Shipping companies did employ armed security that did indeed fire on pirates when the Somali problem was at its peak. You can find video on the web.
The big problem is the weapons you're carrying have to be legal in both the country you're shipping from and the country you're shipping to. Since so much of it was destined for Europe, where almost every weapon is illegal, your options are limited. Most of the security companies operating in that region had their own boats to move guards - they would board with their weapons in international waters and debark with their weapons in international waters.
Under international law pirates are hostis humani generis. What you do to them in international waters is constrained only by the flag you're flying and the amount of bad PR you're willing to put up with.
We don't spend money defending Canada. The US does maintain radar installations to pick up Russian missiles streaking over the pole, but that's not for Canada's benefit. Canada doesn't spend much on its military because there isn't any need - they maintain friendly relations with the US and everybody else is too far away.
I would add it is a decision which could be revisited should conditions warrant. At the end of WW II Canada had the third most powerful navy in the world, behind the US and the UK.
The problem is people who squeeze out a bunch of bastards and people who get hooked on opiods use a lot of services the rest of us have to pay for. I'm a live-and-let-live kind of guy, but if your lifestyle is consuming part of my paycheck I don't think it's unreasonable for me to expect some input.
By the way, it's funny that you should conflate personal freedom and democracy. They are not at all linked.
But wouldn't they need their own apps? When Android was launched nobody had a large range of apps. Today is a different story - people expect their bank to have one, they expect navigation, they expect messenger apps. If Huawei really launches a new OS they're going to have a chicken-and-egg problem.
I would also bet it's more risky - back in the MS-DOS days only governments worried about security desktop machines. There are probably all sorts of holes that would be considered security malpractice today. The only way to even sort-of secure it would be to have it running on VMs off it its own little world.
I worked for the US DoD as a contractor. When faced with the same situation (a program running on, of all things, Microsoft Xenix) we bought, not just a license, but the program itself including source code. Of course, part of the deal was the end of support from the vendor.
This time it might actually be different, though, because the addition of cheap computers greatly increases the number of tasks that can be automated. We're already pretty close to the point where people on the left half of the bell curve are completely driven out of the job market, and the service jobs that are growing are high-skill occupations like doctors and software developers.
A missile or the first stage of a normal launch. Even for Falcon 9 launches if the customer needs every last m/sec of dV the first stage is a write-off.
Yeah, this is NASA's biggest problem. Congress sees NASA as just another porkbarrel project. That's why there are ten different "Space Excellence Centers". That's why solid rockets for the space shuttle were built in Utah, which meant they had to be segmented (and have o-rings that could fail) so they could be shipped by train. That's why launches are in Florida but mission control is in Texas. You would never willingly run an operation like that.
It's not just NASA either - defense contractors have been forced into this kind of stuff for ages. I suspect over time individual congressmen will force NASA to write contracts such that SpaceX will need to open a dozen facilities all over the country, increasing costs and decreasing the company's ability to produce new designs quickly.
I doubt it. Numbers add up quickly if you're go somewhere with the intention of killing people. As bad as this attack was it could have been a lot worse - he was engaged by a cop early on, which probably gave a lot of people time to flee, and he apparently had a bomb that wasn't detonated. This could easily have had a toll in the hundreds.
There's a problem with basing policy on this kind of logic, though. Percentages matter - based on the number of Muslims in the US if Christians and Muslims were equally likely to carry out this kind of attack, we would expect a Muslim attack, what, every few hundred years? Or, conversely, a Christian attack every day?
They made the decision with the evidence they had on hand at the time, they didn't know 300 years down the road they were going to get invaded.
Of course they knew, or should have. Weak countries always get invaded eventually. China had been invaded by steppe nomads over and over for hundreds of years until the invention of gunpowder.
Yes, China was already the most developed nation in the world... and with policies like this one it stagnated to the point Western powers were able to waltz in and take over. You're not making the point you think you're making.
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It's more that she sues when she doesn't get a promotion because it shouldn't matter she didn't stay late like her colleagues did.
Shipping companies did employ armed security that did indeed fire on pirates when the Somali problem was at its peak. You can find video on the web.
The big problem is the weapons you're carrying have to be legal in both the country you're shipping from and the country you're shipping to. Since so much of it was destined for Europe, where almost every weapon is illegal, your options are limited. Most of the security companies operating in that region had their own boats to move guards - they would board with their weapons in international waters and debark with their weapons in international waters.
Under international law pirates are hostis humani generis. What you do to them in international waters is constrained only by the flag you're flying and the amount of bad PR you're willing to put up with.
We don't spend money defending Canada. The US does maintain radar installations to pick up Russian missiles streaking over the pole, but that's not for Canada's benefit. Canada doesn't spend much on its military because there isn't any need - they maintain friendly relations with the US and everybody else is too far away.
I would add it is a decision which could be revisited should conditions warrant. At the end of WW II Canada had the third most powerful navy in the world, behind the US and the UK.
The problem is people who squeeze out a bunch of bastards and people who get hooked on opiods use a lot of services the rest of us have to pay for. I'm a live-and-let-live kind of guy, but if your lifestyle is consuming part of my paycheck I don't think it's unreasonable for me to expect some input.
By the way, it's funny that you should conflate personal freedom and democracy. They are not at all linked.
But wouldn't they need their own apps? When Android was launched nobody had a large range of apps. Today is a different story - people expect their bank to have one, they expect navigation, they expect messenger apps. If Huawei really launches a new OS they're going to have a chicken-and-egg problem.
You'd think by now that kind of stuff would have been worked out of the system.
I would also bet it's more risky - back in the MS-DOS days only governments worried about security desktop machines. There are probably all sorts of holes that would be considered security malpractice today. The only way to even sort-of secure it would be to have it running on VMs off it its own little world.
I worked for the US DoD as a contractor. When faced with the same situation (a program running on, of all things, Microsoft Xenix) we bought, not just a license, but the program itself including source code. Of course, part of the deal was the end of support from the vendor.
This time it might actually be different, though, because the addition of cheap computers greatly increases the number of tasks that can be automated. We're already pretty close to the point where people on the left half of the bell curve are completely driven out of the job market, and the service jobs that are growing are high-skill occupations like doctors and software developers.
That's overly cynical. If money mattered that much Jeb Bush would be cruising to the Oval Office right now.
A missile or the first stage of a normal launch. Even for Falcon 9 launches if the customer needs every last m/sec of dV the first stage is a write-off.
Yeah, this is NASA's biggest problem. Congress sees NASA as just another porkbarrel project. That's why there are ten different "Space Excellence Centers". That's why solid rockets for the space shuttle were built in Utah, which meant they had to be segmented (and have o-rings that could fail) so they could be shipped by train. That's why launches are in Florida but mission control is in Texas. You would never willingly run an operation like that.
It's not just NASA either - defense contractors have been forced into this kind of stuff for ages. I suspect over time individual congressmen will force NASA to write contracts such that SpaceX will need to open a dozen facilities all over the country, increasing costs and decreasing the company's ability to produce new designs quickly.
That's an odd use of the word "invested". Typically when you purchase something from a company you don't consider yourself an investor.
So... both kidneys?
Oh, a I agree. That's why we never see this kind of thing in, say, France.
I doubt it. Numbers add up quickly if you're go somewhere with the intention of killing people. As bad as this attack was it could have been a lot worse - he was engaged by a cop early on, which probably gave a lot of people time to flee, and he apparently had a bomb that wasn't detonated. This could easily have had a toll in the hundreds.
There's a problem with basing policy on this kind of logic, though. Percentages matter - based on the number of Muslims in the US if Christians and Muslims were equally likely to carry out this kind of attack, we would expect a Muslim attack, what, every few hundred years? Or, conversely, a Christian attack every day?
Dude, refusing to decorate a cake for a gay wedding is totally like stoning people. Check your privilege!
Yeah, you're right. This guy would never have purchased guns illegally. I mean, that would be breaking the law.
Didn't work out so well for the people in that Orlando nightclub.
I don't know how to feel about that. Will our privacy be saved by bureaucratic inefficiency?
Of course they knew, or should have. Weak countries always get invaded eventually. China had been invaded by steppe nomads over and over for hundreds of years until the invention of gunpowder.
Heh heh. There's a version of the Tomahawk that has three warheads :)
Yes, China was already the most developed nation in the world... and with policies like this one it stagnated to the point Western powers were able to waltz in and take over. You're not making the point you think you're making.
It could have just been a Democratic rocket that was unwilling to pull its own weight.