Does anyone really believe that the government could make it illegal to record anything in analog?
I didn't used to think so. But upon reflection I've changed my mind. I used to think there's no way the government could put the mp3 genie back in the bottle, but for the most part that's exactly what's happened.
Look, any government that can make growing and consuming a plant in your house illegal can make analog recording illegal.
It sounds like the origins of some kind of cheap comic book super vilain. Except, its not really that funny. This guy might be developing biological weapons for terrorists in the near future. If all he cares about is money and isn't too concerned about right and wrong, he's going to go work for somebody who might overlook his past mistakes as long as he can deliver what they want.
I doubt even the arch-villians will hire this guy. If you're gonna release a bio-bomb on New York, you don't want to be wondering if the toxin acutally killed the lab rats or if he drowned them in the sink.
Especially if you're gonna demand one... million... dollars.
Sigh. Another Zonk retread. If people didn't say interesting things in the comments, I wouldn't bother with slashdot anymore.
The problem with intelligent design is not that it is implausible, but that it is completely untestable.
That has always been my problem with evolution. The way it's taught in the schools it's actually two theories, only one of which involves natural selection. It's hard to argue against natural selection, since we see it all around us, from the famous moth study to drug resistant microbes.
The genesis part of the theory really isn't science at all. There's simply no evidence for any of the various explanations floating around, and it's probably not a testable event. You could probably prove "if I put this, this, and this together at volcanic termperatures and then zap it with lightening I get a protein." But there's no way to prove that's actually what happened. As far as I'm concerned, the people who think their pet supernatural theory is the truth have just as much as any scientist to back it up.
As an atheist, I don't have much patience for so-called "intelligent design", which everyone knows is just repackaged creationism. But like I don't worship any supreme being, I don't worship at the altar of science either - I can conceive of unrepeatable events, which science simply can't address. Every tool has its limits.
I'd just like to point out the IAEA didn't actually do any of those things he's taking credit for. The Nobel committee gave him the peace prize as a slap at the US for invading Iraq, nothing more.
In fact, I would go as far as to say their work has been counter-productive, lulling people into thinking countries aren't doing weapons development when they are. North Korea is an excellent example - the North Koreans were developing nuclear weapons literally under the IAEA's nose after a 1994 agreement in which they promised not to.
"In the aftermath of Sept. 11, President Bush ordered his then top anti-terrorism adviser to look for a link between Iraq and the attacks, despite being told there didn't seem to be one.
I don't see anything sinister here. It's a pretty reasonable request.
In any event, I don't see what this has to do with whether or not Bush thought Iraq had WMD. We didn't invade Iraq because we thought they were responsible for the World Trade Center attacks.
In my Navy career as an anti-submarine warfare helicopter pilot, I can tell you I always used passive detection whenever possible; active was a last resort.
But that's my point. There are situations when you have to use active sonar, and you have to train for them. The fact that it's a last resort doesn't mean it's a capability you can do without.
real war, versus training are two different beasts.
True, but only as a result of necessity. The goal of training is to simulate actual battle conditions as closely as possible.
i fully believe that training is hella important beforhand. BUT you dont see the navy jets firing real rockets at each other in training because it'll kill.
I was involve in surface-to-air missle training for many years. Believe me, they fired real missles at real flying targets. Sometimes the missle wouldn't hit because it wasn't maintained properly, wasn't fired under the right conditions, or wasn't programmed properly. It'd be a hell of thing to find out during a war that you really didn't know as much about operating active sonar as you thought you did. A hell of a fatal thing, in fact.
Why is it so hard for them to use the sonar differently in training? I didnt RFA but the headline even said that they wanted the navy to first listen for animals, then progressively turn on their sonar systems such that animals had a chance to flee. whats so hard about that? how is having animals within your training area going to adversely effect your training?
Couple things. One, how long are you going to wait for the animals to clear out? How far is safe? If they really have to go 1000 miles away to avoid injury then training with this sonar would be effectively barred.
Second, I don't see much in the way of science to back the claims in the lawsuit. We've been using medium-wave active sonar for sixty years, and in that time whale populations have been growing. So if it's harmful the harm is pretty localized.
You have been around sub jockeys. They're the only ones to spout that little bit of idiocy.
In a real open ocean fight...
Mostly irrelevant. Would you have the infantry train only during the day? One of the hard lessons the navy has learned over the years is the "blue water" fight is only part of what they need to prepare for. Most naval combat has occurred and will continue to occur in relatively shallow water, where active sonar is definitely a card you'd like to be able to play if necessary. The US navy is busy now training to fight in the Taiwan straight, the most likely place for the next big slug-fest. Lots of shallow water there...
In a real fight, the surface units would be assisted by subsurface assets. Hopefully there would also be some aviation assets to help prosecute whatever problem might emerge. But the real solution will be subsurface units doing what they do best.
You never depend on the availability of another platform. With the Europeans selling AIP technology all over the world US nuclear submarines will probably be at a disadvantage in coastal water for the first time in half a century. If I'm a destroyer captain I'll make sure I can operate without one.
My point here is that active SONAR from surface units is usually a liability, and reducing the noise signature is a good thing.
That word "usually" covers a big hole in your argument. You'd like to depend on passive sonar if you can. You can't always do that. If it were so useless this discussion wouldn't be taking place, as the navy wouldn't have active sonar.
Some of you need to quit waving the flag and consider the question. Just because the Navy (or any) DoD component wants to play w/their toys doesn't make it good and useful. Be sure to catch my next lecture regarding torpedos from surface ships.
Waving the flag? Now you're just spouting nonsense. Those "toys", as you call them, keep our sailors alive. I, for one, will oppose any law that keeps the US navy from being able to train effectively.
I live near Bremerton, Washington, and so know a lot of ex sub-mariners. Most of them tell me that in all their years on subs, they NEVER used active sonar. It gives out too much useful information to anyone who might be trying to locate the sub.
Well, yeah, they were on a platform that depends on stealth for safety. Subs don't go active unless they're sure they've been discovered. On the other hand, there's lots of platforms that use active sonar, like helos, sonobouys, and destroyers.
The other point to consider is whether or not this stuff would be used against another navy in wartime. If you plan to use a system under pressure, you have to test it frequently and train under the most realistic conditions possible. My prediction is this suit won't go anywhere, except maybe a face-saving settlement that doesn't have any real effect. Personally, I'd rather the navy was given every lattitude to train - when a war comes it's too late.
My suspicion is the reason they're getting away with this has more to do with the fact that POTS is a cash cow for governments as well as phone companies. Here in the US state governments are terrified of VOIP because they count on POTS for a not-insignificant portion of revenues.
Yeah. What makes this easy is the same fucking topic has been posted every day for the last month. I mean, seriously, at the pace these things get resolved we could re-do the same thread hundreds of times.
You can whack off to whatever you like. But don't waste my time with bullshit about "he thought there were WMD" when even Margaret Thatcher got the memo about Bush lying about WMD. Nixon had "a secret plan to end the war" in 1968, too, you know. I guess you figure that since Bush also believes god talks to him about invading Iraq, god must have put Bush up to the WMD scam, too.
I don't find the fact that Baroness Thatcher disagrees (now) with Blair's (then) WMD assessment compelling. For one thing, she's a Tory, which puts the whole partisan spin on the thing. Also, it's easy to be right when the results are in.
At any rate it doesn't matter if she was right at the time or not. Her opinions really have anything to do with Bush, or even Blair. As I said earlier, you have to know what Bush really believed to know whether or not he was lying. I just don't see how you can know that unless there's some documentary evidence I'm not aware of. I look forward to seeing actual evidence Bush believed one thing and said another on this issue.
Clown.
Sigh. I see you run out of support for your position. I'm starting to think you can't have a discussion on slashdot without personal attacks. I guess the AC got you in the mood.
Well, I guess if you think you can look into someone's mind and know whether he had a reason to reach a conclusion that seemed opposite of the obvious at the time, you might be forgiven for being confused about what I'm talking about.
But saying something doesn't make it so - there was simply no reason to believe Iraq didn't have WMDs and every reason to believe they did. To know whether or not he lied you would have to know exactly what he believed at the time (not what you believe now). The only thing we can actually say for sure is whether or not they were there when we got there. That's why I call it a meme - it's just a product of leftists repeating the same speculation over and over until they're convinced it has a solid foundation.
Please spare me the Hans Blix stuff. The IAEA has managed to miss every single covert nuclear weapons program. If I were in Bush's shoes I wouldn't give any weight to what came out of that organization.
But maybe you folks are on to something. I'm gonna go into the corner and repeat "I'm rich... I'm rich... I"m rich" to myself over and over so I can retire.
The "Bush lied" meme doesn't really have any substance to it, but you can keep repeating it if it makes you feel better. At least it goes over well on slashdot.
As far as giving Iraq all that money - you don't really think that, do you? I mean, they had to have had many times that over the years from oil sales and they spent it all on military toys. Lets say we had flooded Iraq with money in 2002. Instead of having a base on the moon (which is probably pointless anyway - what would the occupants do?), they would have the best equipped army in the Middle East and procede to invade whichever neighbor looked the weakest. Or maybe they just woulda built the bomb. Hard to say.
Anyway, the reason we're not doing more robotic research has nothing to do with Iraq and everything to do with how money gets parcelled out by Congress. The manned side of NASA (which provides jobs in key congressional districts) has simply grown large enough to eat all the other parts of the budget. You can look for cuts in any program which doesn't support manned spaceflight, and keep in mind NASA's budget went up this year and is slated to increase next year as well.
My take on Windows is it would be a hell of a lot more secure if programmers didn't force me to install everything as Administrator. I once tried to use non-administrator accounts at home and finally gave up in disgust. Every third-party peice of software required administrator access to install (which is fine) and could only be run successfully by the installing user (which is not), because pretty much Microsoft was the only company to follow best practices. Now I use the admin account for everything but web-surfing.
I could understand it if those best practices were really complicated or undocumented, but they're not. Programmers are just lazy.
Well, I see we can't read the entire report without shovelling over a bunch of dead presidents, but let me go out on a limb here and guess at least some of those 20 points from a group of universities involve yet another conduit from my paycheck to... wait for it... universities!
Re:It's meant to counter supercavitation torpedoes
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Sonic Torpedo Defense
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· Score: 1
Just a small thought to add: even Germany has those torpedoes
Anybody with money can buy these and almost any other non-NBC Russian weapon. This is a revelation?
...so expect being shot from a speedboat with one of those fuckers in the near future (like...10 years?). good luck in the middle east/gulf/whatnot, Mr. Supercarrier.
That's one thing I wouldn't worry about as a carrier captain. This kind of torpedo needs lots of sensors and expertise to work properly. Not something terrorists have in great quantity. Besides, if they do, this is much more likely to be a concern, since you don't have to be on top of the ship to use it.
I'm curious as to the particulars of your project. How many people are working on it? How long has it been around? Does your company employ short-term contractors? Every C/C++ project I've been involved with has been around at least ten years, with more than 100 people working on it over time (not all at once).
In every case the program would core-dump seemingly at random. Each time I cajoled my boss into getting a copy of Purify and then spent the next three months flushing out all the memory leaks and buffer overruns, and to everyone's amazement the program became stable.
The problem was in every new release some bozo would put more in. I myself was originally a big advocate of C, but I've come to the conclusion the average programmer is simply too stupid to avoid 1)memory leaks, 2) buffer overruns, and 3) my personal favorite - passing references to stack variables back to the calling frame.
Yeah, that's what I'm wondering. The last time this came up the thrust of the article was "the US will be forced to...". By who?
I don't have a problem with other countries adopting socialism, but when they start with that "what's yours is mine" crap at the international level, well, then we have a problem. My taxes paid for the development of the internet. If the rest of the world doesn't like how we run the DNS servers they can just kiss my ass.
Re:It's meant to counter supercavitation torpedoes
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Sonic Torpedo Defense
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· Score: 2, Informative
I don't see the advantage of this system over using a torpedo to destroy an incoming shkval. You should be able to home in on that sucker from 100 miles away. I would think a head shot from the target would do the trick.
Also, I thought that particular weapon wasn't suited to non-nuclear use because it can't steer well inside it's bubble and it's so noisy it can't home on a target. Ah, I see from this article initial versions were unguided, current versions have an autopilot, and future versions will slow to conventional speeds for terminal guidance.
If I were Microsoft, and I became liable for the security of customer data in Great Britain, I simply wouldn't release software there. There's no way you can release bug-free software for the price people are willing to pay.
We know how to write bug-free software. It's a very rigid process that sacrifices time, money, and functionality for dependability. Well, raise your hand if you want to pay $20,000 for a stripped version of MS Office.
Note also this raises the barrier for entry in a business with high barriers already. Who's gonna invest in a software company that could get sued out of business in a couple of weeks? Only a company with deep pockets and a take-no-prisoners legal team could possibly cope in that environment.
I suspect if they actually went through with that the government would end up releasing software so people could do their jobs. Not because the quality was higher, but simply because the government would exempt itself from lawsuits.
Yes, well, you and I never put memory leaks in our code. Of course. Unfortunately, in any large commercial project you'll still spend much of your time chasing down memory leaks that other people have put there. Not everyone can be the programming gods that you and I are.
Only if you're seen - which, as I showed, odds are pretty low.
I must have missed when you showed that. Or did you miss my point about our UAVs being able to cover the places IEDs are effective?
Geez, how many wars did you manage to forget? The following have had less KIA (and again, our excellent medical care has shifted many "deaths" to "wounded") than the current Iraq war:
...
Sorry, I should have been more specific - what I meant was "casualty rates", i.e. how many soldiers die for each one you have in the field. You can't really count raw casualties and compare them to conflicts which amounted to minor brawls by today's standards.
they've lost enough people emplacing IEDs that they're starting to favor suicide bombers
Um, I'd say not.
Your link doesn't address my point. I didn't say the IEDs are less effective - they've been more effective because the bad guys are using more explosives (5 155s instead of just 2, for example). My point was more insurgents are getting killed as they place the IEDs. That's wy they're switching to suicide bombers. By the way, I suspect those figures include suicide car bombs, which support my point.
Convoys are likely to pass wherever the US feels the need to send troops. The US sends troops to places where they think guerillas are operating. I.e., guerillas fortify places where they operate from; when the US invades, they attack. This has happened all through the history of guerilla movements. The US *has* to invade strongholds, or guerillas will launch hit-and-run attacks from there.
For the most part that's not what's happening. The attacks are centered primarily on US supply routes and regular patrols in large population centers. The number of successful attacks is actually tailing off. The reason casualties have been up is, as I have pointed out, a result of larger bombs. I'm not really sure why they didn't do that earlier, since the entire country is filled with explosives. They'll never run out.
When they invade, however, guerillas either leave or blend into the local population. That's what makes guerilla wars so hard to win; foreign powers almost never win guerilla wars, because it doesn't take many guerillas or supportive areas to outmaneuver occupying troops.
I don't believe that's the case. In fact, guerilla tactics are rarely actually successful (for every Nicaragua there's an El Salvador and a Phillipines). Even the most widely cited case, Vietnam, didn't actually end as a guerilla war. The VC was smashed in the south and would never be a factor after the 1968 Tet offensive. The north won the war in a second conventional tank assault in 1975 after the first one was a disasterous failure in 1972. The US pullout was a result of Johnson losing the propaganda war in the US, not anything on the battlefield. That, by the way, is the only way the Iraqis can win.
You act like time to prepare is something that they don't have.
Not at all. They have plenty of time. My point was running around putting cartridges and triggers is suspicious activity that can get you killed.
If that were the case, we wouldn't be losing such a large percentage of total casualties to IEDs.
The reason we lose most of our people in IED attacks has less to do with how easy it is to plant IEDs and more to do with how few people we lose in firefights. We're taking fewer casualties in this war than any we've ever fought, and almost none from rifles (although we've had a couple recently since the other side set up a sniper school). In any event, they've lost enough people emplacing IEDs that they're starting to favor suicide bombers (sometime unwilling - "Sure Achmed, you'll have plenty of time to get away after you press the button...").
We only have 150k boots on the ground in a country as big as California (and by far, the majority are in bases at any given point in time), and a few dozen to, at most, a few hundred eyes in the sky at any given point in time.
True. But in order to be effective the ambush or IED has to be planted somewhere a US convoy is likely to pass, allowing us to concentrate eyes in the right places. Setting up ambush in the middle of the desert is probably perfectly save, but not very effective.
Also, they often get turned in by Iraqis in the neighborhood, because of support for the new government, money, or to settle a grudge. They really don't want everybody to know what they're doing.
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I didn't used to think so. But upon reflection I've changed my mind. I used to think there's no way the government could put the mp3 genie back in the bottle, but for the most part that's exactly what's happened.
Look, any government that can make growing and consuming a plant in your house illegal can make analog recording illegal.
I doubt even the arch-villians will hire this guy. If you're gonna release a bio-bomb on New York, you don't want to be wondering if the toxin acutally killed the lab rats or if he drowned them in the sink.
Especially if you're gonna demand one... million... dollars.
The problem with intelligent design is not that it is implausible, but that it is completely untestable.
That has always been my problem with evolution. The way it's taught in the schools it's actually two theories, only one of which involves natural selection. It's hard to argue against natural selection, since we see it all around us, from the famous moth study to drug resistant microbes.
The genesis part of the theory really isn't science at all. There's simply no evidence for any of the various explanations floating around, and it's probably not a testable event. You could probably prove "if I put this, this, and this together at volcanic termperatures and then zap it with lightening I get a protein." But there's no way to prove that's actually what happened. As far as I'm concerned, the people who think their pet supernatural theory is the truth have just as much as any scientist to back it up.
As an atheist, I don't have much patience for so-called "intelligent design", which everyone knows is just repackaged creationism. But like I don't worship any supreme being, I don't worship at the altar of science either - I can conceive of unrepeatable events, which science simply can't address. Every tool has its limits.
In fact, I would go as far as to say their work has been counter-productive, lulling people into thinking countries aren't doing weapons development when they are. North Korea is an excellent example - the North Koreans were developing nuclear weapons literally under the IAEA's nose after a 1994 agreement in which they promised not to.
I don't see anything sinister here. It's a pretty reasonable request.
In any event, I don't see what this has to do with whether or not Bush thought Iraq had WMD. We didn't invade Iraq because we thought they were responsible for the World Trade Center attacks.
But that's my point. There are situations when you have to use active sonar, and you have to train for them. The fact that it's a last resort doesn't mean it's a capability you can do without.
True, but only as a result of necessity. The goal of training is to simulate actual battle conditions as closely as possible.
i fully believe that training is hella important beforhand. BUT you dont see the navy jets firing real rockets at each other in training because it'll kill.
I was involve in surface-to-air missle training for many years. Believe me, they fired real missles at real flying targets. Sometimes the missle wouldn't hit because it wasn't maintained properly, wasn't fired under the right conditions, or wasn't programmed properly. It'd be a hell of thing to find out during a war that you really didn't know as much about operating active sonar as you thought you did. A hell of a fatal thing, in fact.
Why is it so hard for them to use the sonar differently in training? I didnt RFA but the headline even said that they wanted the navy to first listen for animals, then progressively turn on their sonar systems such that animals had a chance to flee. whats so hard about that? how is having animals within your training area going to adversely effect your training?
Couple things. One, how long are you going to wait for the animals to clear out? How far is safe? If they really have to go 1000 miles away to avoid injury then training with this sonar would be effectively barred.
Second, I don't see much in the way of science to back the claims in the lawsuit. We've been using medium-wave active sonar for sixty years, and in that time whale populations have been growing. So if it's harmful the harm is pretty localized.
You have been around sub jockeys. They're the only ones to spout that little bit of idiocy.
In a real open ocean fight...
Mostly irrelevant. Would you have the infantry train only during the day? One of the hard lessons the navy has learned over the years is the "blue water" fight is only part of what they need to prepare for. Most naval combat has occurred and will continue to occur in relatively shallow water, where active sonar is definitely a card you'd like to be able to play if necessary. The US navy is busy now training to fight in the Taiwan straight, the most likely place for the next big slug-fest. Lots of shallow water there...
In a real fight, the surface units would be assisted by subsurface assets. Hopefully there would also be some aviation assets to help prosecute whatever problem might emerge. But the real solution will be subsurface units doing what they do best.
You never depend on the availability of another platform. With the Europeans selling AIP technology all over the world US nuclear submarines will probably be at a disadvantage in coastal water for the first time in half a century. If I'm a destroyer captain I'll make sure I can operate without one.
My point here is that active SONAR from surface units is usually a liability, and reducing the noise signature is a good thing.
That word "usually" covers a big hole in your argument. You'd like to depend on passive sonar if you can. You can't always do that. If it were so useless this discussion wouldn't be taking place, as the navy wouldn't have active sonar.
Some of you need to quit waving the flag and consider the question. Just because the Navy (or any) DoD component wants to play w/their toys doesn't make it good and useful. Be sure to catch my next lecture regarding torpedos from surface ships.
Waving the flag? Now you're just spouting nonsense. Those "toys", as you call them, keep our sailors alive. I, for one, will oppose any law that keeps the US navy from being able to train effectively.
Well, yeah, they were on a platform that depends on stealth for safety. Subs don't go active unless they're sure they've been discovered. On the other hand, there's lots of platforms that use active sonar, like helos, sonobouys, and destroyers.
The other point to consider is whether or not this stuff would be used against another navy in wartime. If you plan to use a system under pressure, you have to test it frequently and train under the most realistic conditions possible. My prediction is this suit won't go anywhere, except maybe a face-saving settlement that doesn't have any real effect. Personally, I'd rather the navy was given every lattitude to train - when a war comes it's too late.
My suspicion is the reason they're getting away with this has more to do with the fact that POTS is a cash cow for governments as well as phone companies. Here in the US state governments are terrified of VOIP because they count on POTS for a not-insignificant portion of revenues.
I suppose I could make some macros.
I don't find the fact that Baroness Thatcher disagrees (now) with Blair's (then) WMD assessment compelling. For one thing, she's a Tory, which puts the whole partisan spin on the thing. Also, it's easy to be right when the results are in.
At any rate it doesn't matter if she was right at the time or not. Her opinions really have anything to do with Bush, or even Blair. As I said earlier, you have to know what Bush really believed to know whether or not he was lying. I just don't see how you can know that unless there's some documentary evidence I'm not aware of. I look forward to seeing actual evidence Bush believed one thing and said another on this issue.
Clown.
Sigh. I see you run out of support for your position. I'm starting to think you can't have a discussion on slashdot without personal attacks. I guess the AC got you in the mood.
But saying something doesn't make it so - there was simply no reason to believe Iraq didn't have WMDs and every reason to believe they did. To know whether or not he lied you would have to know exactly what he believed at the time (not what you believe now). The only thing we can actually say for sure is whether or not they were there when we got there. That's why I call it a meme - it's just a product of leftists repeating the same speculation over and over until they're convinced it has a solid foundation.
Please spare me the Hans Blix stuff. The IAEA has managed to miss every single covert nuclear weapons program. If I were in Bush's shoes I wouldn't give any weight to what came out of that organization.
But maybe you folks are on to something. I'm gonna go into the corner and repeat "I'm rich... I'm rich... I"m rich" to myself over and over so I can retire.
As far as giving Iraq all that money - you don't really think that, do you? I mean, they had to have had many times that over the years from oil sales and they spent it all on military toys. Lets say we had flooded Iraq with money in 2002. Instead of having a base on the moon (which is probably pointless anyway - what would the occupants do?), they would have the best equipped army in the Middle East and procede to invade whichever neighbor looked the weakest. Or maybe they just woulda built the bomb. Hard to say.
Anyway, the reason we're not doing more robotic research has nothing to do with Iraq and everything to do with how money gets parcelled out by Congress. The manned side of NASA (which provides jobs in key congressional districts) has simply grown large enough to eat all the other parts of the budget. You can look for cuts in any program which doesn't support manned spaceflight, and keep in mind NASA's budget went up this year and is slated to increase next year as well.
I could understand it if those best practices were really complicated or undocumented, but they're not. Programmers are just lazy.
Well, I see we can't read the entire report without shovelling over a bunch of dead presidents, but let me go out on a limb here and guess at least some of those 20 points from a group of universities involve yet another conduit from my paycheck to... wait for it... universities!
Anybody with money can buy these and almost any other non-NBC Russian weapon. This is a revelation?
That's one thing I wouldn't worry about as a carrier captain. This kind of torpedo needs lots of sensors and expertise to work properly. Not something terrorists have in great quantity. Besides, if they do, this is much more likely to be a concern, since you don't have to be on top of the ship to use it.
In every case the program would core-dump seemingly at random. Each time I cajoled my boss into getting a copy of Purify and then spent the next three months flushing out all the memory leaks and buffer overruns, and to everyone's amazement the program became stable.
The problem was in every new release some bozo would put more in. I myself was originally a big advocate of C, but I've come to the conclusion the average programmer is simply too stupid to avoid 1)memory leaks, 2) buffer overruns, and 3) my personal favorite - passing references to stack variables back to the calling frame.
I don't have a problem with other countries adopting socialism, but when they start with that "what's yours is mine" crap at the international level, well, then we have a problem. My taxes paid for the development of the internet. If the rest of the world doesn't like how we run the DNS servers they can just kiss my ass.
Also, I thought that particular weapon wasn't suited to non-nuclear use because it can't steer well inside it's bubble and it's so noisy it can't home on a target. Ah, I see from this article initial versions were unguided, current versions have an autopilot, and future versions will slow to conventional speeds for terminal guidance.
We know how to write bug-free software. It's a very rigid process that sacrifices time, money, and functionality for dependability. Well, raise your hand if you want to pay $20,000 for a stripped version of MS Office.
Note also this raises the barrier for entry in a business with high barriers already. Who's gonna invest in a software company that could get sued out of business in a couple of weeks? Only a company with deep pockets and a take-no-prisoners legal team could possibly cope in that environment.
I suspect if they actually went through with that the government would end up releasing software so people could do their jobs. Not because the quality was higher, but simply because the government would exempt itself from lawsuits.
Yes, well, you and I never put memory leaks in our code. Of course. Unfortunately, in any large commercial project you'll still spend much of your time chasing down memory leaks that other people have put there. Not everyone can be the programming gods that you and I are.
Oh, but not for granny to carry her groceries. I want one so I can carry this.
I must have missed when you showed that. Or did you miss my point about our UAVs being able to cover the places IEDs are effective?
Geez, how many wars did you manage to forget? The following have had less KIA (and again, our excellent medical care has shifted many "deaths" to "wounded") than the current Iraq war:
Sorry, I should have been more specific - what I meant was "casualty rates", i.e. how many soldiers die for each one you have in the field. You can't really count raw casualties and compare them to conflicts which amounted to minor brawls by today's standards.
they've lost enough people emplacing IEDs that they're starting to favor suicide bombers
Um, I'd say not .
Your link doesn't address my point. I didn't say the IEDs are less effective - they've been more effective because the bad guys are using more explosives (5 155s instead of just 2, for example). My point was more insurgents are getting killed as they place the IEDs. That's wy they're switching to suicide bombers. By the way, I suspect those figures include suicide car bombs, which support my point.
Convoys are likely to pass wherever the US feels the need to send troops. The US sends troops to places where they think guerillas are operating. I.e., guerillas fortify places where they operate from; when the US invades, they attack. This has happened all through the history of guerilla movements. The US *has* to invade strongholds, or guerillas will launch hit-and-run attacks from there.
For the most part that's not what's happening. The attacks are centered primarily on US supply routes and regular patrols in large population centers. The number of successful attacks is actually tailing off. The reason casualties have been up is, as I have pointed out, a result of larger bombs. I'm not really sure why they didn't do that earlier, since the entire country is filled with explosives. They'll never run out.
When they invade, however, guerillas either leave or blend into the local population. That's what makes guerilla wars so hard to win; foreign powers almost never win guerilla wars, because it doesn't take many guerillas or supportive areas to outmaneuver occupying troops.
I don't believe that's the case. In fact, guerilla tactics are rarely actually successful (for every Nicaragua there's an El Salvador and a Phillipines). Even the most widely cited case, Vietnam, didn't actually end as a guerilla war. The VC was smashed in the south and would never be a factor after the 1968 Tet offensive. The north won the war in a second conventional tank assault in 1975 after the first one was a disasterous failure in 1972. The US pullout was a result of Johnson losing the propaganda war in the US, not anything on the battlefield. That, by the way, is the only way the Iraqis can win.
Not at all. They have plenty of time. My point was running around putting cartridges and triggers is suspicious activity that can get you killed.
If that were the case, we wouldn't be losing such a large percentage of total casualties to IEDs.
The reason we lose most of our people in IED attacks has less to do with how easy it is to plant IEDs and more to do with how few people we lose in firefights. We're taking fewer casualties in this war than any we've ever fought, and almost none from rifles (although we've had a couple recently since the other side set up a sniper school). In any event, they've lost enough people emplacing IEDs that they're starting to favor suicide bombers (sometime unwilling - "Sure Achmed, you'll have plenty of time to get away after you press the button...").
We only have 150k boots on the ground in a country as big as California (and by far, the majority are in bases at any given point in time), and a few dozen to, at most, a few hundred eyes in the sky at any given point in time.
True. But in order to be effective the ambush or IED has to be planted somewhere a US convoy is likely to pass, allowing us to concentrate eyes in the right places. Setting up ambush in the middle of the desert is probably perfectly save, but not very effective.
Also, they often get turned in by Iraqis in the neighborhood, because of support for the new government, money, or to settle a grudge. They really don't want everybody to know what they're doing.