Granting a license to something does not negate your proprietary interest in that something.
May I take this to mean that you also support restrictive EULA's which give the "owner" ultimate control over what you may or may not do with the software, books, music, etc. that you create using their tools?
After all, if I grant you an unrestricted, royalty-free license to use something, that doesn't mean I no longer 'own' the thing I've given you the license for, so it's absolutely okay for me to come along and tell you you can only install / use it on certain systems, you can't resell it, you can't share it, and you can't do anything I don't otherwise approve of with it.
I can't wait to see you lining up to voice your support for the RIAA, BSA, and other organizations who also feel this way about licenses on "virtual" products. Because this is a direct, logical, and consistent result of the sentiment you've just expressed - that granting someone a license to do whatever they want with a "non-physical" good means that the license granter still has ultimate say in how the user uses & disposes of the item, regardless of the actual terms of the license.
First, this isn't a copyright issue. It's a subpoena of business records related to a case before the court. There are restrictions on the type of information that may be subpoenaed, but the court has ruled that the information being requested meets the requirements for information that may be requested from a service provider. "That's copyrighted" is not sufficient cause to refuse a subpoena. If it was, Twitter would have argued it in its motion to the court. It didn't.
Now, Twitter can (and has) argued that the user SHOULD have standing to challenge this under the federal Stored Communications Act, which probably stands the best chance of getting them to reverse the motion and quash the order. And if that does happen, you can bet there'll be a warrant issued for the records instead - in fact, that's pretty much what the conclusion from twitter states - "quash the order, and give us a warrant instead."
That's a very broad and subjective interpretation of the law.
Well, it also happens to be the court's interpretation of the law, so... that makes it at least slightly more official than your opinion or mine.
Twitter's TOS is significantly broader than you're trying to claim it is - "he didn't grant Twitter the right to use it outside of Twitter" - the TOS actually says he DOES grant them the right to use it anywhere they see fit - "any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed.)" In essence, he has granted them a copy of his IP, with which they can do anything they wish, and he has no claim on what they do with their copy - and so, he has no standing to block the court-ordered disclosure of the information by Twitter, because he grants that license to them.
Again - go read the actual motion I linked, and the legal reasoning included in it, it's quite interesting. It helps if you understand the law and the legal reasoning being applied in the decision before you start claiming that he's protect by some bizarrely twisted shield laws and intellectual property laws - your attempt to invoke those simply illustrates your misunderstanding of the law, and how it's being applied here.
And the actual motion explains some pretty compelling reasons why the subpoena went forward:
1) That Mr. Harris had to agree to Twitter's terms of service to have an account; 2) That the terms of service grant Twitter the following:
By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).
The essential argument is that since the user is granting Twitter that license to his tweets, the user has no "proprietary" (ownership) interest in the tweets, because by posting, he specifically gives up his right to prevent Twitter from doing anything they wish with that tweet he's submitted. In essence, they conclude that he's "given away" his tweet to Twitter via that license, and that he therefore has no standing to claim that it is "his property" which may not be disclosed by Twitter without his permission.
Because the user has deleted all of his tweets before February 2012.
The prosecution believes that his tweets (including those deleted) will contradict his "anticipated defense" - specifically, that he was induced or forced to step onto the roadway by police, rather than stepping out onto the roadway of his own volition, and obstructing traffic. For instance, if they can show he tweeted a photo of himself and some other protesters dancing around in the roadway minutes before he was arrested, it sort of torpedoes the "The police threw me into the street!" defense.
The reasoning the court is using in supporting the subpoena (by rejecting the defendant's motion to invalidate it) is that the records are akin to bank records - they are *about* the user, but the user has neither possession nor a "proprietary" interest in those records - in other words, the records belong to the bank, and so a subpoena is sufficient for the bank to turn over records about the defendant. Given Twitter's terms of service (granting them a worldwide irrevocable license to reproduce, present and display... etc. etc.... your tweets) and the precedent of bank records, the judge has ruled that the defendant has no standing to challenge the validity of the subpoena.
You can read the full order here, and it goes into fairly deep detail about the issue, and is a fairly straightforward read.
Nope. The US, without a standing army, could repel a Chinese attack.
You are full of shit. Full stop.
If the US military stood down today, China could not invade and hold a single continental US city by the end of the year.
Okay, let's assume the Chinese military attacks us with only their operational capability today. They roll up near a coastal city with their transport vessels - they have 150 or so of these, each holding 250-500 troops - and begin offloading. Who's going to stop them? They could easily drop a couple thousand troops, with naval gun and attack helicopter support, plus at least a couple tanks & personnel carriers.
Those troops go to work establishing and securing a beachhead, including enough land to begin landing transport planes (carrying troops, personnel carriers, tanks and mobile artillery) on a hastily constructed airstrip. As more materials and more troops land, you continue enlarging and securing your perimeter until you have amassed enough troops and supporting material to begin offensive operations outside that perimeter.
Prioritize securing fuel, ammunition, food, and water stores in the initial landing & push, and establish naval & aerial supply lines.
Remember, all of this is happening uncontested - there is no standing military, air force, or navy to oppose these operations. There is no civilian weaponry sufficient enough to do more than kill a couple of the soldiers before the person shooting is killed. There is no organization with command and control capability, and military capacity, to oppose their landing and the establishment of a beachhead. You have failed to explain how ANY civilian force would effectively contest their occupation and control of a single city, much less a large swath of territory, except to assert that somehow, a bunch of untrained amateurs with no coordination and limited supplies would somehow be able to rout hundreds of thousands of trained soldiers who are far better geared and trained.
They would be here. They would be occupying numerous cities by year's end. Your entire premise is so up its own ass that it's ridiculous: Standing down the military = anybody with a reasonably modern military can walk right in if they want to.
"maybe in a few years they'll have a carrier or something"
No, in 3 years, they'll have 2 carriers, they are under construction, and expected to complete by 2015. It's also a fallacy to assert that the only way to invade a nation is to do so with aircraft carriers. The Chinese have aerial refueling capabilities, and would simply need to ferry aircraft over, at which point they have an airstrip, and air power that can be projected. Unless you can come up with some way a bunch of civilians with Glocks and the odd AR-15 can repel thousands of well-armed troops supported by naval guns, attack helicopters, and armored vehicles in a toe-to-toe battle, there is NOTHING preventing anybody with a modern military from rolling on up the beach and establishing a beachhead and an airstrip to start landing more troops, material, and airpower. American civilians would be about as effective as Iraqi civilians were in stopping our invasion of that country: which is to say, not effective at all.
The same restriction applies for any other cruise missile launch platform - as long as nobody sinks it, or bombs it, it can keep shooting.
The B-52's in our arsenal have been there for 60 years. These airframes will last for decades - "as long as no one shoots it down."
Of course I knew about the MTCR - but its relevance to this discussion is minimal. The MTCR is focused on export of missile technology to limit the proliferation of missiles, and has traditionally focused on ballistic missile threats carrying payloads greater than 500 kg. There is nothing stopping member countries from developing their own missiles with larger warheads, they've simply agreed to limit the export of those technologies to other nations. There is also a bit of logistical and engineering limitation in that warheads much larger than that limit tend to be best delivered by ballistic trajectories, anyway - not low-altitude non-ballistic delivery systems like a Tomahawk, because it simply becomes unwieldy and rapidly non-cost-effective to build a missile capable of delivering such a large payload without building a whole goddamned plane around it.
And this also ignores the simple fact that cruise missiles are typically ineffective at hitting mobile or hardened targets, where a much larger warhead or a much more sophisticated delivery system is required.
PS once your attack the cities of nuke armed countries, it nuke war baby
And yet, that's never happened. The only use of nuclear weapons in anger has been when the US used them on Japan (a non-nuclear power). Despite years of being nuclear powers and shooting at each other, Pakistan and India have not nuked each other. Despite years of close calls, proxy wars, and bilateral brinksmanship, the US and Russia never fired nuclear weapons at each other. Despite being literally existentially threatened from nearly all sides, North Korea has not launched a nuclear attack. It's like you have no concept of modern warfare, it's amazing.
When it comes to attack primitives hiding in caves, you can push the bombs out the back of transport plans as long as they are laser guided.
I see, so the only possible wartime uses for a bomb are: 1) Global nuclear war, with ICBMs flying everywhere (making the bomber irrelevant) 2) Asymmetric warfare where a superpower is trying to kill a handful of "savages" in a cave (using transport planes, which means the bomber is also irrelevant)
I guess the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan never happened. I guess the recent downfall of Gaddaffi in Libya also never happened. I guess there's no possible, conceivable way that any modern country would ever fight another modern country using modern weapon systems short of nuclear weapons; it's either nukes, or stone age savages in caves!
Actually, I'd say it's just the opposite: web sites fail far more predictably than hard drives.
You never know when a hard drive is going to fail. Could be fine today, toast tomorrow.
AOL? Yahoo? Myspace? Who didn't see those coming?
You can see the decline happening with web sites - they don't fail overnight. It's rare for a web site to be "here today, gone tomorrow" with no notice of the impending change. That happens all the time with hard drives.
Anti-aircraft missiles? What aircraft? China doesn't have a carrier, so the most effective aricraft they have is suicide trips in Boeings or Airbusses, and anything that launches from China to hit the US will be going down shortly anyway, so no need to shoot, just wait a few minutes and they'll be down.
I guess you missed the part where China has 2 carriers under construction, slated for completion in a couple years. I guess you also missed the part where planes can be transported to an airbase stateside - really, who's going to stop them from ferrying in their regional long range bombers (Xian H6 - a quite capable plane that could easily be flown here with a couple hops or air to air refueling), and their attack aircraft, and their helicopters? Doesn't take much to build a runway quickly - just a long stretch of flat, open terrain. Who's going to stop them from building that runway here? A bunch of people with Glocks?
So, here's how they do it: naval approach with their 2 carriers with a full complement of attack aircraft and helicopters for close air support. Land a bunch of marines, establish a beachhead, build a couple runways. Fly in your long range bombers, naval transport for other planes (they don't have to launch from the ships, you know, they can just be transported in), and boom. Magical airpower. And since we have no standing army to contest this operation, there is fuck-all anybody with an AR-15 can do about it, because there's a couple companies of well trained Chinese marines guarding this new airfield, supported by naval guns, carrier-launched aircraft, and any material they begin transporting in via air.
You seem to think that the Chinese military is completely incompetent and full of Keystone Kops who would bumble their way through an operation like this. You're wrong.
Shooting the ships? What for? They aren't doing anything other than shelling military complexes far from where the landings are taking place, so sinking them would have no effect on any landing.
Sorry, are the soldiers landing in waves being fired in by those naval guns? Are the strike aircraft being flown from the carriers just deciding to fly around at random and provide no air support to the ground troops landing? And these "military complexes" -- what military? We have no standing military, remember? Why would they be shelling anything, and why would they think it's a military complex, when we have no military?
And why do you need armor? By the time they notice you shooting at them, you are dead, no matter what modern armor you are wearing. Armor will just slow you down.
Because the chinese soldiers will probably be wearing body armor. Helmets, kevlar vests, things like that. Making your theoretical-but-comical civilian resistance with no military support even less likely to be able to do shit against a regular military force.
I think you are greatly over-estimating the ability of anyone to project force on the US mainland. And underestimating the resolve of those being invaded
And I think you're realizing just how foolish your "disband the entire military" bullshit was, and are now furiously trying to backpedal by creating some sort of "military complex" that an invading force would care about, and assuming that the Chinese could not, ever, ever, ever, build an aircraft carrier or ferry in planes via aerial refueling, loading a bunch of them into boats for shipping, or multiple hops overland. There would be nothing, in your proposed scenario, to contest their offloading of this material at the landing stage, and you've glibly ignored the fact that attack helicopters can and do take off from non-carrier vessels, as well to support the initial construction of airstrips and offloading of shipped aircraft.
Also, resolve is necessary to win a war, but it's not the only thing required. The ability to damage the enemy i
Yes, it's a design decision. And that design decision must juggle warhead size, missile speed, missile range, missile size, and cost.
Even the fastest cruise missiles will take a couple minutes to reach targets at their maximum range. There's only so much they can do against mobile or hardened targets. They cost up to a couple million dollars per shot.
So, let's see... for 550 million, you can hit 275-550 targets with a cruise missile (it's common for there to be literally *thousands* or *tens of thousands* of bombing targets in an aerial campaign), or you can have a reusable UAV that can drop thousands of JDAMs on those same targets, and the thousands of other targets that are mobile or hardened that a cruise missile would be ineffective against. Also, one $2 million USD cruise missile = twenty eight 2,000 pound GBU-31 JDAMs, (cost ~70k / bomb) or fifty six 500 pound GBU-38's (cost ~35k / bomb).
Yep, that $550 million plane is just a complete waste. A boondoggle. There's no cost justification or military justification for it whatsoever. Nobody could ever possibly need something like this, ever, ever, ever. It helps if you understand the cost, effectiveness, and capabilities of the technologies involved before you offer your opinion on their usefulness and cost effectiveness.
First: this would, obviously, not be strictly designated as a "plane for missions against China."
Second: Without the capabilities of a platform like this, as a defense against cruise missiles, just move any military assets 600 miles inland. Whoops, guess we all just go home, boys. Can't hit them from here!
Third: Cruise missiles have limited usefulness against targets that are not stationary & fairly soft; Their long travel times (subsonics can take upwards of an hour to travel 600 miles; supersonics (mach 1 - mach 5) can take 10-35 minutes to cover that same distance; even the hypersonics (mach 5+) would take 6 minutes or so to cover that distance. Also, generally speaking, the faster the cruise missile, the shorter it's maximum range, and the generally smaller its maximum payload. Hardened targets & mobile targets are tough for a typical cruise missile.
Fourth: Cruise missiles don't have a lot of active guidance after they're fired. Having a mobile aerial platform that can enter in targeting information and launch those missiles stealthily from a few miles away means less reaction time, more precise targeting, and better chance of an effective hit.
Fifth: Cruise missiles can cost a couple million dollars per shot. How many JDAMs can you drop for that price? This plane would not be "cruise missile only," it would be cruise-missile capable, but also be able to carry conventional or nuclear payloads of various types, thus it would be far more flexible than a cruise missile.
Our long-range delivery platform right now for situations where stealth is a concern is pretty much the B-2. 20 multi-billion dollar planes, expensive as hell to operate and fly, with a crew of 2 as your potential loss if you lose one of those planes, as well as a reduction in your capability by 5% every time you lose a plane. We have the B-52, which, while a hell of a good plane, will be 60+ years old by the time these new planes enter production in the 2020's, have no stealth, meaning their utility without escorts is going to be limited, and have a crew of 5 that you lose every time you lose a plane.
Now consider a uav with no crew loss if you lose it, the range & stealth capabilities of a B-2, and the abilities of deep penetration and localized delivery against even mobile targets, because it can get on station and look around a bit for the best target before launching its ordnance. The proposal also includes command and control, target acquisition, and reconaissance capabilities being built into the plane, meaning that even after it's dropped its payload, it can loiter in the target area and help direct other aircraft by providing updated targeting and surveillance information.
Chiefly because Red Dawn had a standing US military actively fighting the invasion during the course of the entire movie plot.
Which means that all those units engaged with the active military wouldn't need to be, which means that they'd be hunting the insurgents down, which means that Red Dawn would've been a short-ass movie because the insurgents would have died within hours, not weeks. Which means that tne insurgency is effectively neutralized.
Why say stuff like this?
Because it's true. Any invader would simply have to say, "Okay look, our beef is with the government, not with the civilians. We just want to take over and rule, but we're going to let you keep working, and keep doing your jobs and all that. You'll just have a Chinese man in a suit as your leader, instead of an American man in a suit," and they'd neutralize about 80% of the resistance from middle class people who are going to simply want to get back to their lives, raise their kids, and have some peace and quiet.
You keep pointing to Afghanistan and Iraq - and again, it's notable that there are two very important parallels that wouldn't be the same in your proposed scenario: 1) The presence of a technologically advanced third-party supporting the insurgency (You think the Mujaheddin would have done anywhere near as much damage without weapons and training from the US?); 2) The fact that the "middle class" in Iraq and Afghanistan mostly *fled the country* rather than take up arms and fight. What makes you think the bulk of middle class gun-owners would take up arms rather than simply say, "If you promise to leave me mostly alone, I'll be cool?" There's precious little precedent for it, as I noted, and you failed to address: insurgencies tend to be led & populated by the dispossessed - either upper/influential classes before the invasion (see: Baath party), or the lower class 'foot soldiers' who have nothing else to lose (see: many of the suicide bombers and 'death squads'.)
You also seem to think that "political win by insurgency" - with the years of economic damage, lives lost, and drain on educated middle class as they flee - is somehow preferable, or at least no worse than, having a standing military that can deter or repel invaders. I assure you, it is not. States that "win" by insurgency also tend to become unpleasant-to-live-in or downright failed states ruled by battling warlords who exert what power over whatever territory they can seize control of (Somalia), military dictatorships (North Korea), or repressive religious regimes (Afghanistan under the Taliban).
Can't say definitively, but one of the major characteristics of cancer cells are that they evade apoptosis (cell 'suicide' in cases of damage, etc.), and if you go read up on apoptosis, you'll see that one of the common triggering effects is hypoxia (low oxygen). It's certainly conceivable that the cancer cells, in disregarding apoptosis commands, utilize this low-oxygen synthesis pathway to continue multiplying, and that preventing the cells from using that pathway would cause them to die normally - in other words, the cancer cell MAY receive the signal to die, and shut down its "normal oxygen" protein synthesis pathway, but start (or continue) using the low-oxygen pathway, instead of dying.
Very speculative, but it could very well be something that's fundamental to many broad categories of cancer cell. IF it turns out to be as effective as suggested (hoped), it would add a powerful new treatment to the chemotherapy, radiation, and surgical treatments already being used. If it doesn't, it still offers some potential insight into how cancer cells function, which could lead to development of other treatment protocols. It could also lead to better treatments of heart disease & stroke, since lack of oxygen to various cells & organs is one of the major components of damage in both of those conditions.
Wish Nature wasn't behind a paywall, the newspaper interview & writeup are interesting, but scant of detail.
With stealth cruise missiles that can be fired from land, ships, submarines and aircraft, why the hell would you stuff around with a 550 million dollar bomber whose only real purpose is to cost 550 million dollars.
Because cruise missiles typically have a range of 200-600 miles. Submarines and ships can only reach 600 miles from the coast; you need a launcher on land within 600 miles of your intended target. Or, you can launch from a mobile aerial platform, which can fly undetected within 600 miles of any target on earth, launch, and fly home, and still let the pilot be home in time for American Idol because it's a UAV and his replacement can fly the thing back home.
Extra bonus - your pilots and other personnel are never at physical risk - meaning the years of training you sunk into them don't disappear if some air defense guy gets a lucky potshot while your pilot flies over. A machine can be replaced pretty quickly, and pretty easily. A pilot with thousands of hours of flight time and training? That's trickier.
The insurgency cannot remove the occupying force militarily - they must rely on bad press and "we're sick of this violence" to influence the occupiers - and it's likely that anybody invading us would have a much higher stomach for blood and "collateral damage" than the American public. In essence, the insurgency is a political operation, a public relations campaign, not a military activity.
And it often works in practice in various countries around the world.
Actually no, most of the time, unless there is external assistance propping up the insurgency, it ends in a dismal failure for the insurgency because the militarily weak insurgency is crushed by superior force and resources. External success is only occasionally a predictor of success for an insurgency. This myth that all you have to do is strap on a 9mm with a couple dozen of your best buds, and you can take down a superpower is so misguided it's ridiculous.
Nor does a standing army replace a well armed civilian population. The two are inherently synergistic for defense of a territory.
Never said civilians can't, shouldn't, or don't deserve to own weapons and be armed. But I promise you, occupied America with no standing military would bear little to no resemblance to Red Dawn. Comfortable middle class suburbanites have very little will, motivation, or expertise for fighting an insurgency. The people who DO fight in these insurgencies are generally either the formerly-powerful/privileged dispossessed (De-baathified military and marginalized clerics who suddenly have their power base threatened), or the people with nothing else to lose (unemployed young men with no prospects and time on their hands). Not the middle class educated folks who are told "Stay in your homes, and nothing bad will happen to you." This is not the stuff of radical insurgency.
I have little doubt that even our civilian armed forces (police, even some militias) would prove formidable to Chinese troops
And I have little doubt that you vastly underestimate the organization and capabilities of the Chinese military, and overestimate the suitability of a police force to warfare - an occupation force with no standing military to resist it would sweep in and seize effective control of a coastal city within hours, and one of their first orders of business would be to neutralize any police / security forces.
The LAPD has about 10,000 active duty officers. How long do you think they'd last against a couple brigades of Chinese marines and infantry, given that the soldiers will have rifles, grenades, armored personnel carriers, machine guns... and most of the LAPD officers will have nothing but a service handgun, a taser, and a Crown Vic with flashing lights?
Nope. Only our closest allies could project a force capable of a credible attack on a coastal city. None have the capability to hold an inland city. In *any* credible scenario.
Really? When we have no standing military? What's stopping them from occupying a coastal city, or inland city?
Answer: Absolutely nothing, Swayze.
You seem to think that a bunch of civilians would be able to organize a counterattack to prevent armored landing craft and airborne forces from establishing a beachhead and occupying a coastal city - say, San Diego, or Boston, or LA, or NYC, or Atlanta, or Washington. Do you think that this mythical arsenal civilians are packing includes anti-aircraft missles, Harpoon anti-ship missiles, and body armor capable of stopping assault rifle fire? Because there's no standing military to repel those people, and any random, disorganized, grab-asstic civilian cowboys trying to stop well-armed soldiers from landing on the beach with a.22 rifle are going to get shredded in pretty short order.
Sounds great - whose military will they serve in - Canada? France? Germany? The UK? The core of the premise we're being asked to consider suggests that we could fend off invaders with "no standing army" simply because we've got a lot of guns in civilian hands.
Mandatory military service for all citizens sort of presupposes the existence of a military for those citizens to serve in.
The context of these statements are, once again, in AK Marc's assertion far upthread that disbanding the military would leave us "un-invadable" simply because we have the weapons to mount an insurgency.
Post-invasion guerilla operations is not homeland defense - it is a failed defense strategy, and will NEVER render a country "uninvadable." The cost to the country so occupied is exorbitantly high, and borders on Pyrrhic victory - potentially generations of "lost youth," a destroyed middle class, economic stagnation and decay, warring factions, and no political, economic, or physical stability and security. The occupier pays relatively little direct cost - they've already invaded, and ongoing losses are low - except for the political ones incurred by the occupation.
Relying on your opponent to "get sick of fighting" is NOT a military victory. It is a political victory, and maybe you get what you think you wanted in the end, but what you're left with is a dysfunctional failed state with no functional government, factional infighting, and a void where your educated middle class used to be, because the educated upper & middle class has either fled or been killed. If this is the sort of "victory" that we can hope for in AK Marc's utopia of no standing military, I'll take the gritty and imperfect here and now, complete with standing military, thanks.
I see that the US military has withdrawn from Iraq. So there's that military objective accomplished.
No, they have achieved a *political* objective. Politicians ordered the withdrawal, because popular support for the occupation had waned. The achievement of this objective will depend largely on the stomach for bloodshed that the invading nation's leaders & population have. In the specific case of China's leadership, I think it's fairly safe to say that an invader would have a significantly higher tolerance for bloodshed (and ruthless response by the occupying forces against the local population) than American politicans on a 4-year election cycle.
The entire context of this discussion is AK Marc's suggestion that disbanding the military would still leave the US un-invadable because we have so many civilians with guns. The entire notion of an "insurgency" against this "occupying force" means that civilians with guns have FAILED to render the US "un-invadable," and so are left doing the only thing possible: fighting a years- or decades-long insurgency against an occupying force, hoping to exceed their tolerance for bloodshed before the civilians get tired of fighting.
A "well armed civilian population" does nothing to replace a standing army.
Yes, as long as their military goals are limited to "killing unarmed civilians living in the wrong neighborhood," they'll be resoundingly successful. As a way of repelling foreign occupiers, these insurgencies have done nothing, militarily. They have bloodied some noses and sapped political will for a continued occupation by making the occupation difficult and unpleasant.
All of the "sovereign territory" they've reclaimed has been reclaimed by virtue of troops withdrawing at the behest of political masters, not being ejected by force of arms. This is how an insurgency wins, and given the scenario under discussion - remember, we're talking an invasion of continental US by an occupying force after the military has been completely disbanded - there is no situation in which an "armed resistance" will win except by bleeding the occupier until they cry "Uncle!" And if the occupying force happens to have a high tolerance for bloodshed, well... that concession could be a long time coming.
A well armed insurgency focused on repelling a single enemy is going to be more effective
No, it's just going to have a whole lot more dead heroes and martyrs.
From a "military" standpoint, the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan have been military failures. They've killed a few soldiers, but they've done NOTHING to reassert control.
What the insurgencies do is sap political and popular will to support the invasion and occupation, and that's how they attempt to "win" - by bleeding the occupiers too much and making it too politically expensive to continue occupying. If there were no political cost to occupying Iraq in the face of the insurgency, we could sit there forever, militarily speaking. A couple thousand - even tens of thousands - of guys with guns and IEDs wouldn't change that, because they lack the strategy, materials, and coordination to actually remove the occupiers by force of arms.
We could remain uninvadable without a standing army, with just a greater focus on the national guard being a little more prepared and equipped.
Yeah... no.
All your 9mm Glocks and hunting rifles and even AK-47's and AR-15's aren't going to do much good against an armored column. The point of a guerilla response is to make the enemy bleed enough that it (eventually) saps the popular and political will supporting the invasion and occupation, forcing an eventual withdrawal. But that can be an awfully long time: How long was Russia in Afghanistan? the US in Iraq, Afghanistan? The French in Vietnam? The British... everywhere? An "armed resistance" sounds great. But it does not compare in the slightest to a modern, well-equipped, well-trained military. If you think a hundred thousand Angelenos and New Yorkers are going to meet the invaders on the beaches in a pitched battle rivaling Normandy... I want some of what you're smoking. Without a standing military, we'd be eminently invadable.
The only thing we'd have is the firepower to offer some resistance after the occupation. But even still, 300 million amateurs with handguns are still fucking amateurs. The vast majority will know nothing of small unit tactics, communications, survival, evasion, etc. required to effectively fight against an occupying force. And there's a pretty steep learning curve when the smallest mistake means you catch a.50 caliber round in the face. There's a VERY small number of people who own guns and who would be capable of mounting effective resistance. The rest would be ground meat in about 2 days against any reasonably well-trained military. "Red Dawn" was a fanciful notion, but it's just that: fanciful.
And imagine if the dinosaurs had had iPhones with push alerts to let them know via the Extinction Forecast app that there was a slight chance of asteroid impact followed by a 100% chance of an ice age.
Maybe they could have evolved some thumbs and space heaters if they were smarter.
Slashdot Mirror
May I take this to mean that you also support restrictive EULA's which give the "owner" ultimate control over what you may or may not do with the software, books, music, etc. that you create using their tools?
After all, if I grant you an unrestricted, royalty-free license to use something, that doesn't mean I no longer 'own' the thing I've given you the license for, so it's absolutely okay for me to come along and tell you you can only install / use it on certain systems, you can't resell it, you can't share it, and you can't do anything I don't otherwise approve of with it.
I can't wait to see you lining up to voice your support for the RIAA, BSA, and other organizations who also feel this way about licenses on "virtual" products. Because this is a direct, logical, and consistent result of the sentiment you've just expressed - that granting someone a license to do whatever they want with a "non-physical" good means that the license granter still has ultimate say in how the user uses & disposes of the item, regardless of the actual terms of the license.
First, this isn't a copyright issue. It's a subpoena of business records related to a case before the court. There are restrictions on the type of information that may be subpoenaed, but the court has ruled that the information being requested meets the requirements for information that may be requested from a service provider. "That's copyrighted" is not sufficient cause to refuse a subpoena. If it was, Twitter would have argued it in its motion to the court. It didn't.
Now, Twitter can (and has) argued that the user SHOULD have standing to challenge this under the federal Stored Communications Act, which probably stands the best chance of getting them to reverse the motion and quash the order. And if that does happen, you can bet there'll be a warrant issued for the records instead - in fact, that's pretty much what the conclusion from twitter states - "quash the order, and give us a warrant instead."
Well, it also happens to be the court's interpretation of the law, so... that makes it at least slightly more official than your opinion or mine.
Twitter's TOS is significantly broader than you're trying to claim it is - "he didn't grant Twitter the right to use it outside of Twitter" - the TOS actually says he DOES grant them the right to use it anywhere they see fit - "any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed.)" In essence, he has granted them a copy of his IP, with which they can do anything they wish, and he has no claim on what they do with their copy - and so, he has no standing to block the court-ordered disclosure of the information by Twitter, because he grants that license to them.
Again - go read the actual motion I linked, and the legal reasoning included in it, it's quite interesting. It helps if you understand the law and the legal reasoning being applied in the decision before you start claiming that he's protect by some bizarrely twisted shield laws and intellectual property laws - your attempt to invoke those simply illustrates your misunderstanding of the law, and how it's being applied here.
And the actual motion explains some pretty compelling reasons why the subpoena went forward:
1) That Mr. Harris had to agree to Twitter's terms of service to have an account;
2) That the terms of service grant Twitter the following:
The essential argument is that since the user is granting Twitter that license to his tweets, the user has no "proprietary" (ownership) interest in the tweets, because by posting, he specifically gives up his right to prevent Twitter from doing anything they wish with that tweet he's submitted. In essence, they conclude that he's "given away" his tweet to Twitter via that license, and that he therefore has no standing to claim that it is "his property" which may not be disclosed by Twitter without his permission.
Because the user has deleted all of his tweets before February 2012.
The prosecution believes that his tweets (including those deleted) will contradict his "anticipated defense" - specifically, that he was induced or forced to step onto the roadway by police, rather than stepping out onto the roadway of his own volition, and obstructing traffic. For instance, if they can show he tweeted a photo of himself and some other protesters dancing around in the roadway minutes before he was arrested, it sort of torpedoes the "The police threw me into the street!" defense.
The reasoning the court is using in supporting the subpoena (by rejecting the defendant's motion to invalidate it) is that the records are akin to bank records - they are *about* the user, but the user has neither possession nor a "proprietary" interest in those records - in other words, the records belong to the bank, and so a subpoena is sufficient for the bank to turn over records about the defendant. Given Twitter's terms of service (granting them a worldwide irrevocable license to reproduce, present and display... etc. etc.... your tweets) and the precedent of bank records, the judge has ruled that the defendant has no standing to challenge the validity of the subpoena.
You can read the full order here, and it goes into fairly deep detail about the issue, and is a fairly straightforward read.
This response makes zero sense, and seems to be predicated on me pretending none of the facts I've communicated to you so far exist.
Thanks for proclaiming your ignorance. Quod erat demonstradum!
You are full of shit. Full stop.
Okay, let's assume the Chinese military attacks us with only their operational capability today. They roll up near a coastal city with their transport vessels - they have 150 or so of these, each holding 250-500 troops - and begin offloading. Who's going to stop them? They could easily drop a couple thousand troops, with naval gun and attack helicopter support, plus at least a couple tanks & personnel carriers.
Those troops go to work establishing and securing a beachhead, including enough land to begin landing transport planes (carrying troops, personnel carriers, tanks and mobile artillery) on a hastily constructed airstrip. As more materials and more troops land, you continue enlarging and securing your perimeter until you have amassed enough troops and supporting material to begin offensive operations outside that perimeter.
Prioritize securing fuel, ammunition, food, and water stores in the initial landing & push, and establish naval & aerial supply lines.
Remember, all of this is happening uncontested - there is no standing military, air force, or navy to oppose these operations. There is no civilian weaponry sufficient enough to do more than kill a couple of the soldiers before the person shooting is killed. There is no organization with command and control capability, and military capacity, to oppose their landing and the establishment of a beachhead. You have failed to explain how ANY civilian force would effectively contest their occupation and control of a single city, much less a large swath of territory, except to assert that somehow, a bunch of untrained amateurs with no coordination and limited supplies would somehow be able to rout hundreds of thousands of trained soldiers who are far better geared and trained.
They would be here. They would be occupying numerous cities by year's end. Your entire premise is so up its own ass that it's ridiculous: Standing down the military = anybody with a reasonably modern military can walk right in if they want to.
No, in 3 years, they'll have 2 carriers, they are under construction, and expected to complete by 2015. It's also a fallacy to assert that the only way to invade a nation is to do so with aircraft carriers. The Chinese have aerial refueling capabilities, and would simply need to ferry aircraft over, at which point they have an airstrip, and air power that can be projected. Unless you can come up with some way a bunch of civilians with Glocks and the odd AR-15 can repel thousands of well-armed troops supported by naval guns, attack helicopters, and armored vehicles in a toe-to-toe battle, there is NOTHING preventing anybody with a modern military from rolling on up the beach and establishing a beachhead and an airstrip to start landing more troops, material, and airpower. American civilians would be about as effective as Iraqi civilians were in stopping our invasion of that country: which is to say, not effective at all.
The same restriction applies for any other cruise missile launch platform - as long as nobody sinks it, or bombs it, it can keep shooting.
The B-52's in our arsenal have been there for 60 years. These airframes will last for decades - "as long as no one shoots it down."
Of course I knew about the MTCR - but its relevance to this discussion is minimal. The MTCR is focused on export of missile technology to limit the proliferation of missiles, and has traditionally focused on ballistic missile threats carrying payloads greater than 500 kg. There is nothing stopping member countries from developing their own missiles with larger warheads, they've simply agreed to limit the export of those technologies to other nations. There is also a bit of logistical and engineering limitation in that warheads much larger than that limit tend to be best delivered by ballistic trajectories, anyway - not low-altitude non-ballistic delivery systems like a Tomahawk, because it simply becomes unwieldy and rapidly non-cost-effective to build a missile capable of delivering such a large payload without building a whole goddamned plane around it.
And this also ignores the simple fact that cruise missiles are typically ineffective at hitting mobile or hardened targets, where a much larger warhead or a much more sophisticated delivery system is required.
And yet, that's never happened. The only use of nuclear weapons in anger has been when the US used them on Japan (a non-nuclear power). Despite years of being nuclear powers and shooting at each other, Pakistan and India have not nuked each other. Despite years of close calls, proxy wars, and bilateral brinksmanship, the US and Russia never fired nuclear weapons at each other. Despite being literally existentially threatened from nearly all sides, North Korea has not launched a nuclear attack. It's like you have no concept of modern warfare, it's amazing.
I see, so the only possible wartime uses for a bomb are:
1) Global nuclear war, with ICBMs flying everywhere (making the bomber irrelevant)
2) Asymmetric warfare where a superpower is trying to kill a handful of "savages" in a cave (using transport planes, which means the bomber is also irrelevant)
I guess the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan never happened. I guess the recent downfall of Gaddaffi in Libya also never happened. I guess there's no possible, conceivable way that any modern country would ever fight another modern country using modern weapon systems short of nuclear weapons; it's either nukes, or stone age savages in caves!
Teach us more wisdom, Sun Tzu, please.
Actually, I'd say it's just the opposite: web sites fail far more predictably than hard drives.
You never know when a hard drive is going to fail. Could be fine today, toast tomorrow.
AOL? Yahoo? Myspace? Who didn't see those coming?
You can see the decline happening with web sites - they don't fail overnight. It's rare for a web site to be "here today, gone tomorrow" with no notice of the impending change. That happens all the time with hard drives.
I guess you missed the part where China has 2 carriers under construction, slated for completion in a couple years. I guess you also missed the part where planes can be transported to an airbase stateside - really, who's going to stop them from ferrying in their regional long range bombers (Xian H6 - a quite capable plane that could easily be flown here with a couple hops or air to air refueling), and their attack aircraft, and their helicopters? Doesn't take much to build a runway quickly - just a long stretch of flat, open terrain. Who's going to stop them from building that runway here? A bunch of people with Glocks?
So, here's how they do it: naval approach with their 2 carriers with a full complement of attack aircraft and helicopters for close air support. Land a bunch of marines, establish a beachhead, build a couple runways. Fly in your long range bombers, naval transport for other planes (they don't have to launch from the ships, you know, they can just be transported in), and boom. Magical airpower. And since we have no standing army to contest this operation, there is fuck-all anybody with an AR-15 can do about it, because there's a couple companies of well trained Chinese marines guarding this new airfield, supported by naval guns, carrier-launched aircraft, and any material they begin transporting in via air.
You seem to think that the Chinese military is completely incompetent and full of Keystone Kops who would bumble their way through an operation like this. You're wrong.
Sorry, are the soldiers landing in waves being fired in by those naval guns? Are the strike aircraft being flown from the carriers just deciding to fly around at random and provide no air support to the ground troops landing? And these "military complexes" -- what military? We have no standing military, remember? Why would they be shelling anything, and why would they think it's a military complex, when we have no military?
Because the chinese soldiers will probably be wearing body armor. Helmets, kevlar vests, things like that. Making your theoretical-but-comical civilian resistance with no military support even less likely to be able to do shit against a regular military force.
And I think you're realizing just how foolish your "disband the entire military" bullshit was, and are now furiously trying to backpedal by creating some sort of "military complex" that an invading force would care about, and assuming that the Chinese could not, ever, ever, ever, build an aircraft carrier or ferry in planes via aerial refueling, loading a bunch of them into boats for shipping, or multiple hops overland. There would be nothing, in your proposed scenario, to contest their offloading of this material at the landing stage, and you've glibly ignored the fact that attack helicopters can and do take off from non-carrier vessels, as well to support the initial construction of airstrips and offloading of shipped aircraft.
Also, resolve is necessary to win a war, but it's not the only thing required. The ability to damage the enemy i
Yes, it's a design decision. And that design decision must juggle warhead size, missile speed, missile range, missile size, and cost.
Even the fastest cruise missiles will take a couple minutes to reach targets at their maximum range. There's only so much they can do against mobile or hardened targets. They cost up to a couple million dollars per shot.
So, let's see... for 550 million, you can hit 275-550 targets with a cruise missile (it's common for there to be literally *thousands* or *tens of thousands* of bombing targets in an aerial campaign), or you can have a reusable UAV that can drop thousands of JDAMs on those same targets, and the thousands of other targets that are mobile or hardened that a cruise missile would be ineffective against. Also, one $2 million USD cruise missile = twenty eight 2,000 pound GBU-31 JDAMs, (cost ~70k / bomb) or fifty six 500 pound GBU-38's (cost ~35k / bomb).
Yep, that $550 million plane is just a complete waste. A boondoggle. There's no cost justification or military justification for it whatsoever. Nobody could ever possibly need something like this, ever, ever, ever. It helps if you understand the cost, effectiveness, and capabilities of the technologies involved before you offer your opinion on their usefulness and cost effectiveness.
First: this would, obviously, not be strictly designated as a "plane for missions against China."
Second: Without the capabilities of a platform like this, as a defense against cruise missiles, just move any military assets 600 miles inland. Whoops, guess we all just go home, boys. Can't hit them from here!
Third: Cruise missiles have limited usefulness against targets that are not stationary & fairly soft; Their long travel times (subsonics can take upwards of an hour to travel 600 miles; supersonics (mach 1 - mach 5) can take 10-35 minutes to cover that same distance; even the hypersonics (mach 5+) would take 6 minutes or so to cover that distance. Also, generally speaking, the faster the cruise missile, the shorter it's maximum range, and the generally smaller its maximum payload. Hardened targets & mobile targets are tough for a typical cruise missile.
Fourth: Cruise missiles don't have a lot of active guidance after they're fired. Having a mobile aerial platform that can enter in targeting information and launch those missiles stealthily from a few miles away means less reaction time, more precise targeting, and better chance of an effective hit.
Fifth: Cruise missiles can cost a couple million dollars per shot. How many JDAMs can you drop for that price? This plane would not be "cruise missile only," it would be cruise-missile capable, but also be able to carry conventional or nuclear payloads of various types, thus it would be far more flexible than a cruise missile.
Our long-range delivery platform right now for situations where stealth is a concern is pretty much the B-2. 20 multi-billion dollar planes, expensive as hell to operate and fly, with a crew of 2 as your potential loss if you lose one of those planes, as well as a reduction in your capability by 5% every time you lose a plane. We have the B-52, which, while a hell of a good plane, will be 60+ years old by the time these new planes enter production in the 2020's, have no stealth, meaning their utility without escorts is going to be limited, and have a crew of 5 that you lose every time you lose a plane.
Now consider a uav with no crew loss if you lose it, the range & stealth capabilities of a B-2, and the abilities of deep penetration and localized delivery against even mobile targets, because it can get on station and look around a bit for the best target before launching its ordnance. The proposal also includes command and control, target acquisition, and reconaissance capabilities being built into the plane, meaning that even after it's dropped its payload, it can loiter in the target area and help direct other aircraft by providing updated targeting and surveillance information.
Which means that all those units engaged with the active military wouldn't need to be, which means that they'd be hunting the insurgents down, which means that Red Dawn would've been a short-ass movie because the insurgents would have died within hours, not weeks. Which means that tne insurgency is effectively neutralized.
Because it's true. Any invader would simply have to say, "Okay look, our beef is with the government, not with the civilians. We just want to take over and rule, but we're going to let you keep working, and keep doing your jobs and all that. You'll just have a Chinese man in a suit as your leader, instead of an American man in a suit," and they'd neutralize about 80% of the resistance from middle class people who are going to simply want to get back to their lives, raise their kids, and have some peace and quiet.
You keep pointing to Afghanistan and Iraq - and again, it's notable that there are two very important parallels that wouldn't be the same in your proposed scenario:
1) The presence of a technologically advanced third-party supporting the insurgency (You think the Mujaheddin would have done anywhere near as much damage without weapons and training from the US?);
2) The fact that the "middle class" in Iraq and Afghanistan mostly *fled the country* rather than take up arms and fight. What makes you think the bulk of middle class gun-owners would take up arms rather than simply say, "If you promise to leave me mostly alone, I'll be cool?" There's precious little precedent for it, as I noted, and you failed to address: insurgencies tend to be led & populated by the dispossessed - either upper/influential classes before the invasion (see: Baath party), or the lower class 'foot soldiers' who have nothing else to lose (see: many of the suicide bombers and 'death squads'.)
You also seem to think that "political win by insurgency" - with the years of economic damage, lives lost, and drain on educated middle class as they flee - is somehow preferable, or at least no worse than, having a standing military that can deter or repel invaders. I assure you, it is not. States that "win" by insurgency also tend to become unpleasant-to-live-in or downright failed states ruled by battling warlords who exert what power over whatever territory they can seize control of (Somalia), military dictatorships (North Korea), or repressive religious regimes (Afghanistan under the Taliban).
Can't say definitively, but one of the major characteristics of cancer cells are that they evade apoptosis (cell 'suicide' in cases of damage, etc.), and if you go read up on apoptosis, you'll see that one of the common triggering effects is hypoxia (low oxygen). It's certainly conceivable that the cancer cells, in disregarding apoptosis commands, utilize this low-oxygen synthesis pathway to continue multiplying, and that preventing the cells from using that pathway would cause them to die normally - in other words, the cancer cell MAY receive the signal to die, and shut down its "normal oxygen" protein synthesis pathway, but start (or continue) using the low-oxygen pathway, instead of dying.
Very speculative, but it could very well be something that's fundamental to many broad categories of cancer cell. IF it turns out to be as effective as suggested (hoped), it would add a powerful new treatment to the chemotherapy, radiation, and surgical treatments already being used. If it doesn't, it still offers some potential insight into how cancer cells function, which could lead to development of other treatment protocols. It could also lead to better treatments of heart disease & stroke, since lack of oxygen to various cells & organs is one of the major components of damage in both of those conditions.
Wish Nature wasn't behind a paywall, the newspaper interview & writeup are interesting, but scant of detail.
Because cruise missiles typically have a range of 200-600 miles. Submarines and ships can only reach 600 miles from the coast; you need a launcher on land within 600 miles of your intended target. Or, you can launch from a mobile aerial platform, which can fly undetected within 600 miles of any target on earth, launch, and fly home, and still let the pilot be home in time for American Idol because it's a UAV and his replacement can fly the thing back home.
Extra bonus - your pilots and other personnel are never at physical risk - meaning the years of training you sunk into them don't disappear if some air defense guy gets a lucky potshot while your pilot flies over. A machine can be replaced pretty quickly, and pretty easily. A pilot with thousands of hours of flight time and training? That's trickier.
The insurgency cannot remove the occupying force militarily - they must rely on bad press and "we're sick of this violence" to influence the occupiers - and it's likely that anybody invading us would have a much higher stomach for blood and "collateral damage" than the American public. In essence, the insurgency is a political operation, a public relations campaign, not a military activity.
Actually no, most of the time, unless there is external assistance propping up the insurgency, it ends in a dismal failure for the insurgency because the militarily weak insurgency is crushed by superior force and resources. External success is only occasionally a predictor of success for an insurgency. This myth that all you have to do is strap on a 9mm with a couple dozen of your best buds, and you can take down a superpower is so misguided it's ridiculous.
Never said civilians can't, shouldn't, or don't deserve to own weapons and be armed. But I promise you, occupied America with no standing military would bear little to no resemblance to Red Dawn. Comfortable middle class suburbanites have very little will, motivation, or expertise for fighting an insurgency. The people who DO fight in these insurgencies are generally either the formerly-powerful/privileged dispossessed (De-baathified military and marginalized clerics who suddenly have their power base threatened), or the people with nothing else to lose (unemployed young men with no prospects and time on their hands). Not the middle class educated folks who are told "Stay in your homes, and nothing bad will happen to you." This is not the stuff of radical insurgency.
And I have little doubt that you vastly underestimate the organization and capabilities of the Chinese military, and overestimate the suitability of a police force to warfare - an occupation force with no standing military to resist it would sweep in and seize effective control of a coastal city within hours, and one of their first orders of business would be to neutralize any police / security forces.
The LAPD has about 10,000 active duty officers. How long do you think they'd last against a couple brigades of Chinese marines and infantry, given that the soldiers will have rifles, grenades, armored personnel carriers, machine guns... and most of the LAPD officers will have nothing but a service handgun, a taser, and a Crown Vic with flashing lights?
Really? When we have no standing military? What's stopping them from occupying a coastal city, or inland city?
Answer: Absolutely nothing, Swayze.
You seem to think that a bunch of civilians would be able to organize a counterattack to prevent armored landing craft and airborne forces from establishing a beachhead and occupying a coastal city - say, San Diego, or Boston, or LA, or NYC, or Atlanta, or Washington. Do you think that this mythical arsenal civilians are packing includes anti-aircraft missles, Harpoon anti-ship missiles, and body armor capable of stopping assault rifle fire? Because there's no standing military to repel those people, and any random, disorganized, grab-asstic civilian cowboys trying to stop well-armed soldiers from landing on the beach with a .22 rifle are going to get shredded in pretty short order.
Sounds great - whose military will they serve in - Canada? France? Germany? The UK? The core of the premise we're being asked to consider suggests that we could fend off invaders with "no standing army" simply because we've got a lot of guns in civilian hands.
Mandatory military service for all citizens sort of presupposes the existence of a military for those citizens to serve in.
The context of these statements are, once again, in AK Marc's assertion far upthread that disbanding the military would leave us "un-invadable" simply because we have the weapons to mount an insurgency.
Post-invasion guerilla operations is not homeland defense - it is a failed defense strategy, and will NEVER render a country "uninvadable." The cost to the country so occupied is exorbitantly high, and borders on Pyrrhic victory - potentially generations of "lost youth," a destroyed middle class, economic stagnation and decay, warring factions, and no political, economic, or physical stability and security. The occupier pays relatively little direct cost - they've already invaded, and ongoing losses are low - except for the political ones incurred by the occupation.
Relying on your opponent to "get sick of fighting" is NOT a military victory. It is a political victory, and maybe you get what you think you wanted in the end, but what you're left with is a dysfunctional failed state with no functional government, factional infighting, and a void where your educated middle class used to be, because the educated upper & middle class has either fled or been killed. If this is the sort of "victory" that we can hope for in AK Marc's utopia of no standing military, I'll take the gritty and imperfect here and now, complete with standing military, thanks.
No, they have achieved a *political* objective. Politicians ordered the withdrawal, because popular support for the occupation had waned. The achievement of this objective will depend largely on the stomach for bloodshed that the invading nation's leaders & population have. In the specific case of China's leadership, I think it's fairly safe to say that an invader would have a significantly higher tolerance for bloodshed (and ruthless response by the occupying forces against the local population) than American politicans on a 4-year election cycle.
The entire context of this discussion is AK Marc's suggestion that disbanding the military would still leave the US un-invadable because we have so many civilians with guns. The entire notion of an "insurgency" against this "occupying force" means that civilians with guns have FAILED to render the US "un-invadable," and so are left doing the only thing possible: fighting a years- or decades-long insurgency against an occupying force, hoping to exceed their tolerance for bloodshed before the civilians get tired of fighting.
A "well armed civilian population" does nothing to replace a standing army.
Yes, as long as their military goals are limited to "killing unarmed civilians living in the wrong neighborhood," they'll be resoundingly successful. As a way of repelling foreign occupiers, these insurgencies have done nothing, militarily. They have bloodied some noses and sapped political will for a continued occupation by making the occupation difficult and unpleasant.
All of the "sovereign territory" they've reclaimed has been reclaimed by virtue of troops withdrawing at the behest of political masters, not being ejected by force of arms. This is how an insurgency wins, and given the scenario under discussion - remember, we're talking an invasion of continental US by an occupying force after the military has been completely disbanded - there is no situation in which an "armed resistance" will win except by bleeding the occupier until they cry "Uncle!" And if the occupying force happens to have a high tolerance for bloodshed, well... that concession could be a long time coming.
No, it's just going to have a whole lot more dead heroes and martyrs.
From a "military" standpoint, the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan have been military failures. They've killed a few soldiers, but they've done NOTHING to reassert control.
What the insurgencies do is sap political and popular will to support the invasion and occupation, and that's how they attempt to "win" - by bleeding the occupiers too much and making it too politically expensive to continue occupying. If there were no political cost to occupying Iraq in the face of the insurgency, we could sit there forever, militarily speaking. A couple thousand - even tens of thousands - of guys with guns and IEDs wouldn't change that, because they lack the strategy, materials, and coordination to actually remove the occupiers by force of arms.
Yeah... no.
All your 9mm Glocks and hunting rifles and even AK-47's and AR-15's aren't going to do much good against an armored column. The point of a guerilla response is to make the enemy bleed enough that it (eventually) saps the popular and political will supporting the invasion and occupation, forcing an eventual withdrawal. But that can be an awfully long time: How long was Russia in Afghanistan? the US in Iraq, Afghanistan? The French in Vietnam? The British... everywhere? An "armed resistance" sounds great. But it does not compare in the slightest to a modern, well-equipped, well-trained military. If you think a hundred thousand Angelenos and New Yorkers are going to meet the invaders on the beaches in a pitched battle rivaling Normandy... I want some of what you're smoking. Without a standing military, we'd be eminently invadable.
The only thing we'd have is the firepower to offer some resistance after the occupation. But even still, 300 million amateurs with handguns are still fucking amateurs. The vast majority will know nothing of small unit tactics, communications, survival, evasion, etc. required to effectively fight against an occupying force. And there's a pretty steep learning curve when the smallest mistake means you catch a .50 caliber round in the face. There's a VERY small number of people who own guns and who would be capable of mounting effective resistance. The rest would be ground meat in about 2 days against any reasonably well-trained military. "Red Dawn" was a fanciful notion, but it's just that: fanciful.
And imagine if the dinosaurs had had iPhones with push alerts to let them know via the Extinction Forecast app that there was a slight chance of asteroid impact followed by a 100% chance of an ice age.
Maybe they could have evolved some thumbs and space heaters if they were smarter.