This is military jargon thing. ICBMs, no matter what the acronym stands for, are considered to be land-based missiles. SLBMs are the same thing only launched from submarines (although many early US and current rest-of-world SLBMs have considerably shorter ranges). MRBMs are land based and have ranges about to about 3000km. SRBMs are also land based and have ranges up to about 1000 km.
1) We don't even know if this was a sub launched missile. The surface fleet launches missiles all the freaking time, and you couldn't tell the difference from LA.
2) There are test ranges for all sorts of stuff off the coast of SoCal. Recall that the Navy owns several islands out there that they use for target practice.
I guarantee that this is a perfectly ordinary test shot that the Navy doesn't want to talk about.
We still have large and impressive operational SOSUS arrays all over the Pacific, and I guarantee you that the Chinese SSBNs are loud enough to be tracked with them. No way they snuck all the way across the Pacific undetected.
If that was the case, expect a cover-up on this because those kind of secrets never get released to the public.
Actually, those kind of secrets are the hardest to keep secret, because sailors (being human) can't keep their mouths shut about that kind of thing. If we had accidentally launched an SLBM I can pretty much guarantee it would be all over the news.
How do you know this was an SLBM? Or even a sub launched missile of any kind (ballistic or otherwise)? The only thing you really know is that from LA they saw a missile launch out to sea. Could very well have been surface launched.
How do you know this was a "demonstration" as opposed to a USN operational test (which, as I know from my own Navy experience go on absolutely all the time)?
How does it make any sense to show off that we're "within range" by launching right off our coast, when they could announce a test off their own coast and let us track it, without the danger of touching off nuclear Armageddon? This might make sense as a demonstration of how stealthy their subs are, but not as a demo of their missile technology. And I guarantee that neither the Chinese nor the Russians have developed subs so stealthy they can get all the way to LA without being detected.
I guarantee this is nothing more than a Navy test that they don't want to talk about, so they're denying.
at the extent to which people will spout off about topics they don't understand (I know, must be new here). For starters:
In this case, however, the missile was launched from 35 nautical miles offshore, which would put it in international waters.
That ain't necessarily so. 35 miles offshore, depending on the bearing, could very well put it within 12 miles of Catalina or one of the other channel islands... which would be US territorial waters. Unless you have the actual lat & long of the launch and have plotted it on a chart, you're talking out your ass here.
I suspect this was the act of a foreign entity demonstrating a newly-developed capability to the United States. If the submarine doesn't identify its country of origin, then the US would be allowed to destroy it with impunity in international waters.
Dude, now you're just making stuff up. You think it was the act of a foreign entity... based on what, exactly? Which is more likely - 1) there's a huge Tom Clancy novel playing out off the coast of Socal? or 2) the USN is doing a routine missile shot and doesn't want to talk about it? I know which one I'm voting for. Also, you get to destroy submarines that don't identify themselves? I wish I had known that when I was in the Navy, because we would have destroyed several! Unfortunately, most of them would have turned out to be our own. Submarines don't go around identifying themselves, and even if they don't, it doesn't mean you can shoot them. Seriously.
Sure, it's fun to come up with wild theories of international intrigue, but: Occam's Razor: it applies to everything.
First of all, the article doesn't give you a lat and long where this took place, and until you plot the launch position on a nautical chart, you just don't know whether or not it was in international waters. "35 miles out to sea, west of LA and north of Catalina" doesn't tell you anything.
Second of all, you need to read up on UNCLOS before you start talking about this stuff. There are many, many more zones than territorial waters and and EEZs. And although we haven't ratified UNCLOS, every administration since it was signed has treated it as customary international law.
1) No the US has not ratified UNCLOS, but we consider it "customary international law" and consider ourselves bound by it. I spent 20 years in the US Navy and I guarantee the USN thinks UCLOS is the law.
3) People are jumping to all sorts of conclusions about whether these are "international" or "archipelagic" waters with no more basis than "it was about 35 miles out to sea, west of LA and north of Catalina Island". This may or may not have been in international waters. Without getting an exact position and plotting it on a chart, you don't know.
But yeah, I agree with your conclusion anyway - no way this was a foreign missile. UNCLOS or no UNCLOS, we'd have sunk that bad boy.
Former naval officer here. I think it's dubious that the water in the vicinity of the Channel Islands constitutes "archipelagic waters" for purposes of the law - I think the islands are too far apart - but you'd need a JAG to help you with that question. However, each of the Channel Islands, as part of the US, are entitled to its own 12 mile band of "territorial waters", which are also sovereign US territory, so if the launch took place within that zone, yeah, you're talking act of war there.
Also: while the US hasn't formally ratified the Law of the Sea Treaty (aka the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea - UNCLOS), it has signed it and every administration since then (including Ronald Reagan) have treated it as "customary international law" and have considered us to be bound by it. I can promise you through many years of my own at-sea experience that the USN thinks the UNCLOS is the law.
Finally: you did hit upon something important in your first paragraph. The law notwithstanding, if someone else's submarine really did do this, sure, we'd sink it. The reason is not that it's legal but that we could get away with it - when a submarine sinks, it's really hard to prove what happened, and being as how this took place right off LA we could certainly prevent China (or whoever) from investigating.
Bottom line: no way this was a foreign sub. The whole Navy would be a general quarters so fast it would make your head spin. Mullen, Roughhead, and likely a host of other admirals would be fired. Obama would have flown home from overseas. Etc, etc. This was just the Navy doing the stuff they do, and not wanting to talk about it.
We have a pretty good grasp on the state of acoustic silencing of all the submarine forces in the world. China has approximately 3 SSBNs: 1 Xia class that is so loud you can hear it practically all the way across the ocean, and about 2 Jin class (a third may have been launched but may not be fully operational yet), which are considerably quieter but still (relatively) easy to detect. And less anyone think that maybe they developed a totally stealthy submarine so secretly that we didn't even find out until they launched a missile off California... the only thing I can say to that is, dude, you read too many Tom Clancy novels.
... is no proof against being just plain dumb. Look, we've tested a LOT of ICBMs, SLBMs, and the like over the years. This is not some radical new technology no one realizes we have. The Chinese already KNOW we can do this, and we know that they know. So what would be the point of that kind of a demonstration? I think it's far more likely that this was a routine, but secret, test that the Navy was doing for technical reasons, and they just don't want to talk about it.
... that we have thousands of warheads and the Chinese have like 20. Enough to ruin America's whole day, to be sure, but we have enough to put an end to the history of China. I seriously doubt the Chinese would be crazy enough to do something quite this destabilizing. If they were capable of that kind of craziness, they would have invaded Taiwan a long time ago.
I think there's about a 99.9999 percent chance that this is a US subsurface missile launch that the Navy doesn't want to talk about, so they're issuing non-denial denials that the press isn't reporting very clearly.
How useful are cameras, either? So you happen to catch a guy on film robbing your house. Even if you happen to be watching while it happens, the guy is going to be long gone before the cops get there, and what good is the video really going to do you? It's fine for evidence... IF the cops ever catch the guy who did it, which is highly unlikely. But I don't see how it deters a break-in in the first place.
It seems to me you'd be a lot better off to invest in more secure locks, alarm systems (more for scaring off the burglar than anything else), and similar stuff.
... not the same thing as breaking and entering. Breaking and entering is a more serious crime, and a reasonable person would probably rightly fear for their life if someone broke into their house while they were in it. And in that situation, is it realistic to be able to wait for the police to show up? I don't think so.
The actual problem with Heim theory is that it predicted the existence of a neutral equivalent to the electron (per the theory, it should be commonly observed in particle interactions). The fact that such a particle has never been seen is considered a big strike against Heim.
TFA wasn't just talking about phones: Android is going into tablets
TFA may have been about both, but this particular slashdot thread is about smartphone vs. desktop:
most people reading here are desktop-centric, and the smartphone os is a secondary platform, in terms of work, play, and psychological orientation
but we are rapidly entering a world that is smartphone-centric, and the desktop os is a secondary platform, in terms of work, play, and psychological orientation. the whole desktop segment will be marginal
I'm not responding to the article, I'm responding to this thread. The initial poster made the claim that desktop systems will become marginal, which MBGMorden took issue with. You followed up with an argument about thin vs. fat clients, which is sort of a non-sequitur in the context of this thread. I was trying to point that out, and get back to the original topic of the thread.
For Apple's devices, that subsidy is coming from AT&T, and its only purpose is to tie you to AT&T for a minimum contract term. The restriction on what you can INSTALL comes (almost) entirely from Apple, and has nothing to do with the subsidy. These aren't "network" features we're talking about here.As an analogy, what if you bought a Dell computer from, say, Comcast, at a discount in exchange for getting internet service from them... and then Dell said "here's the list of what you're allowed to install on it". What would that have to do with your subsidy? Dell's not even a party to the agreement - they're just providing the hardware.
It's PC vs. thin client. For serious work a phone is never going to replace a desktop, no matter what operating system either one of them uses. It's too hard to 1) get data into it (tiny keyboard) and 2) work with various windows, documents, etc (tiny screen). The only use cases where a phone would work for this kind of thing are those where the need for mobility trumps the need to easily do 1) and 2), as pointed out by GP. Tablets are slightly better in that they at least solve the screen problem, but you still need a keyboard. And once you've added a keyboard to the thing, how is it different from a desktop form factor?
Well when I'm in a group, I usually see one iPhone (which is mine, if that matters), 3 or 4 Androids, and a bunch of "dumb" phones. And my anecdote can beat up your anecdote.
Or maybe we could all agree that anecdotes != data.
Sure, there's lots of room for Android to grow, but consider: there's still, even after all this time, a fair number of ATMs using OS/2, iOS isn't about to roll over and die in the world of handheld/tablet devices (and of course there are lots of others there too - WebOS, Symbian, etc), there are plenty of MS Windows devices of various flavors... it's quite unlikely that any one technology is going to take over any platform to the extent Windows did in the PC world, and even there, MS's grip is slipping somewhat.
Dude, you need to break out your dictionary
on
Rise of the Small Botnet
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· Score: 2, Informative
The word you're looking for is "algorithm". A "logarithm" is a number that you get by taking the exponent of a number from a certain base. For example the "common" (base 10) logarithm of 1000 is 3. What your machine is doing has nothing to do with this.
Imagine all those ideas. Imagine how brilliant that [a new office suite] could be. Just imagine. Now imagine Firefox 4. Honestly, which one of those are you most excited by?
Which am I more excited by? Neither. A new office suite? That's OpenOffice.org's deal. What is Mozilla going to be able to do that those guys can't?
So yeah, I'm onboard with the "stick with what you're good at" theory. Or at least if you want to do something different, do something that some other team hasn't been working on for all eternity.
The one thing that always bothered me about students selling their textbooks after completing the course it that this action basically says "I took this class because the degree required it, and I will never have the need to recall this information for the rest of my days."
Dude, come on. What that actually says is "I'm not freaking made of money and I need to sell my old textbooks to scrape up at least some of the money needed to buy next semester's". At least, that's what it said when I was doing it back in the day.
Not everyone can afford to keep thousands of dollars tied up in old college textbooks, particularly when a lot of the material really WON'T be needed in the future. Yes, I sold my freshman chemistry texts. No, I have never, ever wished I still had them to refresh my memory about chemistry.
Leaving aside the energy cost to actually build the MTU engines, to redesign the M1's transmission, to ship the new engines to the repair yards, to pull the old engines from the M1s and dispose of them, to install the new engines, to adjust our supply lines to insure that diesel fuel is always available (gas turbines are able to burn other fuels), and to adjust the M1's chassis for the extra weight of the engine.
Everyone seems to think that the object of the game here is to 1) save money or 2) be green. Well, I guess there are some elements of that, but the real issue is logistics. It's really, really hard to get fuel to some of the places where the services need to use it, so if they can remake their forces so as to use less, they can be more operationally effective.
Also, as a minor but related point: on the other side of the cost ledger, you've left out the costs involved in transporting said fuel to said locations. I've heard price quotes of something like a hundred bucks a gallon by the time you finally get it to where it needs to be. Further: you wouldn't necessarily want to retrofit the M1s. It would probably be more effective to build the next tank with energy efficiency in mind.
Slashdot Mirror
This is military jargon thing. ICBMs, no matter what the acronym stands for, are considered to be land-based missiles. SLBMs are the same thing only launched from submarines (although many early US and current rest-of-world SLBMs have considerably shorter ranges). MRBMs are land based and have ranges about to about 3000km. SRBMs are also land based and have ranges up to about 1000 km.
1) We don't even know if this was a sub launched missile. The surface fleet launches missiles all the freaking time, and you couldn't tell the difference from LA.
2) There are test ranges for all sorts of stuff off the coast of SoCal. Recall that the Navy owns several islands out there that they use for target practice.
I guarantee that this is a perfectly ordinary test shot that the Navy doesn't want to talk about.
We still have large and impressive operational SOSUS arrays all over the Pacific, and I guarantee you that the Chinese SSBNs are loud enough to be tracked with them. No way they snuck all the way across the Pacific undetected.
Actually, those kind of secrets are the hardest to keep secret, because sailors (being human) can't keep their mouths shut about that kind of thing. If we had accidentally launched an SLBM I can pretty much guarantee it would be all over the news.
I guarantee this is nothing more than a Navy test that they don't want to talk about, so they're denying.
at the extent to which people will spout off about topics they don't understand (I know, must be new here). For starters:
That ain't necessarily so. 35 miles offshore, depending on the bearing, could very well put it within 12 miles of Catalina or one of the other channel islands... which would be US territorial waters. Unless you have the actual lat & long of the launch and have plotted it on a chart, you're talking out your ass here.
Dude, now you're just making stuff up. You think it was the act of a foreign entity... based on what, exactly? Which is more likely - 1) there's a huge Tom Clancy novel playing out off the coast of Socal? or 2) the USN is doing a routine missile shot and doesn't want to talk about it? I know which one I'm voting for. Also, you get to destroy submarines that don't identify themselves? I wish I had known that when I was in the Navy, because we would have destroyed several! Unfortunately, most of them would have turned out to be our own. Submarines don't go around identifying themselves, and even if they don't, it doesn't mean you can shoot them. Seriously.
Sure, it's fun to come up with wild theories of international intrigue, but: Occam's Razor: it applies to everything.
First of all, the article doesn't give you a lat and long where this took place, and until you plot the launch position on a nautical chart, you just don't know whether or not it was in international waters. "35 miles out to sea, west of LA and north of Catalina" doesn't tell you anything.
Second of all, you need to read up on UNCLOS before you start talking about this stuff. There are many, many more zones than territorial waters and and EEZs. And although we haven't ratified UNCLOS, every administration since it was signed has treated it as customary international law.
1) No the US has not ratified UNCLOS, but we consider it "customary international law" and consider ourselves bound by it. I spent 20 years in the US Navy and I guarantee the USN thinks UCLOS is the law.
3) People are jumping to all sorts of conclusions about whether these are "international" or "archipelagic" waters with no more basis than "it was about 35 miles out to sea, west of LA and north of Catalina Island". This may or may not have been in international waters. Without getting an exact position and plotting it on a chart, you don't know.
But yeah, I agree with your conclusion anyway - no way this was a foreign missile. UNCLOS or no UNCLOS, we'd have sunk that bad boy.
Former naval officer here. I think it's dubious that the water in the vicinity of the Channel Islands constitutes "archipelagic waters" for purposes of the law - I think the islands are too far apart - but you'd need a JAG to help you with that question. However, each of the Channel Islands, as part of the US, are entitled to its own 12 mile band of "territorial waters", which are also sovereign US territory, so if the launch took place within that zone, yeah, you're talking act of war there.
Also: while the US hasn't formally ratified the Law of the Sea Treaty (aka the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea - UNCLOS), it has signed it and every administration since then (including Ronald Reagan) have treated it as "customary international law" and have considered us to be bound by it. I can promise you through many years of my own at-sea experience that the USN thinks the UNCLOS is the law.
Finally: you did hit upon something important in your first paragraph. The law notwithstanding, if someone else's submarine really did do this, sure, we'd sink it. The reason is not that it's legal but that we could get away with it - when a submarine sinks, it's really hard to prove what happened, and being as how this took place right off LA we could certainly prevent China (or whoever) from investigating.
Bottom line: no way this was a foreign sub. The whole Navy would be a general quarters so fast it would make your head spin. Mullen, Roughhead, and likely a host of other admirals would be fired. Obama would have flown home from overseas. Etc, etc. This was just the Navy doing the stuff they do, and not wanting to talk about it.
We have a pretty good grasp on the state of acoustic silencing of all the submarine forces in the world. China has approximately 3 SSBNs: 1 Xia class that is so loud you can hear it practically all the way across the ocean, and about 2 Jin class (a third may have been launched but may not be fully operational yet), which are considerably quieter but still (relatively) easy to detect. And less anyone think that maybe they developed a totally stealthy submarine so secretly that we didn't even find out until they launched a missile off California... the only thing I can say to that is, dude, you read too many Tom Clancy novels.
... is no proof against being just plain dumb. Look, we've tested a LOT of ICBMs, SLBMs, and the like over the years. This is not some radical new technology no one realizes we have. The Chinese already KNOW we can do this, and we know that they know. So what would be the point of that kind of a demonstration? I think it's far more likely that this was a routine, but secret, test that the Navy was doing for technical reasons, and they just don't want to talk about it.
... that we have thousands of warheads and the Chinese have like 20. Enough to ruin America's whole day, to be sure, but we have enough to put an end to the history of China. I seriously doubt the Chinese would be crazy enough to do something quite this destabilizing. If they were capable of that kind of craziness, they would have invaded Taiwan a long time ago.
I think there's about a 99.9999 percent chance that this is a US subsurface missile launch that the Navy doesn't want to talk about, so they're issuing non-denial denials that the press isn't reporting very clearly.
How useful are cameras, either? So you happen to catch a guy on film robbing your house. Even if you happen to be watching while it happens, the guy is going to be long gone before the cops get there, and what good is the video really going to do you? It's fine for evidence... IF the cops ever catch the guy who did it, which is highly unlikely. But I don't see how it deters a break-in in the first place.
It seems to me you'd be a lot better off to invest in more secure locks, alarm systems (more for scaring off the burglar than anything else), and similar stuff.
... not the same thing as breaking and entering. Breaking and entering is a more serious crime, and a reasonable person would probably rightly fear for their life if someone broke into their house while they were in it. And in that situation, is it realistic to be able to wait for the police to show up? I don't think so.
The actual problem with Heim theory is that it predicted the existence of a neutral equivalent to the electron (per the theory, it should be commonly observed in particle interactions). The fact that such a particle has never been seen is considered a big strike against Heim.
lol, been there...
TFA may have been about both, but this particular slashdot thread is about smartphone vs. desktop:
I'm not responding to the article, I'm responding to this thread. The initial poster made the claim that desktop systems will become marginal, which MBGMorden took issue with. You followed up with an argument about thin vs. fat clients, which is sort of a non-sequitur in the context of this thread. I was trying to point that out, and get back to the original topic of the thread.
For Apple's devices, that subsidy is coming from AT&T, and its only purpose is to tie you to AT&T for a minimum contract term. The restriction on what you can INSTALL comes (almost) entirely from Apple, and has nothing to do with the subsidy. These aren't "network" features we're talking about here.As an analogy, what if you bought a Dell computer from, say, Comcast, at a discount in exchange for getting internet service from them... and then Dell said "here's the list of what you're allowed to install on it". What would that have to do with your subsidy? Dell's not even a party to the agreement - they're just providing the hardware.
It's PC vs. thin client. For serious work a phone is never going to replace a desktop, no matter what operating system either one of them uses. It's too hard to 1) get data into it (tiny keyboard) and 2) work with various windows, documents, etc (tiny screen). The only use cases where a phone would work for this kind of thing are those where the need for mobility trumps the need to easily do 1) and 2), as pointed out by GP. Tablets are slightly better in that they at least solve the screen problem, but you still need a keyboard. And once you've added a keyboard to the thing, how is it different from a desktop form factor?
Well when I'm in a group, I usually see one iPhone (which is mine, if that matters), 3 or 4 Androids, and a bunch of "dumb" phones. And my anecdote can beat up your anecdote.
Or maybe we could all agree that anecdotes != data.
Sure, there's lots of room for Android to grow, but consider: there's still, even after all this time, a fair number of ATMs using OS/2, iOS isn't about to roll over and die in the world of handheld/tablet devices (and of course there are lots of others there too - WebOS, Symbian, etc), there are plenty of MS Windows devices of various flavors... it's quite unlikely that any one technology is going to take over any platform to the extent Windows did in the PC world, and even there, MS's grip is slipping somewhat.
The word you're looking for is "algorithm". A "logarithm" is a number that you get by taking the exponent of a number from a certain base. For example the "common" (base 10) logarithm of 1000 is 3. What your machine is doing has nothing to do with this.
Which am I more excited by? Neither. A new office suite? That's OpenOffice.org's deal. What is Mozilla going to be able to do that those guys can't?
So yeah, I'm onboard with the "stick with what you're good at" theory. Or at least if you want to do something different, do something that some other team hasn't been working on for all eternity.
Dude, come on. What that actually says is "I'm not freaking made of money and I need to sell my old textbooks to scrape up at least some of the money needed to buy next semester's". At least, that's what it said when I was doing it back in the day.
Not everyone can afford to keep thousands of dollars tied up in old college textbooks, particularly when a lot of the material really WON'T be needed in the future. Yes, I sold my freshman chemistry texts. No, I have never, ever wished I still had them to refresh my memory about chemistry.
Everyone seems to think that the object of the game here is to 1) save money or 2) be green. Well, I guess there are some elements of that, but the real issue is logistics. It's really, really hard to get fuel to some of the places where the services need to use it, so if they can remake their forces so as to use less, they can be more operationally effective.
Also, as a minor but related point: on the other side of the cost ledger, you've left out the costs involved in transporting said fuel to said locations. I've heard price quotes of something like a hundred bucks a gallon by the time you finally get it to where it needs to be. Further: you wouldn't necessarily want to retrofit the M1s. It would probably be more effective to build the next tank with energy efficiency in mind.