I know exactly what's driving Lucas on this. Cash. Period. Whatever motivations he may have once had for this story and this franchise, his sole concern now seems to be the bank account.
Supposedly the new movie was supposed to be televised first and then straight to DVD, and during preparation of the movie Lucas' people said he lit up and said something like "This is so good it needs to be in theaters!".
I think it was more like "Hey, I think we can squeeze another 90 to 100 million out of the suckers if we put this in theaters".
"The military always prepares to fight the last war?"
Maybe SecDef Gates is making exactly the same mistake.
You have to finish your last war before you can waste time refighting it. The difference here is that we're still in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the support mission is paramount for USAF.
There's a reason the Marines have their own air support.
The USAF was a mistake to start with. Shut it down, and give the equipment to the units actually doing work.
I completly agree with the second part... however, while the first part is true, I think that we currently have too much duplication of mission among services. It's kind of insane that we basically have 3 air forces (USAF, Navy, USMC). We should be limiting what kind of aircraft each service can have according to it's mission. The Marines shouldn't get anything that can't take off or land vertically. The Navy shouldn't be doing shore-based missions. If it can't land on a carrier or on the ocean, they shouldn't have it.
I agree that the time has come to re-integrate the Air Force back into the Army. They hate to admit it, but most of their mission these days is troop support anyway.
The enormous sucking sound you hear is the money being vacuumed out of the Mother of All Aircraft Buys. So long, Lightning II, we hardly knew ye.
The problem with weapons programs is that when they get far enough along, so many people are sucking at the tit of government budgets that it's nearly impossible to kill them.
Case in point, the F-18 program... in the early 80's, it had gotten expensive enough that NavAir leaders decided they'd rather just cancel it and buy more F-14's and A-6's. Nope. The Hornet program was far enough along that a slew of Congressmen and Senators wanted to shovel money to their districts.
The most we can hope for, I think, is that the Navy cancels their version, or the USMC cancels theirs. I think the program is largely a waste, just a stealthy F-16 with less payload and range under most mission scenarios.
The Air Force has finally come out of denial on that point, and is creating a "UAV operator" career path that does not require rated pilots. Among other things, it will open the field up to a lot of people who have the technical chops but can't pass a pilot physical.
rj
More than that, it may very well open up "pilot" positions for people without college degrees, which will greatly expand the pool of applicants. Face it, the Army has proven for years that you don't need a degree to be a military pilot. Most of their pilots are non-college grads that are made Warrant Officers after a two year training program. The Navy's Nuclear Power Program is more academically rigorous (much more so, according to knowledgeable sources), with a stressful two-year program that gives advanced college credit, and the enlisted grads don't get officer promotions. So the notion that we have to have college grads in the cockpit is mostly bunk.
I've been saying for years now that all the services should open up much of their flying billets for enlisted people. Enlisted personnel are on average intelligent and educated enough to handle the academics involved. If Chuck Yeager, who by his own admission was horrible at math, could do things like break the sound barrier in a rocket plane, surely the USAF, USN, and USMC could open up their rotary billets to enlisted people, and perhaps even planes like C-130's. We'd be wise to chuck this "Officer Knight" thing in cockpits, and realize that military aircraft are just another weapon.
"The fighter pilots are the aristocracy of the aristocracy of the AF."
Well, they are now. USAF used to be a bomber culture in SAC's heyday under Curtis LeMay.
Regardless, the fighter mafia's days appear to be numbered. Recently, the COS and the SecAF were sacked by SecDef; they insisted on ignoring the current wars in favor of looking at China. They were more interested in F-22's and F-35's than in cargo planes and unmanned drones, which is what is desperately needed. So SecDef Gates fired them, and in the first time in USAF's history, replaced the COS with a cargo guy... someone that's been in C-130's his entire career. That fighter culture is being punished now, and when they were fired, cheers were heard at the Pentagon. Gates sent a message... "look to the future, but concentrate on the here and now". USAF got the message. They may not like it, but they got the message. Do the dirty, unglamorous work of supporting the Army, or get the axe.
I suspect that whoever wins in November... McCain or Obama... USAF's future leadership for the next decade or so will come much more from the non-traditional ranks.... cargo, special warfare, intelligence... than from the traditional fighter community, which is quickly being seen as an outmoded aristocracy in the Department of Defense.
" That's why the Army needs to take over the drone program. The AF has shed a stunning number of missions and aircraft (it didn't originally want the A-10) and wants to only do air dominance".
I'll go further than that. I think we should re-integrate the USAF back into the Army. The Raison de "Etre of the USAF was long range strategic nuclear bombing, something that's now been replaced with ICBM/SLBM technology. USAF doesn't like doing the un-sexy missions that its called upon to do 95 percent of the time... especially grunt support. So bring back the Army Air Forces, and problem solved. The fighter mafia will scream, but let them. They'll either put on green suits, or leave. Their budget and priorities will come from the Army. The more I look at it, the more I question the wisdom of making the Air Force independent in the first place.
"Put the best pilot in the world in an F-16, and a much less skilled pilot on the ground, controlling an aircraft that can out climb, out turn, and out run him, and it's game over. Whatever his skills are, if he blacks out at 12 Gs, he loses."
You've hit on something that rubs pilots raw, but is unavoidable; the biggest setback in making fighters with greater performance now isn't physics or even cost. It's the physical limits of the human pilot. We've had planes that could take more stress and more G's than our pilots could for 30 years now. F-16's could be even more maneuverable without humans in the cockpits. With the advance of software and AI, it's inevitable that in the future, we'll make unmanned fighters that can whip anything a human can fly. The two types won't even be close in terms of G restrictions, decision making time, endurance, and payload (all those systems to support human life take up a lot of space and weight).
The sad truth for lovers of the fighter pilot mystique is that their era is beginning its sunset. It may take 30, 40, or 50 years, but one day, we'll build a robot fighter that far outclasses manned fighters. And on that day, the romantic figure of the fighter pilot with his helmet, leather jacket, and scarf, will be relegated to history with the armored knight and the horse-and-sabre cavalry charge.
"What bothers me about this is that you take away risk to persons from war, and those persons are more willing to wage war...which leads to more war."
While I understand your reasoning on this, I don't think it's valid... yet. These kinds of drones thus far are really only good against guerillas on foot or in trucks. A first class threat... say, Russian armored forces... would eat these drones for lunch. So drones like these really don't reduce the danger to US personell much, because A-10's, F-16's, and AC-130's really aren't in much danger when going up against a group of Al Qaeda goons running in the desert. They might have the occasional shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile on them, but so far, nothing like that has been able to beat the countermeasures on US combat aircraft. So the "take the danger away for humans and encourage more war" thing isn't valid with the current generation of drones.
However... the Navy is working on a new drone aircraft, the N-UCAS, which will be years in development, but when ready, will basically be a scaled down stealth bomber that can launch and land on our carriers. If they get this puppy working, your ideas may be a little more valid.
That said, if we've learned one thing, it's that push-button-wars from a distance don't get you squat unless you're willing to send boots on the ground into the fight. So something like the Navy drone may lessen the risks to pilots, but there won't be any replacement for the infantryman in several lifetimes. No matter what kind of technology you bring, there's still going to be significant risk for humans in the military.
How can any such order be justified in the light of the first amendment protection of free speech?
Because all speech isn't protected. The First Ammendment isn't a blanket guarantee to say or do anything. There are limits on speech, and always have been, from the time the Constitution was ratified to today.
You can argue on technical grounds that "security by obscurity" is a stupid idea, but I think the EFF lost here for a reason... we've always balanced speech that can have a direct impact on public safety against the relative risks of that speech. You can't email classified blueprints of an AEGIS radar system to Vladimir Putin, for instance, or a list of undercover NYPD officers to some guy named Sal in Sicily, and then claim free speech protection. If you don't want to get in legal trouble, you go to court and get such things made de-classified or stripped of confidential status first, then you can reveal whatever you like. The students first step should have been getting a court order to strip protection from the MBTA information, because MBTA actually has some legal precedent on their side here.
The students may even be in the right here, but they were pleading their case in a way that almost assured their defeat in court. And in this case, EFF was thinking like hackers, not lawyers.
Tor is the answer to everything. Use Tor to access the trackers. Problem solved.
Tor is only the "answer" if you think pirating movies, apps, music, etc is cool. Otherwise, the "answer" is to reform copyright law, and then respect it. Not everyone on Slashdot thinks all copyright violation and piracy is a good thing.
In the opinion of most people that work in commercial aviation, the airline business is in the middle of a huge contraction and consolidation. Fuel costs aren't the reason, they're just the latest body blow in a series of punches that is destroying air travel as you know it.
First off, improving communicatins technology began lessening the need for business air travel in the late 90's. And business travel has always been the lifeblood of the airline industry, it's driving force on a day to day basis. Then September 11th happened. People were scared to fly, they hated the new security measures, and just decided they'd rather drive, thanks. Then came fuel prices.
The US airline industry is undergoing the same fate as the rail industry after WW II, and the military aviation sector after the Cold War ended. A combination of forces is radically shrinking it. Just as there's one passenger rail service now (AmTrak, and subsidized at that), just as there are now only two major airframe builders left in the US (Boeing and Lockheed-Martin), there will probably be, within ten years, only a few passenger airlines left in the US. Delta is already consuming Northwest, and word in the industry is that US Airways is already putting feelers out to Delta; "Hey, buy us out too". Most airports have something of an airline deadpool going. The people I work with are in agreement that we'll probably end up with no more than three major passenger airlines in the US when all is said and done. The biggest air carriers in the world have already changed from passenger companies to freight companies. FedEx and UPS already far outstrip the top US passenger line, Delta, in terms of fleet size, traffic, and numbers of flights. That's only going to accelerate in the future.
More people are going to take "staycations" in the future. If gas prices keep going down, they'll start driving for vacations more, but the heyday of passenger service is done, and it's not coming back. More and more businesses will do their routine "business travel" via teleconferencing. Many smaller airports will either go to skeleton crews to cut costs or just close outright as airlines stop serving them. Even if you brought back massive regulation (and the extra costs that come with it), nothing is going to stop this process. As better and cheaper business broadband becomes more widely available, the paring back of business travel will only accelerate. It'll never completely disappear, but its definitely downsizing, if you will.
Especially when you consider the irrational American hatred of unions, collective bargaining, and collective action in general
Here we go again. If it's a liberal issue Americans support, they're a great, wise, and noble people. If they're against a liberal issue, well, then Americans are just stupid.
Despite what the Chron article says, I wouldn't hold my breath on the Federal Courts issue. Non-competes are pretty standard across a range of industries, and I suspect that the federal courts aren't going to be as quick to void the concept as many here believe. The 9th Circuit would probably uphold it, but any other circuit (and SCOTUS, for that matter) would probably quash this. Non-competes are simply a way to protect trade secrets, and protecting trade secrets has been enforced by courts for decades. If someone thinks this will lead to the abolition of non-competes, I think they're jumping ahead of themselves.
"Now that that's out of the way, why don't you go fuck yourself?"
What's funny is that Democrats have accused Republicans for years now of being little more than mindless cult members. But if you criticize the Obamessiah whatsoever, Democrats just lose their minds and go into a rage. Look at Ratzo. Further, any criticism of The One is both inherently racist and a conspiracy.
Soul? Maybe he didn't have to sell it, Ratzo. Maybe he has to have one in the first place. He had no problem allying himself with Jeremiah Wright for 20+ years, and then, as soon as he became a liability, under the bus he goes. He had no problems teaming up with Tony Rezko for years, but then, as soon as he becomes a liability, bump bump, hear that bus a'rolling. How many speeches has Barack given this year that include *insert name here* is not the person I used to know"?
He used those guys to get to the top, and then disposed of them when the heat became too much. That's not selling out? As for his distinguished law professor career, well, it wasn't. Because he wrote nothing. Nada. Zip. He left no opinions that could come back and haunt him during a political campaign.
Some people worry that Barack Obama is a raging leftist, a real life version of the New Yorker characature of him.
Me, I think the guy is about one thing and one thing only... getting power for Barack Obama. And that makes him just another politician. So you can put those robes away now, Rat. He's not gonna save your soul after all. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Does telling a streetful of prostitutes that the police are on their way make one a pimp?
If you're working with them, yeah. If you're just some shmoe on the street, no. But the students and Tufts have an official relationship, with Tufts being responsible for some of their actions while they're on campus (In Loco Parentis, anyone?). Furthermore, the students are using a university Internet connection, and almost certainly are violating some of the regulations that Tufts puts on the system.
"Bush wasn't reelected, Diebold gave him the election. Diebold's CEO even bragged he was going to give Bush Ohio's vote and Bush "won" because of Ohio's results."
Diebold's CEO was speaking as a Republican political activist... he clearly meant that he and other party members in Ohio would help deliver the state through activism and campaigning, not through some black conspiracy. He'd be pretty damned stupid to make public statements that he'd conspire to cheat the vote, wouldn't you think? You don't think that if the Democratic National Committee had even a hint of real vote fraud that they wouldn't be fomenting bloody rebellion? Are you kidding me?
Nice move on Tufts' part. If they ever do receive such a "notice to preserve", they can relay it straight back to their students and staff and say "look, the RIAA is watching us with a view to screwing you, so behave yourselves" for the duration of such a notice; and if they don't, they have effectively insulated their charges from all further RIAA action. And all whilst looking extermely co-operative for the benefit of the courts...
You don't think most judges wouldn't see that as collaborating with students in copyright violation? I'll promise you Tufts lawyers certainly would see it that way.
And, of course, nobody has *ever* spoofed a MAC Address....
How many kids have any clue whatsoever on how to do this? I'd wager most CIS and IS students don't even know how to do it. You'd have a few really savvy kids that would know how, but honestly, the vast majority of kazaa users don't even know what a MAC address is.
Whatever you think of the RIAA and their methods, that's not a valid legal defense here. Tufts would have to prove that MAC spoofing is common knowledge and a common skill to mount that defense for their students, and that just isn't going to fly in court.
Except that up till now, California state employees have been some of the best paid in the country, with very, very generous benefits. Which perhaps is one reason why California is in a budget mess. California is, in many ways, a country unto itself, with a nation-sized bureaucracy that fights tooth and nail for its turf. Whichever party he belongs to, it's going to be near-suicide for any governor in California to actually cut any state program or numbers of state employees. The California State Employees Union is one of the largest and most powerful in the country. The problem is that California has one of the highest tax burdens (state, local, and property) anywhere in the country, and so many businesses are leaving for other states. Remember, one of Arnold's aims was to "bring the businesses back to California". Well, he's failing at that, because the issues I mentioned are still present there... high taxes and Byzantine regulations. Fancy commercials aren't going to be enough to keep businesses from leaving the state. And when those businesses go, so does that tax base that supports that huge state enterprise.
Californians are in a Catch-22; businesses are leaving, and the bureaucracy won't budge.
Well, US foreign policy is pretty much a rickrolling exercise.
<US> Become democratic, open your markets and your economy will flourish. <Poor_Country> That sounds great, we'll give that a shot. * US companies then enter and ravage what little wealth the locals have, expatriating funds and enslaving previously subsistent worker. <US> Haha gotcha! <Poor_Country>:(
Umm, name one example where a country that became Democratic and opened trade with the US is poorer? You don't even have Russia to point to anymore. Your rant is basically thinly disguised Marxism... democracy + capitalism = bad. Furthermore, you're a hypocrite, sir. That computer that you're comfortably posting this shit from is a product of capitalism. Your living standards... which I'd lay cash are probably not lacking much... is also a product of capitalism. Again.... give me one example... just one... where a country's economy suffered because they entered into trade with the United States, or any other free-market country for that matter, including your own Australia?
Slashdot Mirror
I know exactly what's driving Lucas on this. Cash. Period. Whatever motivations he may have once had for this story and this franchise, his sole concern now seems to be the bank account.
Supposedly the new movie was supposed to be televised first and then straight to DVD, and during preparation of the movie Lucas' people said he lit up and said something like "This is so good it needs to be in theaters!".
I think it was more like "Hey, I think we can squeeze another 90 to 100 million out of the suckers if we put this in theaters".
Define "legally" in a war...
Seriously, black hat, white hat, grey hat or technicolor hat, it kinda loses meaning when legality itself isn't really applicable anymore.
When I was a kid, my best friend's dad was a WW II Navy vet, one that saw a lot. He scoffed at the very notion of "rules of war".
As he put it, "If I have an 'illegal' weapon, and an enemy is trying to kill me... guess what... I'm using the illegal weapon".
"Russians, Georgians, and Niggers are all sub-human."
History of the Internet, Chapter 5: David Duke gets his first email address, Slashdot account.
Not as many niggers as US Georgia.
In Soviet Georgia, Blacks lynch you.
Yes, you specifically.
What is that old miltary maxim?
"The military always prepares to fight the last war?"
Maybe SecDef Gates is making exactly the same mistake.
You have to finish your last war before you can waste time refighting it. The difference here is that we're still in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the support mission is paramount for USAF.
There's a reason the Marines have their own air support.
The USAF was a mistake to start with. Shut it down, and give the equipment to the units actually doing work.
I completly agree with the second part... however, while the first part is true, I think that we currently have too much duplication of mission among services. It's kind of insane that we basically have 3 air forces (USAF, Navy, USMC). We should be limiting what kind of aircraft each service can have according to it's mission. The Marines shouldn't get anything that can't take off or land vertically. The Navy shouldn't be doing shore-based missions. If it can't land on a carrier or on the ocean, they shouldn't have it.
I agree that the time has come to re-integrate the Air Force back into the Army. They hate to admit it, but most of their mission these days is troop support anyway.
The enormous sucking sound you hear is the money being vacuumed out of the Mother of All Aircraft Buys. So long, Lightning II, we hardly knew ye.
The problem with weapons programs is that when they get far enough along, so many people are sucking at the tit of government budgets that it's nearly impossible to kill them.
Case in point, the F-18 program... in the early 80's, it had gotten expensive enough that NavAir leaders decided they'd rather just cancel it and buy more F-14's and A-6's. Nope. The Hornet program was far enough along that a slew of Congressmen and Senators wanted to shovel money to their districts.
The most we can hope for, I think, is that the Navy cancels their version, or the USMC cancels theirs. I think the program is largely a waste, just a stealthy F-16 with less payload and range under most mission scenarios.
The Air Force has finally come out of denial on that point, and is creating a "UAV operator" career path that does not require rated pilots. Among other things, it will open the field up to a lot of people who have the technical chops but can't pass a pilot physical.
rj
More than that, it may very well open up "pilot" positions for people without college degrees, which will greatly expand the pool of applicants. Face it, the Army has proven for years that you don't need a degree to be a military pilot. Most of their pilots are non-college grads that are made Warrant Officers after a two year training program. The Navy's Nuclear Power Program is more academically rigorous (much more so, according to knowledgeable sources), with a stressful two-year program that gives advanced college credit, and the enlisted grads don't get officer promotions. So the notion that we have to have college grads in the cockpit is mostly bunk.
I've been saying for years now that all the services should open up much of their flying billets for enlisted people. Enlisted personnel are on average intelligent and educated enough to handle the academics involved. If Chuck Yeager, who by his own admission was horrible at math, could do things like break the sound barrier in a rocket plane, surely the USAF, USN, and USMC could open up their rotary billets to enlisted people, and perhaps even planes like C-130's. We'd be wise to chuck this "Officer Knight" thing in cockpits, and realize that military aircraft are just another weapon.
"The fighter pilots are the aristocracy of the aristocracy of the AF."
Well, they are now. USAF used to be a bomber culture in SAC's heyday under Curtis LeMay.
Regardless, the fighter mafia's days appear to be numbered. Recently, the COS and the SecAF were sacked by SecDef; they insisted on ignoring the current wars in favor of looking at China. They were more interested in F-22's and F-35's than in cargo planes and unmanned drones, which is what is desperately needed. So SecDef Gates fired them, and in the first time in USAF's history, replaced the COS with a cargo guy... someone that's been in C-130's his entire career. That fighter culture is being punished now, and when they were fired, cheers were heard at the Pentagon. Gates sent a message... "look to the future, but concentrate on the here and now". USAF got the message. They may not like it, but they got the message. Do the dirty, unglamorous work of supporting the Army, or get the axe.
I suspect that whoever wins in November... McCain or Obama... USAF's future leadership for the next decade or so will come much more from the non-traditional ranks.... cargo, special warfare, intelligence... than from the traditional fighter community, which is quickly being seen as an outmoded aristocracy in the Department of Defense.
" That's why the Army needs to take over the drone program. The AF has shed a stunning number of missions and aircraft (it didn't originally want the A-10) and wants to only do air dominance".
I'll go further than that. I think we should re-integrate the USAF back into the Army. The Raison de "Etre of the USAF was long range strategic nuclear bombing, something that's now been replaced with ICBM/SLBM technology. USAF doesn't like doing the un-sexy missions that its called upon to do 95 percent of the time... especially grunt support. So bring back the Army Air Forces, and problem solved. The fighter mafia will scream, but let them. They'll either put on green suits, or leave. Their budget and priorities will come from the Army. The more I look at it, the more I question the wisdom of making the Air Force independent in the first place.
"Put the best pilot in the world in an F-16, and a much less skilled pilot on the ground, controlling an aircraft that can out climb, out turn, and out run him, and it's game over. Whatever his skills are, if he blacks out at 12 Gs, he loses."
You've hit on something that rubs pilots raw, but is unavoidable; the biggest setback in making fighters with greater performance now isn't physics or even cost. It's the physical limits of the human pilot. We've had planes that could take more stress and more G's than our pilots could for 30 years now. F-16's could be even more maneuverable without humans in the cockpits. With the advance of software and AI, it's inevitable that in the future, we'll make unmanned fighters that can whip anything a human can fly. The two types won't even be close in terms of G restrictions, decision making time, endurance, and payload (all those systems to support human life take up a lot of space and weight).
The sad truth for lovers of the fighter pilot mystique is that their era is beginning its sunset. It may take 30, 40, or 50 years, but one day, we'll build a robot fighter that far outclasses manned fighters. And on that day, the romantic figure of the fighter pilot with his helmet, leather jacket, and scarf, will be relegated to history with the armored knight and the horse-and-sabre cavalry charge.
"What bothers me about this is that you take away risk to persons from war, and those persons are more willing to wage war...which leads to more war."
While I understand your reasoning on this, I don't think it's valid... yet. These kinds of drones thus far are really only good against guerillas on foot or in trucks. A first class threat... say, Russian armored forces... would eat these drones for lunch. So drones like these really don't reduce the danger to US personell much, because A-10's, F-16's, and AC-130's really aren't in much danger when going up against a group of Al Qaeda goons running in the desert. They might have the occasional shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile on them, but so far, nothing like that has been able to beat the countermeasures on US combat aircraft. So the "take the danger away for humans and encourage more war" thing isn't valid with the current generation of drones.
However... the Navy is working on a new drone aircraft, the N-UCAS, which will be years in development, but when ready, will basically be a scaled down stealth bomber that can launch and land on our carriers. If they get this puppy working, your ideas may be a little more valid.
That said, if we've learned one thing, it's that push-button-wars from a distance don't get you squat unless you're willing to send boots on the ground into the fight. So something like the Navy drone may lessen the risks to pilots, but there won't be any replacement for the infantryman in several lifetimes. No matter what kind of technology you bring, there's still going to be significant risk for humans in the military.
How can any such order be justified in the light of the first amendment protection of free speech?
Because all speech isn't protected. The First Ammendment isn't a blanket guarantee to say or do anything. There are limits on speech, and always have been, from the time the Constitution was ratified to today.
You can argue on technical grounds that "security by obscurity" is a stupid idea, but I think the EFF lost here for a reason... we've always balanced speech that can have a direct impact on public safety against the relative risks of that speech. You can't email classified blueprints of an AEGIS radar system to Vladimir Putin, for instance, or a list of undercover NYPD officers to some guy named Sal in Sicily, and then claim free speech protection. If you don't want to get in legal trouble, you go to court and get such things made de-classified or stripped of confidential status first, then you can reveal whatever you like. The students first step should have been getting a court order to strip protection from the MBTA information, because MBTA actually has some legal precedent on their side here.
The students may even be in the right here, but they were pleading their case in a way that almost assured their defeat in court. And in this case, EFF was thinking like hackers, not lawyers.
Tor is the answer to everything.
Use Tor to access the trackers. Problem solved.
Tor is only the "answer" if you think pirating movies, apps, music, etc is cool. Otherwise, the "answer" is to reform copyright law, and then respect it. Not everyone on Slashdot thinks all copyright violation and piracy is a good thing.
... and they ain't coming back.
Disclaimer: I work for an airport.
In the opinion of most people that work in commercial aviation, the airline business is in the middle of a huge contraction and consolidation. Fuel costs aren't the reason, they're just the latest body blow in a series of punches that is destroying air travel as you know it.
First off, improving communicatins technology began lessening the need for business air travel in the late 90's. And business travel has always been the lifeblood of the airline industry, it's driving force on a day to day basis. Then September 11th happened. People were scared to fly, they hated the new security measures, and just decided they'd rather drive, thanks. Then came fuel prices.
The US airline industry is undergoing the same fate as the rail industry after WW II, and the military aviation sector after the Cold War ended. A combination of forces is radically shrinking it. Just as there's one passenger rail service now (AmTrak, and subsidized at that), just as there are now only two major airframe builders left in the US (Boeing and Lockheed-Martin), there will probably be, within ten years, only a few passenger airlines left in the US. Delta is already consuming Northwest, and word in the industry is that US Airways is already putting feelers out to Delta; "Hey, buy us out too". Most airports have something of an airline deadpool going. The people I work with are in agreement that we'll probably end up with no more than three major passenger airlines in the US when all is said and done. The biggest air carriers in the world have already changed from passenger companies to freight companies. FedEx and UPS already far outstrip the top US passenger line, Delta, in terms of fleet size, traffic, and numbers of flights. That's only going to accelerate in the future.
More people are going to take "staycations" in the future. If gas prices keep going down, they'll start driving for vacations more, but the heyday of passenger service is done, and it's not coming back. More and more businesses will do their routine "business travel" via teleconferencing. Many smaller airports will either go to skeleton crews to cut costs or just close outright as airlines stop serving them. Even if you brought back massive regulation (and the extra costs that come with it), nothing is going to stop this process. As better and cheaper business broadband becomes more widely available, the paring back of business travel will only accelerate. It'll never completely disappear, but its definitely downsizing, if you will.
Well of course they're being spied on. They're in Red China. I think a "duh" is in order here.
Especially when you consider the irrational American hatred of unions, collective bargaining, and collective action in general
Here we go again. If it's a liberal issue Americans support, they're a great, wise, and noble people. If they're against a liberal issue, well, then Americans are just stupid.
Despite what the Chron article says, I wouldn't hold my breath on the Federal Courts issue. Non-competes are pretty standard across a range of industries, and I suspect that the federal courts aren't going to be as quick to void the concept as many here believe. The 9th Circuit would probably uphold it, but any other circuit (and SCOTUS, for that matter) would probably quash this. Non-competes are simply a way to protect trade secrets, and protecting trade secrets has been enforced by courts for decades. If someone thinks this will lead to the abolition of non-competes, I think they're jumping ahead of themselves.
"Now that that's out of the way, why don't you go fuck yourself?"
What's funny is that Democrats have accused Republicans for years now of being little more than mindless cult members. But if you criticize the Obamessiah whatsoever, Democrats just lose their minds and go into a rage. Look at Ratzo. Further, any criticism of The One is both inherently racist and a conspiracy.
Soul? Maybe he didn't have to sell it, Ratzo. Maybe he has to have one in the first place. He had no problem allying himself with Jeremiah Wright for 20+ years, and then, as soon as he became a liability, under the bus he goes. He had no problems teaming up with Tony Rezko for years, but then, as soon as he becomes a liability, bump bump, hear that bus a'rolling. How many speeches has Barack given this year that include *insert name here* is not the person I used to know"?
He used those guys to get to the top, and then disposed of them when the heat became too much. That's not selling out? As for his distinguished law professor career, well, it wasn't. Because he wrote nothing. Nada. Zip. He left no opinions that could come back and haunt him during a political campaign.
Some people worry that Barack Obama is a raging leftist, a real life version of the New Yorker characature of him.
Me, I think the guy is about one thing and one thing only... getting power for Barack Obama. And that makes him just another politician. So you can put those robes away now, Rat. He's not gonna save your soul after all. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Does telling a streetful of prostitutes that the police are on their way make one a pimp?
If you're working with them, yeah. If you're just some shmoe on the street, no. But the students and Tufts have an official relationship, with Tufts being responsible for some of their actions while they're on campus (In Loco Parentis, anyone?). Furthermore, the students are using a university Internet connection, and almost certainly are violating some of the regulations that Tufts puts on the system.
"Bush wasn't reelected, Diebold gave him the election. Diebold's CEO even bragged he was going to give Bush Ohio's vote and Bush "won" because of Ohio's results."
Diebold's CEO was speaking as a Republican political activist... he clearly meant that he and other party members in Ohio would help deliver the state through activism and campaigning, not through some black conspiracy. He'd be pretty damned stupid to make public statements that he'd conspire to cheat the vote, wouldn't you think? You don't think that if the Democratic National Committee had even a hint of real vote fraud that they wouldn't be fomenting bloody rebellion? Are you kidding me?
Nice move on Tufts' part. If they ever do receive such a "notice to preserve", they can relay it straight back to their students and staff and say "look, the RIAA is watching us with a view to screwing you, so behave yourselves" for the duration of such a notice; and if they don't, they have effectively insulated their charges from all further RIAA action. And all whilst looking extermely co-operative for the benefit of the courts...
You don't think most judges wouldn't see that as collaborating with students in copyright violation? I'll promise you Tufts lawyers certainly would see it that way.
And, of course, nobody has *ever* spoofed a MAC Address ....
How many kids have any clue whatsoever on how to do this? I'd wager most CIS and IS students don't even know how to do it. You'd have a few really savvy kids that would know how, but honestly, the vast majority of kazaa users don't even know what a MAC address is.
Whatever you think of the RIAA and their methods, that's not a valid legal defense here. Tufts would have to prove that MAC spoofing is common knowledge and a common skill to mount that defense for their students, and that just isn't going to fly in court.
...expect minimum wage results.
Except that up till now, California state employees have been some of the best paid in the country, with very, very generous benefits. Which perhaps is one reason why California is in a budget mess. California is, in many ways, a country unto itself, with a nation-sized bureaucracy that fights tooth and nail for its turf. Whichever party he belongs to, it's going to be near-suicide for any governor in California to actually cut any state program or numbers of state employees. The California State Employees Union is one of the largest and most powerful in the country. The problem is that California has one of the highest tax burdens (state, local, and property) anywhere in the country, and so many businesses are leaving for other states. Remember, one of Arnold's aims was to "bring the businesses back to California". Well, he's failing at that, because the issues I mentioned are still present there... high taxes and Byzantine regulations. Fancy commercials aren't going to be enough to keep businesses from leaving the state. And when those businesses go, so does that tax base that supports that huge state enterprise.
Californians are in a Catch-22; businesses are leaving, and the bureaucracy won't budge.
Well, US foreign policy is pretty much a rickrolling exercise.
<US> Become democratic, open your markets and your economy will flourish. :(
<Poor_Country> That sounds great, we'll give that a shot.
* US companies then enter and ravage what little wealth the locals have, expatriating funds and enslaving previously subsistent worker.
<US> Haha gotcha!
<Poor_Country>
Umm, name one example where a country that became Democratic and opened trade with the US is poorer? You don't even have Russia to point to anymore. Your rant is basically thinly disguised Marxism... democracy + capitalism = bad. Furthermore, you're a hypocrite, sir. That computer that you're comfortably posting this shit from is a product of capitalism. Your living standards... which I'd lay cash are probably not lacking much... is also a product of capitalism. Again.... give me one example... just one... where a country's economy suffered because they entered into trade with the United States, or any other free-market country for that matter, including your own Australia?