SpaceX is specifically avoiding patenting any of their innovations because they are well aware the Chinese would just use the patents as a guide to copy and steal their technology. Assuming they can keep their networks secure and they don't have any rogue employees selling their secrets they have a reasonable chance of keeping their less obvious, more technical, innovations from the Chinese at least for a time. SpaceX's fairly compact operations and work force along with avoidance of third party suppliers also reduces somewhat the potential for secrets being stolen.
Never really understood why clueless western politicians let China in to the WTO when it was so obvious that IP theft was at the core of their plan to bury the west.
It could be that Russia or China don't attempt to maintain the illusion that they are particularly nice guys. It tends to be countries like the U.S., Britain, Israel and France that try to con the world in to thinking they are the bastions of freedom and democracy, and trumpet those value the world over, over while in the shadows they prop up right wing dictators, overthrow elected governments, render innocent people to be tortured, etc. in order to make the world safe for themselves and their brands of economics and religion, at the expense of just about everyone else.
I can't really speak to the motives of Wikileaks or Assange but you can see where they might target the hypocrital "democracies" who are increasingly repressive and oppressive but denying it, over China and Russia which are repressive and oppressive but don't really hide it.
Some of the cables have been wildly embarrasing to the U.S. and its allies, some of them helped fuel the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt.
I will agree they probably aren't any different than the duplicity you will find in most diplomatic corps. But the U.S. is the first country in history that managed to let someone dump a huge store of diplomatic cables on the Internet so the whole world could read them. The U.S. is also so infatuated with its position as the world's only superpower, so that its arrogance tends to superceed all others in its diplomatic dealings.
"Those who object to the treatment of Bradley Manning would do well to consider that if he had been a Chinese citizen"
An argument could be made that the U.S. method is actually the more effective deterrent. A life time of low grade torture in a miliary brig, being paraded around naked, with every detail being broadcast to the world might be considered worse by a lot of people than a quick disappearance and a summary execution. Manning faces a lifetime of misery ahead of him, he will probably find no sympathy in any military prison he lands in. Many people would prefer a bullet in the head because it would be a quick end.
Manning's only hope is he gets off using an Elsberg, Pentagon Papers defense, which is highly improbable in the repressive security state that is the U.S. has become since 9/11.
"I don't think there are very many countries on that list."
Russia and China almost certainly would be on the list if Wikileaks would confine itself to only embarassing the U.S. But doing that you are trading an increasingly dictatorial police state(the U.S.) for a couple that have been there for a while. I seem to recall Putin was fairly delighted with all the state department cable leaks for exposing how duplicitous the U.S. and its allies are.
But, I think Wikileaks is an equal opportunity embarasser of repressive states so I doubt they would partner with Russia or China.
The real problem is you need a country that is willing to stand up to the U.S. AND isn't heading towards repressive police state itself and THOSE are sadly somewhere between vanishingly rare and non existent.
This is a case where the ship would have been better off with no captain at all. The ship's course is preprogrammed and extremely safe. The only reason it sank and people died is because the captain was showboating and took it off course to sail it as close as possible to a scenic island to impress people on the ship and on the island. He was doing some kind of tribute to a friend of his who wasn't even there to see it as I recall.
He was steering by the seat of his pants doing a manuever he'd done before but he swung too close to the shore.
I wonder if this is another case, like the Air France crash in the Atlantic, where automation has taken over to the point that the humans no longer have the skills to fly the plane or sail the ship and maybe they shouldn't be allowed to.
On the first chart I found Hotmail only has a 20% plus share among the big email providers. Yahoo is the only one close to dominate with a little over 50% and I doubt that qualifies as a monopoly.
We are talking here about abuse of a monopoly position in search which I think Google has. Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly in email services.
As long as you dont have a monopoly position you can tie and promote your own products all you want. Microsoft might get in trouble if they aggressively promoted Bing or Hotmail through their Windows OS monopoly though that monopoly is in decline with the rise of smartphones and tablets.
Kodak has been pretty capable on the innovation front. They pretty much invented the digital camera. Their problem has been the business execution to make money off their innovation.
Though of late they probably haven't been innovating so much. Their current CEO has made two failed attempts to become a printer company and a TV company which are two markets which are completely dominated by incumbents and they've been bleeding money throughout the attempt.
So you did actually read what he said? I'm pretty sure he said OpenJDK and Android Java are at risk too because they are violating Oracles patents and so Oracle can shut them down or tax them the second they win a patent infringement claim in court.
The moon program acheived its goals in 10 years. Politicians could rationalize the expenditure especially in the context of the cold war and the space race. Getting to the Moon was trivial compared to this. Von Braun was already planning for it in the 40's. Colonizing Mars is trivial comparted to this. When we successfully colonize Mars, come back and we will talk. This is seriously out of sequence on what we need to be doing in space exploration right now.
It will be a challenge to land on a planet and successfully colonize it in this solar system with the aid of resupply and technological support for Earth. At interstellar distances it will be a formidable challenge with a high probability of failure without a somewhat improbable FTL drive breakthrough.
Unless you come up with an FTL driver you aren't going to get to even Alpha Centauri in less than nearly forever and its open to debate what you would do when you got there unless there was a habitable planet there ready to colonize with water, oxygen, fuel, reasonable temperature profile and gravity. I think the nearest discovered planets that have a remote chance of being habitable are an even more formidable distance away than Alpha Centauri.
So, you have no chance to get anyone in government to sink any serious money in to a hundred/thousand year project at a time when the U.S. debt is passing 100% of GDP and has been going parabolic since 2008. The U.S. was still flush with cash from the post ware boom in the 60's.
You also have no chance to get anyone in the private sector to sink any money in to this unless its a billionaire with a sci-fi fetish like Paul Allen who are willing to blow a few billion on something they wont live to see pay off.
All things considered I think someone at DARPA was reading a little too much Sci-Fi or this lady had a friend at DARPA who could throw a half million to her to let her indulge her little fantasy. The cool thing is that since its advertised as a hundred year project she doesn't really need to deliver on anything for the rest of her life. Sweet job, where do I sign up?
" It would be equally hard to argue that focusing on interstellar travel (one of many, many things DARPA is doing right now) won't have vast"
Actualluy it would be EXTREMELY easy to argue that focusing on interstellar travel wont have vast, ongoing short-term effects on space flight.
It will most probably be extremely counterproductive. In the current hyper critical budget environment in D.C. this will just be a dart board for all the politicians who want to kill off science and R&D funding.
Actually no Mars is the only rational place to put a colony in the foreseeable future. At least it has some water, some CO2 for greenhouses, a barely tolerable temperature and some atmosphere. As Mars is a desert compared to Earth, the moon is a vast desert by comparison to Mars.
I should add I wouldn't be surprised if Joe Lieberman is lining up to get the Secretary of DHS job when he retires from the Senate. Then he will get to exercise the sweeping, unchecked, powers he gave that Secretary when he helped right the various DHS, TSA and Patriot Act legislation.
$500,000 isn't exactly a lot of money by U.S. government standards, but for a country that currently can't even get to people in to LEO spending money on interstellar space travel is completely nuts.
So, how about you get to Mars first, maybe then we can talk.
There is pretty much zero chance anyone in the private sector is going to sink any money in to interstellar space travel unless there is a juicy cost plus government contract funding it. If you dangle one of those Lockheed and Boeing will be on it in a heart beat, especially if the contract runs for a 100 years before they have to deliver anything.
This "foundation" will just be used by the DARPA haters in Congress, mostly Republicans and Tea Partiers, as further evidence of how far DARPA and the Obama administration has gone off the rails, and after reading this I can see their point.
DARPA does some amazing things but they need to exert a little self restraint and focus on things that will payoff in less than a millenium. It will be unfortunate if the good R&D DARPA does gets cuts because they seem to have gone completely nuts on this. The U.S. doesn't do enough R&D as it is.
FYI, I think this is the U.S. Law that authorizes TSA VIPR teams which I'm assuming the TSA teams in Boston are. This law ran through 2011 though I think it was extended in the 2012 TSA budget:
TITLE 6 > CHAPTER 4 > SUBCHAPTER II Â 1112. AUTHORIZATION OF VISIBLE INTERMODAL PREVENTION AND RESPONSE TEAMS
(a) In general The Secretary, acting through the Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration, may develop Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (referred to in this section as âoeVIPRâ) teams to augment the security of any mode of transportation at any location within the United States. In forming a VIPR team, the Secretaryâ" (1) may use any asset of the Department, including Federal air marshals, surface transportation security inspectors, canine detection teams, and advanced screening technology; (2) may determine when a VIPR team shall be deployed, as well as the duration of the deployment; (3) shall, prior to and during the deployment, consult with local security and law enforcement officials in the jurisdiction where the VIPR team is or will be deployed, to develop and agree upon the appropriate operational protocols and provide relevant information about the mission of the VIPR team, as appropriate; and (4) shall, prior to and during the deployment, consult with all transportation entities directly affected by the deployment of a VIPR team, as appropriate, including railroad carriers, air carriers, airport owners, over-the-road bus operators and terminal owners and operators, motor carriers, public transportation agencies, owners or operators of highways, port operators and facility owners, vessel owners and operators and pipeline operators. (b) Authorization of appropriations There are authorized to be appropriated to the Secretary to carry out this section such sums as necessary for fiscal years 2007 through 2011.
TSA VIPR teams are already working the highways in Tennessee for their pilot program, though they are focusing more on trucks and busses as they ease people in to the idea of the pervasive police state.
The new TSA budget added money for more VIPR teams so they will, no doubt, be extending their reach over time and as their budget allows. They really need to enlist state and local police to be able to afford doing this nationwide, considering the current constraints on the Federal budget.
It is nearly inevitable that you will eventually not be allowed to move in this country unless you have your papers in order and are not on the DHS "Do Not Travel" (a.k.a. "You Are An Enemy of the State") list, just like the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in their heyday. Presumably they will be using the now pervasive freeway traffic cams and license plate recognition, to track the movements of everyone who is on that list, and will encourage to not get in their cars in the first place.
The introduction of police states in to formerly free countries are often creeping affairs. They chisel away civil liberties slowly so there is no single point in time when everyone realizes they are screwed and revolt en masse. If you do it slowly everyone realizes at a different point in time that they are in a police state. People either revolt one at a time and are crushed, or more typically never revolt at all because no one around them is.
One ray of sunshine is Joe Lieberman is retiring at the end of 2012. He is the person most responsible for the maddness that is DHS and TSA, but his police state has so much momentum now I doubt it will stop just because its Saint-Just is stepping down.
Actually you prove my point more than yours. As designed by the Pentagon and deployed in Vietnam the F-4 was a horrible fighter. Using that "Top Gun" line to try to explain away the F-4's problem is dubious at best. Just like the F-22 and the F-35 they bet everything on technology that wasn't combat proven, didn't hold up when the rubber hit the road, and they had no alternative.
The F-4 had to undergo a major redesign and it was still never very good. It was big, heavy and the smoky engines made it extremely easy to track visually. Unless you got long range missile kills it was at an extreme disadvantage in a close in dog fight.
The disasterous performance of the F-4 lead directly to the F-15 which was a very good fighter. They did learn from their mistakes with the F-15 a decade later.
Do you know what the actual kill ratio was between the F-4 and MiG-21 or MiG-17. I've never been able to find full statistics and have only seen references to the numbers being classifed. If they are classified that is because the Pentagon doesn't want to admit how badly its fighters were beaten by a relatively tiny Vietnamese air force flying some pretty old air planes, at least the MiG-17 was very old.
The only number I find online is:
"During one short period for which data are available, the summer of 1972, air-to-air combat resulted in the loss of 12 MiG-21s, 4 MiG-17/19s, and 11 F-4s, yielding a kill-ratio of about 1.5 MiGs for every Phantom shot down"
1972 was near the end of the war, long after the F-4E was deployed with an internal Vulcan gun. I think the F4-E was deployed in 1968. If the F-4 was, at the end of the war, barely managing a 1.5 kill ratio, and the Pentagon wont even publish the full statistics, that indicates it was probably a total failure. They were just lucky Vietnam didn't have a very big Air Force and air to air wasn't really pivotal to the war.
"but saying "the US steals oil" is a claim with no support."
Actually it is totally supported, as has been said elsewhere here, by the case of Mossadegh and Iran. Mossadegh nationalized British operated oil fields in Iran because he felt Iran was being exploited and not being compensated sufficiently. The British teamed with the U.S. to topple Mossadegh soon after and replaced him with a ruthless despot, the Shah of Iran. Iran's oil fields were promptly handed over to the control of U.S. oil companies, so the U.S. stole those fields from either the Iranians or the British depending on how you look at it:)
The perception that the U.S. steals oil has been around ever since. It was also the turning point in history which drove Iran to be where it is today, and is their rationale for their rabid hatred of the U.S.
In fairness though, the U.S. doesn't start wars, overthrow governments, and support ruthless dictators just for oil. The U.S. does those things for bananas in Central America, sweat shops in Haiti and mob run casinos in Cuba. Its done because its good for business.
For those of you who haven't figured out the allusion by now, I mentioned the role of the Japanese oil embargo in bringing the U.S. in to World War II, because the current situation with Iran is kind of an analog.
The U.S. is seeking to completely embargo Iran, not to peacefully starve Iran in to relenting on its nuclear ambitions, but to drive Iran in to a desperate corner and provoke them in to initiating the hostilites that the U.S., Israel and Sunni Arab's (i.e. Saudi Arabia) so desperately want. Tampering with oil, in this case Iran's oil revenues which are an enormous percentage of their economy, is certain to make them desperate.
The U.S. wants to be able to say that Iran started the war, because after the U.S. fabrications used to justify the Iraq invasion, it would be much more convenient if the Iranians would close the Strait of Hormuz and shoot first. Then the U.S. can bomb them in to the stone age without looking like the aggresor, as much, and without having to spend so much time ginning up a case against them like Iraq, a tactic to which the world is now completely jaded.
Overthrowing Saddam was such a great idea because it made Iran, and Shia muslims, vastly more powerful and they are now starting to threaten Sunni regimes across the Middle East from the now consolidated Shia bloc of Iran, Iraq and Lebanon. So much so that the Sunni's in Saudi Arabia are on the same side as Israel in wanting to wipe Iran off the map. When both Israel and Suadi Arabia are telling the U.S. to do something, the U.S. will inevitably do it, no matter what it costs the U.S. in the end.
Japan's battleships were nearly useless too. The Yamato, the most powerful battleship every built came to its end with a suicide mission to try to stop the invasion of Okinawa, where it was promptly sunk by carrier borne aircraft. Read the link above. The role the Yamato and its sister ship Musashi played in World War II was weak at best. They were mostly used at transports because they were big and well armored, and otherwise were anti aircraft batteries.
Countries built battle ships because they were the signature of powerful navies, and a source of national pride, BEFORE aircraft and aircraft carriers completely changed the dynamics. After the disruption occurred they were staggeringly expensive, and not very useful relics.
The Bismark likewise succumbed to a single torpedo from an ancient British biplane torpedo bomber. Germany's battleships and battlecruisers were an equally ineffective squandering of vast resources.
Billy Mitchell had started to prove how worthless battleships were in the face of aircraft as early as 1921 and 1923 when he sank three battleships from the air, though the tests were a bit rigged. The only only people who didn't know battleships were uselss by 1941 were backward thinking relic admirals.
Battleships were only of value in their original roles in ship to ship battles where there were no air forces in the vacinity, which was increasingly rare in World War II. Otherwise they were used for shore bombardment, armored transport and anti aircraft batteries because they tended to carry a lot of guns. None of those roles really justifed the huge expenditure of resources required to build or fuel them.
There is no disputing that the oil embargo was imposed in an attempt to slow the Japanese occupation and war in China, which was certainly brutal.
But, it would have been incredibly naive for the U.S. to think that Japan wouldn't retaliate for the oil embargo. Without the oil supply from the U.S., Dutch and British East Indies(no Indonesia) Japan's economy and military was crippled. It was inevitable Japan would seize the Dutch and British East Indies to restore their oil supply. That would inevitably lead to war with the British and U.S. So to protect their oil supply they had to completely remove the British and U.S. from a large buffer around their oil fields and shipping lanes which is exactly what they did in the opening weaks of the war. The U.S. Pacific fleet was the one obstacle to Japan's seizing and holding the East Indies oil fields and shipping the oil to Japan. Everyone knew it so its no surprise the U.S. attacked it first thing. It was also no accident the U.S. carriers weren't at Pearl Harbor because they were priceless, while the battleships were expendable since they were nearly useless with the advent of aircraft carriers.
So FDR and the U.S. military knew war was inevitable with Japan the day the embargo was imposed. Claiming the attack on Pearl Harbor was a "surprise" was pure propaganda for the consumption of the American people. It was designed to whip American's in to frenzy of support for war against both Germany and Japan. It worked really well.
I'm not even really being critical of it, Pearl Harbor was a propaganda masterpiece by the Roosevelt administration, in fact I am almost admiring its genius.
The U.S. equipped Afghanistan's mujahideen in their war against the Soviet Union which occupied Afghanistan for most of the 80's. It was called Operation Cyclone
Al Qaeda was formed by Bin Laden and others in a mujahideen camp in 1988 shortly before the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan. Both Al Qaeda and the Taliban were and probably still are extensively supported by Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, which was America's primary partner in Operation Cyclone.
The U.S. didn't exactly "train" Osama, but is pretty much a fact the U.S. did help equip, develop and nurture the mujahideen movement, a splinter of which would morph in to Al Qaeda. The ISI almost certainly aided Bin Laden throughout his career, which is probably why he was found in the middle of a Pakistani garrison city when he was killed, a few miles from the Pakistani equivalent of West Point.
Al Qaeda turned on the U.S. during the first Persian Gulf War against Iraq, when the U.S. established bases in Saudi Arabia, and started two decades of extensive military intervention in the Middle East. Al Qaeda was especially incensed at an infidel army camping in the middle of the Muslim holy land, Saudia Arabia.
Excepting the F-4's record as a fighter in Vietnam was horrible and since every service was using it it was horrible across the board, with no fallback when it turned out to be horrible.
I seriously think the Navy should return to building its own fighter. Yes it will add some costs, but the Air Force, especially the Air Force teamed with Lockheed, have thoroughly proven by now they can't be trusted to build fighters any more.
I'm thinking the Air Force's generals are more concerned with their future Lockheed funded second careers than they are with doing their jobs.
Slashdot Mirror
To summarize⦠workers in China are cheap
SpaceX is specifically avoiding patenting any of their innovations because they are well aware the Chinese would just use the patents as a guide to copy and steal their technology. Assuming they can keep their networks secure and they don't have any rogue employees selling their secrets they have a reasonable chance of keeping their less obvious, more technical, innovations from the Chinese at least for a time. SpaceX's fairly compact operations and work force along with avoidance of third party suppliers also reduces somewhat the potential for secrets being stolen.
Never really understood why clueless western politicians let China in to the WTO when it was so obvious that IP theft was at the core of their plan to bury the west.
It could be that Russia or China don't attempt to maintain the illusion that they are particularly nice guys. It tends to be countries like the U.S., Britain, Israel and France that try to con the world in to thinking they are the bastions of freedom and democracy, and trumpet those value the world over, over while in the shadows they prop up right wing dictators, overthrow elected governments, render innocent people to be tortured, etc. in order to make the world safe for themselves and their brands of economics and religion, at the expense of just about everyone else.
I can't really speak to the motives of Wikileaks or Assange but you can see where they might target the hypocrital "democracies" who are increasingly repressive and oppressive but denying it, over China and Russia which are repressive and oppressive but don't really hide it.
Some of the cables have been wildly embarrasing to the U.S. and its allies, some of them helped fuel the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt.
I will agree they probably aren't any different than the duplicity you will find in most diplomatic corps. But the U.S. is the first country in history that managed to let someone dump a huge store of diplomatic cables on the Internet so the whole world could read them. The U.S. is also so infatuated with its position as the world's only superpower, so that its arrogance tends to superceed all others in its diplomatic dealings.
"Those who object to the treatment of Bradley Manning would do well to consider that if he had been a Chinese citizen"
An argument could be made that the U.S. method is actually the more effective deterrent. A life time of low grade torture in a miliary brig, being paraded around naked, with every detail being broadcast to the world might be considered worse by a lot of people than a quick disappearance and a summary execution. Manning faces a lifetime of misery ahead of him, he will probably find no sympathy in any military prison he lands in. Many people would prefer a bullet in the head because it would be a quick end.
Manning's only hope is he gets off using an Elsberg, Pentagon Papers defense, which is highly improbable in the repressive security state that is the U.S. has become since 9/11.
"I don't think there are very many countries on that list."
Russia and China almost certainly would be on the list if Wikileaks would confine itself to only embarassing the U.S. But doing that you are trading an increasingly dictatorial police state(the U.S.) for a couple that have been there for a while. I seem to recall Putin was fairly delighted with all the state department cable leaks for exposing how duplicitous the U.S. and its allies are.
But, I think Wikileaks is an equal opportunity embarasser of repressive states so I doubt they would partner with Russia or China.
The real problem is you need a country that is willing to stand up to the U.S. AND isn't heading towards repressive police state itself and THOSE are sadly somewhere between vanishingly rare and non existent.
This is a case where the ship would have been better off with no captain at all. The ship's course is preprogrammed and extremely safe. The only reason it sank and people died is because the captain was showboating and took it off course to sail it as close as possible to a scenic island to impress people on the ship and on the island. He was doing some kind of tribute to a friend of his who wasn't even there to see it as I recall.
He was steering by the seat of his pants doing a manuever he'd done before but he swung too close to the shore.
I wonder if this is another case, like the Air France crash in the Atlantic, where automation has taken over to the point that the humans no longer have the skills to fly the plane or sail the ship and maybe they shouldn't be allowed to.
On the first chart I found Hotmail only has a 20% plus share among the big email providers. Yahoo is the only one close to dominate with a little over 50% and I doubt that qualifies as a monopoly.
We are talking here about abuse of a monopoly position in search which I think Google has. Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly in email services.
As long as you dont have a monopoly position you can tie and promote your own products all you want. Microsoft might get in trouble if they aggressively promoted Bing or Hotmail through their Windows OS monopoly though that monopoly is in decline with the rise of smartphones and tablets.
Kodak has been pretty capable on the innovation front. They pretty much invented the digital camera. Their problem has been the business execution to make money off their innovation.
Though of late they probably haven't been innovating so much. Their current CEO has made two failed attempts to become a printer company and a TV company which are two markets which are completely dominated by incumbents and they've been bleeding money throughout the attempt.
So you did actually read what he said? I'm pretty sure he said OpenJDK and Android Java are at risk too because they are violating Oracles patents and so Oracle can shut them down or tax them the second they win a patent infringement claim in court.
The moon program acheived its goals in 10 years. Politicians could rationalize the expenditure especially in the context of the cold war and the space race. Getting to the Moon was trivial compared to this. Von Braun was already planning for it in the 40's. Colonizing Mars is trivial comparted to this. When we successfully colonize Mars, come back and we will talk. This is seriously out of sequence on what we need to be doing in space exploration right now.
It will be a challenge to land on a planet and successfully colonize it in this solar system with the aid of resupply and technological support for Earth. At interstellar distances it will be a formidable challenge with a high probability of failure without a somewhat improbable FTL drive breakthrough.
Unless you come up with an FTL driver you aren't going to get to even Alpha Centauri in less than nearly forever and its open to debate what you would do when you got there unless there was a habitable planet there ready to colonize with water, oxygen, fuel, reasonable temperature profile and gravity. I think the nearest discovered planets that have a remote chance of being habitable are an even more formidable distance away than Alpha Centauri.
So, you have no chance to get anyone in government to sink any serious money in to a hundred/thousand year project at a time when the U.S. debt is passing 100% of GDP and has been going parabolic since 2008. The U.S. was still flush with cash from the post ware boom in the 60's.
You also have no chance to get anyone in the private sector to sink any money in to this unless its a billionaire with a sci-fi fetish like Paul Allen who are willing to blow a few billion on something they wont live to see pay off.
All things considered I think someone at DARPA was reading a little too much Sci-Fi or this lady had a friend at DARPA who could throw a half million to her to let her indulge her little fantasy. The cool thing is that since its advertised as a hundred year project she doesn't really need to deliver on anything for the rest of her life. Sweet job, where do I sign up?
" It would be equally hard to argue that focusing on interstellar travel (one of many, many things DARPA is doing right now) won't have vast"
Actualluy it would be EXTREMELY easy to argue that focusing on interstellar travel wont have vast, ongoing short-term effects on space flight.
It will most probably be extremely counterproductive.
In the current hyper critical budget environment in D.C. this will just be a dart board for all the politicians who want to kill off science and R&D funding.
Actually no Mars is the only rational place to put a colony in the foreseeable future. At least it has some water, some CO2 for greenhouses, a barely tolerable temperature and some atmosphere. As Mars is a desert compared to Earth, the moon is a vast desert by comparison to Mars.
I should add I wouldn't be surprised if Joe Lieberman is lining up to get the Secretary of DHS job when he retires from the Senate. Then he will get to exercise the sweeping, unchecked, powers he gave that Secretary when he helped right the various DHS, TSA and Patriot Act legislation.
$500,000 isn't exactly a lot of money by U.S. government standards, but for a country that currently can't even get to people in to LEO spending money on interstellar space travel is completely nuts.
So, how about you get to Mars first, maybe then we can talk.
There is pretty much zero chance anyone in the private sector is going to sink any money in to interstellar space travel unless there is a juicy cost plus government contract funding it. If you dangle one of those Lockheed and Boeing will be on it in a heart beat, especially if the contract runs for a 100 years before they have to deliver anything.
This "foundation" will just be used by the DARPA haters in Congress, mostly Republicans and Tea Partiers, as further evidence of how far DARPA and the Obama administration has gone off the rails, and after reading this I can see their point.
DARPA does some amazing things but they need to exert a little self restraint and focus on things that will payoff in less than a millenium. It will be unfortunate if the good R&D DARPA does gets cuts because they seem to have gone completely nuts on this. The U.S. doesn't do enough R&D as it is.
FYI, I think this is the U.S. Law that authorizes TSA VIPR teams which I'm assuming the TSA teams in Boston are. This law ran through 2011 though I think it was extended in the 2012 TSA budget:
TITLE 6 > CHAPTER 4 > SUBCHAPTER II
 1112. AUTHORIZATION OF VISIBLE INTERMODAL PREVENTION AND RESPONSE TEAMS
(a) In general The Secretary, acting through the Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration, may develop Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (referred to in this section as âoeVIPRâ) teams to augment the security of any mode of transportation at any location within the United States. In forming a VIPR team, the Secretaryâ"
(1) may use any asset of the Department, including Federal air marshals, surface transportation security inspectors, canine detection teams, and advanced screening technology;
(2) may determine when a VIPR team shall be deployed, as well as the duration of the deployment;
(3) shall, prior to and during the deployment, consult with local security and law enforcement officials in the jurisdiction where the VIPR team is or will be deployed, to develop and agree upon the appropriate operational protocols and provide relevant information about the mission of the VIPR team, as appropriate; and
(4) shall, prior to and during the deployment, consult with all transportation entities directly affected by the deployment of a VIPR team, as appropriate, including railroad carriers, air carriers, airport owners, over-the-road bus operators and terminal owners and operators, motor carriers, public transportation agencies, owners or operators of highways, port operators and facility owners, vessel owners and operators and pipeline operators.
(b) Authorization of appropriations
There are authorized to be appropriated to the Secretary to carry out this section such sums as necessary for fiscal years 2007 through 2011.
TSA VIPR teams are already working the highways in Tennessee for their pilot program, though they are focusing more on trucks and busses as they ease people in to the idea of the pervasive police state.
The new TSA budget added money for more VIPR teams so they will, no doubt, be extending their reach over time and as their budget allows. They really need to enlist state and local police to be able to afford doing this nationwide, considering the current constraints on the Federal budget.
It is nearly inevitable that you will eventually not be allowed to move in this country unless you have your papers in order and are not on the DHS "Do Not Travel" (a.k.a. "You Are An Enemy of the State") list, just like the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in their heyday. Presumably they will be using the now pervasive freeway traffic cams and license plate recognition, to track the movements of everyone who is on that list, and will encourage to not get in their cars in the first place.
The introduction of police states in to formerly free countries are often creeping affairs. They chisel away civil liberties slowly so there is no single point in time when everyone realizes they are screwed and revolt en masse. If you do it slowly everyone realizes at a different point in time that they are in a police state. People either revolt one at a time and are crushed, or more typically never revolt at all because no one around them is.
One ray of sunshine is Joe Lieberman is retiring at the end of 2012. He is the person most responsible for the maddness that is DHS and TSA, but his police state has so much momentum now I doubt it will stop just because its Saint-Just is stepping down.
Adafruit has this, sort of, would need some packaging, its geared towards hardware hackers, Solar LiPo charger plus Minty Boost
Actually you prove my point more than yours. As designed by the Pentagon and deployed in Vietnam the F-4 was a horrible fighter. Using that "Top Gun" line to try to explain away the F-4's problem is dubious at best. Just like the F-22 and the F-35 they bet everything on technology that wasn't combat proven, didn't hold up when the rubber hit the road, and they had no alternative.
The F-4 had to undergo a major redesign and it was still never very good. It was big, heavy and the smoky engines made it extremely easy to track visually. Unless you got long range missile kills it was at an extreme disadvantage in a close in dog fight.
The disasterous performance of the F-4 lead directly to the F-15 which was a very good fighter. They did learn from their mistakes with the F-15 a decade later.
Do you know what the actual kill ratio was between the F-4 and MiG-21 or MiG-17. I've never been able to find full statistics and have only seen references to the numbers being classifed. If they are classified that is because the Pentagon doesn't want to admit how badly its fighters were beaten by a relatively tiny Vietnamese air force flying some pretty old air planes, at least the MiG-17 was very old.
The only number I find online is:
"During one short period for which data are available, the summer of 1972, air-to-air combat resulted in the loss of 12 MiG-21s, 4 MiG-17/19s, and 11 F-4s, yielding a kill-ratio of about 1.5 MiGs for every Phantom shot down"
1972 was near the end of the war, long after the F-4E was deployed with an internal Vulcan gun. I think the F4-E was deployed in 1968. If the F-4 was, at the end of the war, barely managing a 1.5 kill ratio, and the Pentagon wont even publish the full statistics, that indicates it was probably a total failure. They were just lucky Vietnam didn't have a very big Air Force and air to air wasn't really pivotal to the war.
"but saying "the US steals oil" is a claim with no support."
Actually it is totally supported, as has been said elsewhere here, by the case of Mossadegh and Iran. Mossadegh nationalized British operated oil fields in Iran because he felt Iran was being exploited and not being compensated sufficiently. The British teamed with the U.S. to topple Mossadegh soon after and replaced him with a ruthless despot, the Shah of Iran. Iran's oil fields were promptly handed over to the control of U.S. oil companies, so the U.S. stole those fields from either the Iranians or the British depending on how you look at it :)
The perception that the U.S. steals oil has been around ever since. It was also the turning point in history which drove Iran to be where it is today, and is their rationale for their rabid hatred of the U.S.
In fairness though, the U.S. doesn't start wars, overthrow governments, and support ruthless dictators just for oil. The U.S. does those things for bananas in Central America, sweat shops in Haiti and mob run casinos in Cuba. Its done because its good for business.
For those of you who haven't figured out the allusion by now, I mentioned the role of the Japanese oil embargo in bringing the U.S. in to World War II, because the current situation with Iran is kind of an analog.
The U.S. is seeking to completely embargo Iran, not to peacefully starve Iran in to relenting on its nuclear ambitions, but to drive Iran in to a desperate corner and provoke them in to initiating the hostilites that the U.S., Israel and Sunni Arab's (i.e. Saudi Arabia) so desperately want. Tampering with oil, in this case Iran's oil revenues which are an enormous percentage of their economy, is certain to make them desperate.
The U.S. wants to be able to say that Iran started the war, because after the U.S. fabrications used to justify the Iraq invasion, it would be much more convenient if the Iranians would close the Strait of Hormuz and shoot first. Then the U.S. can bomb them in to the stone age without looking like the aggresor, as much, and without having to spend so much time ginning up a case against them like Iraq, a tactic to which the world is now completely jaded.
Overthrowing Saddam was such a great idea because it made Iran, and Shia muslims, vastly more powerful and they are now starting to threaten Sunni regimes across the Middle East from the now consolidated Shia bloc of Iran, Iraq and Lebanon. So much so that the Sunni's in Saudi Arabia are on the same side as Israel in wanting to wipe Iran off the map. When both Israel and Suadi Arabia are telling the U.S. to do something, the U.S. will inevitably do it, no matter what it costs the U.S. in the end.
Japan's battleships were nearly useless too. The Yamato, the most powerful battleship every built came to its end with a suicide mission to try to stop the invasion of Okinawa, where it was promptly sunk by carrier borne aircraft. Read the link above. The role the Yamato and its sister ship Musashi played in World War II was weak at best. They were mostly used at transports because they were big and well armored, and otherwise were anti aircraft batteries.
Countries built battle ships because they were the signature of powerful navies, and a source of national pride, BEFORE aircraft and aircraft carriers completely changed the dynamics. After the disruption occurred they were staggeringly expensive, and not very useful relics.
The Bismark likewise succumbed to a single torpedo from an ancient British biplane torpedo bomber. Germany's battleships and battlecruisers were an equally ineffective squandering of vast resources.
Billy Mitchell had started to prove how worthless battleships were in the face of aircraft as early as 1921 and 1923 when he sank three battleships from the air, though the tests were a bit rigged. The only only people who didn't know battleships were uselss by 1941 were backward thinking relic admirals.
Battleships were only of value in their original roles in ship to ship battles where there were no air forces in the vacinity, which was increasingly rare in World War II. Otherwise they were used for shore bombardment, armored transport and anti aircraft batteries because they tended to carry a lot of guns. None of those roles really justifed the huge expenditure of resources required to build or fuel them.
There is no disputing that the oil embargo was imposed in an attempt to slow the Japanese occupation and war in China, which was certainly brutal.
But, it would have been incredibly naive for the U.S. to think that Japan wouldn't retaliate for the oil embargo. Without the oil supply from the U.S., Dutch and British East Indies(no Indonesia) Japan's economy and military was crippled. It was inevitable Japan would seize the Dutch and British East Indies to restore their oil supply. That would inevitably lead to war with the British and U.S. So to protect their oil supply they had to completely remove the British and U.S. from a large buffer around their oil fields and shipping lanes which is exactly what they did in the opening weaks of the war. The U.S. Pacific fleet was the one obstacle to Japan's seizing and holding the East Indies oil fields and shipping the oil to Japan. Everyone knew it so its no surprise the U.S. attacked it first thing. It was also no accident the U.S. carriers weren't at Pearl Harbor because they were priceless, while the battleships were expendable since they were nearly useless with the advent of aircraft carriers.
So FDR and the U.S. military knew war was inevitable with Japan the day the embargo was imposed. Claiming the attack on Pearl Harbor was a "surprise" was pure propaganda for the consumption of the American people. It was designed to whip American's in to frenzy of support for war against both Germany and Japan. It worked really well.
I'm not even really being critical of it, Pearl Harbor was a propaganda masterpiece by the Roosevelt administration, in fact I am almost admiring its genius.
The U.S. equipped Afghanistan's mujahideen in their war against the Soviet Union which occupied Afghanistan for most of the 80's. It was called Operation Cyclone
Al Qaeda was formed by Bin Laden and others in a mujahideen camp in 1988 shortly before the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan. Both Al Qaeda and the Taliban were and probably still are extensively supported by Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, which was America's primary partner in Operation Cyclone.
The U.S. didn't exactly "train" Osama, but is pretty much a fact the U.S. did help equip, develop and nurture the mujahideen movement, a splinter of which would morph in to Al Qaeda. The ISI almost certainly aided Bin Laden throughout his career, which is probably why he was found in the middle of a Pakistani garrison city when he was killed, a few miles from the Pakistani equivalent of West Point.
Al Qaeda turned on the U.S. during the first Persian Gulf War against Iraq, when the U.S. established bases in Saudi Arabia, and started two decades of extensive military intervention in the Middle East. Al Qaeda was especially incensed at an infidel army camping in the middle of the Muslim holy land, Saudia Arabia.
Excepting the F-4's record as a fighter in Vietnam was horrible and since every service was using it it was horrible across the board, with no fallback when it turned out to be horrible.
I seriously think the Navy should return to building its own fighter. Yes it will add some costs, but the Air Force, especially the Air Force teamed with Lockheed, have thoroughly proven by now they can't be trusted to build fighters any more.
I'm thinking the Air Force's generals are more concerned with their future Lockheed funded second careers than they are with doing their jobs.