Laugh all you want but here in the US our Government can't compel us to turn over an encryption key and detain American citizens for 45 (or is it 90 now?) days without charges. And we still have our guns;)
Who would have thought that willingly giving up one right would have set the precedent for the Government taking away other rights? When will our brothers and sisters across the pond wake up from this horrible nightmare?
Locating a carrier is not all that tough when you have satellites.
Says who? Satellites aren't magical talismans. They are limited by a number of factors, including orbital mechanics, the ability of their radar to resist jamming, the ability of their radar to discern radar decoys from true targets and the ability to conduct evasive maneuvers to avoid being targeted by anti-satellite weapons.
And what happens if Russia shares their satellite intel with China -- just like the US did with the UK during the Falklands war?
That would be an act of war. It's one thing for a nuclear armed superpower to share intel with an ally against a third world country. It's quite another thing for a nuclear armed power to share intel with someone against another nuclear armed power.
The Chinese will have that missile flying before we have a reliable defense.
A 95% shoot-down rate is not good enough against a barrage of 50 missiles.
Actually I'd say a 95% shoot-down rate is very good. That leaves two or three missiles. To engage the carrier they need to overcome the electronic warfare of the battle group (ranging from jamming to the escorts and helicopters with blip enhancers that draw fire) and the point defenses of their targets. Besides, if you aren't talking about the ballistic missiles, how did those ASM launch platforms get into range?
Do you imagine Obama having the guts to take such a loss and risk another?
Do you imagine the American people demanding any less if 5,000 US sailors drown?
So does FexEx, UPS, or DHL deliver a document from any mailbox to anywhere in the country for 43 cents in a couple of days?
We'll never know, because USPS has a Federally granted monopoly on 'non-urgent mail'. Take that away from them and I'd wager that UPS and/or Fedex could drive them into the ground in short order. If nothing else the USPS is overpaying most of their employees, though I'd wager that private enterprise could find savings in other areas as well.
It does if you are stringing new wire. The cost of the wire is nothing compared to the labor cost of installing it. If you aren't stringing new wire then why haven't the phone companies already provided service?
this is actually a decent number for an initiative such as this.
No it's not, because by the time they are done spending money at the rate the Government typically spends it they could have bought a fiber to the doorstep system for every man, woman and child in the UK. Why would you spend a pile of money to build a system that's obsolete as soon as you turn it up?
Now those workers are just welfare scroungers in your eyes.
sure it might make you feel better to debase them
Umm, where the hell did I say that? All I did was question the GP's assumption that welfare lifts the children of those on it out of poverty. You don't have to assume that I look down upon the people who use it just because I question the wisdom of the way the system works.
but they are just as human as you are and your one wage check away from being one of them.
Umm, no, I have savings and could manage to survive for upwards of a year if I lost my job, even without unemployment benefits. I opted to save my extra money during the economic boom instead of blowing it away on material possessions as many did.
Americans have always gotten upset when our forces suffer substantial casualties, even during wars with popular support. Ever read about the public reaction after Tarawa?
To be fair, manned fighter aircraft will soon be a thing of the past.
Says who? Our unmanned aircraft are all dependent upon communications with operators on the ground. For the most part those communications rely on satellites. Are you going to lay odds that an advanced nation-state like China can't figure out a way to disrupt these types of communications systems?
is finally going to start to treat the RIAA like the mobsters they mimic?
I really wish we could stop comparing the RIAA to the Mafia. It's an insult to the hard working men like Tony Soprano that strive to provide needed services like gambling, loan-sharking and prostitution to equate them with an organization that does nothing but sue college students and old people;)
On a more serious note, it's still a stupid comparison. If you wind up on Tony Soprano's bad side you are going to get beaten up or in the worst case scenario murdered. The worst case scenario from a RIAA lawsuit is that you wind up filing bankruptcy. Bankruptcy != murder, IMHO.
he Chinese will soon deploy a new hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile that is a Mach 10 problem for the Navy
Citation?
And then there are Russian supersonic anti-ship missiles as well, which they are selling all over the world (including Iran). At the very least, the Phalanx guns must be supplemented or replaced by rolling airframe missiles.
The Phalanx is being replaced by the RAM. More important than replacing the Phalanx though is investing in fighter aircraft that can keep the launching platforms from getting into range to begin with. It's much easier to shoot down a bomber carrying missiles (or a scout plane trying to find your location so shore/ship based ones can be fired) than it is to shoot down the missiles after launch. In that vein I think it was a mistake to retire the F-14 and the Phoenix missile -- we should have fielded upgraded versions of both -- but DoD apparently thought differently.
Carrier operations in the Persian gulf vs. Iran would be a tricky proposition right now and I doubt they will try it.
Says who? All those missiles are useless if you can't locate the carrier to begin with. To locate the carrier you need to get an aircraft, ship or satellite within radar range. All three of those platforms can be detected, engaged and destroyed during wartime. The Iranian missile threat is cause for concern but I doubt they've negated our navy.
China probably could find the bodies to invade the U.S
WOLVERINES!
Sorry, that was just the first image that came to mind;) I think invading the US would be a pretty tough undertaking. Logistically it would be a nightmare -- you'd need to move men and material across the largest ocean in the World against the World's foremost naval power. Even if you could manage to do that you'd then have to defeat the American military on it's home soil and pacify the American population.
Pacifying a nation of 32 million where a sizable portion (a majority even?) of the population supports the invaders may well prove to be impossible. How would you go about pacifying a nation of 300 million where none of the population would support the invaders and where said population is armed to the teeth and presumably willing to fight for it's freedom and independence? Then there's the matter of nuclear weapons to consider....
No, I'm not real worried about them invading us. I am worried about falling behind them in military capability and having to abandon allies and/or interests. At least when the British came apart there was another world power that was committed to democracy to take their place. Who is going to take our place? I suppose India is a possibility in the long term but they've got enough problems of their own right now. China isn't being very open about their military build-up and I find that troubling on many levels. Unless that changes I don't see any reason why we shouldn't be concerned and taking steps to ensure our own supremacy.
I never played with the Borg option turned on. It was extremely frustrating to spend weeks building an empire only to see it annihilated by the Borg in half an hour. Even if you could manage to beat them the NPC never could -- so they would destroy all of your adversaries and leave you with an extremely boring/uninteresting game to play.
I had issues keeping the Romulan population happy when I wasn't at war. Morale seemed to deteriorate overtime and only going to war would bring it back up.
That is why China has major barriers to imports and is asking for another decade to drop them, even though they were suppose to drop them in 2002.
I've never understood why the United States engages in "free trade" when our supposed trading partners refuse to do the same. Japan is another good example -- it's virtually impossible for American car companies to sell cars in Japan yet we've allowed them free rein to compete in our own market. WTF is wrong with that picture?
We have built 135 F-22s as of now, don't you think that's enough for the time being?
The thing is that once you shut down a production line for a modern aircraft like that it's very hard to impossible to start it back up again. I could understand if Gates wanted to reduce the number of them that we are ordering (although that also runs into issues with economy of scale, see the B-2 for an example) but shutting down the production lines altogether seems short-sighted to me.
But then, this is the same DoD that axed production of the Seawolf in favor of the "cheaper" Virginia's -- which turned out to be only 10% cheaper in exchange for only having half of the weapons load of the Seawolf. Hmm......
So keep your F-22 money, they're not likely to take on the Chinese air force anytime soon
I don't think we are going to take them on "anytime soon". God willing, we'll never have to take them on. But it takes years to decades to design a new fighter aircraft. It takes years to start up a production line even for existing designs. You can't think about tomorrow when looking at these decisions -- you have to think ten to twenty years ahead.
Star Trek: A Final Unity was probably the best Star Trek game ever released.
Minimal combat, which could be avoided based on your actions, and many missions and away teams, just like on the show.
I hope the new Star Trek Online does it justice.
Final Unity also had a pretty cool combat interface if you were inclined to try and manage it all yourself instead of letting Worf do it for you. It was fairly overwhelming but actually seemed representative of what you'd expect space combat in the TNG universe to look like. There were a few battles that you couldn't avoid in the storyline as I recall -- one or two with the Romulans (one of which was painfully easy to win because it was with a "modified" warbird that sacrificed weaponry for speed) and one with the super aliens. That one was pretty hard to win and you usually wind up retreating or losing. I did beat it a few times, which lead to a lot of chest thumping on my part;)
I need to dig that game back out some day and go through it again. I wonder if it will run in Dosbox?
Playing as the Federation or Ferengi it was discouraged
Actually it was kind of encouraged as the Federation. You got small morale boosts for winning space battles but took a huge morale hit if you tried to land troops and conquer planets to actually win the war. As a result you'd usually wind up in an endless war where'd you destroy their ships as soon as they built them but couldn't actually end the war without alienating the civilian population. Remind you of the present day United States where the public will cheer on air campaigns with minimal American loss of life but go apeshit we land ground forces and start suffering a larger number of casualties?
To add more irony to the mix, the game actually encouraged genocide when playing as the Federation. You'd take less of a morale hit by engaging in orbital bombardments until everybody was dead than you would by invading and conquering the place. About the only time you could get away with ground invasions as the Federation was when you liberated conquered races from the other major powers. Those were actually kind of fun because you'd get a HUGE morale boost and liberated race would usually want to join the Federation within a turn or two.
The Romulans were their own PITA with morale too. Believe it or not the Romulan population was almost as picky as the Federation was, just in different ways. The Cardassians could almost get away with ignoring morale. Bad morale == good excuse to build forced labor camps! I never played as the Klingon's or Ferengi. Keep meaning to load that game back up one day but it doesn't seem to like my new computer for some reason -- which is strange because I've had it working on XP before without issue.
The chinese are just as nationalistic as any other group.
Judging from some of the comments about Tibet and the reaction to the protests regarding it during the Olympics I'd say that they are even more so.
Basically, we are still in a cold war with one side KNOWING that it is, while the other side hopes that it is not.
Isn't that the truth? Secretary Gates wants to cancel the F-22 and cut our aircraft carrier fleet down so that we can focus on fighting insurgencies. That's understandable in short term but I pray to god that it doesn't bite us in the ass in the long term. I'm not real worried about insurgents altering the geopolitical balance of power. I am worried about China doing the same.
The device has a power button, don't be weak and turn it off.
That kind of defeats the point of having a cell phone, doesn't it? My cell phone is my only phone. I don't feel like I should have to cut off all of my friends just to avoid stupidity from the office, nor do I want to carry separate devices for work and pleasure.
But from the outset I made it very clear that outside of working hours the notification options will be set to Phone Calls Only (i.e. no tones or vibrate on texts and e-mails)
I thought about that but I'd have two problems with that:
1) My network monitoring setup sends me SMS'es if it detects problems. Silencing these notifications would defeat the purpose of having them.
2) It would destroy the utility of SMS for personal reasons. I don't want to carry separate phones for work and personal (I've already got enough crap hooked to my belt without adding a second phone) so I'd have to give up on SMS from my friends or deal with notifications for stuff that I don't care about.
Employers give out Blackberrys so they can contact people when they are not at work. If you tell them (as I did) that it will always be off outside of work hours, they won't give you one.
The thing is, it doesn't bother me being contacted when I'm not at work if the situation warrants it. With e-mail though it's been my experience that the situation rarely warrants it. People use e-mail for all manner of stupid questions that either aren't that important or that they could answer themselves if they used the time it took to write the e-mail to research the problem on their own.
If it's important enough to warrant bothering me when I'm out of the office then it's important enough for a phone call. If it's not that important then it can wait until next Monday at 8:30am, can't it?
Slashdot Mirror
Laugh all you want but here in the US our Government can't compel us to turn over an encryption key and detain American citizens for 45 (or is it 90 now?) days without charges. And we still have our guns ;)
Who would have thought that willingly giving up one right would have set the precedent for the Government taking away other rights? When will our brothers and sisters across the pond wake up from this horrible nightmare?
Locating a carrier is not all that tough when you have satellites.
Says who? Satellites aren't magical talismans. They are limited by a number of factors, including orbital mechanics, the ability of their radar to resist jamming, the ability of their radar to discern radar decoys from true targets and the ability to conduct evasive maneuvers to avoid being targeted by anti-satellite weapons.
And what happens if Russia shares their satellite intel with China -- just like the US did with the UK during the Falklands war?
That would be an act of war. It's one thing for a nuclear armed superpower to share intel with an ally against a third world country. It's quite another thing for a nuclear armed power to share intel with someone against another nuclear armed power.
The Chinese will have that missile flying before we have a reliable defense.
What makes you think we don't have a defense now?
A 95% shoot-down rate is not good enough against a barrage of 50 missiles.
Actually I'd say a 95% shoot-down rate is very good. That leaves two or three missiles. To engage the carrier they need to overcome the electronic warfare of the battle group (ranging from jamming to the escorts and helicopters with blip enhancers that draw fire) and the point defenses of their targets. Besides, if you aren't talking about the ballistic missiles, how did those ASM launch platforms get into range?
Do you imagine Obama having the guts to take such a loss and risk another?
Do you imagine the American people demanding any less if 5,000 US sailors drown?
So does FexEx, UPS, or DHL deliver a document from any mailbox to anywhere in the country for 43 cents in a couple of days?
We'll never know, because USPS has a Federally granted monopoly on 'non-urgent mail'. Take that away from them and I'd wager that UPS and/or Fedex could drive them into the ground in short order. If nothing else the USPS is overpaying most of their employees, though I'd wager that private enterprise could find savings in other areas as well.
It does if you are stringing new wire. The cost of the wire is nothing compared to the labor cost of installing it. If you aren't stringing new wire then why haven't the phone companies already provided service?
this is actually a decent number for an initiative such as this.
No it's not, because by the time they are done spending money at the rate the Government typically spends it they could have bought a fiber to the doorstep system for every man, woman and child in the UK. Why would you spend a pile of money to build a system that's obsolete as soon as you turn it up?
2000 called. They want their broadband back......
Now those workers are just welfare scroungers in your eyes.
sure it might make you feel better to debase them
Umm, where the hell did I say that? All I did was question the GP's assumption that welfare lifts the children of those on it out of poverty. You don't have to assume that I look down upon the people who use it just because I question the wisdom of the way the system works.
but they are just as human as you are and your one wage check away from being one of them.
Umm, no, I have savings and could manage to survive for upwards of a year if I lost my job, even without unemployment benefits. I opted to save my extra money during the economic boom instead of blowing it away on material possessions as many did.
Americans have always gotten upset when our forces suffer substantial casualties, even during wars with popular support. Ever read about the public reaction after Tarawa?
To be fair, manned fighter aircraft will soon be a thing of the past.
Says who? Our unmanned aircraft are all dependent upon communications with operators on the ground. For the most part those communications rely on satellites. Are you going to lay odds that an advanced nation-state like China can't figure out a way to disrupt these types of communications systems?
They seem to do pretty well in Europe. The last two times I went to Italy I saw more Fords on the road than I do back here in the states.
Statistics. The vast majority of times when that situation occurs, the mugger walks away after getting the wallet.
I'm not going to place my future survival on statistics.
I suppose you can shoot someone as they walk away, but I don't really think my wallet is worth a life, even a mugger's.
Why would you shoot him if he's walking away and no longer poses a threat to you?
is finally going to start to treat the RIAA like the mobsters they mimic?
I really wish we could stop comparing the RIAA to the Mafia. It's an insult to the hard working men like Tony Soprano that strive to provide needed services like gambling, loan-sharking and prostitution to equate them with an organization that does nothing but sue college students and old people ;)
On a more serious note, it's still a stupid comparison. If you wind up on Tony Soprano's bad side you are going to get beaten up or in the worst case scenario murdered. The worst case scenario from a RIAA lawsuit is that you wind up filing bankruptcy. Bankruptcy != murder, IMHO.
Can anyone explain how congress can get a measly 13% approval rating and still re-elect over 90% of it's members in the same month?
Gerrymandering?
he Chinese will soon deploy a new hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile that is a Mach 10 problem for the Navy
Citation?
And then there are Russian supersonic anti-ship missiles as well, which they are selling all over the world (including Iran). At the very least, the Phalanx guns must be supplemented or replaced by rolling airframe missiles.
The Phalanx is being replaced by the RAM. More important than replacing the Phalanx though is investing in fighter aircraft that can keep the launching platforms from getting into range to begin with. It's much easier to shoot down a bomber carrying missiles (or a scout plane trying to find your location so shore/ship based ones can be fired) than it is to shoot down the missiles after launch. In that vein I think it was a mistake to retire the F-14 and the Phoenix missile -- we should have fielded upgraded versions of both -- but DoD apparently thought differently.
Carrier operations in the Persian gulf vs. Iran would be a tricky proposition right now and I doubt they will try it.
Says who? All those missiles are useless if you can't locate the carrier to begin with. To locate the carrier you need to get an aircraft, ship or satellite within radar range. All three of those platforms can be detected, engaged and destroyed during wartime. The Iranian missile threat is cause for concern but I doubt they've negated our navy.
China probably could find the bodies to invade the U.S
WOLVERINES!
Sorry, that was just the first image that came to mind ;) I think invading the US would be a pretty tough undertaking. Logistically it would be a nightmare -- you'd need to move men and material across the largest ocean in the World against the World's foremost naval power. Even if you could manage to do that you'd then have to defeat the American military on it's home soil and pacify the American population.
Pacifying a nation of 32 million where a sizable portion (a majority even?) of the population supports the invaders may well prove to be impossible. How would you go about pacifying a nation of 300 million where none of the population would support the invaders and where said population is armed to the teeth and presumably willing to fight for it's freedom and independence? Then there's the matter of nuclear weapons to consider....
No, I'm not real worried about them invading us. I am worried about falling behind them in military capability and having to abandon allies and/or interests. At least when the British came apart there was another world power that was committed to democracy to take their place. Who is going to take our place? I suppose India is a possibility in the long term but they've got enough problems of their own right now. China isn't being very open about their military build-up and I find that troubling on many levels. Unless that changes I don't see any reason why we shouldn't be concerned and taking steps to ensure our own supremacy.
I never played with the Borg option turned on. It was extremely frustrating to spend weeks building an empire only to see it annihilated by the Borg in half an hour. Even if you could manage to beat them the NPC never could -- so they would destroy all of your adversaries and leave you with an extremely boring/uninteresting game to play.
I had issues keeping the Romulan population happy when I wasn't at war. Morale seemed to deteriorate overtime and only going to war would bring it back up.
That is why China has major barriers to imports and is asking for another decade to drop them, even though they were suppose to drop them in 2002.
I've never understood why the United States engages in "free trade" when our supposed trading partners refuse to do the same. Japan is another good example -- it's virtually impossible for American car companies to sell cars in Japan yet we've allowed them free rein to compete in our own market. WTF is wrong with that picture?
We have built 135 F-22s as of now, don't you think that's enough for the time being?
The thing is that once you shut down a production line for a modern aircraft like that it's very hard to impossible to start it back up again. I could understand if Gates wanted to reduce the number of them that we are ordering (although that also runs into issues with economy of scale, see the B-2 for an example) but shutting down the production lines altogether seems short-sighted to me.
But then, this is the same DoD that axed production of the Seawolf in favor of the "cheaper" Virginia's -- which turned out to be only 10% cheaper in exchange for only having half of the weapons load of the Seawolf. Hmm......
So keep your F-22 money, they're not likely to take on the Chinese air force anytime soon
I don't think we are going to take them on "anytime soon". God willing, we'll never have to take them on. But it takes years to decades to design a new fighter aircraft. It takes years to start up a production line even for existing designs. You can't think about tomorrow when looking at these decisions -- you have to think ten to twenty years ahead.
Star Trek: A Final Unity was probably the best Star Trek game ever released. Minimal combat, which could be avoided based on your actions, and many missions and away teams, just like on the show. I hope the new Star Trek Online does it justice.
Final Unity also had a pretty cool combat interface if you were inclined to try and manage it all yourself instead of letting Worf do it for you. It was fairly overwhelming but actually seemed representative of what you'd expect space combat in the TNG universe to look like. There were a few battles that you couldn't avoid in the storyline as I recall -- one or two with the Romulans (one of which was painfully easy to win because it was with a "modified" warbird that sacrificed weaponry for speed) and one with the super aliens. That one was pretty hard to win and you usually wind up retreating or losing. I did beat it a few times, which lead to a lot of chest thumping on my part ;)
I need to dig that game back out some day and go through it again. I wonder if it will run in Dosbox?
Playing as the Federation or Ferengi it was discouraged
Actually it was kind of encouraged as the Federation. You got small morale boosts for winning space battles but took a huge morale hit if you tried to land troops and conquer planets to actually win the war. As a result you'd usually wind up in an endless war where'd you destroy their ships as soon as they built them but couldn't actually end the war without alienating the civilian population. Remind you of the present day United States where the public will cheer on air campaigns with minimal American loss of life but go apeshit we land ground forces and start suffering a larger number of casualties?
To add more irony to the mix, the game actually encouraged genocide when playing as the Federation. You'd take less of a morale hit by engaging in orbital bombardments until everybody was dead than you would by invading and conquering the place. About the only time you could get away with ground invasions as the Federation was when you liberated conquered races from the other major powers. Those were actually kind of fun because you'd get a HUGE morale boost and liberated race would usually want to join the Federation within a turn or two.
The Romulans were their own PITA with morale too. Believe it or not the Romulan population was almost as picky as the Federation was, just in different ways. The Cardassians could almost get away with ignoring morale. Bad morale == good excuse to build forced labor camps! I never played as the Klingon's or Ferengi. Keep meaning to load that game back up one day but it doesn't seem to like my new computer for some reason -- which is strange because I've had it working on XP before without issue.
The chinese are just as nationalistic as any other group.
Judging from some of the comments about Tibet and the reaction to the protests regarding it during the Olympics I'd say that they are even more so.
Basically, we are still in a cold war with one side KNOWING that it is, while the other side hopes that it is not.
Isn't that the truth? Secretary Gates wants to cancel the F-22 and cut our aircraft carrier fleet down so that we can focus on fighting insurgencies. That's understandable in short term but I pray to god that it doesn't bite us in the ass in the long term. I'm not real worried about insurgents altering the geopolitical balance of power. I am worried about China doing the same.
The device has a power button, don't be weak and turn it off.
That kind of defeats the point of having a cell phone, doesn't it? My cell phone is my only phone. I don't feel like I should have to cut off all of my friends just to avoid stupidity from the office, nor do I want to carry separate devices for work and pleasure.
But from the outset I made it very clear that outside of working hours the notification options will be set to Phone Calls Only (i.e. no tones or vibrate on texts and e-mails)
I thought about that but I'd have two problems with that:
1) My network monitoring setup sends me SMS'es if it detects problems. Silencing these notifications would defeat the purpose of having them.
2) It would destroy the utility of SMS for personal reasons. I don't want to carry separate phones for work and personal (I've already got enough crap hooked to my belt without adding a second phone) so I'd have to give up on SMS from my friends or deal with notifications for stuff that I don't care about.
Employers give out Blackberrys so they can contact people when they are not at work. If you tell them (as I did) that it will always be off outside of work hours, they won't give you one.
The thing is, it doesn't bother me being contacted when I'm not at work if the situation warrants it. With e-mail though it's been my experience that the situation rarely warrants it. People use e-mail for all manner of stupid questions that either aren't that important or that they could answer themselves if they used the time it took to write the e-mail to research the problem on their own.
If it's important enough to warrant bothering me when I'm out of the office then it's important enough for a phone call. If it's not that important then it can wait until next Monday at 8:30am, can't it?