You're too busy planning how to oppress the religious freedoms of other people. Nice to see you have your priorities straight.
Europe called, it says you can keep the mormons. Oh and we're trying to find a way to shuffle off the whole catholic business as well, so if you people are still running that two for one special on that "give me your weak etc" deal, we're in business.
the same human values that the author is talking about eliminating in such a positive light.
The author is talking about the tired and tedious theories of gnosticism, with a fresh coat of paint, which have been rolling around every once in a while for the last few centuries. See this is what happens when you don't oppress the shit out of religious nutjobs. Sigh.
it's definitely the first article in Discover to actually bring tears to my eyes.
Oh for fucks sake. If you want a picture of a region where nature has overtaken humanity, look at the Cambodian jungles. The NK DMZ isn't the only one, nor even the best example. As to why it brings a tear to your eyes, look up gnosticism. See, this is why we booted out religious nutjobs from Europe long ago. Little did we know the Indians wouldn't eat them, in an ironic turn of events.
The Kardashev Scale was released in 1964, when conservationism was a misspelling of conservatism (no political comment here, just a typo). Things have changed a lot since then, with some of the most advanced societies on earth (European) actually using less energy than 10 years ago. And contrary to the fevered wet dreams of every ethnic mionority, the population of the old world is growing, and not via immigration, either. So in the long run, you're fulla shit.:D
I know this is just anecdotal, but maths professors and those who are doing pure maths tend to be some of the most well rounded and happy people I know. Its actually struck me before, since I never really applied myself to in depth mathematics, but I always noticed how those guys seem to be fairly relaxed about life.
In summary, is Ireland a conservative, moralistic hellhole? Yes, but it's getting better. We no longer export pregnant teens and force them to surrender their children for adoption!
I think you're understating the generational gap there. The older generation, the ones currently in political power, have a great deal in common with the moralism of the 50s in Ireland, since thats when they grew up. The current generation have very little in common with that era. Give it 30 years or so.
The USA was taken by force from the red indians. If the UK gives NI back to the Irish, then surely we should give the USA back to the red indians, Australia back to the Aborigines, New Zealand back to the Kiwis etc.etc.etc.
And your weak link is, there are fuck all English people living in the north. There are unionists (mostly scots descent protestants), and republicans. Currently the unionists outnumber the republicans by a small minority, but the balance is shifting over time. I'd say within another 40 or 50 years, the north will rejoin the south again. Not saying its a good or bad thing, but it seems inevitable, really.
No, we just thought they were restricted to America.
Actually even in Ireland, the situation is changing extremely rapidly. What the GP was referring to was the "troubles" in the north, which had almost nothing to do with religion - Catholic / Protestant was just a convenient title for the opposing camps. Republican / unionist would be better. All that is besides the point, however.
The gap between younger and older generations in Ireland is staggering. We basically went from ultra conservative, churchgoing folks to hedonisitic, hip, and tech-savvy in about thirty years. The older generation is still in political power however, which is why you see things like this.IE decision cropping up from time to time. Give it another thirty years and you won't be able to tell an urbanite from Dublin or Galway from someone from New York or London, apart from the accents. Not saying its a good thing or a bad thing, but its how I see it going.
Get a clue. It's done all the time, and it's absolutely necessary.
Only for your dollar values. Just so you know, if your dollar values get in the way of my human life, you're coming out second best, cowboy. I don't think you'll like that too much.
A strictly enforced speed limit of 25mph or lower everywhere would save thousands of lives a year. Why don't we do it?
What does one have to do with the other? Whiskey, tango, fuckin foxtrot.
At this point, the ship(s) is certainly worth more than a human life, because losing it represents a substantial risk to a greater number of human lives
And who do you think is going to invade you? Someone that enjoys being nuked? Besides, thats not what you said. You were talking about dollar values versus human life. Fuck that. Get help.
Sigh. Thats not replacing a life, thats creating a new one. It does not replace all of the unique experiences and opinions that make everybody different, which are lost forever when a person dies. And you are sadly incorrect in saying that the greater mass of
humanity doesn't care about your life. Thats why the "greater mass" created laws to protect you, and a police force to enforce those laws if you are murdered. Being flippant about it doesn't make you right.
You wouldn't say that a single life was more valuable than the U.S.S. Eisenhower (which costs billions of dollars).
So, you're telling me that this dredged up piece of various ores, that even if reduced to a tangle of scrap metal, could be returned to its orginal perfection, worth billions of pieces of paper that are only worth anything because the government says so, and can print more of them on whim, is worth more than a human life? I'm not going to lecture you on the value of human life, but you are seriously fucked up. Seriously. Get help.
Excellent, I must say I am delighted to have encountered a fellow military theoretician!
There is nothing inherent to Space that makes for faster transport to cover "immense distances in a short time". You might be tempted to think that the vacuum is such a feature.
Vacuum is such a feature. Thats why the next generation of civilian transport is able to tout "an hour from London to New York", with White Knight style aircraft. By punching above the atmosphere you can go anywhere on earth in small percentages of the current time. Whats more, when you are up there, fuel requirements to stay up there are negligible.
Further compounding this is the predictability, sensitivity and general terrestrial vulnerability of launches.
Only for the second nation to try it.
Additionaly LEO transportation requires significant navigation requirements - something the US dominates at already. The US could elimiante most LEO travel right now by encoding the existing network, and/or jamming certain frequencies.
I don't understand where you get this assumption at all, unless you are talking about blanket-blocking all communications everywhere. Or how did the first LEO satellites get up there?
his document coveres protecting action in space, it does not cover ground bombardment. That said if such a scenario as you describe were possible in the near future it would only butress the document's conclusion of a need to make orbital attacks on space assets.
You could equally argue that all current US military assets are defensive in nature. Of course the best defence is...
It would require hundreds of thousands of satellites in order to provide full planetary field of fire all the time.
Ah, here you are thinking about spy satellite technology, where they are only really viable when looking straight down. A laser network like we are discussing can engage to the diagonal, albeit with slightly reduced effectiveness for every degree from the vertical (for terrestrial targets). High altitude targets would see less reduction in efficiency, and orbital targets none. It would hardly require many more satellites than make up the current GPS network. Also I never claimed it could hit submarines; however should those submarines attmept to engage their targets, the missiles could be shot down within seconds of clearing the water. Not that a submarine fleet would last long in the absence of a support surface fleet.
Such an act would indeed be an act of war, but a relatively bloodless one, which would almost certainly not lead to open aggression on the owner of a satellite defence network. As for ASAT capability, well, you have a network of satellites able to turn on a dime, and no recoil for their shots either. Also the first group to attempt this would lose all of their communications satellites in short order.
We already have the ability to shoot down virtually any orbitally bound rocket we want to, we simply choose not to. We don't need a ring of satellites or space policy to do this. Just well placed naval and air assets.
I have yet to see a single shred of evidence for this assertion.
Second you alledge that the document leads to this system simply because it states in plain english the intent of all military planning and action: the ability to deny movement and action to an enemy.
Given the current US political climate, the term "enemy" is a continually shifting one. Thats the main concern, but not the only one.
The ability to take an airplane out from orbit would require enourmous amounts of power. Especially if it is in the clouds or even *gasp* below them. Even Solar Power Satellites will not do it.
I do believe we were discussing nuclear fuel sources in this story?
They need an titanic amount of mass thrown into orbit, are very very large, and not very mobile.
Militant Muslims have been telling you that for years:-)
Not bad, not bad. I'd be conflicted on this one; it has without a doubt the zing and zest of a good troll, and yet the substance is just... lacking. Fine aroma but the aftertaste is flat. I'd give this a two on the trollometer.
Yes it is. People are made examples of with every traffic ticket. Sometimes, if a specific crime is on the rise, larger punishments than normal may arise.
No, its not. The root of all law is revenge. The law exists in order to ensure that people don't seek revenge on each other. If punishment excessive to the crime is doled out, sympathy begins to lie with the criminal, something that judges and law enforcers avoid, for obvious reasons. A wikipedia link tangential to the point doesn't make your point.
The ability described is fundamentally no different than the same capability we have for air, land, and sea.
Wrong-o, baby. The grandparent is correct in most of his reasoning; the only problem is that he doesn't go far enough. Space is fundamentally different from land, sea and air in that it takes only a short time to cover immense distances. So a network of laser defence satellites has three distinct advantages for the nation that first completes it.
1. It provides interdiction ability for missiles, from ICBMs to hacked-together Palestinian tin cans, and for aircraft. This allows the ability to destroy any and all airborne targets with relative impunity (missiles and airplanes generally have a distinct heat signature). This is an overwhelming military advantage, and allows full nuclear assault on the nation of choice, with little to no chance of retaliation. The only thing stopping the US from establishing a global military empire in the true sense would be upstanding moral rectitude.
2. It provides a "godzilla" footprint for elimination of ground and sea-surface targets. Kiss your navy goodbye, as well as your silos, bases, open land armies, and leaders, without all the muss and fuss of civilian casualties and nuclear fallout. This is a force multiplier, since it can be used to strike anywhere on earth in a very short timespan.
3. And this is the part that scares the crap out of me, the first nation to control such a network would have the ability to easily deny the creation of a similar network to any other nation, by simply shooting down the defenceless rockets when they are on the way up to deploy the satellites. So first in can lock the door behind them. This is another fundamental difference between space warfare and land, air or sea warfare. There's nowhere to hide. Also as part of this, the near limitless resources of space would then be the sole dominion of that nation that establishes the network first. The thousand year Reich could never dream of such power.
And before our more military minded American cousins start crowing about the potential of Earth truly becoming "one nation under god", you can rest assured that if this were to come to pass, so would King George I, and his ruling corporate class. You can say what you like about rebellion and whatnot, but the simple fact remains that US troops are currently getting a vast amount of experience in asymmetrical warfare in Iraq. Also, so are National Guard Units.
And lower wages for us. So we're still transferring our wealth to other nations. We get nothing out of this.
Immigrant workers depress local wages, not outsourcing. And as for what you get out of this, lets start with the computer you are typing on. Or did you whittle it yourself out of mom's apple tree?
Good. We'll make our own products and sell to ourselves. What do we lose?
As profound economic theories go, Adam Smith's zombified corpse has risen from the tomb and is hunting your ass. If you seal up America economically (not possible in any case with a vast, porous border like that), the US stagnates. If you want the fastest route to becoming a third world country, congratulations, you've found it!
China has a middle class but so what?... No country that we've ever outsourced to has gotten better - a few people over there got rich, but Singapore still has factories falling apart and killing people, and China still has no democracy.
No China doesn't have a middle class. It has the nascent beginnings of one. When it has a fully fledged middle class, you won't be long seeing democracy rearing. And India is at least one example of a country that has benefitted immensely from globalism, leaving it a better place.
Reality: China does not need us to succeed. If we fall apart and die today, they can just steal all our IP and go their own merry way. They've got the factories to support themselves, no thanks to globalism.
Maybe in your universe. They haven't got the knowledge or experience to match the technology of the west, and aren't going to have it until they become a meritocracy.
Not annihilated. Subjugated. They start jerking our strings and making us dance for them.
Okay this is just thinly veiled nationalistic racism here. Kindly refrain from conversing with me ever again.
Slashdot Mirror
You're too busy planning how to oppress the religious freedoms of other people. Nice to see you have your priorities straight.
Europe called, it says you can keep the mormons. Oh and we're trying to find a way to shuffle off the whole catholic business as well, so if you people are still running that two for one special on that "give me your weak etc" deal, we're in business.
Hey, you got first post then, too. Whats that, like a frupe or something?
Google it, sunshine.
the same human values that the author is talking about eliminating in such a positive light.
The author is talking about the tired and tedious theories of gnosticism, with a fresh coat of paint, which have been rolling around every once in a while for the last few centuries. See this is what happens when you don't oppress the shit out of religious nutjobs. Sigh.
it's definitely the first article in Discover to actually bring tears to my eyes.
Oh for fucks sake. If you want a picture of a region where nature has overtaken humanity, look at the Cambodian jungles. The NK DMZ isn't the only one, nor even the best example. As to why it brings a tear to your eyes, look up gnosticism. See, this is why we booted out religious nutjobs from Europe long ago. Little did we know the Indians wouldn't eat them, in an ironic turn of events.
I think some people put up an anti-mankind mindset to make themselves feel like they're hip and intellectual
Its just tired old gnosticism dressed up in an increasingly shabby new costume. People have been spouting the same shit for hundreds of years.
The Kardashev Scale was released in 1964, when conservationism was a misspelling of conservatism (no political comment here, just a typo). Things have changed a lot since then, with some of the most advanced societies on earth (European) actually using less energy than 10 years ago. And contrary to the fevered wet dreams of every ethnic mionority, the population of the old world is growing, and not via immigration, either. So in the long run, you're fulla shit. :D
I know this is just anecdotal, but maths professors and those who are doing pure maths tend to be some of the most well rounded and happy people I know. Its actually struck me before, since I never really applied myself to in depth mathematics, but I always noticed how those guys seem to be fairly relaxed about life.
Yup, there it was, donging away. Sigh.
I'll check that now in 20 minutes. I just don't recall seeing it in years.
The state-owned TV still carries the Angelus call to prayer at 6PM every night.
Eh? No it doesn't.
nice climate (it was sunny the entire time)
Come back soon and please please bring your weather with you!
In summary, is Ireland a conservative, moralistic hellhole? Yes, but it's getting better. We no longer export pregnant teens and force them to surrender their children for adoption!
I think you're understating the generational gap there. The older generation, the ones currently in political power, have a great deal in common with the moralism of the 50s in Ireland, since thats when they grew up. The current generation have very little in common with that era. Give it 30 years or so.
Christianity made it's way to Ireland on it's own, and for some strange reason really found a home there.
:D
Err, when you look at what we had to deal with at the time, it makes a bit more sense...
The USA was taken by force from the red indians. If the UK gives NI back to the Irish, then surely we should give the USA back to the red indians, Australia back to the Aborigines, New Zealand back to the Kiwis etc.etc.etc.
And your weak link is, there are fuck all English people living in the north. There are unionists (mostly scots descent protestants), and republicans. Currently the unionists outnumber the republicans by a small minority, but the balance is shifting over time. I'd say within another 40 or 50 years, the north will rejoin the south again. Not saying its a good or bad thing, but it seems inevitable, really.
No, we just thought they were restricted to America.
.IE decision cropping up from time to time. Give it another thirty years and you won't be able to tell an urbanite from Dublin or Galway from someone from New York or London, apart from the accents. Not saying its a good thing or a bad thing, but its how I see it going.
Actually even in Ireland, the situation is changing extremely rapidly. What the GP was referring to was the "troubles" in the north, which had almost nothing to do with religion - Catholic / Protestant was just a convenient title for the opposing camps. Republican / unionist would be better. All that is besides the point, however.
The gap between younger and older generations in Ireland is staggering. We basically went from ultra conservative, churchgoing folks to hedonisitic, hip, and tech-savvy in about thirty years. The older generation is still in political power however, which is why you see things like this
Get a clue. It's done all the time, and it's absolutely necessary.
Only for your dollar values. Just so you know, if your dollar values get in the way of my human life, you're coming out second best, cowboy. I don't think you'll like that too much.
A strictly enforced speed limit of 25mph or lower everywhere would save thousands of lives a year. Why don't we do it?
What does one have to do with the other? Whiskey, tango, fuckin foxtrot.
At this point, the ship(s) is certainly worth more than a human life, because losing it represents a substantial risk to a greater number of human lives
And who do you think is going to invade you? Someone that enjoys being nuked? Besides, thats not what you said. You were talking about dollar values versus human life. Fuck that. Get help.
Sure we can, its called having children.
Sigh. Thats not replacing a life, thats creating a new one. It does not replace all of the unique experiences and opinions that make everybody different, which are lost forever when a person dies. And you are sadly incorrect in saying that the greater mass of humanity doesn't care about your life. Thats why the "greater mass" created laws to protect you, and a police force to enforce those laws if you are murdered. Being flippant about it doesn't make you right.
You wouldn't say that a single life was more valuable than the U.S.S. Eisenhower (which costs billions of dollars).
So, you're telling me that this dredged up piece of various ores, that even if reduced to a tangle of scrap metal, could be returned to its orginal perfection, worth billions of pieces of paper that are only worth anything because the government says so, and can print more of them on whim, is worth more than a human life? I'm not going to lecture you on the value of human life, but you are seriously fucked up. Seriously. Get help.
Excellent, I must say I am delighted to have encountered a fellow military theoretician!
There is nothing inherent to Space that makes for faster transport to cover "immense distances in a short time". You might be tempted to think that the vacuum is such a feature.
Vacuum is such a feature. Thats why the next generation of civilian transport is able to tout "an hour from London to New York", with White Knight style aircraft. By punching above the atmosphere you can go anywhere on earth in small percentages of the current time. Whats more, when you are up there, fuel requirements to stay up there are negligible.
Further compounding this is the predictability, sensitivity and general terrestrial vulnerability of launches.
Only for the second nation to try it.
Additionaly LEO transportation requires significant navigation requirements - something the US dominates at already. The US could elimiante most LEO travel right now by encoding the existing network, and/or jamming certain frequencies.
I don't understand where you get this assumption at all, unless you are talking about blanket-blocking all communications everywhere. Or how did the first LEO satellites get up there?
his document coveres protecting action in space, it does not cover ground bombardment. That said if such a scenario as you describe were possible in the near future it would only butress the document's conclusion of a need to make orbital attacks on space assets.
You could equally argue that all current US military assets are defensive in nature. Of course the best defence is...
It would require hundreds of thousands of satellites in order to provide full planetary field of fire all the time.
Ah, here you are thinking about spy satellite technology, where they are only really viable when looking straight down. A laser network like we are discussing can engage to the diagonal, albeit with slightly reduced effectiveness for every degree from the vertical (for terrestrial targets). High altitude targets would see less reduction in efficiency, and orbital targets none. It would hardly require many more satellites than make up the current GPS network. Also I never claimed it could hit submarines; however should those submarines attmept to engage their targets, the missiles could be shot down within seconds of clearing the water. Not that a submarine fleet would last long in the absence of a support surface fleet.
Such an act would indeed be an act of war, but a relatively bloodless one, which would almost certainly not lead to open aggression on the owner of a satellite defence network. As for ASAT capability, well, you have a network of satellites able to turn on a dime, and no recoil for their shots either. Also the first group to attempt this would lose all of their communications satellites in short order.
We already have the ability to shoot down virtually any orbitally bound rocket we want to, we simply choose not to. We don't need a ring of satellites or space policy to do this. Just well placed naval and air assets.
I have yet to see a single shred of evidence for this assertion.
Second you alledge that the document leads to this system simply because it states in plain english the intent of all military planning and action: the ability to deny movement and action to an enemy.
Given the current US political climate, the term "enemy" is a continually shifting one. Thats the main concern, but not the only one.
The ability to take an airplane out from orbit would require enourmous amounts of power. Especially if it is in the clouds or even *gasp* below them. Even Solar Power Satellites will not do it.
I do believe we were discussing nuclear fuel sources in this story?
They need an titanic amount of mass thrown into orbit, are very very large, and not very mobile.
When you are travelling thousands
Militant Muslims have been telling you that for years :-)
Not bad, not bad. I'd be conflicted on this one; it has without a doubt the zing and zest of a good troll, and yet the substance is just... lacking. Fine aroma but the aftertaste is flat. I'd give this a two on the trollometer.
Yes it is. People are made examples of with every traffic ticket. Sometimes, if a specific crime is on the rise, larger punishments than normal may arise.
No, its not. The root of all law is revenge. The law exists in order to ensure that people don't seek revenge on each other. If punishment excessive to the crime is doled out, sympathy begins to lie with the criminal, something that judges and law enforcers avoid, for obvious reasons. A wikipedia link tangential to the point doesn't make your point.
The ability described is fundamentally no different than the same capability we have for air, land, and sea.
/I claim dominon over the tinfoil mines
Wrong-o, baby. The grandparent is correct in most of his reasoning; the only problem is that he doesn't go far enough. Space is fundamentally different from land, sea and air in that it takes only a short time to cover immense distances. So a network of laser defence satellites has three distinct advantages for the nation that first completes it.
1. It provides interdiction ability for missiles, from ICBMs to hacked-together Palestinian tin cans, and for aircraft. This allows the ability to destroy any and all airborne targets with relative impunity (missiles and airplanes generally have a distinct heat signature). This is an overwhelming military advantage, and allows full nuclear assault on the nation of choice, with little to no chance of retaliation. The only thing stopping the US from establishing a global military empire in the true sense would be upstanding moral rectitude.
2. It provides a "godzilla" footprint for elimination of ground and sea-surface targets. Kiss your navy goodbye, as well as your silos, bases, open land armies, and leaders, without all the muss and fuss of civilian casualties and nuclear fallout. This is a force multiplier, since it can be used to strike anywhere on earth in a very short timespan.
3. And this is the part that scares the crap out of me, the first nation to control such a network would have the ability to easily deny the creation of a similar network to any other nation, by simply shooting down the defenceless rockets when they are on the way up to deploy the satellites. So first in can lock the door behind them. This is another fundamental difference between space warfare and land, air or sea warfare. There's nowhere to hide. Also as part of this, the near limitless resources of space would then be the sole dominion of that nation that establishes the network first. The thousand year Reich could never dream of such power.
And before our more military minded American cousins start crowing about the potential of Earth truly becoming "one nation under god", you can rest assured that if this were to come to pass, so would King George I, and his ruling corporate class. You can say what you like about rebellion and whatnot, but the simple fact remains that US troops are currently getting a vast amount of experience in asymmetrical warfare in Iraq. Also, so are National Guard Units.
And lower wages for us. So we're still transferring our wealth to other nations. We get nothing out of this.
... No country that we've ever outsourced to has gotten better - a few people over there got rich, but Singapore still has factories falling apart and killing people, and China still has no democracy.
Immigrant workers depress local wages, not outsourcing. And as for what you get out of this, lets start with the computer you are typing on. Or did you whittle it yourself out of mom's apple tree?
Good. We'll make our own products and sell to ourselves. What do we lose?
As profound economic theories go, Adam Smith's zombified corpse has risen from the tomb and is hunting your ass. If you seal up America economically (not possible in any case with a vast, porous border like that), the US stagnates. If you want the fastest route to becoming a third world country, congratulations, you've found it!
China has a middle class but so what?
No China doesn't have a middle class. It has the nascent beginnings of one. When it has a fully fledged middle class, you won't be long seeing democracy rearing. And India is at least one example of a country that has benefitted immensely from globalism, leaving it a better place.
Reality: China does not need us to succeed. If we fall apart and die today, they can just steal all our IP and go their own merry way. They've got the factories to support themselves, no thanks to globalism.
Maybe in your universe. They haven't got the knowledge or experience to match the technology of the west, and aren't going to have it until they become a meritocracy.
Not annihilated. Subjugated. They start jerking our strings and making us dance for them.
Okay this is just thinly veiled nationalistic racism here. Kindly refrain from conversing with me ever again.