ICBM's are not as accurate as you propose. That is why they use nukes, and modern ones MIRV's. They can hit a city sized target. Maybe. Their two powers are range, and pretty much the inability to stop them. However unless you are going for carrier groups with MIRV nukes, there isn't much chance of hitting much but ocean. Of course the "defence" against that would be to simply disperse as most as possible, giving no target (and moving, as an ICBM can't really manover off initial target at those speeds).
By far the most potent weapon against ships are aircraft, hence the predominance of aircraft carriers. The second is submarines. Which is what the primary role of a Destroyer is, to counter submarines. Which is why in your carrier group you are going to have destroyer escorts.
So while 4.4 Billion is a big price tag, I don't think the same arguments can be made as to it not being useful. In the end, they are their to keep submarines from sinking your carriers. As to the actual expense, from the sound of it, this is the first in what is a proof of concept of a host of new technologies, to possibly be integrated into future ships, so being cutting edge, they are of course going to be expensive. Like anything, being a first adopter, it remains to be seen how effective they will be over say a standard destroyer.
hyper-sonic missiles have been talked about for years. As yet they don't exist. Is China trying to develop them? Yes. So is every other nation. The same could be said for super-cavitation torpedoes, which would also be the death knell for just about any surface ship defense system. However again, they don't exist. Again, it isn't for a lack of trying, nations have been trying for years, it is just that those sorts of cutting edge weapon systems are very hard to develop, and you start running into some insurmountable obstacles such as materials science and physics... (i.e. materials don't exists that can meet the requirements, and physics of speed, acceleration, friction, inertia, and the rest need to be overcome).
Almost ALL of this is caused by coal burning, both in large electrical generation stations, and locally by individuals cooking and heating.
China is at least building at an accelerated rate the largest number of nuclear reactors, and some of the most advanced ones at that, in a direct response, however it does take time. They are doing something about the situation, only they are a bit hogtied in the here in now.
How many nuclear reactors are being built or are planning to be built in the US? How quickly is the US realistically trying to get away from coal plants? I say realistically as a premeditated strike against the eventual posts that wind and solar will solve everything. The US corporations seem to have gone with natural gas as an alternative, with fracking, which has its own issues, but smog and clean air isn't really among them...
Three plausible explanations to the "Earthican ale" dilemma.
1) Racism context. The say way one might say American Beer is piss. I think it is understood that not all American beer is piss, and that other beers are avialble, only that most of it is piss, and the most popular is piss, and therefore colloquially given the identification of piss. Hence the Romulans refering to Earthican ale, and Earthicans to Romulan Ale.
2) That given normal evolution of markets, and sufficient time, all tend to trend towards monopoly. Thus fast forwarding hundreds or thousands of years in the future, maybe there is only one Earthican Ale, the tastiest ale on Earth. TM.
3) Given the unlikely united global government that everyone seems to enjoy, perhaps ale production has been nationalized, and our all caring beloved leaders have selected only the best ale to be produced for consumption, as surely they know best!
My favorite bit of dramatic device in that movie was the fact that apparently a Deathstar can travel at faster than light speeds and whip around the universe, however for some unknown inexplicable reason, it can't just fly around a fracking moon or planet, and has to sit there and wait for the natural motion of bodies? Also being equipped with a weapon that can blow up planets, has a planet blocking it's path? Or that blowing up the planet that a moon orbits won't coincidentally also pretty much mess up said moon...
More importantly it was an F-16 FIGHTER (i.e.e equipped for AA) VS a SU-24 BOMBER as that is how it would have been configured, as that was it's mission. It isn't like the Syrian Rebels or ISIS or whomever Russia is against has any air power. Probably hard to win an air battle when not carrying air-to-air armaments, and weighed down by bombs (though he may have unloaded already).
Putin said as much in his immediate news release which said that from now on bombing missions would have a fighter escort. At that point, I am guessing things might turn out a bit differently.
Yes,. but WWII was caused by many factors, including a once super power of the world, which suffering from political decisions of the past, elected to annex one of its neighbors that used to be part of the old empire...
Fortunately that sounds nothing like the world today!
1) I'll agree, it was too long. I assume intentionally for money making purposes. The book was like 150 pages long. 2) It is based on a book, one of the most read books in existence. It isn't like the movie was an original work or something. How much "Vision" do you need. 3) No one seems to mention the legal troubles as well, with the Tolkien estate taking them to court trying to get more money, or not have the movie made, delaying everything.
While not probably obvious, I'm sure many such "databases" exist already, they just are not really out there in the public consciousnesses.
For example, the "No Fly List". where do you think that comes from? How are people put on it? What criteria does it take to be put on it? Etc... I remember a story years ago, that Cat Stevens was mistakenly put on the list, probably in part because when he converted to Islam he changed his name for example.
So while people are getting all high and mighty about the topic, I am sure meany such questionable measures have been in place in the US for many years already. At least he is being upfront about it, insofar as any politician can be.
Personally I think it is wrong, and over the top, but then again, "over the top" is basically Trumps campaign in a nutshell!
I have been playing Fallout 4 since release. I have an AMD card, and have had little problems. I was a bit worried, as my particular card model (7850) was technically below the "minimum" specs, which call for at least a 7870. Which first of all doesn't make any sense, as the 7850 would beat the pants off of the nVIDIA card they listed and several others above that which doesn't make a lot of sense.
When I first tried to play the game, I had to swallow hard, as it initially refused to load, and dumped me a message saying something about my video card not meeting requirements. However I've been playing nothing really but DOTA2 for sometime, and it had been probably a year since I updated my AMD video drivers. Once I went and did that (which took 5 mins), it worked flawlessly. I let Fallout 4 detect my settings, and used whatever it gave me. However on inspection everything is set to "On" or "High" and even "Ultra High", and I have had no video issues with slowness or stuttering, so I am a bit perplexed about the Fallout 4 minimum requirements. About the only thing I can think of is I am not running a multiple monitor setup for gaming, so I don't have some ridiculous resolution going on. That said I am running a 24" on max which is probably 1600x1200 or whatever it may be, so it isn't all that tiny either. I do get what seem like some longer load times when entering a new area (perhaps that is what they are talking about), though I attributed that to perhaps my CPU more than anything else (4670K). For reference I am also running Windows 7 64bit and the game is loaded on a Mushkin 240GB mSATA SSD.
I've owned mostly AMD, and for the most part has been positive.
We've moved to Citrix for a lot of our applications. It works, and is a lot better than the alternative. The applications we have moved to Citrix are ALL old legacy applications that are too expensive to replace. So it is essentially a stopgap solution to keep limping along until we can eventually phase them out. In an ideal world we wouldn't use it, in an ideal world we would have planned for and budgeted for replacements. I rarely if ever see an ideal world however.
You're right, users hate it, however they get used to it. They hate it because they have to remotely log in, and it usually takes a bit longer. That said, they would hate the eventual alternative even more, which would be constant individual problems and calls to IT. It is also more useful for outside clients to your network. Bottom line is it lets us totally control the environment, which with aging applications is essential to them not breaking all the time. Again, perfect world, at least within our own network we would have more control, but again, realistically it doesn't really happen despite best efforts. It also makes upgrades/enhancements/bug-fixes much easier to deploy to a handful of servers, than thousands of computers, also important to keeping old software up to speed enough to keep serving a useful purpose.
So Citrix, while certainly not ideal, is very useful at least in that regard.
Like criminals they are MOSTLY stupid and uneducated. Both groups for the most part lack many of the basic resources required to improve upon their actions, be it infrastructure, money, contacts, technology, etc...
That is why you hear of stories of bank robbers taking cabs home and the like.
That is not to say that smarter craftier ones don't exist, only that the dumb ones far outnumber them. I have no doubt, the easiest way to catch the smart ones, are not by trying to unravel their master plan, but rather by simply catching the dumb ones that are associated with them. I would bet the Terrorist HR department takes pretty much anyone that shows up.
So yeah, don't bother messing around with encryption, it simply isn't worth the time and effort (regardless of the other larger civil implications).
Not to start up the whole Refugee debate, but this is also something I thought about in this context. First countries should accept them, because in doing so is thwarting terrorist efforts. Preventing people from fleeing them, seems counter productive. Secondly, and perhaps just as importantly,of those that are educated and helping the terrorist cause, I would bet a significant portion of them are not fanatics but rather coerced into roles because of threats to their families should they not cooperate. Should those families be safely relocated, that leverage is removed, perhaps prompting desertion, and making it harder for HR to enlist really useful people, having to depend on more dummies, who make more mistakes, which make them less effective and more easily caught, etc...
Having made that complex point, I'll make two more:
1) Not X-Wing VS Tie Fighter! Jerks! Make that game already! The only two SW games that came close to the enjoyment of that game was perhaps SWKOTOR, and Jedi Knight 2 multiplayer (if only to force choke someone over a bottomless pit and drop them).
2) Battlefront of old really sucked for one important reason. The AI bots were the dumbest bunch of morons ever. You could play a game, and genocidally wipe out billions of AI, and still lose. Conversely, you could do nothing, and somehow win. After awhile once the theme wears off, it kinda makes you wonder why you bother to play the game in the first place (other than the fun of picking of Storm Troopers for a period of time). I have no doubt the reason why the AI sucked so bad was the limited computational resources of the consoles it was built for.
...and how much nuclear material would be required to produce enough "bombs" (Orion Project or something similar I am guessing you are referencing) to establish constant propulsion for a distance of several light years? Even assuming that it is a one way trip, my guess is that it would likely take something like all of the material of Earth to do so.
BTW, something like an ION drive would still need something like a nuclear source to power it anyway. I would imagine that once you get sufficiently far enough away from any solar point, things like solar panels won't be as effective.
As to water as a good radiation shielding I have heard that before. The bonus is of course we need water to live etc... Then again, I am not sure how useful irradiated water is for anyone. The other big deterrence to using water is its weight. If we didn't have to get out of a gravity well it would work very well probably. If we have to heave and drag it up through our atmosphere, not so much. So I would guess the first "mining" that we do outside of Earth, would probably be for ice...
Also sounds like the beginning of a Monty Python sketch... when the countermeasures are to build fake submarine drones for the other drones to follow, and by the end there are just a whole lot of drones following each other in an infinite loop around the oceans to the Benny Hill theme song...
Crew maybe. Success no. Reason: Propulsion. In order to get to any nearby star is an order of magnitude of less than millions of years, one would have to accelerate and then at the midpoint decelerate CONSTANTLY. By conventional means, that would mean that they would need cart around about the amount of hydrogen stored is a star, not very reasonable. Things like ION drives are too small and inefficient by far. Things like Ramscoops don't really exist except in works of fiction. Additionally depending on how long the voyage is, you need to build something large enough, comprised of things that don't somehow age or break, or somehow cart around an entire civilization worth of material to construct new everything and the knowledge to do so... From foundries for smelting metal, to foundries that create microchips and everything in between. Never mind a close loop system of atmosphere, waste, and food, that has never been done outside of an actual ecosystem designed over billions of years...
Makes for a good book/tv series/movie however, I'm game for that!
Sounds like some police just want an excuse to buy some Playstation 4's just prior to Star Wars battlefront coming out...
"Sorry sarge, we're too busy today 'monitoring' Playstation 4 to do any other work, I'm afraid we'll probably be at it pretty constantly for the immediate future..."
I have read somewhere that one of the unintended causes of much of the terrorism issues that exist was that when the US invaded IRAQ, they disbanded their Army, essentially putting thousands upon thousands of fighting age men with guns out of work... Not sure how much truth there is to that considering it was 18 years ago, however it does seem plausible at least in part.
Been playing since release... It has crashed a few times, but I've not lost anything/much, and it has been infrequent enough not to care too much. If I unplug my earphones, I lose all sound and have to restart the game which is a bit lame. Some of the mouse movements in menus are clunky. It randomly lost all mouse movement at one point also.
About the only "bug" I've noticed that is truly annoying is that when I am in the Armor Workshop, and I have some awesome stuff I am wearing, and some stuff I want to scrap for parts, it will sometimes seemingly decide that if I am going to scrap my some armor, I should also scrap my good stuff also, even though I definitely didn't say to do that. My solution is for now, either not to scrap any armour, and just store it someplace for later, or make damn sure I save it every time I decide I want to scrap armour, take off all my good stuff and put it somewhere else, then scrap what I have in my inventory. Annoying to be sure.
On another note, there is of course some dumb AI every now and again which can be frustrating... Like sneaking around disarming landmines, and having your AI follower, just run in all over the place blowing all the mine and you up to kingdom come, several times... Then blocking your retreat when facing off against a a boss... I'll admit to trying to kill her several times in frustration.
In all I wouldn't say it is too buggy, but they really need to figure out the UI stuff with the Armour Workshop, I assume they'll patch it at some point.
I can't disagree with anything you said, but will only add that many if not most of those things are made worse the longer a project goes on for. You get actual changes in government with different agendas, new staff assigned from project managers to content experts, etc...
Many times due to the procurement rules, contractors bid ultra low, then pump up the costs by making everything a change order. Is that the fault of government or the contractor?
Anyway I have seen both sides, with about an equal measure. Many times a contractor or company will oversell what they or their software can do. I've been to some development meetings that were more like sales pitches (which makes me roll my eyes). At the same time I have seen requirements flip back and forth because they can't decided what the policy is or what upper management will agree to... I've also seen new management basically take a new "direction" or "strategy" that basically destroys pretty much all your previous work, making you start over, somehow declaring it a "success", then immediately moving on to their next high paying job, leaving the mess to the next manager, who will take a new "direction" or "strategy"...
If my memory serves (and sometimes it doesn't) a good example is the Health Care system they tried to build in the UK. They used Agile methodology. What they got cost billions of dollars, and a whole lot of smaller components that didn't work together, and in the end nothing.
From what I have heard Agile isn't the best method to use on very large scale systems, It can still work if done right apparently, only that the overhead needs to be spent to make it work. Waterfall in those instances might still be a better way to go, though again it too needs to be done properly.
Personally, I think it has less to do with the method, than a lot of other factors at play, particularly when trying to develop in a government environment. Particularly when everything you do is done with various contractors. Other things like yearly budget issues, and political interference either actively trying to make you fail, or timelines that cross political change, and then there is management that is more interested in their next position than any project... None of those things are technical, but I would bet they all play a much larger role in the success or fail of a project regardless of what methodology you choose.
Slashdot Mirror
Somebody forgot to tell the empire!
http://www.starwars.com/databa...
ICBM's are not as accurate as you propose. That is why they use nukes, and modern ones MIRV's. They can hit a city sized target. Maybe. Their two powers are range, and pretty much the inability to stop them. However unless you are going for carrier groups with MIRV nukes, there isn't much chance of hitting much but ocean. Of course the "defence" against that would be to simply disperse as most as possible, giving no target (and moving, as an ICBM can't really manover off initial target at those speeds).
By far the most potent weapon against ships are aircraft, hence the predominance of aircraft carriers. The second is submarines. Which is what the primary role of a Destroyer is, to counter submarines. Which is why in your carrier group you are going to have destroyer escorts.
So while 4.4 Billion is a big price tag, I don't think the same arguments can be made as to it not being useful. In the end, they are their to keep submarines from sinking your carriers. As to the actual expense, from the sound of it, this is the first in what is a proof of concept of a host of new technologies, to possibly be integrated into future ships, so being cutting edge, they are of course going to be expensive. Like anything, being a first adopter, it remains to be seen how effective they will be over say a standard destroyer.
hyper-sonic missiles have been talked about for years. As yet they don't exist. Is China trying to develop them? Yes. So is every other nation. The same could be said for super-cavitation torpedoes, which would also be the death knell for just about any surface ship defense system. However again, they don't exist. Again, it isn't for a lack of trying, nations have been trying for years, it is just that those sorts of cutting edge weapon systems are very hard to develop, and you start running into some insurmountable obstacles such as materials science and physics... (i.e. materials don't exists that can meet the requirements, and physics of speed, acceleration, friction, inertia, and the rest need to be overcome).
Almost ALL of this is caused by coal burning, both in large electrical generation stations, and locally by individuals cooking and heating.
China is at least building at an accelerated rate the largest number of nuclear reactors, and some of the most advanced ones at that, in a direct response, however it does take time. They are doing something about the situation, only they are a bit hogtied in the here in now.
How many nuclear reactors are being built or are planning to be built in the US? How quickly is the US realistically trying to get away from coal plants? I say realistically as a premeditated strike against the eventual posts that wind and solar will solve everything. The US corporations seem to have gone with natural gas as an alternative, with fracking, which has its own issues, but smog and clean air isn't really among them...
Three plausible explanations to the "Earthican ale" dilemma.
1) Racism context. The say way one might say American Beer is piss. I think it is understood that not all American beer is piss, and that other beers are avialble, only that most of it is piss, and the most popular is piss, and therefore colloquially given the identification of piss. Hence the Romulans refering to Earthican ale, and Earthicans to Romulan Ale.
2) That given normal evolution of markets, and sufficient time, all tend to trend towards monopoly. Thus fast forwarding hundreds or thousands of years in the future, maybe there is only one Earthican Ale, the tastiest ale on Earth. TM.
3) Given the unlikely united global government that everyone seems to enjoy, perhaps ale production has been nationalized, and our all caring beloved leaders have selected only the best ale to be produced for consumption, as surely they know best!
My favorite bit of dramatic device in that movie was the fact that apparently a Deathstar can travel at faster than light speeds and whip around the universe, however for some unknown inexplicable reason, it can't just fly around a fracking moon or planet, and has to sit there and wait for the natural motion of bodies? Also being equipped with a weapon that can blow up planets, has a planet blocking it's path? Or that blowing up the planet that a moon orbits won't coincidentally also pretty much mess up said moon...
Just look what happened to the Klingon Empire!
More importantly it was an F-16 FIGHTER (i.e.e equipped for AA) VS a SU-24 BOMBER as that is how it would have been configured, as that was it's mission. It isn't like the Syrian Rebels or ISIS or whomever Russia is against has any air power. Probably hard to win an air battle when not carrying air-to-air armaments, and weighed down by bombs (though he may have unloaded already).
Putin said as much in his immediate news release which said that from now on bombing missions would have a fighter escort. At that point, I am guessing things might turn out a bit differently.
Yes,. but WWII was caused by many factors, including a once super power of the world, which suffering from political decisions of the past, elected to annex one of its neighbors that used to be part of the old empire...
Fortunately that sounds nothing like the world today!
1) I'll agree, it was too long. I assume intentionally for money making purposes. The book was like 150 pages long.
2) It is based on a book, one of the most read books in existence. It isn't like the movie was an original work or something. How much "Vision" do you need.
3) No one seems to mention the legal troubles as well, with the Tolkien estate taking them to court trying to get more money, or not have the movie made, delaying everything.
While not probably obvious, I'm sure many such "databases" exist already, they just are not really out there in the public consciousnesses.
For example, the "No Fly List". where do you think that comes from? How are people put on it? What criteria does it take to be put on it? Etc... I remember a story years ago, that Cat Stevens was mistakenly put on the list, probably in part because when he converted to Islam he changed his name for example.
So while people are getting all high and mighty about the topic, I am sure meany such questionable measures have been in place in the US for many years already. At least he is being upfront about it, insofar as any politician can be.
Personally I think it is wrong, and over the top, but then again, "over the top" is basically Trumps campaign in a nutshell!
Can't let the Terrorists get a hold of the Internet, the Elders of the Internet would be very displeased!
I can only wonder how many times Terrorist IT has asked someone "Have you tried turning it on and off again?"
"Remember, without 'IT' all you have are errors..." :) --- I should win the internets for that one I think.
I have been playing Fallout 4 since release. I have an AMD card, and have had little problems. I was a bit worried, as my particular card model (7850) was technically below the "minimum" specs, which call for at least a 7870. Which first of all doesn't make any sense, as the 7850 would beat the pants off of the nVIDIA card they listed and several others above that which doesn't make a lot of sense.
When I first tried to play the game, I had to swallow hard, as it initially refused to load, and dumped me a message saying something about my video card not meeting requirements. However I've been playing nothing really but DOTA2 for sometime, and it had been probably a year since I updated my AMD video drivers. Once I went and did that (which took 5 mins), it worked flawlessly. I let Fallout 4 detect my settings, and used whatever it gave me. However on inspection everything is set to "On" or "High" and even "Ultra High", and I have had no video issues with slowness or stuttering, so I am a bit perplexed about the Fallout 4 minimum requirements. About the only thing I can think of is I am not running a multiple monitor setup for gaming, so I don't have some ridiculous resolution going on. That said I am running a 24" on max which is probably 1600x1200 or whatever it may be, so it isn't all that tiny either. I do get what seem like some longer load times when entering a new area (perhaps that is what they are talking about), though I attributed that to perhaps my CPU more than anything else (4670K). For reference I am also running Windows 7 64bit and the game is loaded on a Mushkin 240GB mSATA SSD.
I've owned mostly AMD, and for the most part has been positive.
We've moved to Citrix for a lot of our applications. It works, and is a lot better than the alternative. The applications we have moved to Citrix are ALL old legacy applications that are too expensive to replace. So it is essentially a stopgap solution to keep limping along until we can eventually phase them out. In an ideal world we wouldn't use it, in an ideal world we would have planned for and budgeted for replacements. I rarely if ever see an ideal world however.
You're right, users hate it, however they get used to it. They hate it because they have to remotely log in, and it usually takes a bit longer. That said, they would hate the eventual alternative even more, which would be constant individual problems and calls to IT. It is also more useful for outside clients to your network. Bottom line is it lets us totally control the environment, which with aging applications is essential to them not breaking all the time. Again, perfect world, at least within our own network we would have more control, but again, realistically it doesn't really happen despite best efforts. It also makes upgrades/enhancements/bug-fixes much easier to deploy to a handful of servers, than thousands of computers, also important to keeping old software up to speed enough to keep serving a useful purpose.
So Citrix, while certainly not ideal, is very useful at least in that regard.
Like criminals they are MOSTLY stupid and uneducated. Both groups for the most part lack many of the basic resources required to improve upon their actions, be it infrastructure, money, contacts, technology, etc...
That is why you hear of stories of bank robbers taking cabs home and the like.
That is not to say that smarter craftier ones don't exist, only that the dumb ones far outnumber them. I have no doubt, the easiest way to catch the smart ones, are not by trying to unravel their master plan, but rather by simply catching the dumb ones that are associated with them. I would bet the Terrorist HR department takes pretty much anyone that shows up.
So yeah, don't bother messing around with encryption, it simply isn't worth the time and effort (regardless of the other larger civil implications).
Not to start up the whole Refugee debate, but this is also something I thought about in this context. First countries should accept them, because in doing so is thwarting terrorist efforts. Preventing people from fleeing them, seems counter productive. Secondly, and perhaps just as importantly,of those that are educated and helping the terrorist cause, I would bet a significant portion of them are not fanatics but rather coerced into roles because of threats to their families should they not cooperate. Should those families be safely relocated, that leverage is removed, perhaps prompting desertion, and making it harder for HR to enlist really useful people, having to depend on more dummies, who make more mistakes, which make them less effective and more easily caught, etc...
LOL! I agree!
Having made that complex point, I'll make two more:
1) Not X-Wing VS Tie Fighter! Jerks! Make that game already! The only two SW games that came close to the enjoyment of that game was perhaps SWKOTOR, and Jedi Knight 2 multiplayer (if only to force choke someone over a bottomless pit and drop them).
2) Battlefront of old really sucked for one important reason. The AI bots were the dumbest bunch of morons ever. You could play a game, and genocidally wipe out billions of AI, and still lose. Conversely, you could do nothing, and somehow win. After awhile once the theme wears off, it kinda makes you wonder why you bother to play the game in the first place (other than the fun of picking of Storm Troopers for a period of time). I have no doubt the reason why the AI sucked so bad was the limited computational resources of the consoles it was built for.
...and how much nuclear material would be required to produce enough "bombs" (Orion Project or something similar I am guessing you are referencing) to establish constant propulsion for a distance of several light years? Even assuming that it is a one way trip, my guess is that it would likely take something like all of the material of Earth to do so.
BTW, something like an ION drive would still need something like a nuclear source to power it anyway. I would imagine that once you get sufficiently far enough away from any solar point, things like solar panels won't be as effective.
As to water as a good radiation shielding I have heard that before. The bonus is of course we need water to live etc... Then again, I am not sure how useful irradiated water is for anyone. The other big deterrence to using water is its weight. If we didn't have to get out of a gravity well it would work very well probably. If we have to heave and drag it up through our atmosphere, not so much. So I would guess the first "mining" that we do outside of Earth, would probably be for ice...
Sounds pretty inconspicuous to me...
Also sounds like the beginning of a Monty Python sketch... when the countermeasures are to build fake submarine drones for the other drones to follow, and by the end there are just a whole lot of drones following each other in an infinite loop around the oceans to the Benny Hill theme song...
I suppose you could say that Mars already has a robot population....
One of my favorite Ob. XKCD links: https://xkcd.com/1504/
Crew maybe. Success no. Reason: Propulsion. In order to get to any nearby star is an order of magnitude of less than millions of years, one would have to accelerate and then at the midpoint decelerate CONSTANTLY. By conventional means, that would mean that they would need cart around about the amount of hydrogen stored is a star, not very reasonable. Things like ION drives are too small and inefficient by far. Things like Ramscoops don't really exist except in works of fiction. Additionally depending on how long the voyage is, you need to build something large enough, comprised of things that don't somehow age or break, or somehow cart around an entire civilization worth of material to construct new everything and the knowledge to do so... From foundries for smelting metal, to foundries that create microchips and everything in between. Never mind a close loop system of atmosphere, waste, and food, that has never been done outside of an actual ecosystem designed over billions of years...
Makes for a good book/tv series/movie however, I'm game for that!
I hear it is used to power the new Gillette razor with 6 blades...
Sounds like some police just want an excuse to buy some Playstation 4's just prior to Star Wars battlefront coming out...
"Sorry sarge, we're too busy today 'monitoring' Playstation 4 to do any other work, I'm afraid we'll probably be at it pretty constantly for the immediate future..."
I have read somewhere that one of the unintended causes of much of the terrorism issues that exist was that when the US invaded IRAQ, they disbanded their Army, essentially putting thousands upon thousands of fighting age men with guns out of work... Not sure how much truth there is to that considering it was 18 years ago, however it does seem plausible at least in part.
Been playing since release... It has crashed a few times, but I've not lost anything/much, and it has been infrequent enough not to care too much. If I unplug my earphones, I lose all sound and have to restart the game which is a bit lame. Some of the mouse movements in menus are clunky. It randomly lost all mouse movement at one point also.
About the only "bug" I've noticed that is truly annoying is that when I am in the Armor Workshop, and I have some awesome stuff I am wearing, and some stuff I want to scrap for parts, it will sometimes seemingly decide that if I am going to scrap my some armor, I should also scrap my good stuff also, even though I definitely didn't say to do that. My solution is for now, either not to scrap any armour, and just store it someplace for later, or make damn sure I save it every time I decide I want to scrap armour, take off all my good stuff and put it somewhere else, then scrap what I have in my inventory. Annoying to be sure.
On another note, there is of course some dumb AI every now and again which can be frustrating... Like sneaking around disarming landmines, and having your AI follower, just run in all over the place blowing all the mine and you up to kingdom come, several times... Then blocking your retreat when facing off against a a boss... I'll admit to trying to kill her several times in frustration.
In all I wouldn't say it is too buggy, but they really need to figure out the UI stuff with the Armour Workshop, I assume they'll patch it at some point.
I can't disagree with anything you said, but will only add that many if not most of those things are made worse the longer a project goes on for. You get actual changes in government with different agendas, new staff assigned from project managers to content experts, etc...
Many times due to the procurement rules, contractors bid ultra low, then pump up the costs by making everything a change order. Is that the fault of government or the contractor?
Anyway I have seen both sides, with about an equal measure. Many times a contractor or company will oversell what they or their software can do. I've been to some development meetings that were more like sales pitches (which makes me roll my eyes). At the same time I have seen requirements flip back and forth because they can't decided what the policy is or what upper management will agree to... I've also seen new management basically take a new "direction" or "strategy" that basically destroys pretty much all your previous work, making you start over, somehow declaring it a "success", then immediately moving on to their next high paying job, leaving the mess to the next manager, who will take a new "direction" or "strategy"...
If my memory serves (and sometimes it doesn't) a good example is the Health Care system they tried to build in the UK. They used Agile methodology. What they got cost billions of dollars, and a whole lot of smaller components that didn't work together, and in the end nothing.
From what I have heard Agile isn't the best method to use on very large scale systems, It can still work if done right apparently, only that the overhead needs to be spent to make it work. Waterfall in those instances might still be a better way to go, though again it too needs to be done properly.
Personally, I think it has less to do with the method, than a lot of other factors at play, particularly when trying to develop in a government environment. Particularly when everything you do is done with various contractors. Other things like yearly budget issues, and political interference either actively trying to make you fail, or timelines that cross political change, and then there is management that is more interested in their next position than any project... None of those things are technical, but I would bet they all play a much larger role in the success or fail of a project regardless of what methodology you choose.