I dunno about you over in LA, but around here, Law Enforcement starts at just a smidge over $24k/year, if you're lucky enough to land a spot with the county. If you have to work as a city cop, you're royally fucked. $20k/yr. You make more than 20k/yr at Taco Bell around here.
Seriously. And if those bastards had just paid the damned tax on the tea, it wouldn't have been a big deal, and we wouldn't be IN this mess today. A government takes taxes to run, and surely those in power over us wouldn't abuse that power. It's just taxation.
Please remember my point - At least by a non-first world nation.
The United States counts as a first world nation. Iran might not be able to put forth the effort into tracking all these down.
Remember, it's not just the equipment, it's also the manpower to do the analysis.
You'd need to have radar systems to find the objects, followed up by telescopes to confirm the profile of the detected targets. And if you're going as low as a screwdriver, there's an awful lot of targets.
Fair enough. But the technology we're talking about? It debuted in the US in 1965. More than forty years ago. Does Iran have the national R&D base to develop that sort of thing? Probably not. But (to cite the near-cliche), Russia will sell just about anything to anyone with enough cash, including blueprints, plans, and technology. China probably isn't that far behind technologically, honestly. Radar and EW systems are certainly the US's strong point, but it would be unwise to assume that technology that's 40+ years old is unattainable by other nations.
Also, screwdrivers tend to not enter stable orbits; they tend to have a decaying orbit. Meaningful objects tend to have a couple preset orbit profiles. It's really mostly a computing problem.
You'd think that, yes, but the US (at least) operates what're called the AN/FPS-85 Spacetrack Radars. Here where I live, at Eglin AFB, it's run by the 20th Space Control Squadron, a part of the US Air Force. They're phased-array radars, built into an entire receiver building at least 140 feet high. It's really impressive to see. Anyway, point is, they track everything in space screwdriver-sized or bigger in its view. Ever seen our Moon on radar? These guys do regularly; that's how massive the radar is.
And it was built in 1969. Now, granted, it's gotten plenty of upgrades since then, but it isn't exactly new technology, and it'd be unwise to assume that nobody else has got one.
As a libertarian (little L) I feel obligated to respond.
Any true libratarian will look at this, as was suggested above, and say, 'Oh. They own the rights, ergo, they can do whatever they want with it, since changing the toys that I have memories associated with isn't really HURTING me."
Yes, but purely from a government-legislation standpoint. (and really particularly from a Federal government standpoint.) I don't think the jerks who are making what will probably be a lousy movie should be prosecuted. I don't think there should be Federal standards regulating movie quality, substance, censorship, etc.
Doesn't mean I won't hate the movie, or complain about it, or refuse to go see it. It just means I think the company ought to have the legal right to make a lousy movie.
And, as so many people have pointed out, GI Joe has been multinational/multicultural/non-real-nation-fighti ng for YEARS.
Yes, the article sucks. And it's spelled "libertarian". We're not advocates of Libratay.;)
Yes, before he was corrupted and made into the lieutenant of Morgoth, the great evil "god" - who, himself was not created evil; neither was he named Morgoth in the beginning. In the beginning, when Eru (more commonly known as Ilúvatar) sang the world into creation, Morgoth was originally created as a good being too, and was named Melkor. Sauron was a lesser spirit, also created at the beginning of the world. During the Singing, however, Melkor became jealous and selfish, and tried to bend Ilúvatar's song to his own will - to his own shame and failure. Later, Melkor would attempt to usurp the powers of the Universe, and gain the power to control other beings, and to call into being his own twisted creations.
Morgoth was banished to the Halls of Mandos for three ages. After serving his sentence, he continued to fuck with the world, and recruited Sauron as his lieutenant. Morgoth was eventually utterly vanquished at the end of the First Age, and sent into the void, but his influence remained - as did Sauron.
Sauron ruled the forces of evil in the Second Age, and seduced the greatest race of Men, the Númenoreans, into rebelling against the Valar (minor deities, of whom Melkor/Morgoth was one). In retaliation, Ilúvatar destroyed their lands and their people. The survivors were the Dúnedain, who would eventually found the Royal House of Gondor. Their descendants were the Men of the West. Sauron escaped, and did not reappear until 1,000 years later, at the beginning of the Third Age.
Then you get the Rings of Power, and the battle, with the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, as featured in the introduction to the movies.
It's Apple's fault that (a) You can't replace the battery easily by yourself and (b) Batteries die? Apple is responsible for this guy's lack of research on a significant investment? And Apple is responsible for the fact that batteries cost money?
Ignoring, of course, the entire PAGES that Apple has devoted to how their batteries work, and how long users should expect them to last.
If you're going to spend hundreds of dollars on something - particularly a new technological invention - common sense dictates that at least a bit of cursory research is in order, especially in this day and age where information is plentiful.
This guy doesn't have a shot in hell of winning, and it makes me sad that anyone would say otherwise.
I hate to do this, because it takes up a lot of my time arguing politics on the internet, and, well, you know what they say about arguing on the Internets... But here we go.
Let's look at the Fox News article, your first source. It's talking about two artillery shells that were found as part of an IED. Scroll about halfway down.
Kimmitt said the shell belonged to a class of ordnance that Saddam's government said was destroyed before the 1991 Gulf war. Experts believe both the sarin and mustard gas weapons date back to that time.
"It was a weapon that we believe was stocked from the ex-regime time and it had been thought to be an ordinary artillery shell set up to explode like an ordinary IED and basically from the detection of that and when it exploded, it indicated that it actually had some sarin in it," Kimmitt said.
So what we're looking at is actually an old, unused artillery shell from the Iraq-Iran war back in the '70s and '80s. That they lost.
The article also included information about some mustard gas that was discovered about two weeks before the writing of this article.
Tests conducted by the Iraqi Survey Group (search) -- a U.S. organization searching for weapons of mass destruction -- and others concluded the mustard gas was "stored improperly," which made the gas "ineffective."
So essentially what we're looking at are small abouts of improperly stored and/or misplaced chemical weapons from 25-30 years ago. Hardly the imminent threat we were "warned" about. This isn't evidence of a threat; this is evidence of gross incompetence by the former Iraqi regime Thing is, we were wrong about the WMDs. The question is, were we wrong on purpose? Or wrong by our -own- sheer incompetence?
--
Let's have a look at the second source. We have an ABC article regarding a second suspected mobile weapons laboratory, discovered in or around Mosul. The existence of these mobile weapons labs was publicly introduced by Colin Powell in his speech to the UN in February of '03.
You, uh. You need to review your source material, because, well, you're flat out wrong. I wouldn't mind reading your post again with citations instead of the version of events you keep in your head to protect you from the scary liberals.
You could always, y'know, not visit Politics thread. It's not like you clicked on the "Bush Commutes Libby's Sentence" headline and went, "OH MY GOD POLITICS!! I had NO WARNING!" Seriously, what were you expecting? Discourses on the implementation of preemptive scheduling in the 2.6 kernel?
I happen to be a meteorology student, although that doesn't really qualify me to use Google any more than you.
While I would like to have predictions as accurate as possible, I think reality may trump accurate predictions, especially in high population areas.
After going thru the nightmare of evacuating the Houston metro area for hurricane Rita, a lot of people around here say they are never going to evacuate again. More accuracy isn't going to change their minds. Keep in mind these people, at the time, thought they were running from a cat 5 storm.
I live in Florida, by the coast. Lots of people complained about evacuating for Hurricane Opal, back in '95. "We'll never evacuate again!!!" Heard it. The smart people will in fact evacuate - just, earlier.
The local bureaucracy has come up with a new evacuation plan since then. I suppose it will be better than nothing, which is pretty much what we had for Rita. However, I predict that there will be little change in people's behavior here, or in other parts of the country.
The hard core hurricane party people and the curmudgeons will stay. The faint of heart will leave early. The average Joe will leave when told by the bureaucracy. The fools will wait until its to late and decide to stand out in the wind and rain taking video with their cell phone.
Yeah, but that's how it is, anyway.
The following statements have me a little puzzled:
One of his main concerns has been the imminent demise of a key weather satellite called QuikScat, launched in 1999 and long past its designed lifetime.
'Imminent demise' from what? Out of cooling fluids for sensors? Out of fuel for stabilizers? Last gyro outputting flakey data? Imminent implies to me that there is a know issue, but oddly no such issue is mentioned.
In fact, the primary transmitter failed. It's operating five years past its scheduled mission dates. (wikipedia: quikSCAT, from an article in the San Francisco newspaper) There are, I'm sure, other documented failures in this satellite, but it took more than the first Google link to find.
No replacement currently is in development and the loss of QuikScat could diminish the accuracy of some hurricane forecasts by up to 16 percent, Proenza and other experts have said.
Three things stand out here: the word 'could', the word 'some' and the phrase 'up to'. 'Could diminish' is not the same as will diminish. 'Some hurricane forecasts' implies that not all forecasts use the data this satellite produces or that this satellite can't be used for all conditions. Finally, the last time I checked a change of 'up to' can mean no change at all.
The forecasting models are based on very large, computer-intensive algorithms that depend on lots of different data sources. Until they're reworked to leave out QuikSCAT data, it'll be tough to know exactly how much less accurate they'll be. But it is a sure and certain fact that there is not another satellite as suited for this task as QuikSCAT. There are other satellites that do the same sort of work, but they're lower resolution and not well suited for tropical systems analysis. All this adds up to a definitive, quantifiable loss in forecast capability. Precisely how much is tough to tell because of the nature of forecasting - you don't know your forecast is wrong until after you've been wrong. It'd probably take a full hurricane season of forecasting without QuikSCAT, and some months of analysis to figure -exactly- what percentage. But there will be loss of accuracy, and it will be significant.
I wonder where all these wishy washy, CYA, words come from: 'the experts' or the author of this story. If they are from 'the experts' It would make me wonder about what's really going on here. If they come from the author, then it's just another example of a reporter writing about som
You, uh, realize, of course, that this guy has only been head of the NHC for not-quite-a-year? And that his previous job was as a regional supervisor for weather offices? It's not like any of this was his job back then.
Slashdot Mirror
As written in the summary above it is about the performers/models or whatever title they go by.
I can believe this, but then where did all the adults go?You have to click through a couple menus so that they send your problem to the right place. Here, try this link: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=gtag_headers&ctx=gtag_headers&bug_topic=Incoming+Encoding+Garbled&submit=Click+here+to+report+your+issue.
I, uh. I really don't care, not for 20MBit up AND down for what it costs to have 12MBit down / 1Mbit up.
I dunno about you over in LA, but around here, Law Enforcement starts at just a smidge over $24k/year, if you're lucky enough to land a spot with the county. If you have to work as a city cop, you're royally fucked. $20k/yr. You make more than 20k/yr at Taco Bell around here.
Seriously. And if those bastards had just paid the damned tax on the tea, it wouldn't have been a big deal, and we wouldn't be IN this mess today. A government takes taxes to run, and surely those in power over us wouldn't abuse that power. It's just taxation.
Very true.
Nice sig, by the by.
Please remember my point - At least by a non-first world nation.
The United States counts as a first world nation. Iran might not be able to put forth the effort into tracking all these down.
Remember, it's not just the equipment, it's also the manpower to do the analysis.
You'd need to have radar systems to find the objects, followed up by telescopes to confirm the profile of the detected targets. And if you're going as low as a screwdriver, there's an awful lot of targets.
Fair enough. But the technology we're talking about? It debuted in the US in 1965. More than forty years ago. Does Iran have the national R&D base to develop that sort of thing? Probably not. But (to cite the near-cliche), Russia will sell just about anything to anyone with enough cash, including blueprints, plans, and technology. China probably isn't that far behind technologically, honestly. Radar and EW systems are certainly the US's strong point, but it would be unwise to assume that technology that's 40+ years old is unattainable by other nations.
Also, screwdrivers tend to not enter stable orbits; they tend to have a decaying orbit. Meaningful objects tend to have a couple preset orbit profiles. It's really mostly a computing problem.
Negative, sir.
:)
:D
DoubleSpace came with DOS 6, and then DriveSpace replaced it in MS-DOS 6.22.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoubleSpace
You're welcome.
-ponder- Those have got to be some huge tubes, and some major cooling facilities.
You'd think that, yes, but the US (at least) operates what're called the AN/FPS-85 Spacetrack Radars. Here where I live, at Eglin AFB, it's run by the 20th Space Control Squadron, a part of the US Air Force. They're phased-array radars, built into an entire receiver building at least 140 feet high. It's really impressive to see. Anyway, point is, they track everything in space screwdriver-sized or bigger in its view. Ever seen our Moon on radar? These guys do regularly; that's how massive the radar is.
:)
And it was built in 1969. Now, granted, it's gotten plenty of upgrades since then, but it isn't exactly new technology, and it'd be unwise to assume that nobody else has got one.
So in short, no, it'd get noticed.
(sources:
((http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/an-fps-85.htm
((http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20th_Space_Control_Squadron
((http://thegiantshinywhitebuildingthirtymilesfrommyhouse.com
)
For the fifteenth time: SRAM! RTFA.
:\
Oh, right; Slashdot.
He'll get over it.
As a libertarian (little L) I feel obligated to respond.
i ng for YEARS.
;)
Any true libratarian will look at this, as was suggested above, and say, 'Oh. They own the rights, ergo, they can do whatever they want with it, since changing the toys that I have memories associated with isn't really HURTING me."
Yes, but purely from a government-legislation standpoint. (and really particularly from a Federal government standpoint.) I don't think the jerks who are making what will probably be a lousy movie should be prosecuted. I don't think there should be Federal standards regulating movie quality, substance, censorship, etc.
Doesn't mean I won't hate the movie, or complain about it, or refuse to go see it. It just means I think the company ought to have the legal right to make a lousy movie.
And, as so many people have pointed out, GI Joe has been multinational/multicultural/non-real-nation-fight
Yes, the article sucks. And it's spelled "libertarian". We're not advocates of Libratay.
Yes, before he was corrupted and made into the lieutenant of Morgoth, the great evil "god" - who, himself was not created evil; neither was he named Morgoth in the beginning. In the beginning, when Eru (more commonly known as Ilúvatar) sang the world into creation, Morgoth was originally created as a good being too, and was named Melkor. Sauron was a lesser spirit, also created at the beginning of the world. During the Singing, however, Melkor became jealous and selfish, and tried to bend Ilúvatar's song to his own will - to his own shame and failure. Later, Melkor would attempt to usurp the powers of the Universe, and gain the power to control other beings, and to call into being his own twisted creations.
Morgoth was banished to the Halls of Mandos for three ages. After serving his sentence, he continued to fuck with the world, and recruited Sauron as his lieutenant. Morgoth was eventually utterly vanquished at the end of the First Age, and sent into the void, but his influence remained - as did Sauron.
Sauron ruled the forces of evil in the Second Age, and seduced the greatest race of Men, the Númenoreans, into rebelling against the Valar (minor deities, of whom Melkor/Morgoth was one). In retaliation, Ilúvatar destroyed their lands and their people. The survivors were the Dúnedain, who would eventually found the Royal House of Gondor. Their descendants were the Men of the West. Sauron escaped, and did not reappear until 1,000 years later, at the beginning of the Third Age.
Then you get the Rings of Power, and the battle, with the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, as featured in the introduction to the movies.
And now you know.
(yes, I have a girlfriend. She hates that book.)
W...waaait. Are you seriously defending this guy?
It's Apple's fault that (a) You can't replace the battery easily by yourself and (b) Batteries die? Apple is responsible for this guy's lack of research on a significant investment? And Apple is responsible for the fact that batteries cost money?
Ignoring, of course, the entire PAGES that Apple has devoted to how their batteries work, and how long users should expect them to last.
If you're going to spend hundreds of dollars on something - particularly a new technological invention - common sense dictates that at least a bit of cursory research is in order, especially in this day and age where information is plentiful.
This guy doesn't have a shot in hell of winning, and it makes me sad that anyone would say otherwise.
Where exactly did you see the word "patent" in her biography? Me either.
Let's look at the Fox News article, your first source. It's talking about two artillery shells that were found as part of an IED. Scroll about halfway down.
Kimmitt said the shell belonged to a class of ordnance that Saddam's government said was destroyed before the 1991 Gulf war. Experts believe both the sarin and mustard gas weapons date back to that time.
So what we're looking at is actually an old, unused artillery shell from the Iraq-Iran war back in the '70s and '80s. That they lost.
The article also included information about some mustard gas that was discovered about two weeks before the writing of this article.
So essentially what we're looking at are small abouts of improperly stored and/or misplaced chemical weapons from 25-30 years ago. Hardly the imminent threat we were "warned" about. This isn't evidence of a threat; this is evidence of gross incompetence by the former Iraqi regime Thing is, we were wrong about the WMDs. The question is, were we wrong on purpose? Or wrong by our -own- sheer incompetence?
--
Let's have a look at the second source. We have an ABC article regarding a second suspected mobile weapons laboratory, discovered in or around Mosul. The existence of these mobile weapons labs was publicly introduced by Colin Powell in his speech to the UN in February of '03.
Funny thing about that. Turns out they weren't really weapons trailers. They were actually just labs making hydrogen for weather balloons.
Even better than that... We knew that before we went in.
Everyone knew. All the way up to the Director of the CIA and higher.
At best we were horribly, incompetently wrong. At best.
You, uh. You need to review your source material, because, well, you're flat out wrong. I wouldn't mind reading your post again with citations instead of the version of events you keep in your head to protect you from the scary liberals.
You could always, y'know, not visit Politics thread. It's not like you clicked on the "Bush Commutes Libby's Sentence" headline and went, "OH MY GOD POLITICS!! I had NO WARNING!" Seriously, what were you expecting? Discourses on the implementation of preemptive scheduling in the 2.6 kernel?
Right after the Marketing Department of the Sirius Robotics Corporation.
Who didn't see this coming; really?
How in the heck is this off topic? It's true...
While I would like to have predictions as accurate as possible, I think reality may trump accurate predictions, especially in high population areas.
After going thru the nightmare of evacuating the Houston metro area for hurricane Rita, a lot of people around here say they are never going to evacuate again. More accuracy isn't going to change their minds. Keep in mind these people, at the time, thought they were running from a cat 5 storm.
I live in Florida, by the coast. Lots of people complained about evacuating for Hurricane Opal, back in '95. "We'll never evacuate again!!!" Heard it. The smart people will in fact evacuate - just, earlier.
The local bureaucracy has come up with a new evacuation plan since then. I suppose it will be better than nothing, which is pretty much what we had for Rita. However, I predict that there will be little change in people's behavior here, or in other parts of the country.
The hard core hurricane party people and the curmudgeons will stay. The faint of heart will leave early. The average Joe will leave when told by the bureaucracy. The fools will wait until its to late and decide to stand out in the wind and rain taking video with their cell phone.
Yeah, but that's how it is, anyway.
The following statements have me a little puzzled:
'Imminent demise' from what? Out of cooling fluids for sensors? Out of fuel for stabilizers? Last gyro outputting flakey data? Imminent implies to me that there is a know issue, but oddly no such issue is mentioned.
In fact, the primary transmitter failed. It's operating five years past its scheduled mission dates. (wikipedia: quikSCAT, from an article in the San Francisco newspaper) There are, I'm sure, other documented failures in this satellite, but it took more than the first Google link to find.
Three things stand out here: the word 'could', the word 'some' and the phrase 'up to'. 'Could diminish' is not the same as will diminish. 'Some hurricane forecasts' implies that not all forecasts use the data this satellite produces or that this satellite can't be used for all conditions. Finally, the last time I checked a change of 'up to' can mean no change at all.
The forecasting models are based on very large, computer-intensive algorithms that depend on lots of different data sources. Until they're reworked to leave out QuikSCAT data, it'll be tough to know exactly how much less accurate they'll be. But it is a sure and certain fact that there is not another satellite as suited for this task as QuikSCAT. There are other satellites that do the same sort of work, but they're lower resolution and not well suited for tropical systems analysis. All this adds up to a definitive, quantifiable loss in forecast capability. Precisely how much is tough to tell because of the nature of forecasting - you don't know your forecast is wrong until after you've been wrong. It'd probably take a full hurricane season of forecasting without QuikSCAT, and some months of analysis to figure -exactly- what percentage. But there will be loss of accuracy, and it will be significant.
I wonder where all these wishy washy, CYA, words come from: 'the experts' or the author of this story. If they are from 'the experts' It would make me wonder about what's really going on here. If they come from the author, then it's just another example of a reporter writing about som
Check out this guy's answer to your question.
And you can't be SERIOUS about waiting for the satellite to fail. Maybe we could start designing one, oh, I don't know, BEFORE it fails?
You, uh, realize, of course, that this guy has only been head of the NHC for not-quite-a-year? And that his previous job was as a regional supervisor for weather offices? It's not like any of this was his job back then.
-met student