoots with NSA and GSHQ, anything that passes through Sweden will automatically be scanned. A new undersea cable that bypasses Sweden thus has infinitely better chances of being secure.
No. Being spied on by Finland and Germany's spy agencies is not really more secure than being spied on by Finland, Sweden and Denmark's spy agencies. And its not like Germany wouldn't supply interesting things to the USA, at best they won't allow mass surveillance. Finland too probably.
It's the Soviets that liberated the continent of Europe...
The people or eastern Europe who were "liberated" by the Soviets don't seem to agree. They seem to feel they merely exchanged one brutal repressive dictator for another. Keep in mind that Stalin was initially Hitler's partner. The war formally started in Europe when Hitler invaded Poland, what it conveniently not mentioned is that Hitler only took half of Poland. Hitler and Stalin had a pre-arranged deal, Hitler would take the the western half and Stalin would take the eastern half of Poland. Stalin invaded Poland right after Hitler on the pretext of coming to their defense but never engaged the Germans, it was just theatre. Stalin also went on to commit massacres in Poland just like Hitler.
... the Americans/English only came for the ride. And even fighting only one enemy and what an enemy, that ended up costing the USSR a whole lot more than what the US lost in the war fighting on theaters.
Russia only survived long enough to make that fight because of US aid. Weapons, ammunition, food, etc. Without the US aid the Russians may very well have been pushed over the Urals. Once that happened the Nazis could have bottled up the mountain passes.
That said, I agree that the Russians did the bulk of the fighting and suffered greatly. However lets not be ridiculous and pretend they triumphed on their own, they did not. US aid was critical for their survival.
I don't understand where the planes land on it after their missions.
They don't land on the sub, the land in the water near the sub. Much like the scout planes for battleships. The sub based planes could be equipped with floats. They were removed when the aircraft went into the hangar and there was a clever system for rapidly attaching them while preparing for launch. Also, some missions were planned to be one way. Pilot survivability was not a major concern for Imperial Japan.
Despite their huge size, they weren't particularly advanced technologically and the aircraft carried were fairly short ranged with unimpressive payloads.
That doesn't quite matter when the attack is biological in nature. Imperial Japan developed a system for aerial dispersal of plague infected flees. They "successfully" tested this system on Chinese villagers in territory they occupied. One planned mission for these subs was to disperse plague infected fleas over major U.S. coastal cities like San Francisco and San Diego. They decided not to carry out this biological attack once they decided they needed a negotiated end to the war.
"Bacteriological weapons provided by Shir Ishii's units were also profusely used. For example, in 1940, the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force bombed Ningbo with fleas carrying the bubonic plague. During the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials the accused, such as Major General Kiyashi Kawashima, testified that, in 1941, some 40 members of Unit 731 air-dropped plague-contaminated fleas on Changde. These attacks caused epidemic plague outbreaks" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War#Use_of_chemical_and_bacteriological_weapons
= = = One of his first moves was to let partisan Nancy Pelosi take the lead and also take the process into the back rooms with lobbyists in tow. = = =
It is always easy to spot the breitbart.com fans in the office:
Really? I don't think I've been to Breitbart's website.
1) They all subscribe to the "Nancy Pelosi as ultimate evil librul WITCH" theory - despite Pelosi being an ordinary centrist Democrat.
Really? I called her partisan, not "evil witch". I'll go further and suggest her agenda is different than the President's, which leads to the confusion over his surrendering leadership to her.
In any case, thanks for your amusing post. You truly identified the political hack whose mind exists in some strange bubble, yourself.
Yes, barely won, the margin of votes was small in key states that could have tipped the electoral college vote either way.
Complete bullshit. Obama won the electoral vote 332 - 206. Suppose you give Romney all the close states, so anything less than a 55% win for Obama counts as a Romney state, okay? That gives Romney Florida (29) [at 50%], Ohio (18) [at 51%], and Virginia (13) [at 51%], changing the totals to Obama 272 - 266. You'd have to throw in Colorado (9) [at 51%], which Obama won by 5.37%, to make it a Romney win.
You are only including the states that had a 51.5% or less win for Obama, not 55% as claimed. You failed to consider Pennsylvania (20) at 52%, New Hampshire (4) at 52%, Iowa (19) at 52%, Nevada (6) at 52%, Minnesota (10) at 53%, Wisconsin (10) at 53%, New Mexico (5) at 53%, Michigan (16) at 54%, and Oregon (7) at 54%
Basically 64 electoral votes needed to flip. Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania represent 67 and there Obama's vote represent less than 52%.
But lets go with the math you actually used (margin) rather than the math you claimed to have used. Why not go from a 5.37% margin to 5.39% it only a different of 0.02%? Then we can include Pennsylvania (20)
So, a 5.4% swing could have made it a solid Romney electoral college victory. As the NY Times reported, the President received an 11% favorability boost from the successful raid. Suppose we generously expect only a swing of half that magnitude when the October surprise leak occurs **right before** the election informing the public of a decision **not** to conduct the raid. That's 5.5%. Now consider how much of that 11% faded by election day, lets generously assume three quarters of it evaporated, so that by election day the boost was only 2.75%. We are looking at a 8.25% shift from favorable to unfavorable by flipping the decision from go to "no go".
You do know people can look things up and check your facts, right?
Apparently not you, saying lets go with 55% states but only including 51.5% states.
Say what you want about the bin Ladin raid, about the ACA, about the website, whatever. But your point about the 2012 election being on the cusp is just completely wrong.
Whether we use your erroneously stated argument, or your unintentionally used argument, its pretty clear that flipping the Bin Laden raid story from go to "no go" could have easily changed the election. All it took was a 1% shift in Florida, a 3% shift in Ohio and a 5.4% shift in Pennsylvania.
Slashdot Mirror
In addition, IBM shares recovered almost all their 6.4 percent loss within a month!
You don't understand. That recovery should have been an additional increase from the pre-decline price. These investors should not be even, they should be up 6.4%. Don't you understand that if stocks go down someone did something wrong and needs to be sued?
There is no real business opportunity for US or European companies in China. If your business is major infrastructure or major industry you will experience a decline in business once sufficient experience and technology has been transferred to Chinese partners. Ex GE moves some jet engine manufacturing to China to sell to Chinese airlines while the Chinese government is simultaneously releasing its 10 year plan to replace foreign designed aviation components with domestically "designed" components.
The NSA is a convenient public excuse for China doing what it had planned to do all along.
Worst case scenario would mean that Finnish army would collapse within weeks of the conflict and go into guerrilla warfare mode, which would mean that cities and their infrastructure would become controlled by Red Army. That means that destruction of any city infrastructure would be a key NATO priority. This would have to be done in a way that would be quick enough to inflict necessary damage before Red army was in the cities to avoid NATO vs Warsaw Pact war. That means using tactical nuclear weapons.
The article seems pretty clear that targeting of normal city infrastructure was not part of the plan. Only infrastructure of military value: bridges, airfields, ports, etc. Certainly some civilians may be close to these. However the use of tactical nuclear weapons, weapons of low yield, suggests that civilians were in fact considered. If there were truly no consideration of civilians or the desire to destroy all city infrastructure then strategic nuclear weapons, the high yield city killers, would have been selected. And as the author concedes, identified targets were not necessarily even going to be hit with nukes.
With respect to avoiding Red Army casualties, again that seems contrary to the article. The article indicates nukes were unlikely to be used unless the US was facing an imminent attack or had been attacked. A desire to limit Red Army casualties makes no sense in this context. Plus the plan refers to strikes on infrastructure that was "about to" or "had been" captured, that does not suggest a Red Army at a safe distance.
But when you get right down to it, a search is required to find a particular paper letter in a mass of other paper letters while it's in the post office system.
That analogy is off on a tangent, we are not talking about intercepting a particular letter or email. The topic is recording meta data, in other words recording the addresses on the front of an envelope. My understanding is that letters already go through optical sorting, the envelope imaged and recognition is applied to the address. It would take little effort to record that address.
... If yahoo.com's hard drives were public, David Kernell would not have committed any infraction at all for reading Sarah Palin's email. ...
That is an even worse analogy, even farther off on a tangent. No one is talking about reading the contents of mail or email. That has been made clear repeatedly in this thread. All that is being discussed is the recording of the meta data, to and from addresses.
Telephone call routing information is not public. Letter routing information is not public. Packet routing information is not public. Email routing information is not public. Package routing information is not public. Metadata is not public.
"The Mail Isolation program is really just a super-beefed-up version of the USPS "mail covers" program that has been around for about a century, explains the Times. Mail covers are warrantless requests for photos of the outside of specific recipients’ mail. Basically, a law enforcement agency fills out the request, and for 30 days (extendable to 120 days), it receives scans of all mail related to the subject of the request. Only the outside of the mail is provided, as opening mail would require a warrant. Authorities maintain that no warrant is needed for information on the outside of a piece of mail, as there can be no reasonable expectation of privacy. The USPS can deny a mail covers request, but rarely does."
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130703/12551523709/old-school-metadata-still-being-harvested-usps-turned-over-to-law-enforcementsecurity-agencies-request.shtml
Going into an ISP and recording all the to/from fields or going into the phone company and recording all the phone numbers connected in a call would seem analogous.
I have no idea which finnish author you're referencing. Kindly cite the author's name. Notably, I'm a finn.
“Without Mercy” – U.S. Strategic Intelligence and Finland in the Cold War
Jukka Rislakki
http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2011/12/finland-and-american-intelligence
"It remains unknown in what kind of situations the superpowers would have resorted to their nuclear arsenal. By the mid 1960s the use of tactical nuclear weapons had become an increasingly remote possibility despite the fact that the United States had approximately 7,000 stored in Europe. It is unlikely that the U.S.A would have used them for purposes other than repelling or preventing an attack against herself.
It is hard to build a reliable picture of comprehensive plans and their exact nature since documents have come to light only randomly, and those that have are incomplete. (And practically nothing definite is known about the Soviet plans.) What is obvious, however, is that in the event of the outbreak of a war, all listed targets would not have been attacked automatically and all the bombs used would not have carried nuclear warheads."
Basically the idea in that this routing information has been made public ...This idea got extended to email
Which makes absolutely no sense ...
How is that? The routing information, addresses on snail mail envelope or to/from fields in the email, must be disclosed to 3rd parties for routing and delivery.
Just because you can see it does not mean it is not private.
That seems to be precisely where the courts have drawn the line between no warrant required and warrant required, "in plain view".
There's no legitimate reason for them to study me
There is no constitutional prohibition against investigating you. Looking at you is how probably cause for a warrant is found. Certain things you say and do are considered public information, in "plain sight". My understanding is that routing information that you shared with a 3rd party falls into this plain sight. Routing information being the addresses on an envelope, the to/from fields of an email, the two phone numbers in a telephone call, ... The content of the envelope, the email, the phone call, that's a different story and where a warrant becomes necessary.
The fact that you are mailing letters to your co-conspirators is not protected,
Not sure I follow.
Let me put the text here "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Not seeing 'only except data we can sorta see anyway'. Which is metadata.
Note the words "secure" and "search". The addressee on the envelope is in plain sight. It is not considered secure nor is a search required to discover it. Basically the idea in that this routing information has been made public. This is what the courts have determined. This idea got extended to email, the routing information, to and from fields, have been made public. Now the content of the email, that is supposed to be like the content of the envelope, private until a warrant is obtained.
For phones the two numbers connected are considered public routing information and the conversation itself the private contents.
I am not a lawyer and the above is just a casual paraphrasing.
They aren't actually breaking the law now with metadata collection. The courts have ruled on that. You might wish they were, but they aren't.
If they're searching the communications (or "papers") of American citizens ...
That's the point, metadata collection is not supposed to include the content of conversations. The metadata collected is not considered the citizen's data, it is being considered the phone company's data. What two phone numbers were connected and for how many seconds. That is all the metadata is **supposed** to be.
That said, I am not claiming that two phone numbers and a time duration are all that has been collected without warrants.
It was to largely AVOID hitting USSR/Warsaw pact forces, and hit infrastructure BEFORE tanks arrived.
The original Finnish author was clear, the plan was hit targets under threat of **imminent** capture or already captured. Imminent would mean the tanks are basically there.
NATO would need to essentially level key cities very quickly, before USSR tanks reached them.
According to the original Finnish author the targets were bridges, air fields and ports. Leveling cities was not part of the plan. Low yield tactical nukes were to be used to limit damage to local civilians.
Conventional weapons were/are simply not powerful enough for the task.
That is also contradicting that original Finnish author that indicated that targets such as bridges would probably be first hit with conventional weapons rather than tactical nukes.
Finnish answer to this threat was very pragmatic, as usual. Ever since the plan came to light back in Cold War, every new building had to include a bomb shelter.
According to the original Finnish author, with US encouragement. Again, the US wanted to limit damage to civilians in these WW3 scenarios.
NATO didn't really care about finnish population in any way, it just wanted to destroy the infrastructure before USSR would arrive, and so you'd build shelters everywhere and try to save as many people as possible.
That is an erroneous portrayal of the original Finnish author's work.
Are gun owners required to be in the militia? Is the State free to draft gun owners?
According to U.S. Federal Law all U.S. able bodied adult males up to a certain age are in the "inactive" Federal Militia. "Inactive" means that there is no requirement to gather or train. Many states have similar laws regarding the state militias. The federal law also makes it clear that the militia is not the National Guard since that upper age limit is increased if a person had ever served in the "active" military forces. The National Guard is an "active" force since it meets and trains regularly and its training is dictated by the U.S. Army.
Automatically being in the Federal Militia is part of the legal basis for the draft. In a technical sense you are being "transferred" from the inactive militia to the active duty reserve (IIRC) force.
Also note that there is an inactive reserve, meaning after you leave the military you no longer have to meet or train but the military still owns your butt for some time frame. They can immediately return you to active duty in the event of a pressing need.
In general the U.S. military has the following components according the federal law (IIRC):
Regular Forces
Active Reserve Forces
Inactive Reserve Forces
National Guard (normally under command of state, can be transferred to federal authority, training dictated by feds)
Active Militia
Inactive Militia (all able bodied males of a certain age range automatically belong)
Is the money from an initial sale worth any less? Sales are sales.
Unless you are using sales as a metric to judge the quality of a game, then pre and post word-of-mouth sales are very different.
And to date D3 has over 14 million units sold.
I have never argued whether D3 is in fact a bad, good or superb game. I'm just arguing that record breaking initial sales (pre word-of-mouth) is not evidence of quality, rather it is evidence of reputation.
Not answering tank rush with nukes. Attacking key infrastructure with nukes to deny USSR its usage.
No, answering tank rushes, not merely an abstract threat. The infrastructure identified as *potential* targets for low yield tactical nukes were bridges, airfields and ports and the context imminent capture or after capture in a WW3 scenario. Hell Norway and Sweden were even on board. Norway was going to use its fighters to clear a path for US bombers, and if the US provided a tactical nuke Norway was even willing to deliver it to the Finnish target with one of its fighters.
Again, its a plan, a plan probably intentionally leaked/stolen as part of a deterrent/bluff campaign. During the cold war the US probably had plans on nuking every spot on the planet under some contingency. There were probably plans to nuke US territory if seized by the Soviets. The Finnish author who broke the story even admits that it was highly unlikely the US would have actually used the nukes in the event of a Soviet incursion, that a Soviet attack on US forces would probably have been necessary for the US to go nuclear.
D3 was the fastest selling PC game of all time and didn't just break PC sales records, it destroyed them. But yeah, other than that I can see why you'd think it would cause blizzard to fail...
You are merely quoting initial sales before word of mouth appraisals got going. Initial sales are largely based upon reputation, the actual value of the game itself is a minor factor. You have to look at sales once word of mouth appraisals of the game are flowing to determine a game's actual value.
D3 may very well be a big success. But you are not really offering evidence of that. You are really offering evidence of the success of D2 and WoW and their effect on D3 day one sales. Well, that and the fact that the D3 beta was not a disaster. I suppose a truly disastrous beta could have squandered the D2 and WoW good will. However less-than-big success in the beta would not derail the D2 and WoW good will.
... stab you in the back with nukes ...
Making the Russians *think* you may respond to a tank rush with nukes is one thing. Doing so is something completely different.
I was all prepared to ask if the Finnish word for "bluff" is xxxxx but then Google translate says the Finish word is "bluffi". That really undermines the attempt at humor.
Finland is not exactly pro Russian. They fought against the Russians in WW2. They even partially allied themselves to Nazi Germany in order to better fight the Russians.
Finland will spy on Russian traffic just like Sweden. Finland will also probably share interesting things with the US, the only question is whether all traffic will be monitored by the US.
Actually, no. Since we know from the Snowden leaks that the Swedish FRA is in cahoots with NSA and GSHQ, anything that passes through Sweden will automatically be scanned. A new undersea cable that bypasses Sweden thus has infinitely better chances of being secure.
No. Being spied on by Finland and Germany's spy agencies is not really more secure than being spied on by Finland, Sweden and Denmark's spy agencies. And its not like Germany wouldn't supply interesting things to the USA, at best they won't allow mass surveillance. Finland too probably.
It's the Soviets that liberated the continent of Europe ...
The people or eastern Europe who were "liberated" by the Soviets don't seem to agree. They seem to feel they merely exchanged one brutal repressive dictator for another. Keep in mind that Stalin was initially Hitler's partner. The war formally started in Europe when Hitler invaded Poland, what it conveniently not mentioned is that Hitler only took half of Poland. Hitler and Stalin had a pre-arranged deal, Hitler would take the the western half and Stalin would take the eastern half of Poland. Stalin invaded Poland right after Hitler on the pretext of coming to their defense but never engaged the Germans, it was just theatre. Stalin also went on to commit massacres in Poland just like Hitler.
... the Americans/English only came for the ride. And even fighting only one enemy and what an enemy, that ended up costing the USSR a whole lot more than what the US lost in the war fighting on theaters.
Russia only survived long enough to make that fight because of US aid. Weapons, ammunition, food, etc. Without the US aid the Russians may very well have been pushed over the Urals. Once that happened the Nazis could have bottled up the mountain passes.
That said, I agree that the Russians did the bulk of the fighting and suffered greatly. However lets not be ridiculous and pretend they triumphed on their own, they did not. US aid was critical for their survival.
I don't understand where the planes land on it after their missions.
They don't land on the sub, the land in the water near the sub. Much like the scout planes for battleships. The sub based planes could be equipped with floats. They were removed when the aircraft went into the hangar and there was a clever system for rapidly attaching them while preparing for launch. Also, some missions were planned to be one way. Pilot survivability was not a major concern for Imperial Japan.
Despite their huge size, they weren't particularly advanced technologically and the aircraft carried were fairly short ranged with unimpressive payloads.
That doesn't quite matter when the attack is biological in nature. Imperial Japan developed a system for aerial dispersal of plague infected flees. They "successfully" tested this system on Chinese villagers in territory they occupied. One planned mission for these subs was to disperse plague infected fleas over major U.S. coastal cities like San Francisco and San Diego. They decided not to carry out this biological attack once they decided they needed a negotiated end to the war.
"Bacteriological weapons provided by Shir Ishii's units were also profusely used. For example, in 1940, the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force bombed Ningbo with fleas carrying the bubonic plague. During the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials the accused, such as Major General Kiyashi Kawashima, testified that, in 1941, some 40 members of Unit 731 air-dropped plague-contaminated fleas on Changde. These attacks caused epidemic plague outbreaks"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War#Use_of_chemical_and_bacteriological_weapons
...doesn't sound very unintentional to me.
Its a beta test for when we all have federally issued ID cards. :-)
For that amount, they could have failed at health care for most of the country. How does one city get that far lost?
We don't really know what it costs to fail at a national health care IT project yet. They have even started to implement 40% of the functionality.
It is always easy to spot the breitbart.com fans in the office:
Really? I don't think I've been to Breitbart's website.
1) They all subscribe to the "Nancy Pelosi as ultimate evil librul WITCH" theory - despite Pelosi being an ordinary centrist Democrat.
Really? I called her partisan, not "evil witch". I'll go further and suggest her agenda is different than the President's, which leads to the confusion over his surrendering leadership to her.
In any case, thanks for your amusing post. You truly identified the political hack whose mind exists in some strange bubble, yourself.
Complete bullshit. Obama won the electoral vote 332 - 206. Suppose you give Romney all the close states, so anything less than a 55% win for Obama counts as a Romney state, okay? That gives Romney Florida (29) [at 50%], Ohio (18) [at 51%], and Virginia (13) [at 51%], changing the totals to Obama 272 - 266. You'd have to throw in Colorado (9) [at 51%], which Obama won by 5.37%, to make it a Romney win.
You are only including the states that had a 51.5% or less win for Obama, not 55% as claimed. You failed to consider Pennsylvania (20) at 52%, New Hampshire (4) at 52%, Iowa (19) at 52%, Nevada (6) at 52%, Minnesota (10) at 53%, Wisconsin (10) at 53%, New Mexico (5) at 53%, Michigan (16) at 54%, and Oregon (7) at 54%
Basically 64 electoral votes needed to flip. Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania represent 67 and there Obama's vote represent less than 52%. But lets go with the math you actually used (margin) rather than the math you claimed to have used. Why not go from a 5.37% margin to 5.39% it only a different of 0.02%? Then we can include Pennsylvania (20)
So, a 5.4% swing could have made it a solid Romney electoral college victory. As the NY Times reported, the President received an 11% favorability boost from the successful raid. Suppose we generously expect only a swing of half that magnitude when the October surprise leak occurs **right before** the election informing the public of a decision **not** to conduct the raid. That's 5.5%. Now consider how much of that 11% faded by election day, lets generously assume three quarters of it evaporated, so that by election day the boost was only 2.75%. We are looking at a 8.25% shift from favorable to unfavorable by flipping the decision from go to "no go".
You do know people can look things up and check your facts, right?
Apparently not you, saying lets go with 55% states but only including 51.5% states.
Say what you want about the bin Ladin raid, about the ACA, about the website, whatever. But your point about the 2012 election being on the cusp is just completely wrong.
Whether we use your erroneously stated argument, or your unintentionally used argument, its pretty clear that flipping the Bin Laden raid story from go to "no go" could have easily changed the election. All it took was a 1% shift in Florida, a 3% shift in Ohio and a 5.4% shift in Pennsylvania.