frankly, I think the mulinationals are using Australia as the "precedent setting" English-speaking country and Canada as the "bad child" country. The corporations have found a spot isolated enough they can game the system, and even the right-wing morality police (which are also large international corporations) are in on the action. Once they have a precedent in a locked down Australia, they can then go after Canada (which they already are doing) and then the UK and US.. all of course from their headquarters full of hookers and slaves in Dubai because they can afford to not follow any rules there. (where the majority of people live in poverty and inhumane religious law that still stones and cuts off body parts)
well for starters, Apple doesn't officially support using Blades or Virtual Machines (they did "allow" VMWare to do it", but only on Mac Hardware) which are where many enterprise Linux installs are living nowdays on IBM, Dell, or HP farms. Apple hardware doesn't really have an enterprise presence or connections to the type of SAN hardware running in many places. You have to ASK to buy a Mac and not many IT departments would allow that. You don't have to ASK to try out a Linux install, you can beg "forgiveness" later on because generally you won't cost the company monie$$, or at least risks they wouldn't have spent money on in the first place. While Macs are cool, as far as enterprise uses, it is still pretty limited. I have several macs (so I'm not a hater) but I could never get my IT manager to take them seriously.
actually, with this tech, you could make a set of dice that really would "roll" on the touchscreen. It would be a neat idea, of course like the Wii fiasco, people would smash their damn screens tossing dice that are just a few grams.
you miss the fact that being able to recognize even simple physical objects without a camera opens up a bunch of new ideas, most readily for gaming but also for other things. Even just pulling up the stats and calculating damage for something like Warhammer 40K is a big deal. The rule and stat book is several hundred pages, they have to have a stack of several hundred cards just to represent all the unit stats "quickly". Pick up a board piece and instantly call up the rules, without having to enter search terms (which are terrible for gaming names) would be a big deal. A two item limit isn't that big of deal.
If they used a jailbreak, they would have access to the actual sensor data and write their own code there's much more data there than Apple is letting devs use. We've seen what the raw data looks like before on Slashdot, so it's more than possible, the trick for them is to get far enough ahead they can persuade Apple to open the SDK, and keep Apple from poaching the idea at the same time.
this isn't really trivial, iPad, unlike Surface is not using a camera, just the touch screen controller. It looks like they have a jail breaked iPad to get more fine grained access to the touch sensors. The neat technology is how they use flat "doped" paper stickers rather than something like a shaped rubber stamper, like other iPad/iPhone "pointers" on the market.
This is also news because it will bring things like table top gaming into the digital age, without changing the nature of the games much. Doing this with a game like DnD miniatures would be neat. You could use a phone app to keep track of the squares and do all the damage calculations, etc. allowing for more complex play. When you get more than a few pieces in play the sheer accounting takes more time than playing... watch the Warhammer 40K crowd play and the game descends in to complex damage and stat accounting very quickly and not speedy play. A technology like this would revolutionize gaming. The paper "doping" didn't look like it changed the appearance of the physical cards either. There is one card game for PS3 that tries to use the camera for reading cards and a version of Pokemon tried having embedded codes on the printed cards, but it's just too much kludge. If you could play a game like Magic:TG just by showing your cards to the device you would open up all sorts of play, from having table top referees for one-on-one matches in person to playing somebody across the internet with the PHYSICAL cards, something that has proved difficult.
So anyway, for the Slashdot crowd this is something most of us would actually use at some point.
At my company we put it as part of our recovery testing in addition to development. After all, if you don't have all the pieces for a DR/HA box or at least a good development box, then you don't REALLY have a recovery program. And if you can't PRACTICE recovery, you don't have a backup plan! On our system we use our backup tapes from production to go through the whole process of pulling a regular backup tape and restoring our production data files to the development system. This has the side effect of forcing the devs to "clean house" and practice setting up their programming changes again... sure there are issues... but you WANT the developers to have them, not the users.
The true purpose of not allowing developers is for stability and reliability. Nothing is worse than an untested program erasing a single field from 100k lines and having to put it back. I know since my company went to keeping devs separate, our production system only shuts down for regular patches. We also went from having 6 people (plus contractors) dedicated to taking user calls down to just me and the contractors help with debugging.
I would say keeping devs out of production for security purposes is the wrong idea. Ideally, devs should have an identical system on which to program and access to any data files for troubleshooting.
because they built a cutting-edge school with all the things geeks say schools need..... and all the geeks show up to say it's "too expensive"!
frankly, any school housing 4,200 students had better be more than a blank office building... most schools aren't built to the same level of comfort as city hall. The bigger issue is that schools need to be built to last 50+ years, they are cornerstones of our civic landscape.
Nobody would ever build a school like my town's high school again. It was built in the 1920's when labor and materials were cheap for a huge amount of money. It was built in the same construction cycle as the "Carnegie" funded library and city hall. It's housed students for almost 90 years at this point, no small feat. Even our elementary schools are circa 1950's and have nearly double the students they were built to handle. The last new school built in my town was in the late 1960's.
If public schools are going to get truly new facilities only every 50 years, then spending a large amount of money is no problem. Nobody complains on spending that on a football or baseball stadium which CITIES build purely for entertainment, then only uses for a few events per year. Building for 50 years out, designed to be used by thousands of kids every day, is something only schools and Museums do now days. I have seen most of the "efficient" new schools and they are built like adult office buildings. Sure they are nice but they aren't built to last 50 years without drastic renovations.. let alone the 60-90 years my town is running for truly new school construction.
I wouldn't say it was that short sighted though. All the agencies kept adding their own hobby projects to the list and that was probably a good thing. Considering the USA has not developed or tested any other manned vessel since before the shuttle was launched in 1981 and the last new shuttle was launched in 1992 (and Apollo ended several years before that) the shuttle program is a raging success for a 1970's design. Five vehicles (Enterprise was never launch worthy. Columbia, Challenger, Atlantis, Discovery, Endeavor) were the entire manned program for 30 years, that's not a bad run. The ships have launched satellites, sent astronauts on repair missions, carried ISS modules, and even brought instruments back to Earth again for repairs. While it might not have been the most efficient, it's ability to be a platform for many types of projects was the design purpose and it did a pretty good job.
In the interim, maybe they should build a system that uses shuttle-compatible boosters and tanks, but without the wings and return capability. If they were really clever, they could even use the ships as pieces of the ISS, so they didn't just burn up. The real problem is that even if somebody liked the idea right now, it takes close to 10 years to get anything that will be manned through planning, design, and manufacturing, effectively the US manned space program is dead for the next decade unless we borrow ships from other countries.
Even that chart doesn't show the "off budget" funds when Congress does pure borrowing in 100 Billion a pop. All that money is "off the books" as far as the budget keepers are concerned, which is why even though every other program is seeing cuts, the deficit is ballooning at record rates. Adding in off-budget military funding they are definitely in first place now. The stating of the military "minimum" is deceptive because Congress is constitutionally not allowed to guarantee military funds year-over-year, they have to vote on nearly all of it every year, even though most of the budget is just rubber stamping what they did last year.
we don't actually spend that much on NASA any more, it's budget has been cut to a fraction of even 20 years ago. The real problem is that we have to do BOTH, we have plenty of food in this country, sure there are hungry people but that is a social problem not a money problem and there are still fewer than any other time in US history. Our transit systems need work, but again, that money and employees can come from the Military budget if it was really important. As far as digital infrastructure, again to compare us to other countries is silly unless you are including all of Russia, China or Canada... and no just the cities. The US is incredibly well wired for the amount of space involved... you might compare other countries to single most populated US states to get a more realistic picture. The same is true of schools, the numbers the US uses come from ALL schools except maybe "special ed" who knows where numbers for other countries (especially Asian countries) come from as they "track" students into "worker" programs at a younger age and don't report those numbers the same way we do.
Space is something only the government can do right. Sure we could have commercial space programs... they aren't even at the level of the Mercury program the government had 60+ years ago to put ONE MAN in orbit. Space is all about bragging rights, doing something that nobody else CAN do. but even now, China, Japan, India are all putting up a better effort than the USA.
But the most BASIC level of improving the situation for exploring the solar system is to stop launching every rocket from Earth with enough fuel for an entire trip. A much cheaper solution is to use the Moon for the launch point, but the US hasn't put a man there in 40 years, it' s practically a myth now. Sure, that doesn't solve all the fuel problems, but it allows you to focus on efficient ships for "milk runs" from Earth to the Moon, and allow the Moon teams to build ships to go further that don't have to survive launches from Earth's gravity. Ideally, we would build some bases at the LaGrange points of the Earth-Moon system and the Sun-Earth system to improve launches even more... the US has spent the last 40 years barely making milk runs to low orbit with the ISS being the furthest thing we've done. We've banked NOTHING into the tech in that entire time, it's not really that hard to do, especially if we could get fast-tracked ships built with manufacturing in mind rather than the "engineering samples" we fly now. Imagine if we were still building cars by hand in machine shops.. with lathes and hammers and no two pieces exactly the same, that's where our space program is now.
There is no "cost" problem, it is a PRIORITY problem. We spend more than 1 Billion dollars a month (all borrowed outside the usual 25% military budget) on our little "peace" missions. Six months of not paying for any more wars would put people on Mars quite easily. The problem is that after we went to the Moon, we didn't KEEP doing it. We threw away all the technology and experience in the 1970s, and we're about to throw away the ability to put ANY people in orbit. NASA's budget is a fraction of what it was in the 1980's even and it's almost all service to Military or Infrastructure missions that are absolutely necessary, very little "blue sky" research has been done beyond what can fit in the astronauts "carry on" luggage.
you do realize that NASA's entire budget at this point is just a few months of what the military is spending in the Middle East. NASA has been gutted to the point that money put in is wasted. They've put more money into secret bombers than the next space ship in the last 20 years.
more importantly, it saves the accounting the department from having to recalculate half-a-weeks pay for all the people they layoff.... MOST companies DON'T have any severance for layoff other than maybe owed vacation time.
the short term problem of not getting the last two launches prepared is the LEAST of NASA's problems. The REAL problem is that once these guys are gone and the teams broken up, that technical ability is gone... poof. NASA doesn't even have the program to build a capsule for basic maintenance of the space station and servicing satellites STARTED YET! This is going to be a 20 year blight on the agency when it happens... these jobs aren't going to be replaced, private industry isn't legally ALLOWED to do the kinds of things these employees did.
exactly, just like the Pirate Bay case, this is becoming increasingly shameful for Sweden's government that their justice system is so easily corrupted by OUTSIDE governments and corporations.
The idea is to pick the fight, but not throw the first punch. This is to provoke Israel to attack the production facilities without waiting for Iran to attack, the intention is not to use it. Iran has ties to Russia and China both on the UN security council with VETO power, they need the Oil and other resources, they won't allow full-scale war by the West to ruin their economies. Israel attacks again and Iran can demand revenge, they just have to place the bases next to something Russia and China need.
first, Iran is quite well armed. There are lots of "citizens groups" armed with basic submachine guns... they are more than ready to fight a house-to-house war against invasion.
Second, the point of the weapon is to attack local targets, the most important is Israel after they made an unprovoked attack in the last year or so. The next targets are governments sympathetic to the West, Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. The lowest priority would be US bases, they don't want a direct attack, they want to have other governments force the US out of the region. The key for Iran is to do it in a way that they "draw the fist punch" from a rogue Israel. Then countries with strong business ties like Kazakhstan, Russia, and China will bring the pressure on the UN to stop Israel interfering with international trade. The US doesn't have the capability to fight a war with Iran, bombing them will only piss off other neighbors in the region, nobody on the UN security council is going to approve attacking a business partner as at least 2 members are business partners.
our US UAVs have names like "Predator" for what's supposed to be an "unarmed" platform. Our missile blocking system is named "Patriot". Our troop transport is named "Stryker".... everybody does it. Don't get started on the names of recent Middle East US military operations... they're almost oxymoron.
Frankly, I think the announcement is specifically to get Israel to take a shot at them the US doesn't want them too. Everybody will claim this is "offensive technology" and Iran is picking the fight even though Israel has long range US made fighters and even nukes within striking distance and has already done unprovoked "preemptive" attacks on Iran before. The US already had egg on it's face trying to stick up for Israel last time they didn't ask before attacking Iran... do it again and Israel will be on the wrong end of most of our Nato partners that are tired of their lying to their allies.
Blizzard saw this coming, it was the only thing getting them off their asses for Starcraft 2!
It's great they have a "cure" for Starcraft addiction... too bad it took them 10 years to crack it, now Starcraft 2 is out with "super-extra-addiction" added!
again, you miss the point... he was fired for not documenting, so be it. Once he was fired, there was no other duty to the boss. They FIRED HIM!
In the US we have "innocent until proven guilty" in our legal system... as this is a CRIMINAL trial, not a CIVIL trial the burden of proof is that he COMMITTED a criminal act, not omitted something that denied them access. He did not deprive them of their property in ANY way. There was no evidence AFTER being fired he DID ANY damage to their systems, none. He didn't give them the passwords, so what? They had PHYSICAL access, they COULD have gotten control back.. that is the COST of firing an employee that knows more than you.
If you don't see what happened here, essentially they had no backup plan, and couldn't even hire smart enough people to reset the passwords without wrecking their network! It would not have been easy to redo the network, but it was running stable until they had the time to reconfigure it. Sure that is extra cost, but given the terms of letting him go, they should have spent the money on a network rebuild anyway. (again, not the EMPLOYEE's fault THEY don't trust him anymore) Any additional cost was the MANAGEMENT'S fault, not the employee's. This sets a DANGEROUS precedent that an employer can use CRIMINAL charges if you don't give them what they THINK they need, when they think they need it AFTER they let you go.
exactly, real war profiteering is the likes of Blackwater or Halburton.... the ones in charge of PALLETS of cash and "lost" it. The ones that RUN A BUSINESS killing people for hire, not for their country. It's a considerably larger market than the video game companies. Complaining about video games would be like complaining about WW2 John Wayne movies.
Any good officer would have no problem playing the other side... that's how you learn to win. Military plays "war games" like that all the time in training, why can't regular folks? Little boys have been playing "cowboys and indians" long before video games. Do you think anybody worried that the little boys weren't properly representing perils of scalping prisoners, or genocide of whole tribes of defenseless women and children? They still sell that crap at just about every toy store.
Slashdot Mirror
frankly, I think the mulinationals are using Australia as the "precedent setting" English-speaking country and Canada as the "bad child" country. The corporations have found a spot isolated enough they can game the system, and even the right-wing morality police (which are also large international corporations) are in on the action. Once they have a precedent in a locked down Australia, they can then go after Canada (which they already are doing) and then the UK and US.. all of course from their headquarters full of hookers and slaves in Dubai because they can afford to not follow any rules there. (where the majority of people live in poverty and inhumane religious law that still stones and cuts off body parts)
well for starters, Apple doesn't officially support using Blades or Virtual Machines (they did "allow" VMWare to do it", but only on Mac Hardware) which are where many enterprise Linux installs are living nowdays on IBM, Dell, or HP farms. Apple hardware doesn't really have an enterprise presence or connections to the type of SAN hardware running in many places. You have to ASK to buy a Mac and not many IT departments would allow that. You don't have to ASK to try out a Linux install, you can beg "forgiveness" later on because generally you won't cost the company monie$$, or at least risks they wouldn't have spent money on in the first place. While Macs are cool, as far as enterprise uses, it is still pretty limited. I have several macs (so I'm not a hater) but I could never get my IT manager to take them seriously.
actually, with this tech, you could make a set of dice that really would "roll" on the touchscreen. It would be a neat idea, of course like the Wii fiasco, people would smash their damn screens tossing dice that are just a few grams.
you miss the fact that being able to recognize even simple physical objects without a camera opens up a bunch of new ideas, most readily for gaming but also for other things. Even just pulling up the stats and calculating damage for something like Warhammer 40K is a big deal. The rule and stat book is several hundred pages, they have to have a stack of several hundred cards just to represent all the unit stats "quickly". Pick up a board piece and instantly call up the rules, without having to enter search terms (which are terrible for gaming names) would be a big deal. A two item limit isn't that big of deal.
If they used a jailbreak, they would have access to the actual sensor data and write their own code there's much more data there than Apple is letting devs use. We've seen what the raw data looks like before on Slashdot, so it's more than possible, the trick for them is to get far enough ahead they can persuade Apple to open the SDK, and keep Apple from poaching the idea at the same time.
this isn't really trivial, iPad, unlike Surface is not using a camera, just the touch screen controller. It looks like they have a jail breaked iPad to get more fine grained access to the touch sensors. The neat technology is how they use flat "doped" paper stickers rather than something like a shaped rubber stamper, like other iPad/iPhone "pointers" on the market.
This is also news because it will bring things like table top gaming into the digital age, without changing the nature of the games much. Doing this with a game like DnD miniatures would be neat. You could use a phone app to keep track of the squares and do all the damage calculations, etc. allowing for more complex play. When you get more than a few pieces in play the sheer accounting takes more time than playing... watch the Warhammer 40K crowd play and the game descends in to complex damage and stat accounting very quickly and not speedy play. A technology like this would revolutionize gaming. The paper "doping" didn't look like it changed the appearance of the physical cards either. There is one card game for PS3 that tries to use the camera for reading cards and a version of Pokemon tried having embedded codes on the printed cards, but it's just too much kludge. If you could play a game like Magic:TG just by showing your cards to the device you would open up all sorts of play, from having table top referees for one-on-one matches in person to playing somebody across the internet with the PHYSICAL cards, something that has proved difficult.
So anyway, for the Slashdot crowd this is something most of us would actually use at some point.
At my company we put it as part of our recovery testing in addition to development. After all, if you don't have all the pieces for a DR/HA box or at least a good development box, then you don't REALLY have a recovery program. And if you can't PRACTICE recovery, you don't have a backup plan! On our system we use our backup tapes from production to go through the whole process of pulling a regular backup tape and restoring our production data files to the development system. This has the side effect of forcing the devs to "clean house" and practice setting up their programming changes again... sure there are issues... but you WANT the developers to have them, not the users.
The true purpose of not allowing developers is for stability and reliability. Nothing is worse than an untested program erasing a single field from 100k lines and having to put it back. I know since my company went to keeping devs separate, our production system only shuts down for regular patches. We also went from having 6 people (plus contractors) dedicated to taking user calls down to just me and the contractors help with debugging.
I would say keeping devs out of production for security purposes is the wrong idea. Ideally, devs should have an identical system on which to program and access to any data files for troubleshooting.
because they built a cutting-edge school with all the things geeks say schools need..... and all the geeks show up to say it's "too expensive"!
frankly, any school housing 4,200 students had better be more than a blank office building... most schools aren't built to the same level of comfort as city hall. The bigger issue is that schools need to be built to last 50+ years, they are cornerstones of our civic landscape.
Nobody would ever build a school like my town's high school again. It was built in the 1920's when labor and materials were cheap for a huge amount of money. It was built in the same construction cycle as the "Carnegie" funded library and city hall. It's housed students for almost 90 years at this point, no small feat. Even our elementary schools are circa 1950's and have nearly double the students they were built to handle. The last new school built in my town was in the late 1960's.
If public schools are going to get truly new facilities only every 50 years, then spending a large amount of money is no problem. Nobody complains on spending that on a football or baseball stadium which CITIES build purely for entertainment, then only uses for a few events per year. Building for 50 years out, designed to be used by thousands of kids every day, is something only schools and Museums do now days. I have seen most of the "efficient" new schools and they are built like adult office buildings. Sure they are nice but they aren't built to last 50 years without drastic renovations.. let alone the 60-90 years my town is running for truly new school construction.
I wouldn't say it was that short sighted though. All the agencies kept adding their own hobby projects to the list and that was probably a good thing. Considering the USA has not developed or tested any other manned vessel since before the shuttle was launched in 1981 and the last new shuttle was launched in 1992 (and Apollo ended several years before that) the shuttle program is a raging success for a 1970's design. Five vehicles (Enterprise was never launch worthy. Columbia, Challenger, Atlantis, Discovery, Endeavor) were the entire manned program for 30 years, that's not a bad run. The ships have launched satellites, sent astronauts on repair missions, carried ISS modules, and even brought instruments back to Earth again for repairs. While it might not have been the most efficient, it's ability to be a platform for many types of projects was the design purpose and it did a pretty good job.
In the interim, maybe they should build a system that uses shuttle-compatible boosters and tanks, but without the wings and return capability. If they were really clever, they could even use the ships as pieces of the ISS, so they didn't just burn up. The real problem is that even if somebody liked the idea right now, it takes close to 10 years to get anything that will be manned through planning, design, and manufacturing, effectively the US manned space program is dead for the next decade unless we borrow ships from other countries.
Even that chart doesn't show the "off budget" funds when Congress does pure borrowing in 100 Billion a pop. All that money is "off the books" as far as the budget keepers are concerned, which is why even though every other program is seeing cuts, the deficit is ballooning at record rates. Adding in off-budget military funding they are definitely in first place now. The stating of the military "minimum" is deceptive because Congress is constitutionally not allowed to guarantee military funds year-over-year, they have to vote on nearly all of it every year, even though most of the budget is just rubber stamping what they did last year.
we don't actually spend that much on NASA any more, it's budget has been cut to a fraction of even 20 years ago. The real problem is that we have to do BOTH, we have plenty of food in this country, sure there are hungry people but that is a social problem not a money problem and there are still fewer than any other time in US history. Our transit systems need work, but again, that money and employees can come from the Military budget if it was really important. As far as digital infrastructure, again to compare us to other countries is silly unless you are including all of Russia, China or Canada... and no just the cities. The US is incredibly well wired for the amount of space involved... you might compare other countries to single most populated US states to get a more realistic picture. The same is true of schools, the numbers the US uses come from ALL schools except maybe "special ed" who knows where numbers for other countries (especially Asian countries) come from as they "track" students into "worker" programs at a younger age and don't report those numbers the same way we do.
Space is something only the government can do right. Sure we could have commercial space programs... they aren't even at the level of the Mercury program the government had 60+ years ago to put ONE MAN in orbit. Space is all about bragging rights, doing something that nobody else CAN do. but even now, China, Japan, India are all putting up a better effort than the USA.
But the most BASIC level of improving the situation for exploring the solar system is to stop launching every rocket from Earth with enough fuel for an entire trip. A much cheaper solution is to use the Moon for the launch point, but the US hasn't put a man there in 40 years, it' s practically a myth now. Sure, that doesn't solve all the fuel problems, but it allows you to focus on efficient ships for "milk runs" from Earth to the Moon, and allow the Moon teams to build ships to go further that don't have to survive launches from Earth's gravity. Ideally, we would build some bases at the LaGrange points of the Earth-Moon system and the Sun-Earth system to improve launches even more... the US has spent the last 40 years barely making milk runs to low orbit with the ISS being the furthest thing we've done. We've banked NOTHING into the tech in that entire time, it's not really that hard to do, especially if we could get fast-tracked ships built with manufacturing in mind rather than the "engineering samples" we fly now. Imagine if we were still building cars by hand in machine shops.. with lathes and hammers and no two pieces exactly the same, that's where our space program is now.
There is no "cost" problem, it is a PRIORITY problem. We spend more than 1 Billion dollars a month (all borrowed outside the usual 25% military budget) on our little "peace" missions. Six months of not paying for any more wars would put people on Mars quite easily. The problem is that after we went to the Moon, we didn't KEEP doing it. We threw away all the technology and experience in the 1970s, and we're about to throw away the ability to put ANY people in orbit. NASA's budget is a fraction of what it was in the 1980's even and it's almost all service to Military or Infrastructure missions that are absolutely necessary, very little "blue sky" research has been done beyond what can fit in the astronauts "carry on" luggage.
you do realize that NASA's entire budget at this point is just a few months of what the military is spending in the Middle East. NASA has been gutted to the point that money put in is wasted. They've put more money into secret bombers than the next space ship in the last 20 years.
more importantly, it saves the accounting the department from having to recalculate half-a-weeks pay for all the people they layoff.... MOST companies DON'T have any severance for layoff other than maybe owed vacation time.
the short term problem of not getting the last two launches prepared is the LEAST of NASA's problems. The REAL problem is that once these guys are gone and the teams broken up, that technical ability is gone... poof. NASA doesn't even have the program to build a capsule for basic maintenance of the space station and servicing satellites STARTED YET! This is going to be a 20 year blight on the agency when it happens... these jobs aren't going to be replaced, private industry isn't legally ALLOWED to do the kinds of things these employees did.
exactly, just like the Pirate Bay case, this is becoming increasingly shameful for Sweden's government that their justice system is so easily corrupted by OUTSIDE governments and corporations.
The idea is to pick the fight, but not throw the first punch. This is to provoke Israel to attack the production facilities without waiting for Iran to attack, the intention is not to use it. Iran has ties to Russia and China both on the UN security council with VETO power, they need the Oil and other resources, they won't allow full-scale war by the West to ruin their economies. Israel attacks again and Iran can demand revenge, they just have to place the bases next to something Russia and China need.
first, Iran is quite well armed. There are lots of "citizens groups" armed with basic submachine guns... they are more than ready to fight a house-to-house war against invasion.
Second, the point of the weapon is to attack local targets, the most important is Israel after they made an unprovoked attack in the last year or so. The next targets are governments sympathetic to the West, Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. The lowest priority would be US bases, they don't want a direct attack, they want to have other governments force the US out of the region. The key for Iran is to do it in a way that they "draw the fist punch" from a rogue Israel. Then countries with strong business ties like Kazakhstan, Russia, and China will bring the pressure on the UN to stop Israel interfering with international trade. The US doesn't have the capability to fight a war with Iran, bombing them will only piss off other neighbors in the region, nobody on the UN security council is going to approve attacking a business partner as at least 2 members are business partners.
our US UAVs have names like "Predator" for what's supposed to be an "unarmed" platform. Our missile blocking system is named "Patriot". Our troop transport is named "Stryker".... everybody does it. Don't get started on the names of recent Middle East US military operations... they're almost oxymoron.
Frankly, I think the announcement is specifically to get Israel to take a shot at them the US doesn't want them too. Everybody will claim this is "offensive technology" and Iran is picking the fight even though Israel has long range US made fighters and even nukes within striking distance and has already done unprovoked "preemptive" attacks on Iran before. The US already had egg on it's face trying to stick up for Israel last time they didn't ask before attacking Iran... do it again and Israel will be on the wrong end of most of our Nato partners that are tired of their lying to their allies.
Wow, was that a fR1St Pr0st?
WooT!
Blizzard saw this coming, it was the only thing getting them off their asses for Starcraft 2!
It's great they have a "cure" for Starcraft addiction... too bad it took them 10 years to crack it, now Starcraft 2 is out with "super-extra-addiction" added!
again, you miss the point... he was fired for not documenting, so be it. Once he was fired, there was no other duty to the boss. They FIRED HIM!
In the US we have "innocent until proven guilty" in our legal system... as this is a CRIMINAL trial, not a CIVIL trial the burden of proof is that he COMMITTED a criminal act, not omitted something that denied them access. He did not deprive them of their property in ANY way. There was no evidence AFTER being fired he DID ANY damage to their systems, none. He didn't give them the passwords, so what? They had PHYSICAL access, they COULD have gotten control back.. that is the COST of firing an employee that knows more than you.
If you don't see what happened here, essentially they had no backup plan, and couldn't even hire smart enough people to reset the passwords without wrecking their network! It would not have been easy to redo the network, but it was running stable until they had the time to reconfigure it. Sure that is extra cost, but given the terms of letting him go, they should have spent the money on a network rebuild anyway. (again, not the EMPLOYEE's fault THEY don't trust him anymore) Any additional cost was the MANAGEMENT'S fault, not the employee's. This sets a DANGEROUS precedent that an employer can use CRIMINAL charges if you don't give them what they THINK they need, when they think they need it AFTER they let you go.
exactly, real war profiteering is the likes of Blackwater or Halburton.... the ones in charge of PALLETS of cash and "lost" it. The ones that RUN A BUSINESS killing people for hire, not for their country. It's a considerably larger market than the video game companies. Complaining about video games would be like complaining about WW2 John Wayne movies.
Any good officer would have no problem playing the other side... that's how you learn to win. Military plays "war games" like that all the time in training, why can't regular folks? Little boys have been playing "cowboys and indians" long before video games. Do you think anybody worried that the little boys weren't properly representing perils of scalping prisoners, or genocide of whole tribes of defenseless women and children? They still sell that crap at just about every toy store.