But things are different now. We have already spent $65 billion on 135 F22's. That is plenty for me to sleep soundly at night unless things change dramatically, which would take a while.
I think a lot of people are not looking at this the correct way. I could care less if we spend money on maned or unmanned aircraft. I could care less if we bought 135 of something or 300 of another... what allows me to sleep well at night is just knowing that we are technologically superior to everybody else. We as American's demand that our military be ready for any contingency. They are the best to decide what they need to do there job (as opposed to the slashdot armchair generals). I expect them to continue to look for further advancements in technology. Will it be expensive... yes, but that is the price to maintain our superiority.
And yes, I also expect congress to keep the military's spending in check. You know, that whole checks and balances thing.
Here is an interesting concept. Use one jammer with several different antenna connected through shielded cables and an amplifier on each end.
You could effectivly switch the jamming from one geographical area to another almost a mile away with just a couple of amplifiers and hide most of the real shit completely out of harms way. And with signal seeking missiles, your could have them so far off target that they would be useless.
One antenna, one missile... six antennas, six missiles. Problem solved.
With our technology today, you only need to transmit for a short period of time for us to accurately locate you. Even if you shut it down we can locate and destroy it.
During the height of Iraqi Freedom we were destroying GPS jammers with GPS guided bombs. While it is easy to jam the civilian side of GPS it is not as easy to jam the military side. Believe it or not, we actually do have engineers that can design around known jamming techniques.
They can fly themselves but they cannot pick out targets, select the appropriate ammunition or missiles to use, and then take the judgment call to fire on their own.
Says who? The US military has had that very capability for a while now. Computers analyze the threat, pick the targets figure out which aircraft or surface launched missiles best suited to deal with said threat. The only thing we don't let the computer do is actually fire the weapon. There is nothing stopping that from happening, except the current mindset that we want humans to have the final control.
Actually, using a booby trap to capture the next door neighbour's punk ass 12 year old kid from stealing my stuff sounds like a real good idea. Now where did I put that bear trap?
Would your father ask you to get him a car that lasts 15 years?
I hate to say it, but lasting the designed life span of computer parts (2 years) seems to be a challenge as of late, and buying quality doesn't seem to gain much.
The failure rates now days have been getting a bit long in the tooth.
Your car analogy doesn't work. Many people get 15-20 years out of a vehicle. I personally drive a 1991 VW Jetta.
Getting computer parts to last is not hard either. Don't buy bleeding edge. Those brand new super high speed drives today do tend to fail, so buy the slower models that came out a couple of years ago. They have the bugs worked out.
Um, the Google camera that drove past my house was 3m off the road (notice that it's on a pole on top of a car). So it sees over the fence and right into my daughter's bedroom.
I have yet to see a picture on Street View that showed more than about 6 inches into a window. The camera they use is effectively an instamatic used during bright daylight. They don't use telescoping lenses or special equipment to peer into homes. Unless your daughter's room has more light inside than outside, you have no argument.
Maybe not for touring, but Street View was very useful to me recently when I was looking to buy a house in an area far from where I live.
I just moved from California to New Mexico and used Google street view for just this reason. I needed to find a house that would allow me to park my trailer in the back yard. While a top down view was good to show the space needed, it doesn't allow you to see if there is a gate big enough to drive through. For that I needed street view.
In my view the advantages out weigh the privacy concerns.
It is already illegal in many California counties to wash your car with your garden hose. They have to have the means of capturing the waste water so that the oils can be separated. Yea hippies!
I suppose if no one updated drivers or their system ever, it would be nice and stable:), but that isn't very realistic.
I set my mother up on Fedora 5 several years ago. Before that she was using Windows. With Windows set up do auto update, I was guaranteed to have a phone call about once every couple of months because something stopped working. Now that she is on Fedora, I manually do the updates about once a year when I go home to visit. I have not had one phone call asking for help because something stopped working. Obviously, I wouldn't wait that long to update a Windows box, but I feel confident that she won't be hacked with the Fedora box. The reduced workload was well worth it for me.
If it's 'limited to DoD personnel for security reasons' in what sense is it 'Open'?
Many DoD contractors write software for various projects. Allowing them a secure means to share code with each other would be immensely helpful. You can have several developers within a single contract, but in different companies and different locations around the world contributing to the software. For instance somebody from Harris corp. could submit patches to software written by Raytheon. Up until now there was no way to accomplish this. The best you could hope for, was to submit a request, and hope it got worked on by the originating company. A process that has always been very expensive for the Government.
I would call it limited, but it's still Open Source. Now, lets hope that companies start using this.
Slashdot Mirror
But things are different now. We have already spent $65 billion on 135 F22's. That is plenty for me to sleep soundly at night unless things change dramatically, which would take a while.
I think a lot of people are not looking at this the correct way. I could care less if we spend money on maned or unmanned aircraft. I could care less if we bought 135 of something or 300 of another... what allows me to sleep well at night is just knowing that we are technologically superior to everybody else. We as American's demand that our military be ready for any contingency. They are the best to decide what they need to do there job (as opposed to the slashdot armchair generals). I expect them to continue to look for further advancements in technology. Will it be expensive... yes, but that is the price to maintain our superiority.
And yes, I also expect congress to keep the military's spending in check. You know, that whole checks and balances thing.
Here is an interesting concept. Use one jammer with several different antenna connected through shielded cables and an amplifier on each end.
You could effectivly switch the jamming from one geographical area to another almost a mile away with just a couple of amplifiers and hide most of the real shit completely out of harms way. And with signal seeking missiles, your could have them so far off target that they would be useless.
One antenna, one missile... six antennas, six missiles. Problem solved.
With our technology today, you only need to transmit for a short period of time for us to accurately locate you. Even if you shut it down we can locate and destroy it.
During the height of Iraqi Freedom we were destroying GPS jammers with GPS guided bombs. While it is easy to jam the civilian side of GPS it is not as easy to jam the military side. Believe it or not, we actually do have engineers that can design around known jamming techniques.
They can fly themselves but they cannot pick out targets, select the appropriate ammunition or missiles to use, and then take the judgment call to fire on their own.
Says who? The US military has had that very capability for a while now. Computers analyze the threat, pick the targets figure out which aircraft or surface launched missiles best suited to deal with said threat. The only thing we don't let the computer do is actually fire the weapon. There is nothing stopping that from happening, except the current mindset that we want humans to have the final control.
Actually, using a booby trap to capture the next door neighbour's punk ass 12 year old kid from stealing my stuff sounds like a real good idea. Now where did I put that bear trap?
Google is my God!
Wow... the moderators have no sense of humor!
Yep, Slashdot... home of the fat lazy nerds.
Would your father ask you to get him a car that lasts 15 years?
I hate to say it, but lasting the designed life span of computer parts (2 years) seems to be a challenge as of late, and buying quality doesn't seem to gain much.
The failure rates now days have been getting a bit long in the tooth.
Your car analogy doesn't work. Many people get 15-20 years out of a vehicle. I personally drive a 1991 VW Jetta.
Getting computer parts to last is not hard either. Don't buy bleeding edge. Those brand new super high speed drives today do tend to fail, so buy the slower models that came out a couple of years ago. They have the bugs worked out.
Google is my God!
Does anyone deserve to be menaced by a gun?
Yes, there are plenty of reasons that would cause me to "menace" you with a gun...
Um, the Google camera that drove past my house was 3m off the road (notice that it's on a pole on top of a car). So it sees over the fence and right into my daughter's bedroom.
I have yet to see a picture on Street View that showed more than about 6 inches into a window. The camera they use is effectively an instamatic used during bright daylight. They don't use telescoping lenses or special equipment to peer into homes. Unless your daughter's room has more light inside than outside, you have no argument.
Maybe not for touring, but Street View was very useful to me recently when I was looking to buy a house in an area far from where I live.
I just moved from California to New Mexico and used Google street view for just this reason. I needed to find a house that would allow me to park my trailer in the back yard. While a top down view was good to show the space needed, it doesn't allow you to see if there is a gate big enough to drive through. For that I needed street view.
In my view the advantages out weigh the privacy concerns.
The OP and whoever allowed that crap to get posted on Slashdot should be drowned in a large vat of warm whale spunk!
There is a visual I just didn't need... on the rest of your post, however, I completely agree.
Smurfingly
Not necessarily... Don't you remember OMGPONIES!
It is already illegal in many California counties to wash your car with your garden hose. They have to have the means of capturing the waste water so that the oils can be separated. Yea hippies!
I suppose if no one updated drivers or their system ever, it would be nice and stable:), but that isn't very realistic.
I set my mother up on Fedora 5 several years ago. Before that she was using Windows. With Windows set up do auto update, I was guaranteed to have a phone call about once every couple of months because something stopped working. Now that she is on Fedora, I manually do the updates about once a year when I go home to visit. I have not had one phone call asking for help because something stopped working. Obviously, I wouldn't wait that long to update a Windows box, but I feel confident that she won't be hacked with the Fedora box. The reduced workload was well worth it for me.
To up-skirting.
If it's 'limited to DoD personnel for security reasons' in what sense is it 'Open'?
Many DoD contractors write software for various projects. Allowing them a secure means to share code with each other would be immensely helpful. You can have several developers within a single contract, but in different companies and different locations around the world contributing to the software. For instance somebody from Harris corp. could submit patches to software written by Raytheon. Up until now there was no way to accomplish this. The best you could hope for, was to submit a request, and hope it got worked on by the originating company. A process that has always been very expensive for the Government.
I would call it limited, but it's still Open Source. Now, lets hope that companies start using this.
Careful, your Cockney is showing.
Can this really work outside of a lab, where the water surface isn't like glass ?
It sure can work outside the lab. Check out the pics (search for figure 2 / figure 3) to see photos!
I love how Figure #9 has the naughty bits blacked out!
I did find this. The senate claims that you only need Flash to view the ceremony.
Eh... Its all just smurfy.
WARNING! Your toddlers might violate a Patent! [tinyurl.com]
WTF? How did that get a patent? Nevermind, its a rhetorical question.
While you are correct in thinking that the term POTUS has a military background, it has been used in main stream media for years.
We should all eat it. It's the greenest soup.
When I saw this, I imediatly thought of Soylent green.