Liquid-fuel ICBMs are vulnerable during the launch phase; solid fuel ICBMs, however, are almost impossible to destroy. When the Air Force's airborne laser program was canceled, the reasons given by SecDef Gates were very limited range which resulted in a bulky, impractical weapon system that you'd almost have to be hovering above a silo to use. And that was a megawatt-class chemical laser, more powerful than what this technology is.
I'm not saying laser R&D isn't worth it, but good missile defense is extremely difficult. It will take quite a while before any of these systems surpass something more conventional like the Phalanx.
It's the military's job to develop a response strategy to pretty much every scenario imaginable. Zombies, velociraptors, zombie velociraptors, a Red Chinese invasion of Alaska... you know, whatever.
Yes, keep insulting Americans, on an American server running American software, on an American-created internet, with an American-created computer, while telling us all how negatively America affects your day-to-day life.
Though ironically, I'd say your nationality is actually most likely to be... American. And that's all kinds of psychological issues right there... more daddy issues than a season of "Lost".
Yes, because Apple is deeply ashamed of already having the WSJ on it. Oh, wait...
(for those of you not getting the sarcasm, the WSJ is a highly-regarded publication by News Corp that also has an iPad app)
End the world? No. And yes, obviously politicians are politicians, no matter the party or nation.
But Wikileaks did nothing to improve relations between nation-states, and if anything, created at least a few schisms. That's what Nobel's original intent focused on. And maybe that doesn't mean anything anymore, but that was the original, historic intent.
It is ironic. Gandhi gave his life for peace and change, and never won. Obama won without doing anything at all.
It should be based on an individual and their actions and choices. Yet, it is more like an international high school popularity contest.
I have seen this before in every kind of organization, large and small. Contributions and objective change are ignored, and recognition is "merited" to people based on emotion alone.
Unless there is an objective quantification used in this process, it will continue to be driven by emotion. Because that's what we do, when we fail to have systems in place to mitigate the effects of emotional decision making.
Nothing changed with Al Gore, Arafat, or Obama-- the selection process is as it always was. Flawed, subjective, and rooted entirely in emotion. The entire system was never objective. So will Assange win? I have no idea. But it will have little to do with any sort of objective, quantified way that you could measure what he did or did not do.
Oh, there were differences. It sounds like you didn't watch much SG1-- perhaps you should, before judging it.
There are also numerous episodes with the dead-horse Star Trek plot of establishing communication with an alien that doesn't understand you (and vice-versa). ie, "Enemy Mine", which James Cameron's "Avatar" borrowed heavily from.
Also, believe it or not, people didn't actually speak in Iambic Pentameter 500 years ago.
The truly alien have distinct languages; humans tend to have language that was present in the culture they were taken from.
The linguistics of Stargate is a complex topic that could fill a discussion on its own. Ancient Egyptian is difficult to interpret from archeology alone (as vowels are not written), so for Stargate, a hybrid language of Ancient Egyptian and Coptic was created by Stuart Tyson Smith, one of the foremost experts in his field.
But, like I said, it's a mechanic that gets old fast in a TV series. If you watch SG1, you'll see numerous early episodes that have SG1 and human aliens communicating through Daniel Jackson. It just drags things out.
Here's an example: "Sejem secher hereh, neswet. Hekat irt kaping at weben taa. Weya set se rech reshwet weben. Shiak hanweysun, herew. Herew." So you have pretty big chunks of dialog you can't understand that take just as long to repeat in English. Some phrases, like Jaffa, kree, sho'vah, etc are never translated.
There's also a certain amount of logic in that exceptionally intelligent, long-lived aliens like the Asgard or Gao'uld would know multiple Earth languages, given the backstory of each race's involvement with Earth. Come to think of it, most of the aliens in Stargate are far more advanced, intelligent, and longer lived than us.
Indeed. SGU was very much the "200" allusion, and it didn't please many fans when SGA, which had higher ratings than SGU and cost less to make, was canceled in favor of it. Brad Wright & co are simply not Ron Moore, and do best writing SG1/SGA style scripts.
Has anyone tried to rewatch BSG lately, anyway? While I enjoyed its first broadcasts, more recently I found it to be melodramatic, slow, and boring. The plots are too tied in to current events and political issues from several years ago, and it has not aged gracefully. So, even if Brad Wright & co had done better copying BSG, I'm not sure it was really something worth emulating at this point. Before someone flames me and says how awesome it was back in the day -- yes, I agree, it was -- but try watching it again today. It's not very enjoyable or interesting.
SGU was not much of a Stargate, at all. Does anyone recall the episode with Stargate Command / Sam Carter and the F-302 raid on a Lucian Alliance base? It felt nothing like a Stargate, and was simply bizarre to watch.
That said, I took no pleasure from SGU's cancellation. While not on par with SG1 or SGA, its writing was improving, and was somewhat watchable. Most of the characters were uninteresting, the BSG-wannabe camerawork was terrible, and Season 1 was mostly unwatchable. But, it was improving. Just not enough.
Still, I would have preferred SGA remain on the air. A proper Stargate series should be tongue-in-cheek, use cameras with image stabilization functions, be recorded by people who understand how to properly expose a shot, and be filmed in the forests of British Columbia, which coincidentally look like every alien world the SG teams visit.
Also, regarding the grandparent's claims that "everyone spoke English" through the Stargate... no, they didn't, not initially in SG1. But having dialog that Daniel had to translate, then have O'Neill say something, and have that get translated again, was just cumbersome. Further, some of the humans transplanted by the Gao'uld were in fact, white dudes from Earth who natively spoke English. So yes, they should probably be speaking English.
Stargate gets dubbed for foreign language markets anyway. Do you think they speak French, German or Italian full-time at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex? Survey says: no.
This *IS* cutting-edge military tech. China's jet engines in their recent stealth fighter are relatively obsolete, old designs. With the technology to make significant improvements in their aerospace designs, it's not just commercial applications that benefit, but military ones as well.
Yes, because nuclear engineering is a growth industry, attracting America's best and most patriotic talent, where fission reactors follow Moore's law. Oh wait. Our nuclear batteries are actually worse than they were in the 70s.
There are other ways of preventing the transfer of technology. High-grade encryption and things like generation 3 image intensifier-based night vision devices are subject to export control.
I think it's very easy to see how advanced jet engines, avionics, and control systems fall into "dual use" military and commercial applications. The US has always prevented companies from selling out our best technology, because the US government, like any other government, exists due to long-term investment, not short-term.
And before you mock these regulations for being cold war relics, know that they have kept and created tremendous numbers of American jobs in the engineering and manufacturing sectors.
If China doesn't get AN/PVS-14D night vision monoculars, why should it get advanced aerospace technology?
It wasn't so long ago that selling advanced technology to communists would've gotten you brought in front of Senator Joseph McCarthy. "Fellow traveler" I believe the term was, wasn't it? Selling out American jobs to communists? Oh, snap. I have to admit, it'd be pretty damned amusing to see the GE executives in this case whimpering on the stand as they were convicted of treason. Ah, they just don't make punishments and protect America like they used to.
I'm all for capitalism, but regulations exist for a reason... usually as a reactionary measure to massive abuse.
In this case, they're right. The valuation is ridiculously excessive relative to their annual revenue, and I fail to see how being deprived of getting scammed is destroying America. Does anyone honestly think Madoff getting busted was a threat to liberty? It's a bit sad we let them take foreign investors like that, but hey, I guess that at least benefits the US economy, right?
I also find it quite ironic that a company that has abused end-user privacy so casually expects a great deal of privacy for themselves.
Iran's proxy war against Israel isn't much of a secret, and I'm sure sponsoring and supplying a proxy war could be casus belli. (though I can't think of any instances where it has been, off the top of my head)
The US won every battle in Vietnam. It was due to political reasons that we withdrew -- not military defeat. Whether you regard Vietnam as a mistake or not, that is historical fact.
The US military is primarily intended to fight conflicts with other nation states (not "WWII"), but there have been significant changes in training and tactics for its emerging new roles. Further, even after WWII, there was significant anti-insurgency and peacekeeping work done in Germany -- where our tactics were much more heavy-handed than today.
Iraq had been preparing for war for a very long time as well. There was the Iran-Iraq war, amongst other conflicts, and Iraq purchased a good deal of Soviet equipment, including semi-modern MBTs, MIGs, and Mil Mi-24D Hinds. They were not a terrorist force with only AK-47s and RPG-7s.
Iran's technological base isn't much better. Even in the conflict in Kosovo, where we fought ex-Soviet satellite troops with superior training, experience, and technology, it was very lopsided.
The reality is that there is little Iran could do to prevent US air superiority, nor could they prevail in a ground conflict. Even if Russia would sell them modern technology that could compete with the US, they would not be able to afford enough of it.
It is not at all akin to WWII, where we had inferior technology, little experience, and fought against the then #1 superpower in the world, Germany. Like someone else said, it's more like we're Germany, and Iran would be Poland. Suggesting that Iran is on par with the Waffen SS or DAK is exaggeration on the level of Baghdad Bob.
Actually, yes they can. The DSC-TX9 digital camera from Sony has a 1280x720 LCD screen that is 3.5", which is a very high pixel density. I have an older T-series and it even appears to be an IPS display, but it is lower resolution.
They want to see if he's insane or not. Given the amount of crazy this guy has displayed, it is possible he's actually legally insane. Part of determining that will be looking in to the communications he's made. That's going to include things in games, as well as e-mail and so on. The more information the better.
My understanding is that Arizona lacks the insanity defense -- instead, they have "guilty but insane", along with several other western states.
About 1% of the population is schizophrenic; of them, those with untreated SZ have a 10% incidence of committing violent crime, versus 2% for the general population. When they receive treatment, that number drops to 5%. In any case, it is indeed above average by a significant amount. Schizophrenics also have a 50% incidence of suicide attempts -- they are ticking time bombs, but more towards themselves than others.
Unfortunately, other than increasing the availability and accessibility of treatment, I don't see any way to help that without significant human rights concerns... treating people against their will is something that has been prone to abuse in the past.
Slashdot Mirror
The country most likely to complain about America on the internet is... America. Getting trolled by a 12 year old in New Jersey: just say no.
Liquid-fuel ICBMs are vulnerable during the launch phase; solid fuel ICBMs, however, are almost impossible to destroy. When the Air Force's airborne laser program was canceled, the reasons given by SecDef Gates were very limited range which resulted in a bulky, impractical weapon system that you'd almost have to be hovering above a silo to use. And that was a megawatt-class chemical laser, more powerful than what this technology is.
I'm not saying laser R&D isn't worth it, but good missile defense is extremely difficult. It will take quite a while before any of these systems surpass something more conventional like the Phalanx.
It's the military's job to develop a response strategy to pretty much every scenario imaginable. Zombies, velociraptors, zombie velociraptors, a Red Chinese invasion of Alaska... you know, whatever.
Yes, keep insulting Americans, on an American server running American software, on an American-created internet, with an American-created computer, while telling us all how negatively America affects your day-to-day life. Though ironically, I'd say your nationality is actually most likely to be... American. And that's all kinds of psychological issues right there... more daddy issues than a season of "Lost".
Yes, because Apple is deeply ashamed of already having the WSJ on it. Oh, wait... (for those of you not getting the sarcasm, the WSJ is a highly-regarded publication by News Corp that also has an iPad app)
End the world? No. And yes, obviously politicians are politicians, no matter the party or nation.
But Wikileaks did nothing to improve relations between nation-states, and if anything, created at least a few schisms. That's what Nobel's original intent focused on. And maybe that doesn't mean anything anymore, but that was the original, historic intent.
"Nobel invented dynamite. I won't accept his blood money!" -Dr. Gregory House, MD
It is ironic. Gandhi gave his life for peace and change, and never won. Obama won without doing anything at all.
It should be based on an individual and their actions and choices. Yet, it is more like an international high school popularity contest.
I have seen this before in every kind of organization, large and small. Contributions and objective change are ignored, and recognition is "merited" to people based on emotion alone.
Unless there is an objective quantification used in this process, it will continue to be driven by emotion. Because that's what we do, when we fail to have systems in place to mitigate the effects of emotional decision making.
Nothing changed with Al Gore, Arafat, or Obama-- the selection process is as it always was. Flawed, subjective, and rooted entirely in emotion. The entire system was never objective. So will Assange win? I have no idea. But it will have little to do with any sort of objective, quantified way that you could measure what he did or did not do.
Oh, there were differences. It sounds like you didn't watch much SG1-- perhaps you should, before judging it.
There are also numerous episodes with the dead-horse Star Trek plot of establishing communication with an alien that doesn't understand you (and vice-versa). ie, "Enemy Mine", which James Cameron's "Avatar" borrowed heavily from.
Also, believe it or not, people didn't actually speak in Iambic Pentameter 500 years ago.
The truly alien have distinct languages; humans tend to have language that was present in the culture they were taken from.
The linguistics of Stargate is a complex topic that could fill a discussion on its own. Ancient Egyptian is difficult to interpret from archeology alone (as vowels are not written), so for Stargate, a hybrid language of Ancient Egyptian and Coptic was created by Stuart Tyson Smith, one of the foremost experts in his field.
But, like I said, it's a mechanic that gets old fast in a TV series. If you watch SG1, you'll see numerous early episodes that have SG1 and human aliens communicating through Daniel Jackson. It just drags things out.
Here's an example: "Sejem secher hereh, neswet. Hekat irt kaping at weben taa. Weya set se rech reshwet weben. Shiak hanweysun, herew. Herew." So you have pretty big chunks of dialog you can't understand that take just as long to repeat in English. Some phrases, like Jaffa, kree, sho'vah, etc are never translated.
There's also a certain amount of logic in that exceptionally intelligent, long-lived aliens like the Asgard or Gao'uld would know multiple Earth languages, given the backstory of each race's involvement with Earth. Come to think of it, most of the aliens in Stargate are far more advanced, intelligent, and longer lived than us.
Indeed. SGU was very much the "200" allusion, and it didn't please many fans when SGA, which had higher ratings than SGU and cost less to make, was canceled in favor of it. Brad Wright & co are simply not Ron Moore, and do best writing SG1/SGA style scripts.
Has anyone tried to rewatch BSG lately, anyway? While I enjoyed its first broadcasts, more recently I found it to be melodramatic, slow, and boring. The plots are too tied in to current events and political issues from several years ago, and it has not aged gracefully. So, even if Brad Wright & co had done better copying BSG, I'm not sure it was really something worth emulating at this point. Before someone flames me and says how awesome it was back in the day -- yes, I agree, it was -- but try watching it again today. It's not very enjoyable or interesting.
SGU was not much of a Stargate, at all. Does anyone recall the episode with Stargate Command / Sam Carter and the F-302 raid on a Lucian Alliance base? It felt nothing like a Stargate, and was simply bizarre to watch.
That said, I took no pleasure from SGU's cancellation. While not on par with SG1 or SGA, its writing was improving, and was somewhat watchable. Most of the characters were uninteresting, the BSG-wannabe camerawork was terrible, and Season 1 was mostly unwatchable. But, it was improving. Just not enough.
Still, I would have preferred SGA remain on the air. A proper Stargate series should be tongue-in-cheek, use cameras with image stabilization functions, be recorded by people who understand how to properly expose a shot, and be filmed in the forests of British Columbia, which coincidentally look like every alien world the SG teams visit.
Also, regarding the grandparent's claims that "everyone spoke English" through the Stargate... no, they didn't, not initially in SG1. But having dialog that Daniel had to translate, then have O'Neill say something, and have that get translated again, was just cumbersome. Further, some of the humans transplanted by the Gao'uld were in fact, white dudes from Earth who natively spoke English. So yes, they should probably be speaking English.
Stargate gets dubbed for foreign language markets anyway. Do you think they speak French, German or Italian full-time at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex? Survey says: no.
These give too many bad links, or links to spam sites... the actual webcams are a minority of the results returned.
But far be it from me to complain and not offer a better solution, so I give you:
inurl:"/jpg/" | "/mjpg/" | "/axis-cgi/" ?inurl:"image.cgi" | "video.cgi" | "video.mjpg" filetype:mjpg | filetype:cgi
Not perfect, but almost all the results returned are working cams, though it is limited to Axis cams.
Theft: it looks a lot like MGS4.
Tell me, exactly which country in the world practices this mythical "fair trade" you speak of? How does it work? Magnets?
This *IS* cutting-edge military tech. China's jet engines in their recent stealth fighter are relatively obsolete, old designs. With the technology to make significant improvements in their aerospace designs, it's not just commercial applications that benefit, but military ones as well.
No need to shortsell -- the government will bail them out. Don't worry.
Yes, because nuclear engineering is a growth industry, attracting America's best and most patriotic talent, where fission reactors follow Moore's law. Oh wait. Our nuclear batteries are actually worse than they were in the 70s.
There are other ways of preventing the transfer of technology. High-grade encryption and things like generation 3 image intensifier-based night vision devices are subject to export control.
I think it's very easy to see how advanced jet engines, avionics, and control systems fall into "dual use" military and commercial applications. The US has always prevented companies from selling out our best technology, because the US government, like any other government, exists due to long-term investment, not short-term.
And before you mock these regulations for being cold war relics, know that they have kept and created tremendous numbers of American jobs in the engineering and manufacturing sectors.
If China doesn't get AN/PVS-14D night vision monoculars, why should it get advanced aerospace technology?
It wasn't so long ago that selling advanced technology to communists would've gotten you brought in front of Senator Joseph McCarthy. "Fellow traveler" I believe the term was, wasn't it? Selling out American jobs to communists? Oh, snap. I have to admit, it'd be pretty damned amusing to see the GE executives in this case whimpering on the stand as they were convicted of treason. Ah, they just don't make punishments and protect America like they used to.
I'm all for capitalism, but regulations exist for a reason... usually as a reactionary measure to massive abuse.
In this case, they're right. The valuation is ridiculously excessive relative to their annual revenue, and I fail to see how being deprived of getting scammed is destroying America. Does anyone honestly think Madoff getting busted was a threat to liberty? It's a bit sad we let them take foreign investors like that, but hey, I guess that at least benefits the US economy, right?
I also find it quite ironic that a company that has abused end-user privacy so casually expects a great deal of privacy for themselves.
Iran's proxy war against Israel isn't much of a secret, and I'm sure sponsoring and supplying a proxy war could be casus belli. (though I can't think of any instances where it has been, off the top of my head)
The US military is primarily intended to fight conflicts with other nation states (not "WWII"), but there have been significant changes in training and tactics for its emerging new roles. Further, even after WWII, there was significant anti-insurgency and peacekeeping work done in Germany -- where our tactics were much more heavy-handed than today.
Iran's technological base isn't much better. Even in the conflict in Kosovo, where we fought ex-Soviet satellite troops with superior training, experience, and technology, it was very lopsided.
The reality is that there is little Iran could do to prevent US air superiority, nor could they prevail in a ground conflict. Even if Russia would sell them modern technology that could compete with the US, they would not be able to afford enough of it.
It is not at all akin to WWII, where we had inferior technology, little experience, and fought against the then #1 superpower in the world, Germany. Like someone else said, it's more like we're Germany, and Iran would be Poland. Suggesting that Iran is on par with the Waffen SS or DAK is exaggeration on the level of Baghdad Bob.
Though I doubt it'll come to war, anyway.
(Not the earlier AC. I think Manning's guilty, isn't being tortured, and Assange isn't guilty, but might be when they get their hands on him.)
But since you asked, America touched me (and people like me) here, here, and here.
Hah. Well played, sir.
Actually, yes they can. The DSC-TX9 digital camera from Sony has a 1280x720 LCD screen that is 3.5", which is a very high pixel density. I have an older T-series and it even appears to be an IPS display, but it is lower resolution.
They want to see if he's insane or not. Given the amount of crazy this guy has displayed, it is possible he's actually legally insane. Part of determining that will be looking in to the communications he's made. That's going to include things in games, as well as e-mail and so on. The more information the better.
My understanding is that Arizona lacks the insanity defense -- instead, they have "guilty but insane", along with several other western states.
Sentencing can vary, of course.
About 1% of the population is schizophrenic; of them, those with untreated SZ have a 10% incidence of committing violent crime, versus 2% for the general population. When they receive treatment, that number drops to 5%. In any case, it is indeed above average by a significant amount. Schizophrenics also have a 50% incidence of suicide attempts -- they are ticking time bombs, but more towards themselves than others.
Unfortunately, other than increasing the availability and accessibility of treatment, I don't see any way to help that without significant human rights concerns... treating people against their will is something that has been prone to abuse in the past.