Actually, she was quite the success. While we're not building ships exactly like her, radar stealth has been a significant concern of the Navy, and current ships are designed to minimize their radar cross section. Reduced crew manning has also been a really big push, as had improved roll stability. About the only major design feature not in use is the catamaran hull. and really, figuring out something is a bad idea is still a successful experiment.

It's a 30 year old ship that was never really designed for extended operations. It has a max crew of 12, and they're roughing it. It's slow, with no weapons. Please describe exactly how you think this ship would be useful to the border patrol. Not "worth the cost to maintain an old, one-of-a-kind vessel", just useful.

It wasn't developed in competition with anything. It wasn't a warship, or really a working ship at all. It was a test platform for a bunch of different technologies. And, since the technologies being tested have since been incorporated into actual navy ships, I'd say it was a successful test ship. Calling it a failure is nearly as stupid as calling the Norton Sound a failure. After all, they didn't build any more of her, either.

The reason we didn't send a manned mission back is that there's really no point - a realization they came to on the first trip. The people in the sub can't directly interact with the environment in any way. They have to look at the world through cameras, and all work is carried out by robotic arms. Essentially, all you've done is take the control room for a remote vehicle and send it down with the robot. It's a lot of engineering work and no small danger for basically zero gain.

Why am I not suprised that you managed not to mention the actual sponsor, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA). Rep Maloney is the other sponsor, but the bill was introduced by Rep. Issa. For reference, this is Rep. Issa's third bite at this particular apple - he was a cosponser on a similar bill in 2008 and 2009. Rep Maloney was also a cosponser in 2009.

This is all much ado about nothing. There are no real changes to current law here - the computer professional exemption has been a part of the FLSA for years at least - probably decades. See the Department of Labor fact sheet - http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/fs17e_computer.htm The proposed amendment has 2 purposes. 1) It provides a more detailed definition of computer professional. 2) It cleans up the weekly salary requirement by linking it to the standard salary requirements, instead of existing seperately. The hourly number is the same in both versions. So there's essentially nothing new here. This is a cleanup/clarification of existing law, with almost nonexistant changes.

The top 10% of the population has more than 70% of the wealth in the country. The top 1% has almost 40% of the wealth. The bottom 40% has .2% of the wealth. Like it or not, the rich are going to get soaked to pay the debt, because over the last 30 years they took most of the money from the rest of us.

And you are a perfect example of the problem. He didn't "just" release his birth certificate. He released it in June 2008. The State of Hawaii, ini the person of Dr. Fukino, director of the Department of Health, personally verified the certificate was on file and stated so on the record in 2008. If you had done even the most cursory of checks, you'd have known all this. But you found a story that fed your preconceptions, and that was enough for you. And that's the problem, in a nutshell.

Um, shells on a ballistic arc from over the horizon are irrelevant to naval battles. Simply put, when both platforms are constantly moving, it's practically impossible for ships to hit each other at range. The only way to achieve hits are to seperately disable the other ship's propulsion and steering, or get extremely close (i.e. inside LoS). You simply can't hit a ship from over the horizon with a ballistic projectile.

There was a day-long gun duel at range in WW2 where neither side managed a hit. There's a reason all the gun ships went away, and we depend on planes and missiles now. Guns simply don't work anymore.

Actually, there's a much bigger problem with releasing real data. It tells your opponents what data you collect, and therefore what data you miss. That makes it easier to spoof or avoid detection. The data isn't classified because we want to hide the position of enemy ships, it's classified becasue we don't want to reveal the exact capibilities of the system.

It doesn't appear the government has asserted the document is classified - that's a term of art meaning that the release of the data would compromise national security in some way. Instead, they've declared that the data was marked For Official Use Only, which means the data is unclassified, but not for wide dissemination.

Let's break it down. We have classified information, which is data that, if released, would affect the national security. This determination is made by the President or directly appointed representatives only - I think Deputy Secretary of the Army/Navy/whatever is the lowest level with classification authority. Everyone else is merely applying the policies as determined by the originating authority. So I, as a low-level contractor, cannot unilaterally decide to classify a piece of information. Instead, I apply a predetermined set of rules (does it come from system A or mention topic B) to data I sort, and mark it appropriately.

For classified data, there are three broad groupings - Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret. Secret has a subcategory of NoForn - not to be shared with foreign governments. Top Secret has a bazillion "code-word" subcategories - my favorite was Cosmic Top Secret.

There is also a category of unclassifed information that should not be in wide release. This is information that would not impact national security, but should still be controlled. The classic example is Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Leaking your address and social wouldn't impact national security, and neither would leaking your medical records or job evaluations. But I think we'd all agree this information should be kept out of the public eye, so it's marked FOUO. Not classified, but still not for dissemination.

The other category of FOUO information tends to be operational details for a command. This would include unit movements, detailed meeting schedules, specific evaluation criteria, etc. The stuff that, in a corporation, would be tagged Company Propriatary.

Finally, there is unclassified information that is treated as classified. This is generally any build media used for classified systems. The media itself isn't classified - it's straight from the vender. But once we have it, we treat it as if it's classified at the level of the system it was used to build. That way, no one can modify the unclassified source material without already having access to the classifed data.

It's not censorship. It's all Freedom of Speech, all the way down. The Truth Wins Out crowd is using their free speech to oppose the webapp, both by calling it ingorant and bigoted, and by lobbying Apple and Steve Jobs. They aren't asking Apple to censor the app; they're asking Apple to exercise their editorial control over the app store and remove it as not reflecting the "Apple values". Editorial control is a cornerstone of Freedom of Speech; there's no right to make someone else say something for you. You may think Apple shouldn't exercise editorial control over the app store in this way - I might even agree. But they clearly do - see the ban on "Adult" apps. The arguement is that this app makes them look at least as bad as a Playboy app would, and should be removed for the same reasons.

Because the economy was perfect in the 1800s. It's not like the US had 23 recognized recessions in the 1800s, including one bigger than the great depression. Even a passing look at economic history shows that the current economic regime, including the Fed, leads to a significantly more stable economy, with shorter and less frequent downturns.

It would cost more to take the nuclear power plants out than it would to build a new ship. So that's a non-starter. And you want to keep the plane-handling abilities if you can, as planes give you a much greater range and ability to ship in supplies and move people. But the whole idea is still completely unworkable. In a natural disaster scenario, the key window is right after the disaster, out to a week or two. That's the window when everything is disrupted, even in the most modern countries, and an external airbase/supply depot is useful. Hawaii (the closest the ship would be stationed) is about 4000 miles away, At an unrealistic top speed of 50 mph, that's over 3 days, or half your useful window. At a more realistic speed, the ship arrives after the need has passed. And that assumes the ship can get underway instantly. It would probably take at least a day to get ready to steam - you have to get the crew onboard, get the plants up, move in perishable supplies, etc, etc. It's not a quick process. And that's just Japan. The ship would be several weeks out from other possible response areas - India, South America, Europe, etc. A single ship just doesn't work. Until you develop the ability to teleport the ship, you need to have a ship already in the area to be useful.

Nice to see that even the Linux partisans know that the only way for Linux to have desktop success is to have no competition. Given a choice, almost no one would choose linux.