Should we really be so shocked? Haven't nuclear weapons been present in the middle east for over 3 decades now, in Israel?
Israel hasn't pledged to push it's neighbors "into the sea". As soon as Israel was created (by the United Nations, backed by American Democratic politicians), Arab neighbor states began attacking immediately, and have regularly attempted invasions since then. Iran's top politician has made a promise to "smash the Jewish" state numerous times, promising to, in fact, wipe them off the map.
The fact is that Israel has used their supply of nukes as a deterrent... indeed, no other state has attacked since they've had them. Surrounding hostile states have relied on funding and equipping terrorists to do their dirty work for them instead. But no one will send an army against Israel anymore.
Iran, on the other hand, has openly made statements to the effect that any new military technologies they develop... nukes included... will be used to eliminate Israel. They've threatened in effect that their nukes will have offensive purposes. These weapons will be in the hands of a leadership that believes they can bring about the end of days... and thus the coming of the 12th Imam... by launching a cataclysmic attack on Israel, and perhaps on her allies.
It matters who has these weapons, and who doesn't.
In what alternate reality? Most people have never heard of it or use it. There have been plenty of well-made websites, but with sparse traffic. They're not a "success" then.
"But more importantly, even the fairness doctrine that conservatives dread so much (even though no one is trying to bring it back)..."
No one is trying to bring it back now, at least not openly. Last year was a different case. The Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Senate Majority leader both expressed support for it. It's unpopular. Presidents from FDR to Nixon used it to smother opponents. That's why it was eliminated (by a Democratic Congress in the 80's, I would add).If Democrats ever do try to bring it back, yes, it will likely be wrapped in another bill of some kind.
"... was never about silencing opposition. It was about providing a balance of viewpoints -- you know, like Fox News claims to do."
Fox gives an alternative based on market choices. If people want it, they can watch it, while there are plenty of alternatives on the air at the same time. That's now how the Fairness Doctrine works. It mandates, under government authority, that you give an "equal" block of airtime to someone in opposition to your programming, whether or not your listeners want it. It's Big Brother on the radio. Your only alternative is to turn the radio off. That's regulating speech and micromanaging private enterprise. And as for the sure-to-come argument that "the airways belong to the public"... stations paid a lot of money for the rights to those airwaves so that they could put a product on them that would make a profit. Let the listeners decide what they want to hear. If something isn't making money, it's off the air. Period. That's how broadcasting works.
I don't know if IBM even supports it anymore (they probably do), but I saw an ATM a short time ago that was using OS/2... so there has got to be more of them out there. OS/2 was used lot in things like ATM's and cash registers. I think people would be surprised if they knew just how old some of the software was that businesses were using for single-purpose machines. My local pizza place uses what appears to be DOS for their order systems. The old CRT's that the pizza makers get the info from certainly looks like a DOS screen.
Print is extremely wasteful and bad for the environment compared to reading them on an ebook reader.
I don't care. Reading isn't just a mental pleasure for me, it's a tactile pleasure. I like the feel of the pages in my fingers. I love the smell of the paper. And since I work in technology and spend the vast majority of my time with it, I need those periods where I can unplug and relax with a book. I simply don't like reading books on a screen.
Increasingly, it looks like we might be forced to sacrifice a lot to the god of "green". But he's not getting my books.
really, I shoudl be able to go to a bok store and get the book I want made on the spot. At software stores, they should burn the software on demand.
For book stores, yes, good idea. But software stores are basically obsolete. Geekoid, I don't know what country you live in, but in most industrialized countries, this would already be obsolete for software. The difference between the two markets is one of tactile preference; most people prefer to read paper pages still. But with software, there's no such factor. Software is software, no matter who burns it for you. And there simply aren't enough dial-up only users left to justify a physical software store based on convenience. Widespread broadband killed places like the old mall software chains. Google for "software shops in..." and the suggestion box is filled mostly with third world cities where broadband isn't widespread yet. Software is a tough brick-and-mortar business in the US, even for places like Office Depot now. If it's cheap enough... say, under a hundred bucks or so, you just download it yourself and pay via paypal or credit card. If it's very expensive, then you're planning the purchase, and will order via mail usually. On-demand software burning would have been a great idea during the dial-up era. But now it would be like "Hey, I've got this great idea for propulsion... it's called the steam engine!".
Uh, acquiring fossils has pretty much always been a private pursuit. Regardless of how the economy is right now, this is nothing new.
"Maybe it's time we energize a little more funding into the arts and history."
That wont solve the issue of where these are being found... mostly on private property. If they're under ground someone else owns, they get to do with it as they please, period. What could be done is to raise money, gather a crew, and then tell landowners "Hey, we think there might be dinosaur bones here... if we pay you X amount of dollars, can we dig them up and keep them?" If the owner agrees, then everyone is happy. And if he doesn't, then you look for your fossils elsewhere.
"In fact, the free-marketeers who worship Friedman (I know that's Chicago school, not Austrian, but bear with me) ignored the potential for the current crisis while Keynesians like Krugman, in point of fact, predicted it."
Free Marketers have said this was coming for quite awhile. So have the Keynesians. In fact, everyone that had some commons sense recognized that in an economy where you sell houses to people that can't pay for them, and then package those sure-to-fail mortgages as a security was going to be bitten in the ass sooner or later. The right-wing types were more vocal about the subprime danger while the left-wingers yelped louder about the securitization. But their arguments were two sides of the same coin. Krugman was no more prescient than anyone else. And he was conspicuously silent about the government turning a blind eye to the Fannie and Freddie shenanigans.
"I normally don't respond to flamebait, but someone modded you insightful."
What a coincidence. It's the same reason I'm responding to you.
"Maybe you were reading straight through and didn't finish until you got to the game-changing peace and love hippie stuff?"
If you think Christianity is all hippy peace and love stuff, then I'd suggest you finish reading the Bible, or take a second look. Even in the New Testament, God (and Christ) often got angry and displayed wrath. Jesus wasn't some Ghandi-ish peace and understanding guy. He said that if you didn't believe he was the Messiah, you were in for an eternity of sufferning. He often told people that it was better for them to suffer some horrible Earthly fate than to violate his teachings, because the punishment for that would be worse.
Turn the other cheek? He also said not so nice things.
"He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one." - Luke 22:36
In the book of Matthew, one morning Jesus wakes up and wants some breakfast. He comes to a fig tree, expecting fruit. When he sees the tree has produced none, he becomes angry, and curses the tree, causing it to wither and die, never to produce fruit again.
"And as they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away from the roots. And Peter calling to remembrance said unto him, âRabbi, behold, the fig tree which you cursed is withered away." - Mark 11:20
Anyone that thinks Jesus was some hippy "I'm OK, You're OK" kind of guy really has never read the Bible.
Maybe Congress can attempt to pass an "Assault Replica" bill.
I've never understood the logic of banning a gun because it looks scary. American "assault rifles" are semi-automatic. Pull the trigger, and one shot comes out. Politicians want to ban them because they look intimidating next to, say, a standard bolt-action Ruger 30.06. This is like banning a V-6 equipped Camaro because "it looks fast".
Because these people don't want to "save" the planet for man... they place the planet above man. They view this not as our home, but view people as inferior, a parasite on their world. We call them treehuggers because these people are essentially a pagan earth cult. They're a Gaia-worshipping Luddite movement.
When was the last time you saw a major naval battle between surface ships, particularly battleships? It doesn't happen anymore because submarines and aircraft carriers made it obsolete.
Not really. In 1988, there was a big naval battle in the Persian Gulf... Operation Praying Mantis. It was the largest naval battle since Leyte Gulf in WWII. It just didn't get much press stateside. And while my carrier (the Enterprise) had aircraft involved, the battle was largely between surface forces. We sent an A-6 to pop off some Skippers at the Iranian frigates (which were then-recent ships and British-built, very capable warships), but much of the combat was conducted by our destroyers and frigates. It was in fact the first time US naval forces fired ship-to-ship missiles in combat.
And as for aircraft making surface warfare obsolete, note that our surface ships shot down an Iranian F-4, and the rest of their aircraft would flee as soon as painted by radar.
Surface warfare is very much still relevant. What isn't is the old notion of two ships lining up and firing canons at each other.
And a tank costs a lot more than a pickup truck. So what? If the F-22 can maintain, say, a 20:1 kill ratio against other aircraft, then the 5:1 cost disparity is more than justified.
That extraordinary ratio is from USAF-directed simulations, under their rules of engagement, not real world combat. And we know they'd never exaggerate the F-22's effectiveness, now would they?
The Raptor, while impressive on paper is indeed a lemon, especially with it's software problems. No fighter, no matter how potent, is any good to you when it averages a 50% uptime, and costs so much that you can't afford it in sufficient quantities. Reliability and quantity count in warfare, bigtime. Ask the Germans about this. Their Tiger Tank was a wonder on paper. Too bad it was broken down all the time, and too bad that it was so expensive the Germans could only build a few of them. Meanwhile, the Russians and Americans churned out cheap and reliable tanks by the thousands, and ate the Germans alive. Read a book called Arms of Destruction, a book that ranks the best land weapons of WWII. The lessons are applicable to all types of weaponry. The author makes a point that seems to elude the Department of Defense these days; that capabilities of a weapon mean nothing if that weapon isn't sufficiently available in wartime. It's kind of hard to fulfill that need if you can't buy enough of them, and the ones you do have keep breaking down. And that's the F-22 in a nutshell.
One of which is that, against modern aerial ASW systems, they have no defense at all. They can attempt to fire off torpedoes at other subs or even surface ships, but once detected, are helpless against helos and fixed wing aircraft. If they're detected, their only option is to run or go dead quiet and pray that their countermeasures will throw off the air-dropped torpedoes that are coming after them.
Behind all the "there are subs and there are targets" bravado from the bubblehead community lies the truth that subs are indeed a threat, but the fact is, they're also incredibly vulnerable too.
I very much doubt that maneouverability will become irrelevant. The last time someone put all their trust in weaponry at the expense of maneouverability it did not go so well for them.
I've got an even more recent example for you of "technology X makes practice Y obsolete", and it also deals with fighter planes. In the late 50's, various eggheads in defense think tanks said that the era of dogfighting was over, that air to air missiles were all that mattered. They said turn rate, acceleration, energy manueverability, and guns were no longer factors. So the Navy didn't even put a canon in the F-4.
Ten years later, "obsolete" MiG-17's were shooting down F-4's, often armed with nothing more than a canon. Seems our missiles had a nasty habit of missing their targets, and then our pilots, with no dogfighting skills and no canons for close-combat, were getting chewed up by 20 year old fighters that had no missiles and no radar.
USAF put a canon in their version of the F-4, the Navy started Top Gun to teach dogfighting again, and in the wake of the Vietnam War, we took the lessons learned and produced the Teen series of fighters... the F-14, F-15, and soon after, the F-16 and F/A-18, the finest fighters ever made. The Vietnam experience also shaped the A-10, the best ground attack aircraft ever made, period.
And now... once again, we're tossing aside lessons hard-learned, and buying into the notion that a new technology will make dogfighting obsolete. The Navy and Marine Corps/Royal Navy versions of the F-35, once again, will not even include a built-in canon.
The F35 is a global project with several countries footing the development bill, and many US allies purchasing it for their own air forces...
Not only that, but some allies will be building it themselves. Turkey will produce most of their F-35's at their own factory, and Israel has expressed interest in doing the same thing.
The only stumbling block in exports seems to be the software code. The UK threatened to pull out of the program at one time because the US wouldn't completely share the source code. The Department of Defense thought the UK's export controls weren't strong enough, and that they'd end up sharing secrets with unauthorized countries.
yeah those high precision jets, accurate missiles, highly trained people, and real time global information are just horrible.
Close enough for government work is almost always closer then private industry when it comes to complex work.
Does your praise also included $500 toilet seat lids and $100 hammers? That's a result of government defense purchasing, too. Our newest fighter, the F-35, that was supposed to be "cheap", was designed by committee, and now will cost around $200 million apiece next year. Can't wait to apply that expertise to health care.
In These United States, the Founders set up a Federal division for a good reason... power corrupts, so split it up. And the further the government is from citizens, the less attuned they'll be to those citizens. This is why State and Local governments have been more powerful than their equivalents in Europe. If anything, Federalism and the limits on national government are more important than ever. With over 300 million people, there's simply no way the feds can ever be attuned to local and state concerns, and they'll simply run roughshod over the citizenry, as they've demonstrated increasingly over the decades.
The notion of an all-powerful national government isn't just bad practice. It is well and truly anti-American, and would be opposed vociferously be even the staunchest of the advocates of central government among our founders, save perhaps for Alexander Hamilton. And I'm pretty sure that if someone ever told Washington or Jefferson that some extra-national entity could void US laws, they'd start loading their muskets. Even Lincoln, the father of modern concentrated Presidential power would object to that.
enforce any violation of net neutrality principles
I'd be happier if they vowed to enforce the principles, rather than their violation.
What I'd like to know is on what grounds do they think they can mandate how traffic is managed on ISP networks. There are no net neutrality laws. "Principle" means jack squat legally. I don't think there are even any internal FCC regulations on the books regarding NN, let alone laws passed by Congress. This leaves a huge hole for ISP's to take the FCC to court for what is essentially a privately delivered service.
Must be rough to have been hard to live that last year for you, lol.
And it may not be any easier for us this year. We've got a new coach that went 5-19 in his last job, and yet Tiger Rags is making "We have the winning Gene" t-shirts. Someone just wasn't thinking on that one...
Its more likely that the Pope will declare that God doesn't exist than that US Colleges will stop caring about sports and start caring about education again.
Personally, I agree that sports receive too much emphasis (and I'm a college football fan myself), but... what makes you think they're "not teaching" now? Just because they have a popular sports program, does that mean there's some kind of moratorium on education? Kind of hard to square that idea with the sterling academic reputations of places like Notre Dame, Duke, and UCLA, all of which have big time sports programs. Go to Georgia Tech, Michigan, or Texas, and tell them to "start teaching again", and they'll throw their high academic rankings right back in your face.
Slashdot Mirror
Should we really be so shocked? Haven't nuclear weapons been present in the middle east for over 3 decades now, in Israel?
Israel hasn't pledged to push it's neighbors "into the sea". As soon as Israel was created (by the United Nations, backed by American Democratic politicians), Arab neighbor states began attacking immediately, and have regularly attempted invasions since then. Iran's top politician has made a promise to "smash the Jewish" state numerous times, promising to, in fact, wipe them off the map.
The fact is that Israel has used their supply of nukes as a deterrent... indeed, no other state has attacked since they've had them. Surrounding hostile states have relied on funding and equipping terrorists to do their dirty work for them instead. But no one will send an army against Israel anymore.
Iran, on the other hand, has openly made statements to the effect that any new military technologies they develop... nukes included... will be used to eliminate Israel. They've threatened in effect that their nukes will have offensive purposes. These weapons will be in the hands of a leadership that believes they can bring about the end of days... and thus the coming of the 12th Imam... by launching a cataclysmic attack on Israel, and perhaps on her allies.
It matters who has these weapons, and who doesn't.
"Recovery.org is a huge success. "
In what alternate reality? Most people have never heard of it or use it. There have been plenty of well-made websites, but with sparse traffic. They're not a "success" then.
Symantec's products aren't exactly admired for security and effectiveness in recent years. Pot, meet Kettle,
Their product for the Mac has a horrid reputation. I've heard it called "malware for the Mac".
"But more importantly, even the fairness doctrine that conservatives dread so much (even though no one is trying to bring it back)..."
No one is trying to bring it back now, at least not openly. Last year was a different case. The Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Senate Majority leader both expressed support for it. It's unpopular. Presidents from FDR to Nixon used it to smother opponents. That's why it was eliminated (by a Democratic Congress in the 80's, I would add).If Democrats ever do try to bring it back, yes, it will likely be wrapped in another bill of some kind.
"... was never about silencing opposition. It was about providing a balance of viewpoints -- you know, like Fox News claims to do."
Fox gives an alternative based on market choices. If people want it, they can watch it, while there are plenty of alternatives on the air at the same time. That's now how the Fairness Doctrine works. It mandates, under government authority, that you give an "equal" block of airtime to someone in opposition to your programming, whether or not your listeners want it. It's Big Brother on the radio. Your only alternative is to turn the radio off. That's regulating speech and micromanaging private enterprise. And as for the sure-to-come argument that "the airways belong to the public"... stations paid a lot of money for the rights to those airwaves so that they could put a product on them that would make a profit. Let the listeners decide what they want to hear. If something isn't making money, it's off the air. Period. That's how broadcasting works.
Eww you just admitted something emberassing, you are subscribed to rush limbaugh's site.
And that is bad... why?
I don't know if IBM even supports it anymore (they probably do), but I saw an ATM a short time ago that was using OS/2... so there has got to be more of them out there. OS/2 was used lot in things like ATM's and cash registers. I think people would be surprised if they knew just how old some of the software was that businesses were using for single-purpose machines. My local pizza place uses what appears to be DOS for their order systems. The old CRT's that the pizza makers get the info from certainly looks like a DOS screen.
Print is extremely wasteful and bad for the environment compared to reading them on an ebook reader.
I don't care. Reading isn't just a mental pleasure for me, it's a tactile pleasure. I like the feel of the pages in my fingers. I love the smell of the paper. And since I work in technology and spend the vast majority of my time with it, I need those periods where I can unplug and relax with a book. I simply don't like reading books on a screen.
Increasingly, it looks like we might be forced to sacrifice a lot to the god of "green". But he's not getting my books.
really, I shoudl be able to go to a bok store and get the book I want made on the spot. At software stores, they should burn the software on demand.
For book stores, yes, good idea. But software stores are basically obsolete. Geekoid, I don't know what country you live in, but in most industrialized countries, this would already be obsolete for software. The difference between the two markets is one of tactile preference; most people prefer to read paper pages still. But with software, there's no such factor. Software is software, no matter who burns it for you. And there simply aren't enough dial-up only users left to justify a physical software store based on convenience. Widespread broadband killed places like the old mall software chains. Google for "software shops in..." and the suggestion box is filled mostly with third world cities where broadband isn't widespread yet. Software is a tough brick-and-mortar business in the US, even for places like Office Depot now. If it's cheap enough... say, under a hundred bucks or so, you just download it yourself and pay via paypal or credit card. If it's very expensive, then you're planning the purchase, and will order via mail usually. On-demand software burning would have been a great idea during the dial-up era. But now it would be like "Hey, I've got this great idea for propulsion... it's called the steam engine!".
"Is our economy so bad..."
Uh, acquiring fossils has pretty much always been a private pursuit. Regardless of how the economy is right now, this is nothing new.
"Maybe it's time we energize a little more funding into the arts and history."
That wont solve the issue of where these are being found... mostly on private property. If they're under ground someone else owns, they get to do with it as they please, period. What could be done is to raise money, gather a crew, and then tell landowners "Hey, we think there might be dinosaur bones here... if we pay you X amount of dollars, can we dig them up and keep them?" If the owner agrees, then everyone is happy. And if he doesn't, then you look for your fossils elsewhere.
"In fact, the free-marketeers who worship Friedman (I know that's Chicago school, not Austrian, but bear with me) ignored the potential for the current crisis while Keynesians like Krugman, in point of fact, predicted it."
Free Marketers have said this was coming for quite awhile. So have the Keynesians. In fact, everyone that had some commons sense recognized that in an economy where you sell houses to people that can't pay for them, and then package those sure-to-fail mortgages as a security was going to be bitten in the ass sooner or later. The right-wing types were more vocal about the subprime danger while the left-wingers yelped louder about the securitization. But their arguments were two sides of the same coin. Krugman was no more prescient than anyone else. And he was conspicuously silent about the government turning a blind eye to the Fannie and Freddie shenanigans.
"I normally don't respond to flamebait, but someone modded you insightful."
What a coincidence. It's the same reason I'm responding to you.
"Maybe you were reading straight through and didn't finish until you got to the game-changing peace and love hippie stuff?"
If you think Christianity is all hippy peace and love stuff, then I'd suggest you finish reading the Bible, or take a second look. Even in the New Testament, God (and Christ) often got angry and displayed wrath. Jesus wasn't some Ghandi-ish peace and understanding guy. He said that if you didn't believe he was the Messiah, you were in for an eternity of sufferning. He often told people that it was better for them to suffer some horrible Earthly fate than to violate his teachings, because the punishment for that would be worse.
Turn the other cheek? He also said not so nice things.
"He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one." - Luke 22:36
In the book of Matthew, one morning Jesus wakes up and wants some breakfast. He comes to a fig tree, expecting fruit. When he sees the tree has produced none, he becomes angry, and curses the tree, causing it to wither and die, never to produce fruit again.
"And as they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away from the roots. And Peter calling to remembrance said unto him, âRabbi, behold, the fig tree which you cursed is withered away." - Mark 11:20
Anyone that thinks Jesus was some hippy "I'm OK, You're OK" kind of guy really has never read the Bible.
"Somebody's sarcasm meter is broken."
And yet he was modded +5 Insightful. There's a lot of whooshing going on in here today.
Maybe Congress can attempt to pass an "Assault Replica" bill.
I've never understood the logic of banning a gun because it looks scary. American "assault rifles" are semi-automatic. Pull the trigger, and one shot comes out. Politicians want to ban them because they look intimidating next to, say, a standard bolt-action Ruger 30.06. This is like banning a V-6 equipped Camaro because "it looks fast".
"Y'know, I can almost respect them for torching SUVs "
If you can almost respect them for destroying someone else's property, then you're almost as much as asshole as they are.
Why the "treehugging" qualifier?
Because these people don't want to "save" the planet for man... they place the planet above man. They view this not as our home, but view people as inferior, a parasite on their world. We call them treehuggers because these people are essentially a pagan earth cult. They're a Gaia-worshipping Luddite movement.
When was the last time you saw a major naval battle between surface ships, particularly battleships? It doesn't happen anymore because submarines and aircraft carriers made it obsolete.
Not really. In 1988, there was a big naval battle in the Persian Gulf... Operation Praying Mantis. It was the largest naval battle since Leyte Gulf in WWII. It just didn't get much press stateside. And while my carrier (the Enterprise) had aircraft involved, the battle was largely between surface forces. We sent an A-6 to pop off some Skippers at the Iranian frigates (which were then-recent ships and British-built, very capable warships), but much of the combat was conducted by our destroyers and frigates. It was in fact the first time US naval forces fired ship-to-ship missiles in combat.
And as for aircraft making surface warfare obsolete, note that our surface ships shot down an Iranian F-4, and the rest of their aircraft would flee as soon as painted by radar.
Surface warfare is very much still relevant. What isn't is the old notion of two ships lining up and firing canons at each other.
And a tank costs a lot more than a pickup truck. So what? If the F-22 can maintain, say, a 20:1 kill ratio against other aircraft, then the 5:1 cost disparity is more than justified.
That extraordinary ratio is from USAF-directed simulations, under their rules of engagement, not real world combat. And we know they'd never exaggerate the F-22's effectiveness, now would they?
The Raptor, while impressive on paper is indeed a lemon, especially with it's software problems. No fighter, no matter how potent, is any good to you when it averages a 50% uptime, and costs so much that you can't afford it in sufficient quantities. Reliability and quantity count in warfare, bigtime. Ask the Germans about this. Their Tiger Tank was a wonder on paper. Too bad it was broken down all the time, and too bad that it was so expensive the Germans could only build a few of them. Meanwhile, the Russians and Americans churned out cheap and reliable tanks by the thousands, and ate the Germans alive. Read a book called Arms of Destruction, a book that ranks the best land weapons of WWII. The lessons are applicable to all types of weaponry. The author makes a point that seems to elude the Department of Defense these days; that capabilities of a weapon mean nothing if that weapon isn't sufficiently available in wartime. It's kind of hard to fulfill that need if you can't buy enough of them, and the ones you do have keep breaking down. And that's the F-22 in a nutshell.
"Submarines have several drawbacks"
One of which is that, against modern aerial ASW systems, they have no defense at all. They can attempt to fire off torpedoes at other subs or even surface ships, but once detected, are helpless against helos and fixed wing aircraft. If they're detected, their only option is to run or go dead quiet and pray that their countermeasures will throw off the air-dropped torpedoes that are coming after them.
Behind all the "there are subs and there are targets" bravado from the bubblehead community lies the truth that subs are indeed a threat, but the fact is, they're also incredibly vulnerable too.
I very much doubt that maneouverability will become irrelevant. The last time someone put all their trust in weaponry at the expense of maneouverability it did not go so well for them.
I've got an even more recent example for you of "technology X makes practice Y obsolete", and it also deals with fighter planes. In the late 50's, various eggheads in defense think tanks said that the era of dogfighting was over, that air to air missiles were all that mattered. They said turn rate, acceleration, energy manueverability, and guns were no longer factors. So the Navy didn't even put a canon in the F-4.
Ten years later, "obsolete" MiG-17's were shooting down F-4's, often armed with nothing more than a canon. Seems our missiles had a nasty habit of missing their targets, and then our pilots, with no dogfighting skills and no canons for close-combat, were getting chewed up by 20 year old fighters that had no missiles and no radar.
USAF put a canon in their version of the F-4, the Navy started Top Gun to teach dogfighting again, and in the wake of the Vietnam War, we took the lessons learned and produced the Teen series of fighters... the F-14, F-15, and soon after, the F-16 and F/A-18, the finest fighters ever made. The Vietnam experience also shaped the A-10, the best ground attack aircraft ever made, period.
And now... once again, we're tossing aside lessons hard-learned, and buying into the notion that a new technology will make dogfighting obsolete. The Navy and Marine Corps/Royal Navy versions of the F-35, once again, will not even include a built-in canon.
We never learn.
The F35 is a global project with several countries footing the development bill, and many US allies purchasing it for their own air forces...
Not only that, but some allies will be building it themselves. Turkey will produce most of their F-35's at their own factory, and Israel has expressed interest in doing the same thing.
The only stumbling block in exports seems to be the software code. The UK threatened to pull out of the program at one time because the US wouldn't completely share the source code. The Department of Defense thought the UK's export controls weren't strong enough, and that they'd end up sharing secrets with unauthorized countries.
yeah those high precision jets, accurate missiles, highly trained people, and real time global information are just horrible.
Close enough for government work is almost always closer then private industry when it comes to complex work.
Does your praise also included $500 toilet seat lids and $100 hammers? That's a result of government defense purchasing, too. Our newest fighter, the F-35, that was supposed to be "cheap", was designed by committee, and now will cost around $200 million apiece next year. Can't wait to apply that expertise to health care.
"Don't be a reactionary."
Don't be a slave.
In These United States, the Founders set up a Federal division for a good reason... power corrupts, so split it up. And the further the government is from citizens, the less attuned they'll be to those citizens. This is why State and Local governments have been more powerful than their equivalents in Europe. If anything, Federalism and the limits on national government are more important than ever. With over 300 million people, there's simply no way the feds can ever be attuned to local and state concerns, and they'll simply run roughshod over the citizenry, as they've demonstrated increasingly over the decades.
The notion of an all-powerful national government isn't just bad practice. It is well and truly anti-American, and would be opposed vociferously be even the staunchest of the advocates of central government among our founders, save perhaps for Alexander Hamilton. And I'm pretty sure that if someone ever told Washington or Jefferson that some extra-national entity could void US laws, they'd start loading their muskets. Even Lincoln, the father of modern concentrated Presidential power would object to that.
I'd be happier if they vowed to enforce the principles, rather than their violation.
What I'd like to know is on what grounds do they think they can mandate how traffic is managed on ISP networks. There are no net neutrality laws. "Principle" means jack squat legally. I don't think there are even any internal FCC regulations on the books regarding NN, let alone laws passed by Congress. This leaves a huge hole for ISP's to take the FCC to court for what is essentially a privately delivered service.
Must be rough to have been hard to live that last year for you, lol.
And it may not be any easier for us this year. We've got a new coach that went 5-19 in his last job, and yet Tiger Rags is making "We have the winning Gene" t-shirts. Someone just wasn't thinking on that one...
Its more likely that the Pope will declare that God doesn't exist than that US Colleges will stop caring about sports and start caring about education again.
Personally, I agree that sports receive too much emphasis (and I'm a college football fan myself), but... what makes you think they're "not teaching" now? Just because they have a popular sports program, does that mean there's some kind of moratorium on education? Kind of hard to square that idea with the sterling academic reputations of places like Notre Dame, Duke, and UCLA, all of which have big time sports programs. Go to Georgia Tech, Michigan, or Texas, and tell them to "start teaching again", and they'll throw their high academic rankings right back in your face.