Seriously. I never recommend to my customers that they rely on "cloud services". In the last year or so, even Amazon and other services have gone down, taking innumerable websites offline for unpredictable amounts of time.
Indeed. It's far better to rely on your own servers - after all, they never go down.
Yeah, there are a lot of people on Slashdot whose only actual naval experience is the panic and nonsense in the popular media and tinfoil hat websites. It's actually quite annoying because they'd never trust those when it comes to computer/techie/geek topics - but they lap it up like mother's milk fortified with sugar, cocaine, and crystal meth when it comes to practically every other topic.
Actually, from talking years ago to a friend who had been in the Submarine service, the only serious concern when going up against a navy like Iran's is that they might have a half-decent diesel-electric boat and know how to use it. If they're running at very slow speed on batteries, those things can be quite difficult to detect.
On the flip side, when running at slow speed on batteries, they're pretty much nothing more than a 'smart' mine/minefield. Yeah, they're a danger - but they're also not without severe limitations.
I'm denigrating armchair admirals because I have ten years of Navy service and twenty plus years of studying naval warfare. I'm denigrating armchair admirals because I know what I'm talking about - and they don't.
It may come as a surprise to you, but there are Slashdotters with actual experience and education other than computers.
The Millennium Challenge '02 was one of the largest war games in history. In that war game, the mad general in charge of the mock enemy force sunk sixteen US ships, including a carrier and two helicopter carriers filled with Marines.
Well, that's the ignorant armchair admiral version.
But the real version is the 'mad general' cheated - because according to his order of battle he didn't have those weapons in the first place, so he wasn't facing a force prepared for that threat. So the exercise 'proved' pretty much nothing.
Lesson: Know what the fuck you're talking about rather than spouting bullshit.
If you read up a bit on close in weapon systems, such as the ones you linked, they've only been used and work a handful of times
If you read up a bit on cruise missiles, such as the one you linked, they've only been used and worked a handful of times.
See part of the problem with all of this is all our scenarios are built on fluff. A lot of the systems and gadgets we have as the US haven't actually been tested in real combat.
As above, this from someone who links to a missile that never been tested in combat?
Like many armchair admirals, you've got nothing but bias, ignorance, and handwaving.
There persists the impression that Kinghthood is some rare and impressive award - it isn't. Between the Birthday and New Years lists, a couple of thousand Knights are created each year, many for rather minor things. (Like 'services to the youth of Manchester' for a charity official.)
You can read more about the system, and download recent lists, here.
âoeWe would be committing economical suicide by closing off the Hormuz Strait,â said an Iranian Oil Ministry official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. âoeOil money is our only income, so we would be spectacularly shooting ourselves in the foot by doing that.â
Is this official high enough up that's a reliable source on Iranian government policy? Or is he like the 'peace faction' in Japan at the end of WWII - actually powerless to effect events? Or is he a stalking horse?
Their primary naval weapon is a missile that can get into ballistic mode before a ship's countermeasure can intercept it.
[[Citation Needed]] A real one, not some tinfoil hat website.
OTOH, a ballistic target can be handled by either CIWS, RAM, or ESSM systems.
From what I read, the strategy behing "suicide boats" is not the kamikaze strategy of crashing a boat inside an aircraft carrier but rather to be used as the launchpoint of a single anti-ship missile. The launching boat will be easy to sink, but very cheap to replace. If two or three of these boats can sink one large US ship, that is a net win for Iran.
Again, [[Citation Needed]]. a real one, not some tinfoil hat website.
This strategy is not so easy as you might think. Lacking offboard sensors (which can be jammed, and the platforms carrying them destroyed), such boats will have to come over the horizon and either launch optically or use radar. If they're visible during the day time, or if they radiate, there's a a near certainty that they'll be spotted - and destroyed. (After their radar is jammed.) It's damm near a suicide mission with a low probability of success no matter what the label says.
What you and the other armchair admirals don't seem to realize is that the defenses of a US battlegroup are layered. From aircraft out on the edges, through electronic warfare and countermeasures systems, naval guns and missiles, anti-aircraft guns and missiles, and decoys and chaff. No, no one layer is perfect, but there's a lot of overlapping layers. I'm not saying it's impossible, but that you and the other armchair admirals don't realize the difficulties involved.
Most slashdotters are probably too young to remember - but Iran tried this back in the 1980's, and got soundly spanked.
You did not, however, attempt to address my argument in a meaningful manner.
Yes, I have. Twice. So I'll repeat it a third time in the hopes that you'll be sober enough to understand it: Americans do not give a flying fuck about space. Period. It's not going to become a national security priority because, as much as you and idiots like you would like it to be so, it's not 1960 anymore. If you'd been paying the faintest attention over the last twenty years, you'd have figured out that despite repeated announcement of Brave Bold Plans by Russia and China - there's been no panic, no claims to spend megabucks, etc... etc... American's don't care about space spectaculars. It's not 1960 anymore. Grow the fuck up and deal with reality.
Yes, it is an Ad Hominem attack: you made various insinuations that I am disconnected from reality
No, stating outright what is as plain as the sun in the sky is not an attack. (I.E. as yet more proof of your utter fucking cluelessness you can't even tell the difference between insinuation and something stated as clearly as a boot to the face.)
"It's not trolling to point out that you're utterly clueless." -> but is is trolling to purposefully misread / miss the point of my argument, in order to prolong a discussion and / or elicit an emotional response.
ROTFLMAO. How many times do I have to respond directly to your argument before it sinks through your skull? The first reply wasn't an attack, but the second and subsequent ones are because you're so fucking ignorant that writing insults is the only thing of interest you provide because your too dense to provide interesting conversation. It's now abundantly clear however that your abysmal ignorance is not a consequence of ill education, but a state you've willingly entered into and remain in. Since you're amusement value is now, nil, I'm done with this conversation.
While it's a natural tendency (especially for those of us more comfortable interacting with technology than our fellow humans) to avoid mass movements, there is a substantial history of government changes in response to these forces.
Yes, there's a history of changes in response to mass movements.
But what you, and the other apologists for OWS miss, is this is nothing like those mass movements. The ones you quote with such relish were broadly based and supported by political and legal actions - the protests were just the very visible symptoms of something much deeper and much more organized. Precisely everything that OWS isn't.
But OWS and it's apologists are politically naive and uneducated and have mistaken the visible symptoms for the whole of the matters. Combine this with the nature of protest in the internet era (where 'liking' and 'forwarding' are taken as being equivalent to actually accomplishing anything) and you've got a recipe for exactly what happened - a bright splash followed by a quick descent into the dismal darkness where other forgotten memes and viral reside.
but the eternal mystery that has been plauging our country for years, how does a candidate get put on the ballot, and even moreso get on the ballet and have enough money to advertise who he is and what he stands for... without picking up all the corruption/bribes etc... that he is supposed to be against.
Simple math my friend - if 50% of the 99% they claim to represent each donated $100, then they raise around 15 billion dollars. That's more than sufficient to start getting candidates into office. Hell, that's more than sufficient to fund sweeping political change the likes of which this country hasn't seen since the 1770's.
But OWS faces the same problem that the Tea Party and the Free State movement did - they don't actually represent as many people as they think they do.
Ad Hominem attack which fails to address my point.
No, it's not an Ad Hominem attack, it's a brutal statement of fact. American's don't give a flying fuck about space, which means it's not going to be identified as "important to national security". Period.
And the same goes for your second program, you've got no clue as to how big our economy (even in it's currently reduced state) is if you think 40 billion is anywhere even *close* to the bankruptcy line.
It's not trolling to point out that you're utterly clueless.
Re:This is where western medicine has failed...
on
How Doctors Die
·
· Score: 1
I'm not a physician - but the two times I've been close to a death (that of my mother- and father-in-law) we had to browbeat the doctors into leaving us the hell alone.
The DoD budget should be written by DoD administrative staff based on actual, military need, not by a bunch of congressional staffers trying to appease big donors.
And, by and large, it is written by DoD administrative staff based on perceived needs. But those parts don't get any press so ignorant people don't believe it exists.
For example, if you don't read the specialized press or live in an area effected by the contract (as producers or consumers) you probably don't know that Congress recently approved the purchase of 100 D5 missiles over the next decade to replace those consumed in tests - as requested by the DoN.
Just look at Lockheed Martin's F-22 and F-35 programs for sterling examples of why the U.S. is going broke buying weapons we really don't need, that don't work right, cost vastly more than Lockheed said they would when they won the contracts, and are years to decades late being delivered.
For those too young to remember. Those were *exactly* the same complaints made about the F-15 back in the day. You know the F-15, the fighter that has a 150 to zero win/loss aerial combat record.
Not just the F-15. The B-17 too. (Yes, that B-17, the Flying Fortress.) And the Fleet submarine. (Yes, that Fleet Submarine, the one that brought Japan to it's knee's.)
In fact, those complaints have been around ever since military procurement started - both against weapons that were stellar successes, and those that weren't.
The first problem with your scenario is that you are so disconnected from reality that you fail to understand that most Americans just don't give a flying fuck about space - and that includes Congress.
The second problem is that you fail to comprehend that the amount of money required isn't a drop in the bucket, it's the evaporation off a drop in the bucket.
Your scenario isn't so much 'contrived' as it is 'a drug addled hallucination'.
You could have just written "I haven't a clue what you just said, and can't be bothered to try so I'll just type in some bullshit that I think makes me sound intelligent" (but which actually makes you sound clueless and stoned out of your gourd).
It would have saved us both heaps of time and effort.
In order to compete with the Facebook's and Diaspora's you'd think they would need to take a more open minded approach to things.
Competing with Facebook means competing for the thirty-to-fifty crowd - and your "open minded" scheme is precisely the opposite of what attracts them. The absolute last thing Google wants is to repeat the mistakes of MySpace and LiveJournal and have a reputation as being a has-been that attracts mostly teen and young adult drama. Facebook is already getting something of that reputation with all the party pics, etc... etc...
Why the thirty to fifty crowd? Because, as many Slashdotters fail to realize, Facebook introduced a seismic shift in the social network paradigm - it's not just for kids anymore. Social networking is now used by a variety of businesses and professionals, and where they go, people will follow. (Though Google seems to have missed that.) Where the older folks go, the slightly less older folks will follow to stay connected. You can't build a stable social networking system on fly-by-night, short attention span, follow the fashion, teens and twentysomethings. The name of the game now is slowly grasping each demographic in turn, and building a solid base from there.
As far as competing with Diaspora - that's like claiming the NY Yankees are competing with the little league teams that plays down the road from me. It's laughable. As popular as Diaspora is with the disaffected Slashdot and/or techie crowd... It's meaningless in the larger scheme of things. Those enamored of Diaspora are those pissed at other networks, and they'll get pissed and move on again. They're unstable and marginal.
The constellation's orbital pattern is uniform across the entire surface of the Earth.
Technically, yes, but this assumes you have good visibility of the sky. At high latitudes, especially when you're in cities/urban canyons (where you only have a narrow view of the sky & can't see the horizon), fewer satellites are visible (compared to closer to the equator)
Not "technically yes", but "actually yes". The high latitude effects only take hold North of 80 degrees, and the effect is not one of visibility but one of (relatively speaking) bad viewing angles for navigational accuracy.
The reason you can see fewer birds in urban canyons is because (duh) you're in an urban canyon. Which will block GLONASS, Galelio, Beidou, etc.., in an equal measure.
While I can't speak as to the John Deere system in particular, most the Ag navigation systems are using WAAS on the low end and VRS RTK subscription systems on the high end.
WAAS specifications don't meet the 1m/24/7 level either.
Many of these secrets were, and weren't. The Hubble Space Telescope was built in Danbury, Conn., for example, in that very same building.
Not quite. While the optical components were manufactured by Perkins-Elmer (and thus almost certainly in Connecticut), the bird was actually assembled by Lockheed out in California.
Anyone involved in the HST, or even following it closely before launch, knew about its close design and engineering connections to the then current spy satellites.
It's theorized that one of the reasons there are no photographs of Hubble being transported from California to the Cape (something usually accompanied by much press hullabaloo) is that it used a transport container that was either modified from a KH-9 container, or so closely resembled one that it made security folks nervous.
Despite 1,000 workers mostly keeping mum, both the US and the USSR had a general idea of the operational capacity of the other nation. The `secret' was the proverbial `elephant in the room.' Everyone knew it was there, they just didn't talk about it.
That is an entirely different animal than actually keeping a conspiracy secret.
Um, no. If the general outlines of a highly secret but somewhat visible project* were widely known (and they were, even within by civilians unconnected to the project, the military, or the government), that implies that keeping a significant conspiracy completely secret is equally difficult as they are exactly the same problem. The stuff that actually was kept a deep dark secret was the stuff that offered no public visibility whatsoever - like submarines tracking other submarines or executing SIGINT missions. But even then, there were people who put two-and-two together from publicly available information and theorized the existence of the projects.
* Everyone with a lick of sense knew we were spying on USSR from orbit, and observations of launch times and amateur optical and radio observations provided a great of insight into the program.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. It's far better to rely on your own servers - after all, they never go down.
Yeah, there are a lot of people on Slashdot whose only actual naval experience is the panic and nonsense in the popular media and tinfoil hat websites. It's actually quite annoying because they'd never trust those when it comes to computer/techie/geek topics - but they lap it up like mother's milk fortified with sugar, cocaine, and crystal meth when it comes to practically every other topic.
On the flip side, when running at slow speed on batteries, they're pretty much nothing more than a 'smart' mine/minefield. Yeah, they're a danger - but they're also not without severe limitations.
Yeah, one attack against an unalerted target proves... that you're clueless.
I'm denigrating armchair admirals because I have ten years of Navy service and twenty plus years of studying naval warfare. I'm denigrating armchair admirals because I know what I'm talking about - and they don't.
It may come as a surprise to you, but there are Slashdotters with actual experience and education other than computers.
Well, that's the ignorant armchair admiral version.
But the real version is the 'mad general' cheated - because according to his order of battle he didn't have those weapons in the first place, so he wasn't facing a force prepared for that threat. So the exercise 'proved' pretty much nothing.
Lesson: Know what the fuck you're talking about rather than spouting bullshit.
If you read up a bit on cruise missiles, such as the one you linked, they've only been used and worked a handful of times.
As above, this from someone who links to a missile that never been tested in combat?
Like many armchair admirals, you've got nothing but bias, ignorance, and handwaving.
There persists the impression that Kinghthood is some rare and impressive award - it isn't. Between the Birthday and New Years lists, a couple of thousand Knights are created each year, many for rather minor things. (Like 'services to the youth of Manchester' for a charity official.)
You can read more about the system, and download recent lists, here.
Is this official high enough up that's a reliable source on Iranian government policy? Or is he like the 'peace faction' in Japan at the end of WWII - actually powerless to effect events? Or is he a stalking horse?
[[Citation Needed]] A real one, not some tinfoil hat website.
OTOH, a ballistic target can be handled by either CIWS, RAM, or ESSM systems.
Again, [[Citation Needed]]. a real one, not some tinfoil hat website.
This strategy is not so easy as you might think. Lacking offboard sensors (which can be jammed, and the platforms carrying them destroyed), such boats will have to come over the horizon and either launch optically or use radar. If they're visible during the day time, or if they radiate, there's a a near certainty that they'll be spotted - and destroyed. (After their radar is jammed.) It's damm near a suicide mission with a low probability of success no matter what the label says.
What you and the other armchair admirals don't seem to realize is that the defenses of a US battlegroup are layered. From aircraft out on the edges, through electronic warfare and countermeasures systems, naval guns and missiles, anti-aircraft guns and missiles, and decoys and chaff. No, no one layer is perfect, but there's a lot of overlapping layers. I'm not saying it's impossible, but that you and the other armchair admirals don't realize the difficulties involved.
Most slashdotters are probably too young to remember - but Iran tried this back in the 1980's, and got soundly spanked.
Yes, I have. Twice. So I'll repeat it a third time in the hopes that you'll be sober enough to understand it: Americans do not give a flying fuck about space. Period. It's not going to become a national security priority because, as much as you and idiots like you would like it to be so, it's not 1960 anymore. If you'd been paying the faintest attention over the last twenty years, you'd have figured out that despite repeated announcement of Brave Bold Plans by Russia and China - there's been no panic, no claims to spend megabucks, etc... etc... American's don't care about space spectaculars. It's not 1960 anymore. Grow the fuck up and deal with reality.
No, stating outright what is as plain as the sun in the sky is not an attack. (I.E. as yet more proof of your utter fucking cluelessness you can't even tell the difference between insinuation and something stated as clearly as a boot to the face.)
ROTFLMAO. How many times do I have to respond directly to your argument before it sinks through your skull? The first reply wasn't an attack, but the second and subsequent ones are because you're so fucking ignorant that writing insults is the only thing of interest you provide because your too dense to provide interesting conversation. It's now abundantly clear however that your abysmal ignorance is not a consequence of ill education, but a state you've willingly entered into and remain in. Since you're amusement value is now, nil, I'm done with this conversation.
Yes, there's a history of changes in response to mass movements.
But what you, and the other apologists for OWS miss, is this is nothing like those mass movements. The ones you quote with such relish were broadly based and supported by political and legal actions - the protests were just the very visible symptoms of something much deeper and much more organized. Precisely everything that OWS isn't.
But OWS and it's apologists are politically naive and uneducated and have mistaken the visible symptoms for the whole of the matters. Combine this with the nature of protest in the internet era (where 'liking' and 'forwarding' are taken as being equivalent to actually accomplishing anything) and you've got a recipe for exactly what happened - a bright splash followed by a quick descent into the dismal darkness where other forgotten memes and viral reside.
Simple math my friend - if 50% of the 99% they claim to represent each donated $100, then they raise around 15 billion dollars. That's more than sufficient to start getting candidates into office. Hell, that's more than sufficient to fund sweeping political change the likes of which this country hasn't seen since the 1770's.
But OWS faces the same problem that the Tea Party and the Free State movement did - they don't actually represent as many people as they think they do.
No, it's not an Ad Hominem attack, it's a brutal statement of fact. American's don't give a flying fuck about space, which means it's not going to be identified as "important to national security". Period.
And the same goes for your second program, you've got no clue as to how big our economy (even in it's currently reduced state) is if you think 40 billion is anywhere even *close* to the bankruptcy line.
It's not trolling to point out that you're utterly clueless.
I'm not a physician - but the two times I've been close to a death (that of my mother- and father-in-law) we had to browbeat the doctors into leaving us the hell alone.
And, by and large, it is written by DoD administrative staff based on perceived needs. But those parts don't get any press so ignorant people don't believe it exists.
For example, if you don't read the specialized press or live in an area effected by the contract (as producers or consumers) you probably don't know that Congress recently approved the purchase of 100 D5 missiles over the next decade to replace those consumed in tests - as requested by the DoN.
Not just the F-15. The B-17 too. (Yes, that B-17, the Flying Fortress.) And the Fleet submarine. (Yes, that Fleet Submarine, the one that brought Japan to it's knee's.)
In fact, those complaints have been around ever since military procurement started - both against weapons that were stellar successes, and those that weren't.
The first problem with your scenario is that you are so disconnected from reality that you fail to understand that most Americans just don't give a flying fuck about space - and that includes Congress.
The second problem is that you fail to comprehend that the amount of money required isn't a drop in the bucket, it's the evaporation off a drop in the bucket.
Your scenario isn't so much 'contrived' as it is 'a drug addled hallucination'.
ROTFLMAO.
You could have just written "I haven't a clue what you just said, and can't be bothered to try so I'll just type in some bullshit that I think makes me sound intelligent" (but which actually makes you sound clueless and stoned out of your gourd).
It would have saved us both heaps of time and effort.
Competing with Facebook means competing for the thirty-to-fifty crowd - and your "open minded" scheme is precisely the opposite of what attracts them. The absolute last thing Google wants is to repeat the mistakes of MySpace and LiveJournal and have a reputation as being a has-been that attracts mostly teen and young adult drama. Facebook is already getting something of that reputation with all the party pics, etc... etc...
Why the thirty to fifty crowd? Because, as many Slashdotters fail to realize, Facebook introduced a seismic shift in the social network paradigm - it's not just for kids anymore. Social networking is now used by a variety of businesses and professionals, and where they go, people will follow. (Though Google seems to have missed that.) Where the older folks go, the slightly less older folks will follow to stay connected. You can't build a stable social networking system on fly-by-night, short attention span, follow the fashion, teens and twentysomethings. The name of the game now is slowly grasping each demographic in turn, and building a solid base from there.
As far as competing with Diaspora - that's like claiming the NY Yankees are competing with the little league teams that plays down the road from me. It's laughable. As popular as Diaspora is with the disaffected Slashdot and/or techie crowd... It's meaningless in the larger scheme of things. Those enamored of Diaspora are those pissed at other networks, and they'll get pissed and move on again. They're unstable and marginal.
Not "technically yes", but "actually yes". The high latitude effects only take hold North of 80 degrees, and the effect is not one of visibility but one of (relatively speaking) bad viewing angles for navigational accuracy.
The reason you can see fewer birds in urban canyons is because (duh) you're in an urban canyon. Which will block GLONASS, Galelio, Beidou, etc.., in an equal measure.
There already exist supplementary systems that can provide that accuracy level. They cost big bucks though.
WAAS specifications don't meet the 1m/24/7 level either.
Which is irrelevant - because the issue is keeping them secret FROM THE PUBLIC
Not quite. While the optical components were manufactured by Perkins-Elmer (and thus almost certainly in Connecticut), the bird was actually assembled by Lockheed out in California.
It's theorized that one of the reasons there are no photographs of Hubble being transported from California to the Cape (something usually accompanied by much press hullabaloo) is that it used a transport container that was either modified from a KH-9 container, or so closely resembled one that it made security folks nervous.
Um, no. If the general outlines of a highly secret but somewhat visible project* were widely known (and they were, even within by civilians unconnected to the project, the military, or the government), that implies that keeping a significant conspiracy completely secret is equally difficult as they are exactly the same problem. The stuff that actually was kept a deep dark secret was the stuff that offered no public visibility whatsoever - like submarines tracking other submarines or executing SIGINT missions. But even then, there were people who put two-and-two together from publicly available information and theorized the existence of the projects.
* Everyone with a lick of sense knew we were spying on USSR from orbit, and observations of launch times and amateur optical and radio observations provided a great of insight into the program.