This will be the hardest case the FTC has ever attempted.
In a normal anti-trust case you have a company that has and established product with barriers to entry to the market that typically include:
1. Cost of replacement products (Microsoft is an example of this because the cost of replacement was significant to the cost of the computer). 2. Difficult interoperability (Microsoft again is a good example because the software market made it difficult if not impossible for competitors). 3. Difficult customer access (AT&T is a perfect example of this, building out a last mile telecom network is a huge undertaking, even long distance competitors couldn't access their customers without government intervention). 4. Business collusion and exclusion that prevented competition (almost every FTC case involved this because it's a necessary aspect of enforcement of the sherman-anti trust rules, in the case of MS it was contracts and such that involved the punishing and rewarding of other companies in the business that worked with the competitor).
The FTC might be able to prove that Google is putting their results at the front but they are going to have a hell of time given the facts. No one, not a single soul is forced to use google products. Not only that but the startup costs and difficulty in creating competitive products is nearly non-existent. There are dozens of competing products in almost every single category Google works in and the only reason they haven't been replaced is that they continue to innovate their core products. I really don't think they have case against Google in any of their core markets. Now I do think that what Google did with maps pro (don't jump to conclusions, if you don't know what I'm talking about don't reply) was a dirty evil act right ouf of Microsoft's play-book but I don't think outside that the government even has a case. Everyone could decide to use a different search engine, advertising, maps, calendar, email, phone (android open source doesn't require Google products) tomorrow and there is absolutely nothing stopping people from doing so other than the fact that Google generally offers the better product. With the exception of the maps pro incident Google has none of the barriers to entry that the government hung their hat on during other anti-trust cases.
Personally, I don't think the government will win and I pray Google doesn't just give in.
You are aware they tried that right? Back in the days of Tegra 1 they decided that they wouldn't cooperate with Linux/Android and that Windows was the only OS they would support. That strategy worked so well they didn't sell any chips.
Linux IS required for their business. It's a MASSIVE share of their current business and they've bet the company on it's future. If they walk away from Linux they are walking away from the entire High Performance computing industry, cellular (Android) and almost all GPU based computing (almost all of it is Linux based scientific computing).
Maybe they can declare that the Tegra will only work under Windows Phone like they did in the past and see how far that gets them.
From the things I've read as a casual follower of MS's progress, the Zune lost a ton of money, Windows Phone hasn't done all that well (the Kin vanished after months of hype, for instance), and I don't think the XBox has broken even when viewed over the whole history of the console rather than just in any one fiscal year.
XBox will NEVER even break even on total dollars. Running tab right now is in excess of 5 Billion (with a B) negative. They've had approximately 2 quarters in 7 years where they made money at about $100million overall that doesn't even touch the 5 billion in losses. As we're gearing up for the next hardware release the massive losses in the early days of the console are about to start again. MS is never going to make money on XBox and will likely continue to poor good money after bad until they can't afford it anymore.
I fully expect a apologist to argue that losing $5 billion to control a console market thats likely to fade away completely in the future is some badge of honor or future proofing. These people are idiots, that $5 Billion even if distributed directly to shareholders would have done more for MS than what they've spent it on. Balmer should have been fired years ago if for no other reason the XBox strategy of lighting big piles of money on fire.
Costco has a corporate policy that limits revenue from sales to 10% above their cost. This 10% covers their overhead costs (buildings,employees, distribution, etc). 100% of Costco's profit comes from their membership fees. Depending on the amount of fuel sold per quarter they may turn a very small profit on this 10% or they might not.
Costco has NO profit incentive to sell one customer more of a product if that means pissing off other customers. Their profits come almost exclusively from membership fees, hence the drive to get everyone signed up for executive memberships.
If the US government was intent on killing him he would have been in a car accident or had a "heart attack" more than a year ago.
The US government isn't very smart on a whole, but they aren't profoundly stupid most of the time either. He hasn't broken any US law, were he in the US they wouldn't dare try him for a crime. They tried that with other people a long time ago, it was called the Pentagon Papers trials and it resulted in the government being handed their asses.
On the other hand they do want to neutralize him (not kill) as a reliable journalist that other government employees might leak information to, and the best way to do that is to harm his reputation. Based on past history the best way to do that is get him acting nuts, ya know like violating a bail agreement and seeking asylum in a country with terrible human rights record. He's basically incarcerated himself at this point and wikileaks is pretty much irrelevant because he's made himself the lynchpin of the organization and self incarcerated himself.
Because he's a twit he's pretty much done exactly what the US government would have wanted to do to him and he did it all voluntarily. Regardless of what you think about the matter the Swedish charges are based on things that really happened, and his actions since are all his own. He's basically presented the appearance of conspiracy crazy (and I'm sure you along with all his "supporters" believe this is a legitimate reaction but it's exactly the wrong reaction for broad public sympathy). Because of this and a subtle propaganda campaign at this point he'll never receive documents from someone like Bradly Manning again. This is partly because they are making an example of Manning and mostly because he's destroyed his reputation in the eyes of a broad swath of Americans.
He wants to be in the business of confidence (confidence that the material you give him will go public and that your identity will be protected) and he's basically proven that he can't be trusted. The best part is it was entirely self inflicted. Even if the US was involved in getting the charges brought back (and I don't believe they were) he did do what he's charged with and now he's running from the law including violating a bail agreement that's going to cost the people that put the money up (basically fucking them over). Mark my words President Correa will use this asylum propaganda for his election and maybe for some status points in south/central America but at some point in a several months when Assange doesn't offer any benefit to Correa anymore and he'll be told that there is nothing they can do to get him out of the UK and they are withdrawing the Asylum offer because those nasty British won't abide the request.
In the end he'll end up Sweden, he'll face the charges and afterwards he'll leave and not a thing will happen to him because at that point the US won't care because he neutralized himself almost a year prior.
Java was great as well, even released under the GPL but when the chips were down the patents came out, thank god the Judge was sensible and threw them out of the trial.
C# and.Net had very open architectures, the problem was the same as Java, MS had patents on almost every aspect of the system which meant use at your own risk. I'm willing to bet that in short order we'll find out MS has applied for a dozen patents on typescript in the hope that if it becomes popular they can use it as a club against competitors. They HAVE done it before, they will do it again.
I shouldn't need to point this out as it's a critical aspect of US naval policy since WWII. The point of a US navy carrier grouping is to sit well outside ground fire range and use AIR power. This means planes with ranges that far exceed a missile, and cruise missiles that are nothing more than preprogrammed Kamikaze drones.
Maybe at some point the SunFire's and other supersonic Anti-Ship missiles will have a range equivalent to air power but the further they have to go the easier they are to shoot down.
The first rail guns will be small systems with short ranges of 200 some odd miles, but the future intent is to bring these up to 2 Ton 10,000 mile systems. They will have the ability to throw a hunk of tungsten so fast and so far that it's explosive force will be in the 30K ton of TNT range and it will be capable of penetrating almost a hundred feet of solid rock or reinforced concrete. They will be capable of putting a rod on target within 5 minutes of order. Railguns will revolutionize warfare, probably in a very bad way.
Pilots cost $3-5 Million to train. They needs thousands of hours of recurring flight to stay sharp.
So what happens when you put that old fucker pilot who isn't safe to put in a real fighter jet because he's so old his body can't handle what the plane can do and you stick him behind the controls of a UAV?
Drones are the future, find a way to create un-jamable near instantaneous communications and suddenly their isn't a body in planes. Perfect AI planes and you've even taken the Human pilot out of it and their fallibility. Yes their are concerns, and their are nightmare scenarios. But the future of combat is taking the people out of it because no matter what you do the people are the biggest cost.
Anti-Ship missiles are a bunch of hooey. Yes they are fast and damn hard to shoot down, but if you are are within range of one those with your navy you are doing it wrong. Oh yes, there are people in the USN that think we could engage in Littoral combat, but they are in the extreme minority.
No naval officer ever wants to bring his ship so close to shore that one of those missiles could hit it. And if you are out of range of ground fire the only way to fire is ship based, that exposes the firing ship to submarines which are damn near impossible to detect. The other option is submarine launch, which again on launch exposes the asset and anti-submarine warfare is very well understood at this point. And why launch an anti-ship missile from a submarine when a torpedo can be far more damaging.
The navy is working on a platform for the rail guns that uses current working technology. The systems they are developing will run on top of standard carrier nuclear generation systems. Just like the carriers you have two small nuclear reactors, put them in a large cruiser class ship. There aren't big guns like the old battleships so the ships become multi-role, able to host not only rail gun rounds but missile and radar emplacements. The best part about the rail guns is you do away with explosive munitions, your ammo and firing system are a bunch of wiring, capacitors and a hunk of tungsten for a projectile and you can spread the systems around the ship in a damage control technique (unlike current powder based systems that are a single weak point).
I actually believe the Navy's future plans are more sustainable and build-able than even the air-force's F-35 program. And their time line is even more believable with the first ship construction around 2016.
Not arrested for parole violations? He had two parole conditions and he violated both!! In fact he told the judge yesterday that the name he used during his original trial and incarceration was a fake. This is on the order a sex crime parolee with a condition not to have unsupervised contact with children running a bloody day care. They absolutely put people in jail all the time for violating parole. It's so common it's a daily occurrence for nearly every single parole officer.
At the court hearing about his parole violation he told the Judge that the original name he used during his criminal prosecution and incarceration wasn't his real name.
Think about that for a minute, he's jailed for fraud and ordered as a condition of probation not to use aliases, only his legal name and he tells the judge evaluating his compliance that the name he used in the previous trial was a fake. It's highly unusual in situations like this for a judge to incarcerate a parolee before the hearing, she threw him in jail because she said the court has no confidence he's not a liar and flight risk.
And might I add, just because you haven't bothered to follow the case that it makes your assertion that no one believes this isn't political asinine. Obama and the state department has almost zero influence over department of federal paroles (it's mostly courts administered). His parole conditions were public nearly a day after the whole thing went public, including links to all the PDFs on popehat.
No there isn't. You are a fool to even suggest there is. Assine laws enforced with procedure are no different that good/poor laws enforced without procedure. If I make it illegal to breathe but you still have due process when you are convicted you think that's better?
Both scenarios result in tremendous damage to truly innocent people. There isn't a such thing as less terrible when the result is destroying peoples lives. Oh don't worry George, you only lost 30 years of your life for an unjust law, but at least you weren't railroaded over a just law and lost 30 years, because that would just suck so much more.
In my locality there is a judge that did the petty tyrant routine and he's been essentially fired at this point and the Bar complaint is still pending.
No. If a carrier wants to control the straits it wouldn't sit in them. It would sit 100 miles outside in the Indian ocean and launch planes over the straits. This is what's so silly about Iran's blustering. Yes they could close the strait, for a week or two during which the carrier groupings sitting outside the gulf and based in Bahrain, and UAE would destroy every coastal harbor in Iran from which they could launch a dingy. And once the coast has been annihilated the strait demined the whole thing would be over and Iran's abilities would be severely hampered.
Hell, the US navy already has the battle plan written.
You think going after the doctors is scary? The DEA is trying to shut down pharmacies (Walgreens and CVS) that are filling legitimate pain medicine prescriptions with absolutely NO evidence of diversion. They are trying to simply revoke their license without any hearing or evidence or any procedure of any kind.
And the Anti-Drug lobby writes another opinion piece that medicine should not be treating pain and pharma is out of control by providing new pain management options.
The reason pain prescriptions have gone up is that medicine isn't telling people to take 2 asprin and fuck off. The reason my father has a fucked up GI system is because of the asprin abuse because he was never given the option of real pain management.
As a chronic pain sufferer I wish every one of these fucktards that think no one should be on pain management could experience a month of what I do every day. The constant thoughts of suicide, the near complete lack of life, enjoyment or any satisfaction in life, the exhaustion and the constant work just getting out of bed every day. There is a reason there is an ex law enforcement organization devoted to campaigning proper pain management and it's because some of those lucky people get to experience real chronic pain.
Someone that's never experienced chronic severe pain has no fucking idea what it's like.
Hey it's possible the goals have changed since I last looked at the project, but when I did look last time it was clear that they intended to test (possibly not actively use) the heat extraction layers that would make up the power generating core. I know they haven't solved the main issue that the alpha and neutron emissions cause and the damage they will do to those layers nor how they can even get those layers working properly with all the magnetic containment.
But it was my understanding that one of the project goals of ITER is to actually industrial test some of the theorized energy extraction methods to determine if they are even feasible or if the neutron emissions will destroy them.
The Tokamak's have been scientific breakeven for more than a decade, ITER is supposed to achieve fiscal breakeven. What's the difference? Scientific breakeven means you extract more energy than you put into it, but you don't actually try to collect any of the energy. Fiscal breakeven is that added step where you actually try to collect the energy and use it.
See Fusion has this problem in that it's pretty easy to trigger fusion, it's not easy to keep it going and it's damn near impossible to collect any energy from it because all the stuff you have to start the fusion is in the way of collecting any of the energy and all the neutron and alpha particle emissions tend to destroy any materials you put in there to collect the energy.
This is EXACTLY the point of ITER, it's supposed to test the actual engineering of real world (not laboratory) fusion at an economic scale. This testing is costing a lot of money (US contributions are in the $2 Billion dollar range, total economic input from all the partner nations is 25X that amount).
Having worked at a private company that went through a buyout by a public company I can tell you this means absolutely nothing.
They typically won't change anything for a year while they do due diligence on the company and go through the books with a fine toothed comb. After they full understand the business they will reveal what they intended to do all along.
His response is the FoxConn isn't forcing anyone to work and that it complies with local Chinese law. He said nothing to rebut the criticism that the students are being forced to work. He's got his political speech down, talking about all the unrelated aspects rather than addressing the key point that students are being forced to work.
So from your response you can draw the following conclusions. The students ARE being forced to work, the people doing the forcing are the schools and local government officials, Foxconn is likely involved in pressuring or enticing these entities to do the forcing but isn't actually rounding the people up at gun point themselves.
Yea, not so nice when you take it out of the political speech.
As a raving fiscal conservative with liberatarian social leaning Utahn, i can affirmatively agree with what you said. Huntsman is one great guy who would have been the first republican presidential canidate I would have voted for.
QC and QA are different things. Quality control involves detailed review of designs by an equally qualified engineer. In practice this means two peers from the design team swaps designs and go over everything. Typically this is done with a detailed QC process involving highlighters, red, green and blue pencils for (in order) marking correct, incorrect, agreement and notes. The checkprints become the final record of the QC and document the design and process for the records that could be used in court if there is an error that get through.
The QA reviewer goes through the QC and ensures that it was done. It's a quick process after the work is complete and prepared to be released to ensure that the QC process was followed. This is about a 10 minute process at the end of the cycle to ensure the process was followed but does not review content or check for plan errors.
Everyone single person no matter how smart makes mistakes. Two equally skilled people (the QC reviewer can be more highly skilled) must review every item for correctness including not just details but base concept. Software engineering has always done QC from the backside where testers review final product instead of reviewing the code directly. IMO that makes software engineering an immature form of engineering. Coders need to be held responsible for the mistakes they make (like all the other engineering fields) so they put in place the processes that reduce and eliminate errors, those processes cost money and require more time but without them you get the stupid major errors that almost every piece of software has.
I have no idea what a draughtsman is, unless it's some fucked up British word for drafter (who could be either male or female). In my branch of engineering the drafters are pretty much gone. The plan preparation can be pretty much done entirely by the engineers while doing the design and checking (much of the drafting is automated by the software anyway). Where as in my fathers days there were 20 drafters per engineer the ratio has almost reversed and there is about 1 drafter for every 20 engineers.
Not just constitutionality. The vast majority of their cases are not questions of constitutionality, they are in fact different circuit courts interpreting a law differently. The point of the supreme court (well its original point before the marshal case) was to ensure the laws were interpreted the same and applied equally in the different and independent circuit courts. The Marshal case brought the ability to challenge the constitutionality of the law but cases with that kind of challenge are not the majority.
In my field of Engineering we call this quality control. Two sets of eyes must look at every design before it's released for construction because when you are building stuff out of concrete and steel a mistake is a BIG deal that can put engineering firms out of business.
That software engineering is just starting to realize that everyone (no matter how good they are) makes mistakes and everyone should be reviewed just indicates that it's finally maturing into a real profession where errors mean something more than it does currently (just short of nothing).
There are no martyrs in the days of 15minute news cycles. Besides if they were to kill him it would look like an accident or he would simply disappear. No, if they are out to get him, they want to discredit him, not kill him. The most effective way to do that is to get him acting paranoid and crazy. Say, for example, get him charged with a crime where he flees prosecution (preferably from a western country with an outstanding human rights reputation), then makes friends with totalitarion and corrupt regimes (like Russia, who hosts his TV show), then have him seek asylum from a country with terrible human rights and press freedoms (where the leader is in an election and can use this as propaganda). which meqns he stays locked in an embassy unable to leave, just like prison. And he destroys his reputation in the process and becomes irrlevant.
The US is never going to extradite him, he didn't do anything illegal under US law (manning did). And if they did ask for extradition that means a court order and Judge which means no Guantanamo. Ive yet to see any reason the UK wouldn't extradite him easier that doesn't involve a lot of handwaiving about negative publicity yet thinks that same negative publicity in Sweden means diddly.
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This will be the hardest case the FTC has ever attempted.
In a normal anti-trust case you have a company that has and established product with barriers to entry to the market that typically include:
1. Cost of replacement products (Microsoft is an example of this because the cost of replacement was significant to the cost of the computer).
2. Difficult interoperability (Microsoft again is a good example because the software market made it difficult if not impossible for competitors).
3. Difficult customer access (AT&T is a perfect example of this, building out a last mile telecom network is a huge undertaking, even long distance competitors couldn't access their customers without government intervention).
4. Business collusion and exclusion that prevented competition (almost every FTC case involved this because it's a necessary aspect of enforcement of the sherman-anti trust rules, in the case of MS it was contracts and such that involved the punishing and rewarding of other companies in the business that worked with the competitor).
The FTC might be able to prove that Google is putting their results at the front but they are going to have a hell of time given the facts. No one, not a single soul is forced to use google products. Not only that but the startup costs and difficulty in creating competitive products is nearly non-existent. There are dozens of competing products in almost every single category Google works in and the only reason they haven't been replaced is that they continue to innovate their core products. I really don't think they have case against Google in any of their core markets. Now I do think that what Google did with maps pro (don't jump to conclusions, if you don't know what I'm talking about don't reply) was a dirty evil act right ouf of Microsoft's play-book but I don't think outside that the government even has a case. Everyone could decide to use a different search engine, advertising, maps, calendar, email, phone (android open source doesn't require Google products) tomorrow and there is absolutely nothing stopping people from doing so other than the fact that Google generally offers the better product. With the exception of the maps pro incident Google has none of the barriers to entry that the government hung their hat on during other anti-trust cases.
Personally, I don't think the government will win and I pray Google doesn't just give in.
You are aware they tried that right? Back in the days of Tegra 1 they decided that they wouldn't cooperate with Linux/Android and that Windows was the only OS they would support. That strategy worked so well they didn't sell any chips.
Linux IS required for their business. It's a MASSIVE share of their current business and they've bet the company on it's future. If they walk away from Linux they are walking away from the entire High Performance computing industry, cellular (Android) and almost all GPU based computing (almost all of it is Linux based scientific computing).
Maybe they can declare that the Tegra will only work under Windows Phone like they did in the past and see how far that gets them.
XBox will NEVER even break even on total dollars. Running tab right now is in excess of 5 Billion (with a B) negative. They've had approximately 2 quarters in 7 years where they made money at about $100million overall that doesn't even touch the 5 billion in losses. As we're gearing up for the next hardware release the massive losses in the early days of the console are about to start again. MS is never going to make money on XBox and will likely continue to poor good money after bad until they can't afford it anymore.
I fully expect a apologist to argue that losing $5 billion to control a console market thats likely to fade away completely in the future is some badge of honor or future proofing. These people are idiots, that $5 Billion even if distributed directly to shareholders would have done more for MS than what they've spent it on. Balmer should have been fired years ago if for no other reason the XBox strategy of lighting big piles of money on fire.
Costco has a corporate policy that limits revenue from sales to 10% above their cost. This 10% covers their overhead costs (buildings,employees, distribution, etc). 100% of Costco's profit comes from their membership fees. Depending on the amount of fuel sold per quarter they may turn a very small profit on this 10% or they might not.
Costco has NO profit incentive to sell one customer more of a product if that means pissing off other customers. Their profits come almost exclusively from membership fees, hence the drive to get everyone signed up for executive memberships.
If the US government was intent on killing him he would have been in a car accident or had a "heart attack" more than a year ago.
The US government isn't very smart on a whole, but they aren't profoundly stupid most of the time either. He hasn't broken any US law, were he in the US they wouldn't dare try him for a crime. They tried that with other people a long time ago, it was called the Pentagon Papers trials and it resulted in the government being handed their asses.
On the other hand they do want to neutralize him (not kill) as a reliable journalist that other government employees might leak information to, and the best way to do that is to harm his reputation. Based on past history the best way to do that is get him acting nuts, ya know like violating a bail agreement and seeking asylum in a country with terrible human rights record. He's basically incarcerated himself at this point and wikileaks is pretty much irrelevant because he's made himself the lynchpin of the organization and self incarcerated himself.
Because he's a twit he's pretty much done exactly what the US government would have wanted to do to him and he did it all voluntarily. Regardless of what you think about the matter the Swedish charges are based on things that really happened, and his actions since are all his own. He's basically presented the appearance of conspiracy crazy (and I'm sure you along with all his "supporters" believe this is a legitimate reaction but it's exactly the wrong reaction for broad public sympathy). Because of this and a subtle propaganda campaign at this point he'll never receive documents from someone like Bradly Manning again. This is partly because they are making an example of Manning and mostly because he's destroyed his reputation in the eyes of a broad swath of Americans.
He wants to be in the business of confidence (confidence that the material you give him will go public and that your identity will be protected) and he's basically proven that he can't be trusted. The best part is it was entirely self inflicted. Even if the US was involved in getting the charges brought back (and I don't believe they were) he did do what he's charged with and now he's running from the law including violating a bail agreement that's going to cost the people that put the money up (basically fucking them over). Mark my words President Correa will use this asylum propaganda for his election and maybe for some status points in south/central America but at some point in a several months when Assange doesn't offer any benefit to Correa anymore and he'll be told that there is nothing they can do to get him out of the UK and they are withdrawing the Asylum offer because those nasty British won't abide the request.
In the end he'll end up Sweden, he'll face the charges and afterwards he'll leave and not a thing will happen to him because at that point the US won't care because he neutralized himself almost a year prior.
And how many patents?
Java was great as well, even released under the GPL but when the chips were down the patents came out, thank god the Judge was sensible and threw them out of the trial.
C# and .Net had very open architectures, the problem was the same as Java, MS had patents on almost every aspect of the system which meant use at your own risk. I'm willing to bet that in short order we'll find out MS has applied for a dozen patents on typescript in the hope that if it becomes popular they can use it as a club against competitors. They HAVE done it before, they will do it again.
I shouldn't need to point this out as it's a critical aspect of US naval policy since WWII. The point of a US navy carrier grouping is to sit well outside ground fire range and use AIR power. This means planes with ranges that far exceed a missile, and cruise missiles that are nothing more than preprogrammed Kamikaze drones.
Maybe at some point the SunFire's and other supersonic Anti-Ship missiles will have a range equivalent to air power but the further they have to go the easier they are to shoot down.
The first rail guns will be small systems with short ranges of 200 some odd miles, but the future intent is to bring these up to 2 Ton 10,000 mile systems. They will have the ability to throw a hunk of tungsten so fast and so far that it's explosive force will be in the 30K ton of TNT range and it will be capable of penetrating almost a hundred feet of solid rock or reinforced concrete. They will be capable of putting a rod on target within 5 minutes of order. Railguns will revolutionize warfare, probably in a very bad way.
Pilots cost $3-5 Million to train. They needs thousands of hours of recurring flight to stay sharp.
So what happens when you put that old fucker pilot who isn't safe to put in a real fighter jet because he's so old his body can't handle what the plane can do and you stick him behind the controls of a UAV?
Drones are the future, find a way to create un-jamable near instantaneous communications and suddenly their isn't a body in planes. Perfect AI planes and you've even taken the Human pilot out of it and their fallibility. Yes their are concerns, and their are nightmare scenarios. But the future of combat is taking the people out of it because no matter what you do the people are the biggest cost.
Anti-Ship missiles are a bunch of hooey. Yes they are fast and damn hard to shoot down, but if you are are within range of one those with your navy you are doing it wrong. Oh yes, there are people in the USN that think we could engage in Littoral combat, but they are in the extreme minority.
No naval officer ever wants to bring his ship so close to shore that one of those missiles could hit it. And if you are out of range of ground fire the only way to fire is ship based, that exposes the firing ship to submarines which are damn near impossible to detect. The other option is submarine launch, which again on launch exposes the asset and anti-submarine warfare is very well understood at this point. And why launch an anti-ship missile from a submarine when a torpedo can be far more damaging.
The navy is working on a platform for the rail guns that uses current working technology. The systems they are developing will run on top of standard carrier nuclear generation systems. Just like the carriers you have two small nuclear reactors, put them in a large cruiser class ship. There aren't big guns like the old battleships so the ships become multi-role, able to host not only rail gun rounds but missile and radar emplacements. The best part about the rail guns is you do away with explosive munitions, your ammo and firing system are a bunch of wiring, capacitors and a hunk of tungsten for a projectile and you can spread the systems around the ship in a damage control technique (unlike current powder based systems that are a single weak point).
I actually believe the Navy's future plans are more sustainable and build-able than even the air-force's F-35 program. And their time line is even more believable with the first ship construction around 2016.
Not arrested for parole violations? He had two parole conditions and he violated both!! In fact he told the judge yesterday that the name he used during his original trial and incarceration was a fake. This is on the order a sex crime parolee with a condition not to have unsupervised contact with children running a bloody day care. They absolutely put people in jail all the time for violating parole. It's so common it's a daily occurrence for nearly every single parole officer.
At the court hearing about his parole violation he told the Judge that the original name he used during his criminal prosecution and incarceration wasn't his real name.
Think about that for a minute, he's jailed for fraud and ordered as a condition of probation not to use aliases, only his legal name and he tells the judge evaluating his compliance that the name he used in the previous trial was a fake. It's highly unusual in situations like this for a judge to incarcerate a parolee before the hearing, she threw him in jail because she said the court has no confidence he's not a liar and flight risk.
And might I add, just because you haven't bothered to follow the case that it makes your assertion that no one believes this isn't political asinine. Obama and the state department has almost zero influence over department of federal paroles (it's mostly courts administered). His parole conditions were public nearly a day after the whole thing went public, including links to all the PDFs on popehat.
No there isn't. You are a fool to even suggest there is. Assine laws enforced with procedure are no different that good/poor laws enforced without procedure. If I make it illegal to breathe but you still have due process when you are convicted you think that's better?
Both scenarios result in tremendous damage to truly innocent people. There isn't a such thing as less terrible when the result is destroying peoples lives. Oh don't worry George, you only lost 30 years of your life for an unjust law, but at least you weren't railroaded over a just law and lost 30 years, because that would just suck so much more.
In my locality there is a judge that did the petty tyrant routine and he's been essentially fired at this point and the Bar complaint is still pending.
No. If a carrier wants to control the straits it wouldn't sit in them. It would sit 100 miles outside in the Indian ocean and launch planes over the straits. This is what's so silly about Iran's blustering. Yes they could close the strait, for a week or two during which the carrier groupings sitting outside the gulf and based in Bahrain, and UAE would destroy every coastal harbor in Iran from which they could launch a dingy. And once the coast has been annihilated the strait demined the whole thing would be over and Iran's abilities would be severely hampered.
Hell, the US navy already has the battle plan written.
You think going after the doctors is scary? The DEA is trying to shut down pharmacies (Walgreens and CVS) that are filling legitimate pain medicine prescriptions with absolutely NO evidence of diversion. They are trying to simply revoke their license without any hearing or evidence or any procedure of any kind.
And the Anti-Drug lobby writes another opinion piece that medicine should not be treating pain and pharma is out of control by providing new pain management options.
The reason pain prescriptions have gone up is that medicine isn't telling people to take 2 asprin and fuck off. The reason my father has a fucked up GI system is because of the asprin abuse because he was never given the option of real pain management.
As a chronic pain sufferer I wish every one of these fucktards that think no one should be on pain management could experience a month of what I do every day. The constant thoughts of suicide, the near complete lack of life, enjoyment or any satisfaction in life, the exhaustion and the constant work just getting out of bed every day. There is a reason there is an ex law enforcement organization devoted to campaigning proper pain management and it's because some of those lucky people get to experience real chronic pain.
Someone that's never experienced chronic severe pain has no fucking idea what it's like.
Hey it's possible the goals have changed since I last looked at the project, but when I did look last time it was clear that they intended to test (possibly not actively use) the heat extraction layers that would make up the power generating core. I know they haven't solved the main issue that the alpha and neutron emissions cause and the damage they will do to those layers nor how they can even get those layers working properly with all the magnetic containment.
But it was my understanding that one of the project goals of ITER is to actually industrial test some of the theorized energy extraction methods to determine if they are even feasible or if the neutron emissions will destroy them.
The Tokamak's have been scientific breakeven for more than a decade, ITER is supposed to achieve fiscal breakeven. What's the difference? Scientific breakeven means you extract more energy than you put into it, but you don't actually try to collect any of the energy. Fiscal breakeven is that added step where you actually try to collect the energy and use it.
See Fusion has this problem in that it's pretty easy to trigger fusion, it's not easy to keep it going and it's damn near impossible to collect any energy from it because all the stuff you have to start the fusion is in the way of collecting any of the energy and all the neutron and alpha particle emissions tend to destroy any materials you put in there to collect the energy.
This is EXACTLY the point of ITER, it's supposed to test the actual engineering of real world (not laboratory) fusion at an economic scale. This testing is costing a lot of money (US contributions are in the $2 Billion dollar range, total economic input from all the partner nations is 25X that amount).
Having worked at a private company that went through a buyout by a public company I can tell you this means absolutely nothing.
They typically won't change anything for a year while they do due diligence on the company and go through the books with a fine toothed comb. After they full understand the business they will reveal what they intended to do all along.
His response is the FoxConn isn't forcing anyone to work and that it complies with local Chinese law. He said nothing to rebut the criticism that the students are being forced to work. He's got his political speech down, talking about all the unrelated aspects rather than addressing the key point that students are being forced to work.
So from your response you can draw the following conclusions. The students ARE being forced to work, the people doing the forcing are the schools and local government officials, Foxconn is likely involved in pressuring or enticing these entities to do the forcing but isn't actually rounding the people up at gun point themselves.
Yea, not so nice when you take it out of the political speech.
As a raving fiscal conservative with liberatarian social leaning Utahn, i can affirmatively agree with what you said. Huntsman is one great guy who would have been the first republican presidential canidate I would have voted for.
QC and QA are different things. Quality control involves detailed review of designs by an equally qualified engineer. In practice this means two peers from the design team swaps designs and go over everything. Typically this is done with a detailed QC process involving highlighters, red, green and blue pencils for (in order) marking correct, incorrect, agreement and notes. The checkprints become the final record of the QC and document the design and process for the records that could be used in court if there is an error that get through.
The QA reviewer goes through the QC and ensures that it was done. It's a quick process after the work is complete and prepared to be released to ensure that the QC process was followed. This is about a 10 minute process at the end of the cycle to ensure the process was followed but does not review content or check for plan errors.
Everyone single person no matter how smart makes mistakes. Two equally skilled people (the QC reviewer can be more highly skilled) must review every item for correctness including not just details but base concept. Software engineering has always done QC from the backside where testers review final product instead of reviewing the code directly. IMO that makes software engineering an immature form of engineering. Coders need to be held responsible for the mistakes they make (like all the other engineering fields) so they put in place the processes that reduce and eliminate errors, those processes cost money and require more time but without them you get the stupid major errors that almost every piece of software has.
I have no idea what a draughtsman is, unless it's some fucked up British word for drafter (who could be either male or female). In my branch of engineering the drafters are pretty much gone. The plan preparation can be pretty much done entirely by the engineers while doing the design and checking (much of the drafting is automated by the software anyway). Where as in my fathers days there were 20 drafters per engineer the ratio has almost reversed and there is about 1 drafter for every 20 engineers.
Not just constitutionality. The vast majority of their cases are not questions of constitutionality, they are in fact different circuit courts interpreting a law differently. The point of the supreme court (well its original point before the marshal case) was to ensure the laws were interpreted the same and applied equally in the different and independent circuit courts. The Marshal case brought the ability to challenge the constitutionality of the law but cases with that kind of challenge are not the majority.
In my field of Engineering we call this quality control. Two sets of eyes must look at every design before it's released for construction because when you are building stuff out of concrete and steel a mistake is a BIG deal that can put engineering firms out of business.
That software engineering is just starting to realize that everyone (no matter how good they are) makes mistakes and everyone should be reviewed just indicates that it's finally maturing into a real profession where errors mean something more than it does currently (just short of nothing).
There are no martyrs in the days of 15minute news cycles. Besides if they were to kill him it would look like an accident or he would simply disappear. No, if they are out to get him, they want to discredit him, not kill him. The most effective way to do that is to get him acting paranoid and crazy. Say, for example, get him charged with a crime where he flees prosecution (preferably from a western country with an outstanding human rights reputation), then makes friends with totalitarion and corrupt regimes (like Russia, who hosts his TV show), then have him seek asylum from a country with terrible human rights and press freedoms (where the leader is in an election and can use this as propaganda). which meqns he stays locked in an embassy unable to leave, just like prison. And he destroys his reputation in the process and becomes irrlevant.
The US is never going to extradite him, he didn't do anything illegal under US law (manning did). And if they did ask for extradition that means a court order and Judge which means no Guantanamo. Ive yet to see any reason the UK wouldn't extradite him easier that doesn't involve a lot of handwaiving about negative publicity yet thinks that same negative publicity in Sweden means diddly.