2 options... A bit of fact mixed with fiction. Truth and made up stuff... Or as Mark Twain puts it, "A good Stretcher" (as in the truth gets stretched).
Sorry if my meaning wasn't clear enough. Really this whole story is CLICK BAIT and not much more. Well it could be the continued propaganda war... But one has to be a bit more cynical to go with that option..
Never said it was a side show or that there isn't danger in having the weapons, only that I don't agree with Fermi's theory, or that his purported "evidence" of his musing isn't otherwise explainable. Given that we've been nearly 70 years and 4 generations removed from nuclear weapons development and we've still only seen ONE instance of them being used, there might be enough evidence to call Fermi's philosophical theory might be wrong.
Of course, if you choose to believe that eventually mankind will eradicate himself from existence using these weapons, you may be right, but why bother going on if Fermi was right? Might as well limit as much suffering and sickness as possible and just end it now.
IMHO we are better than that, and recent history shows that we are headed in the right direction with nuclear weapons. Eventually we will get there....
From the perspective of the South, the Election of Lincoln was the trigger that ignited the war. He was a Republican, which had at it's core two fundamental beliefs that where antithetical to life in the South. The position that Slavery was wrong and should be made illegal and that the southern states who where threatening to leave the union over the first issue should not be allowed to leave. This is why many of the southern states left the union AFTER Lincoln was president-elect but before he took office. They knew what was coming, Lincoln was going to be president and we will be loosing our way of life if he and his party have their way.
From the North's perspective.... Most of what you said is true.. However, The first election was razor close, with the electoral college split FOUR ways, with the South's choice taking 55 electoral votes for Breckenridge..It's instructive to pay attention to the popular vote, which with over 80% of voters casting ballots, Lincoln took just less than 500,000 more votes out of about 4.5 Million over his nearest competitor. It was close, and Lincoln was NOT well supported but would become president over a deeply divided country.
In the second election There was a nomination fight, though brief, where the leaders of his own party questioned his position. He largely ran unopposed in the north but Had the south been voting in the second election his margin of victory would have been thinner than his first election. He won with 55% of the popular vote his second time out, but with only Northern votes and with less margin over his single rival.
But my point it all that is that Lincoln was not universally recognized as a good leader, mostly until AFTER his death. He was reviled and savaged in the press of his day, even in the north by Confederates and Abolitionists alike. Plus, I'm trying to make the point that Lincoln was decidedly NOT recognized a an effective leader, but had many who thought him very wrong with at least one member of his cabinet tendering his resignation over the emaciation proclamation and his own party being generally opposed to this and his handling of the war. You see, for the bulk of the war, the North was loosing, loosing materials, men and battles one after another until Gettysburg. This was true for *most* of his first term and only near the end of his term, during the election, did the North start seeing success in the bloody scary war, Especially in the east.
His position as a leader was not firmly established prior to his taking office nor before his re-election as president. Nobody really expected that much from the lowly businessman, lawyer turned politician with nearly zero success in just about all he touched from Illinois. Yet, he turned out to be much more, even more than his shocking martyrdom in office might elicit. He arose to the occasion, having taking the presidency in a 4 way battle, without the majority's support, during an exceedingly difficult time and transformed himself into a principled leader, now remembered and admired for what he accomplished. But nobody really expected Lincoln's presidency to amount to much when it started.
My point is that leaders have historically been much like Lincoln; Leaders who nobody expected to amount to much, rising to the occasion, becoming the very leaders necessary for the times, much to the surprise of all.
Such is the state of journalism today, especially on the internet where nobody knows or cares about your ethics or editorial standards and revenue is determined by how many clicks you generate and not if you are telling the truth or not. If you lack credibility for you story, who cares, just put of a snappy good looking website, a couple of good pictures and pay for Google placement for as long as it generates clicks...
Don't get me started on Social Media.... Where everybody becomes the reporter with a selfie stick..... Just witness or make up a good enough story and you get your 15 min of fame. Bonus points are given for stories that supposedly "stick it to the man" or illustrate some social injustice, but just plan stupidity or being gross is sometimes enough.
Let's take the philosophical musing of a nuclear physicist as good clear headed thinking. Yea, he has a real gift for understanding human nature.
I don't agree with Femi on this particular point. Nuclear weapons have been used ONCE in the 70 years since their invention and have in recent decades been declining in number. Where I'm not willing to claim success on this, evidence seems to say that Man has at least *some* capacity for restraint. In fact, we have made great strides in limiting "weapons of mass destruction" of all kinds, including chemical and biological agents which do far less large scale damage, yet have not been used on a large scale.
If mankind has shown restraint though multiple generations of leaders, and has managed to not use nuclear weapons in war *at all* and if there are the many advanced civilizations out there that have gone though similar weapons development, surely some will have survived..
IMHO I believe that the basic reason we've not seen or been contacted by other civilizations out side our solar system is more due to the Physics of interstellar travel and the absolutely huge timeframes needed to both travel and communicate with current technology making it impossible. So the evidence used to support the Fermi Paradox, really has other possible explanations which are far more reasonable. We don't see them because we simply cannot, given the astronomical distances involved and the difficulties that distance imposes on current technology and not because such civilizations die out before we can even observe them.
NATO couldn't find Serbia's armoured forces in Kosovo. If it comes to war with Russia, half of Europe will panic and desert the alliance anyway.
Oh please, they where not really looking. Everybody knew what the Rules of Engagement where, so Serbia just put their stuff where NATO wasn't going to look. Not to mention that it's likely *everybody* knew where the stuff was and that NATO wouldn't touch it where it sat. Everybody was just sitting on their hands telling themselves that it wasn't worth poking the bear and risking an all out conflict over Kosovo.
If the gloves come off and NATO actually *does* something more than give lip service to containing Russia's advance, very bad things will happen to Russia. Everybody knows that going nuclear in your own back yard is basically shooting your self in the foot, so NATO it is going to take something serious to make NATO take a stand, something serious enough to make the mess of a nuclear engagement with Russia the lessor of two evils. So shooting down civilian airliners and invading parts of NATO countries just don't cut it.
The two nuclear [] guaranteed that the Great Powers would never again become directly embroiled in a major war against each other.
Guaranteed? I don't think so. The future is a long, long time my friend.
Perhaps, but you do understand that so far it's been working for nearly 4 generations?
The future may be a long time, but anything that has worked for 70 years and has successfully reduced the number of the weapons in question is not a bad start.
So JFK and his brother where better leaders than what we've had lately? Well, maybe...
However, good leaders tend to rise to the need when necessary in history but are not always evident or seemingly available before they are needed. Lincoln was a two bit lawyer with zero experience that many believed was largely responsible for the Civil War. He took the highest office of a deeply divided country and it literally fell apart under his leadership. As a leader, he failed in his first term and almost didn't win the primary to be elected to his second term. Yet we remember him as a leader, as an important part of the Civil War, one of the BEST presidents on record.
So, don't be discouraged, leaders are out there and they will step up when the time is right...
I'm guessing it's a bit of both... Something dangerous happened and many of the safeties where disabled, but the true story isn't as bad as this sounds.
As close as we where to a nuclear exchange during the Cuban Missile crisis (and we where close) and as bad as the technical faults may have been or not, it didn't happen. I'd like to point out that for each of these "We almost launched" stories we have on this side, there are at least as many on the other side, even during this crisis, yet nobody has died during a mistaken nuclear explosion since WW2.
The guys/gals in the silos have procedures they follow and that is EXACTLY what they do, usually without exception. Even today, where being in the missile service is seen as a dead end and morale is lower than the bottom of the silos, if the launch order really shows up, you can bet the majority would do their jobs and launch. There is no way that during the Cuban missile crisis, when the safeties where off and launch orders where on a hair trigger that a *mistaken* launch order would have been ignored/disobeyed by the whole missile squadron following their procedures.
So, one can safely conclude that the procedures where followed and they had the desired result of preventing unauthorized unintended launches, even in the face of high tension and danger between two superpowers.
You routinely mix *real* science and *fiction* in this type of writing.
Every Si-Fi Movie I've seen in my lifetime had assumptions or plot devices which where hopelessly impossible based on known physics. The trick is to make the story engaging enough so that the majority of people reading/watching will suspend their thinking about reality and science and just enjoy the story. My favorite example was "Gravity" where orbital dynamics where simply ignored wholesale, mainly because what would take weeks/months/years to develop in reality, needed to happen on much shorter time frames for the sake of the story. If you liked the movie, I'll bet you didn't notice this the first time you watched it. You suspended scientific reality, and it doesn't really matter. It was a movie...
So, who cares if the scientific reality doesn't quite match the story? Of course it's always interesting when the author is clever enough to keep the impossible technology to a minimum, but let's face it. If it took hours to shuttle down/up from a ship in orbit, decades to get to the next solar system and decades to get a message to/from headquarters the stories would be really slow paced.
You seriously think off shore the Eastern Seaboard is a hotbed of scientific research possibilities that might be of interest to the Russians?
Yea, the Razor says this "research vessel" is really gathering intelligence like hundreds of other vessels concocting "research" world wide under the flags of various nations..... That this "scientific" part is really just a cover story...
If they do this, let them. Then clear the oceans of Russian vessels and let that asshole explain to his people why it is happening.
Of course this is to publicly show we are tracking them so it won't happen. I am sure the US can strategically cut cables at will, too.
I'm just guessing, but I'd not be surprised if there are not already devices IN PLACE from both sides, ready to just slice any and all cables they feel are necessary. Likely all that is necessary is to send the proper signals and the cables get cut and the devices disappear.
However, I'd like to point out that with the Russians, there is a whole lot less undersea cables required for their communications networks than the USA and it's allies uses based on the geography involved. So in this space the Russians do have a bit of an advantage.
I'll advise you to recognize as well that the USA, while far from perfect, has so far resisted domination by acquiring territory and resources by force which it is FULLY capable and has IN FACT unilaterally acted with restraint since before World War 1, returning territory won though armed conflict to it's original owners, including those owners who initiated the armed conflict with the USA, and generally attempting to advance the causes of freedom and democracy for all the peoples of the world though the use of its military forces. Yes, we've faltered in our resolve on occasion, killed innocent non-combatants from time to time, and even made some mistakes in our calculations and policies which have accrued to everyone's determent, but we have NOT done so with evil intent. Further, had the USA not engaged in any number of conflicts, the world would be a much different and more dangerous place for many.
Anyone has such capability. No advanced equipment needed - just old-fashioned depth charges. If you master "underwater explosives", then you cruise along the cable and drop cheap bombs till you hit hit.
Which is what will happen in a war with a low-tech opponent. Russian equipment may be able to cut a cable on the very first try - that doesn't make them more dangerous than a fishing boat retrofitted with with a dept charge launcher. This sort of warfare is too easy.
Dang dude... Depth charges are way too expensive and would take too long for this... All you need is to drag along the bottom across the cable using something like an anchor or grappling hook. Once you snag the cable, just shear it into two by either cutting it or pulling on it really hard across a sharp hardened steal blade. Low tech and simple wins EVERY time.
The Americans haven't been in peace time mode since 1945 unless I missed history classes.
Yea, we've been bombing the..... Out of the rest of the world just because we are vindictive sons of......
Seriously, who teaches this garbage? Where we have been in numerous armed conflicts around the world since the end of WW2, hasn't anybody been paying attention to what other countries have done or are now attempting to do? Does anybody care that there have been a number of successful outcomes from these conflicts? Or does anybody care the motivations behind why the USA got involved? No, we have to further the notion that the lone superpower of the world is somehow corruptly using it's military power to "take what it wants" or any other tripe the "have not's" dream up, then re-enforce this idea by spouting half truths and bringing up isolated unfortunate events as proof.
My favorite is that we went into Iraq for "oil". Well we went into Iraq TWICE in my living memory and didn't get one drop of oil or one square foot of ground from it. The FIRST time was to return the oil fields of Kuwait to Kuwait and make sure Iraq wouldn't quickly return. The USA didn't get any oil from the deal, but returned ALL the oil and the territory captured to it's original owners. The SECOND trip into Iraq was for different reasons, but again, even though we had thoroughly and completely conquered ALL of Iraq including it's oil fields, the USA returned them to Iraq along with all the territory taken.
So tell me again how the Americans are all about war? Because if we where, the earth would be paying taxes through the IRS.
LOL... I think you are missing the point. These theoretical things are sized by the physics and they are literally too big to fly. This isn't hubris on my part it's wide eyed practicality that's driving my preannouncements on this. These devices are KILOMETERS in size and anything that size is going to be pretty heavy. Big and heavy are the two things which are very difficult and thus expensive when you want to throw them into space, even in LEO. The amount of energy required to lift this stuff into orbit will exceed what it can return as power. This fails the practical test on it's face.
Physics dictate the size of this thing. Physics will dictate how much power it can transfer, how much it will loose and how much it will have to collect. Physics will dictate how much solar collection area you will need, engineering may be able to approach that someday. Physics will mandate how much energy it will take to get everything necessary into the proper locations. You will be able to engineer lighter structures, but not smaller ones. There is a lower limit on the weight of this structure, regardless of the properties of the materials we can engineer. You might be able to engineer cheaper ways of getting something into orbit, but you cannot change the minimum energy required by physics.
Physics is your problem. It defines a system that is so massive that there is no way it ever gets to be cost effective to build because by my calculations, it will take more energy to create and operate this thing than you can ever hope to recover. That makes it uneconomical too.
Believe what you want though. Personally I think there are much better uses for our time and resources spent on developing new energy sources. Things which are way more cost effective and promising than this nutty idea of throwing solar panels into space and beaming the energy home. Can we say fusion? That's a much better and more effective way to produce energy that we know is theoretically possible too. The remaining engineering problems of fusion are close to workable solutions and the physics, while daunting, do not mandate that we build engineering solutions which are massive in size and complexity. Seems very likely to me we can master these problems and if we did, there would be no need for your pet energy solution where the laws of physics demand massive structures in very harsh environments and equally massive development and deployment costs.
Ok, now you are way into stuff we DON'T know. We don't know what the school and police saw and why they did what they did because the FAMILY refuses to release the information. They've been asked, time and again, for permission and have so far refused.
I ask you to explain why that is? Why won't the family allow the police and school to fully disclose what happened here? I know what I think.... What say you?
NOBODY thought it was a bomb. The kid was investigated for creating a "Bomb hoax" which doesn't require there to be anything resembling a bomb. Creating a "bomb hoax" is only about someone trying to make someone else think that you are threatening to have (now or in the future) a bomb. You are trying to scare somebody.
You are falling for the false narrative that the school thought his alarm clock was a bomb and expelled him for it. That was an invention of the media and the family's story but that's not what the school or police are saying. The boy was investigated for creating a "bomb hoax", for trying to scare somebody into thinking he had or was building a bomb, nobody believed that what he had was a bomb.... See the difference?
How's this court decision differ from how Bitcoin is treated in the USA?
Best I can tell, in both the EU and the USA, Bitcoin is treated as a way to exchange value. You "buy" them in exchange for money, goods or services, then at a later time exchange them for money, goods or services. About all that differs is what kinds of transactions create a taxable or legally reportable event....
Prevent fraud? With the number of exchanges going belly up and their coins on deposit purloined by who knows who, their efforts to prevent fraud don't seem to be working all that well.
Oh man, ditch the windows machine for a Linux box..... But good for you. Most folks won't have the necessary infrastructure to support a GPS based time sync directly, for them NTP, pointing to a server that is based on some time standard like GPS, is a viable solution. For them the problem becomes picking a time server they trust to be right...
How true. Wouldn't it be the fault of the system who accepted a time 12 years in the past and started up without so much as a "Hey, System Administrator! You might want to look at this! Do you really intend to go back 12 years in time here?" I know it wouldn't fix anything because such warnings would likely be ignored anyway, but at least the system Administrator would be to blame then.
Slashdot Mirror
2 options... A bit of fact mixed with fiction. Truth and made up stuff... Or as Mark Twain puts it, "A good Stretcher" (as in the truth gets stretched).
Sorry if my meaning wasn't clear enough. Really this whole story is CLICK BAIT and not much more. Well it could be the continued propaganda war... But one has to be a bit more cynical to go with that option..
Never said it was a side show or that there isn't danger in having the weapons, only that I don't agree with Fermi's theory, or that his purported "evidence" of his musing isn't otherwise explainable. Given that we've been nearly 70 years and 4 generations removed from nuclear weapons development and we've still only seen ONE instance of them being used, there might be enough evidence to call Fermi's philosophical theory might be wrong.
Of course, if you choose to believe that eventually mankind will eradicate himself from existence using these weapons, you may be right, but why bother going on if Fermi was right? Might as well limit as much suffering and sickness as possible and just end it now.
IMHO we are better than that, and recent history shows that we are headed in the right direction with nuclear weapons. Eventually we will get there....
From the perspective of the South, the Election of Lincoln was the trigger that ignited the war. He was a Republican, which had at it's core two fundamental beliefs that where antithetical to life in the South. The position that Slavery was wrong and should be made illegal and that the southern states who where threatening to leave the union over the first issue should not be allowed to leave. This is why many of the southern states left the union AFTER Lincoln was president-elect but before he took office. They knew what was coming, Lincoln was going to be president and we will be loosing our way of life if he and his party have their way.
From the North's perspective.... Most of what you said is true.. However, The first election was razor close, with the electoral college split FOUR ways, with the South's choice taking 55 electoral votes for Breckenridge. .It's instructive to pay attention to the popular vote, which with over 80% of voters casting ballots, Lincoln took just less than 500,000 more votes out of about 4.5 Million over his nearest competitor. It was close, and Lincoln was NOT well supported but would become president over a deeply divided country.
In the second election There was a nomination fight, though brief, where the leaders of his own party questioned his position. He largely ran unopposed in the north but Had the south been voting in the second election his margin of victory would have been thinner than his first election. He won with 55% of the popular vote his second time out, but with only Northern votes and with less margin over his single rival.
But my point it all that is that Lincoln was not universally recognized as a good leader, mostly until AFTER his death. He was reviled and savaged in the press of his day, even in the north by Confederates and Abolitionists alike. Plus, I'm trying to make the point that Lincoln was decidedly NOT recognized a an effective leader, but had many who thought him very wrong with at least one member of his cabinet tendering his resignation over the emaciation proclamation and his own party being generally opposed to this and his handling of the war. You see, for the bulk of the war, the North was loosing, loosing materials, men and battles one after another until Gettysburg. This was true for *most* of his first term and only near the end of his term, during the election, did the North start seeing success in the bloody scary war, Especially in the east.
His position as a leader was not firmly established prior to his taking office nor before his re-election as president. Nobody really expected that much from the lowly businessman, lawyer turned politician with nearly zero success in just about all he touched from Illinois. Yet, he turned out to be much more, even more than his shocking martyrdom in office might elicit. He arose to the occasion, having taking the presidency in a 4 way battle, without the majority's support, during an exceedingly difficult time and transformed himself into a principled leader, now remembered and admired for what he accomplished. But nobody really expected Lincoln's presidency to amount to much when it started.
My point is that leaders have historically been much like Lincoln; Leaders who nobody expected to amount to much, rising to the occasion, becoming the very leaders necessary for the times, much to the surprise of all.
Such is the state of journalism today, especially on the internet where nobody knows or cares about your ethics or editorial standards and revenue is determined by how many clicks you generate and not if you are telling the truth or not. If you lack credibility for you story, who cares, just put of a snappy good looking website, a couple of good pictures and pay for Google placement for as long as it generates clicks...
Don't get me started on Social Media.... Where everybody becomes the reporter with a selfie stick..... Just witness or make up a good enough story and you get your 15 min of fame. Bonus points are given for stories that supposedly "stick it to the man" or illustrate some social injustice, but just plan stupidity or being gross is sometimes enough.
It's got to be true, I saw it on the internet!
Let's take the philosophical musing of a nuclear physicist as good clear headed thinking. Yea, he has a real gift for understanding human nature.
I don't agree with Femi on this particular point. Nuclear weapons have been used ONCE in the 70 years since their invention and have in recent decades been declining in number. Where I'm not willing to claim success on this, evidence seems to say that Man has at least *some* capacity for restraint. In fact, we have made great strides in limiting "weapons of mass destruction" of all kinds, including chemical and biological agents which do far less large scale damage, yet have not been used on a large scale.
If mankind has shown restraint though multiple generations of leaders, and has managed to not use nuclear weapons in war *at all* and if there are the many advanced civilizations out there that have gone though similar weapons development, surely some will have survived..
IMHO I believe that the basic reason we've not seen or been contacted by other civilizations out side our solar system is more due to the Physics of interstellar travel and the absolutely huge timeframes needed to both travel and communicate with current technology making it impossible. So the evidence used to support the Fermi Paradox, really has other possible explanations which are far more reasonable. We don't see them because we simply cannot, given the astronomical distances involved and the difficulties that distance imposes on current technology and not because such civilizations die out before we can even observe them.
NATO couldn't find Serbia's armoured forces in Kosovo. If it comes to war with Russia, half of Europe will panic and desert the alliance anyway.
Oh please, they where not really looking. Everybody knew what the Rules of Engagement where, so Serbia just put their stuff where NATO wasn't going to look. Not to mention that it's likely *everybody* knew where the stuff was and that NATO wouldn't touch it where it sat. Everybody was just sitting on their hands telling themselves that it wasn't worth poking the bear and risking an all out conflict over Kosovo.
If the gloves come off and NATO actually *does* something more than give lip service to containing Russia's advance, very bad things will happen to Russia. Everybody knows that going nuclear in your own back yard is basically shooting your self in the foot, so NATO it is going to take something serious to make NATO take a stand, something serious enough to make the mess of a nuclear engagement with Russia the lessor of two evils. So shooting down civilian airliners and invading parts of NATO countries just don't cut it.
The two nuclear [] guaranteed that the Great Powers would never again become directly embroiled in a major war against each other.
Guaranteed? I don't think so. The future is a long, long time my friend.
Perhaps, but you do understand that so far it's been working for nearly 4 generations?
The future may be a long time, but anything that has worked for 70 years and has successfully reduced the number of the weapons in question is not a bad start.
So JFK and his brother where better leaders than what we've had lately? Well, maybe...
However, good leaders tend to rise to the need when necessary in history but are not always evident or seemingly available before they are needed. Lincoln was a two bit lawyer with zero experience that many believed was largely responsible for the Civil War. He took the highest office of a deeply divided country and it literally fell apart under his leadership. As a leader, he failed in his first term and almost didn't win the primary to be elected to his second term. Yet we remember him as a leader, as an important part of the Civil War, one of the BEST presidents on record.
So, don't be discouraged, leaders are out there and they will step up when the time is right...
I'm guessing it's a bit of both... Something dangerous happened and many of the safeties where disabled, but the true story isn't as bad as this sounds.
As close as we where to a nuclear exchange during the Cuban Missile crisis (and we where close) and as bad as the technical faults may have been or not, it didn't happen. I'd like to point out that for each of these "We almost launched" stories we have on this side, there are at least as many on the other side, even during this crisis, yet nobody has died during a mistaken nuclear explosion since WW2.
The guys/gals in the silos have procedures they follow and that is EXACTLY what they do, usually without exception. Even today, where being in the missile service is seen as a dead end and morale is lower than the bottom of the silos, if the launch order really shows up, you can bet the majority would do their jobs and launch. There is no way that during the Cuban missile crisis, when the safeties where off and launch orders where on a hair trigger that a *mistaken* launch order would have been ignored/disobeyed by the whole missile squadron following their procedures.
So, one can safely conclude that the procedures where followed and they had the desired result of preventing unauthorized unintended launches, even in the face of high tension and danger between two superpowers.
You routinely mix *real* science and *fiction* in this type of writing.
Every Si-Fi Movie I've seen in my lifetime had assumptions or plot devices which where hopelessly impossible based on known physics. The trick is to make the story engaging enough so that the majority of people reading/watching will suspend their thinking about reality and science and just enjoy the story. My favorite example was "Gravity" where orbital dynamics where simply ignored wholesale, mainly because what would take weeks/months/years to develop in reality, needed to happen on much shorter time frames for the sake of the story. If you liked the movie, I'll bet you didn't notice this the first time you watched it. You suspended scientific reality, and it doesn't really matter. It was a movie...
So, who cares if the scientific reality doesn't quite match the story? Of course it's always interesting when the author is clever enough to keep the impossible technology to a minimum, but let's face it. If it took hours to shuttle down/up from a ship in orbit, decades to get to the next solar system and decades to get a message to/from headquarters the stories would be really slow paced.
You seriously think off shore the Eastern Seaboard is a hotbed of scientific research possibilities that might be of interest to the Russians?
Yea, the Razor says this "research vessel" is really gathering intelligence like hundreds of other vessels concocting "research" world wide under the flags of various nations..... That this "scientific" part is really just a cover story...
If they do this, let them. Then clear the oceans of Russian vessels and let that asshole explain to his people why it is happening.
Of course this is to publicly show we are tracking them so it won't happen. I am sure the US can strategically cut cables at will, too.
I'm just guessing, but I'd not be surprised if there are not already devices IN PLACE from both sides, ready to just slice any and all cables they feel are necessary. Likely all that is necessary is to send the proper signals and the cables get cut and the devices disappear.
However, I'd like to point out that with the Russians, there is a whole lot less undersea cables required for their communications networks than the USA and it's allies uses based on the geography involved. So in this space the Russians do have a bit of an advantage.
I'll advise you to recognize as well that the USA, while far from perfect, has so far resisted domination by acquiring territory and resources by force which it is FULLY capable and has IN FACT unilaterally acted with restraint since before World War 1, returning territory won though armed conflict to it's original owners, including those owners who initiated the armed conflict with the USA, and generally attempting to advance the causes of freedom and democracy for all the peoples of the world though the use of its military forces. Yes, we've faltered in our resolve on occasion, killed innocent non-combatants from time to time, and even made some mistakes in our calculations and policies which have accrued to everyone's determent, but we have NOT done so with evil intent. Further, had the USA not engaged in any number of conflicts, the world would be a much different and more dangerous place for many.
Anyone has such capability. No advanced equipment needed - just old-fashioned depth charges. If you master "underwater explosives", then you cruise along the cable and drop cheap bombs till you hit hit.
Which is what will happen in a war with a low-tech opponent. Russian equipment may be able to cut a cable on the very first try - that doesn't make them more dangerous than a fishing boat retrofitted with with a dept charge launcher. This sort of warfare is too easy.
Dang dude... Depth charges are way too expensive and would take too long for this... All you need is to drag along the bottom across the cable using something like an anchor or grappling hook. Once you snag the cable, just shear it into two by either cutting it or pulling on it really hard across a sharp hardened steal blade. Low tech and simple wins EVERY time.
The Americans haven't been in peace time mode since 1945 unless I missed history classes.
Yea, we've been bombing the ..... Out of the rest of the world just because we are vindictive sons of ......
Seriously, who teaches this garbage? Where we have been in numerous armed conflicts around the world since the end of WW2, hasn't anybody been paying attention to what other countries have done or are now attempting to do? Does anybody care that there have been a number of successful outcomes from these conflicts? Or does anybody care the motivations behind why the USA got involved? No, we have to further the notion that the lone superpower of the world is somehow corruptly using it's military power to "take what it wants" or any other tripe the "have not's" dream up, then re-enforce this idea by spouting half truths and bringing up isolated unfortunate events as proof.
My favorite is that we went into Iraq for "oil". Well we went into Iraq TWICE in my living memory and didn't get one drop of oil or one square foot of ground from it. The FIRST time was to return the oil fields of Kuwait to Kuwait and make sure Iraq wouldn't quickly return. The USA didn't get any oil from the deal, but returned ALL the oil and the territory captured to it's original owners. The SECOND trip into Iraq was for different reasons, but again, even though we had thoroughly and completely conquered ALL of Iraq including it's oil fields, the USA returned them to Iraq along with all the territory taken.
So tell me again how the Americans are all about war? Because if we where, the earth would be paying taxes through the IRS.
LOL... I think you are missing the point. These theoretical things are sized by the physics and they are literally too big to fly. This isn't hubris on my part it's wide eyed practicality that's driving my preannouncements on this. These devices are KILOMETERS in size and anything that size is going to be pretty heavy. Big and heavy are the two things which are very difficult and thus expensive when you want to throw them into space, even in LEO. The amount of energy required to lift this stuff into orbit will exceed what it can return as power. This fails the practical test on it's face.
Physics dictate the size of this thing. Physics will dictate how much power it can transfer, how much it will loose and how much it will have to collect. Physics will dictate how much solar collection area you will need, engineering may be able to approach that someday. Physics will mandate how much energy it will take to get everything necessary into the proper locations. You will be able to engineer lighter structures, but not smaller ones. There is a lower limit on the weight of this structure, regardless of the properties of the materials we can engineer. You might be able to engineer cheaper ways of getting something into orbit, but you cannot change the minimum energy required by physics.
Physics is your problem. It defines a system that is so massive that there is no way it ever gets to be cost effective to build because by my calculations, it will take more energy to create and operate this thing than you can ever hope to recover. That makes it uneconomical too.
Believe what you want though. Personally I think there are much better uses for our time and resources spent on developing new energy sources. Things which are way more cost effective and promising than this nutty idea of throwing solar panels into space and beaming the energy home. Can we say fusion? That's a much better and more effective way to produce energy that we know is theoretically possible too. The remaining engineering problems of fusion are close to workable solutions and the physics, while daunting, do not mandate that we build engineering solutions which are massive in size and complexity. Seems very likely to me we can master these problems and if we did, there would be no need for your pet energy solution where the laws of physics demand massive structures in very harsh environments and equally massive development and deployment costs.
Ok, now you are way into stuff we DON'T know. We don't know what the school and police saw and why they did what they did because the FAMILY refuses to release the information. They've been asked, time and again, for permission and have so far refused.
I ask you to explain why that is? Why won't the family allow the police and school to fully disclose what happened here? I know what I think.... What say you?
NOBODY thought it was a bomb. The kid was investigated for creating a "Bomb hoax" which doesn't require there to be anything resembling a bomb. Creating a "bomb hoax" is only about someone trying to make someone else think that you are threatening to have (now or in the future) a bomb. You are trying to scare somebody.
You are falling for the false narrative that the school thought his alarm clock was a bomb and expelled him for it. That was an invention of the media and the family's story but that's not what the school or police are saying. The boy was investigated for creating a "bomb hoax", for trying to scare somebody into thinking he had or was building a bomb, nobody believed that what he had was a bomb.... See the difference?
There you go, using that fuzzy logic again...
How's this court decision differ from how Bitcoin is treated in the USA?
Best I can tell, in both the EU and the USA, Bitcoin is treated as a way to exchange value. You "buy" them in exchange for money, goods or services, then at a later time exchange them for money, goods or services. About all that differs is what kinds of transactions create a taxable or legally reportable event....
You forgot the "straight on til morning" part....
By the way, I think you turned the wrong way at Fox....
Prevent fraud? With the number of exchanges going belly up and their coins on deposit purloined by who knows who, their efforts to prevent fraud don't seem to be working all that well.
I'm worried about 2038 myself... It's going to make Y2K look like a walk in the park and drop us all back into the dark ages of the 1970's...
You won't survive without your Fondue pots, plaid bell bottoms, leisure suits and disco moves....
Oh man, ditch the windows machine for a Linux box..... But good for you. Most folks won't have the necessary infrastructure to support a GPS based time sync directly, for them NTP, pointing to a server that is based on some time standard like GPS, is a viable solution. For them the problem becomes picking a time server they trust to be right...
How true. Wouldn't it be the fault of the system who accepted a time 12 years in the past and started up without so much as a "Hey, System Administrator! You might want to look at this! Do you really intend to go back 12 years in time here?" I know it wouldn't fix anything because such warnings would likely be ignored anyway, but at least the system Administrator would be to blame then.