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The Military

North Korea Forced US Reconnaissance Plane To Land 417

Posted by timothy from the plus-they're-near-deal-extreme-for-lasers dept.
First time accepted submitter ToBeDecided writes "A U.S. military reconnaissance plane was reportedly forced to perform an emergency landing during a major military exercise near the North Korean border in March. As revealed by the South Korean defense ministry, a strong signal transmitted from the north disrupted GPS in the area surrounding the position of the RC-7B aircraft. Without information about their position, the pilots were forced to abort their mission and return to South Korea. This raises the question whether the U.S. military would be able to perform operations in North Korea given how fragile their equipment seems to be."

Comment Re:Hope their drivers have improved (Score 1) 240

by Paintballparrot (#35629444) Attached to: AMD Challenges NVIDIA To Graphics Throw-Down
I have never had anything but problems with AMD products. IMO they make better space heaters than CPUs or GPUs, although I have never had to RMA 5 space heaters in 9 months. I ditched all of my AMD products last year and will never go back. I don't care who has the fastest graphics card in the world, I would still go with the Nvidia for reliability.

Comment Re:Here's why they are doing this (Score 1) 321

by Paintballparrot (#34867298) Attached to: WikiLeaks Gives $15k To Bradley Manning Defense
Except PFC Manning is allowed visits with family and friends and no one has said that he is staring at a wall for 23 hours a day. The disgustingly biased article in Salon went as far as to claim that he was denied access to newspapers and current events which has been disputed by one of their sources.

I'm not trying to say PFC Mannings imprisonment is all sunshine and rainbows, but to suggest that it is months on end of sensory deprivation and social isolation would be false.

Comment Re:Here's why they are doing this (Score 0) 321

by Paintballparrot (#34864966) Attached to: WikiLeaks Gives $15k To Bradley Manning Defense
Hello good sir, I work for the Government.

I would just like to thank you for your liberal usage of words such as 'torture' and 'under duress.' You see, every time somebody describes solitary confinement as torture it weakens a word which at one time used to bring up images of POW camps and medieval torture devices. Now thanks to the efforts of people like yourself, when the average person hears somebody is being tortured they can't be sure if an interrogator is driving splinters under their finger nails or if they have been denied access to cable TV. With your continuing support we hope to one day bring water boarding to the civilian population as an acceptable means of interrogation.

Sincerely,
The Man

Submission + - RapidShare Threatens Suit Over Piracy Allegations

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "PC Magazine reports that RapidShare, named as a contributor to digital piracy by a MarkMonitor report, has threatened to sue for defamation. "This defamation of RapidShare as a digital piracy site is absurd and we reserve the right to take legal action against MarkMonitor," says RapidShare in a statement. "RapidShare is a legitimate company that offers its customers fast, simple and secure storage and management of large amounts of data via our servers." MarkMonitor, a Web site that specializes in "enterprise brand protection," says in their study that the most-trafficked domains engaged in digital piracy included three sites — rapidshare.com, megavideo.com, and megaupload.com — that combined yielded 21 billion pageviews per year. RapidShare acknowledged that copyrighted files do get uploaded to its site, however "these users are in the absolute minority compared with those who use our services to pursue perfectly legitimate interests." RapidShare says that it does not open and view the files of its users, and contains no search function so that other users may look for content."
NASA

Submission + - NASA Pitches Heavy Lift Vehicle to Congress (spacenews.com)

Submitted by BJ_Covert_Action
BJ_Covert_Action writes: Well, Congress demanded, last year, that NASA develop a budget plan and proposal for a new heavy lift vehicle in light of the Ares V cancellation. Recently, NASA gave Congress just what they wanted. On January 11th, Douglas Cooke pitched an interim report to Congressional members detailing the basic design concepts that would go into a new heavy lift vehicle. Congress required that the new heavy lift vehicle maximize the reuse of space shuttle components as part of its budget battle with President Obama last year. As a result, NASA basically copy-pasted the Ares V design into a new report and pitched it to Congress on the 11th. The proposed vehicle will require the five segment SRB's that were proposed for the Ares V rocket. It will utilize the SSME's for it's main liquid stage. It will reuse the shuttle external tank as the primary core for the liquid booster (the same tank design that is currently giving the Discovery shuttle launch so many problems). And it will utilize the new J-2X engine that NASA has been developing for the Ares V project as an upper stage. In other words, NASA proposed to Congress exactly what Congress asked for.

The catch is, NASA also admitted that they will not be able to complete the proposed rocket on the budget that Congress has given them. Neither will they be able to finish the rocket on time. Finally, NASA has commented that a current study being conducted by 13 independent contractors is still being conducted to determine if there is a better design out there that NASA has, 'overlooked.' NASA has stated that, should that study finds any alternate, interesting designs then, they will need to consider those seriously.

Comment Re:Ban guns (Score 1) 2166

by Paintballparrot (#34810752) Attached to: Congresswoman and Staff Gunned Down

they're unlikely to put themselves in a situation where you have the upper-hand

Exactly, if I meet an armed thug with a weapon of my own they are most likely to back down and run away because they no longer have the upper-hand. The average criminal isn't willing to die for the money in my wallet or my TV.

they are presumably being proactive in their pursuit of crime, whereas you are presumably being a "law abiding citizen" and thus unaware of impending criminal activity.

The planning time for most crimes can be measured in seconds, usually right before the crime is committed. Criminals take advantage of opportunities, an unlocked car door, a lone person walking down a dark alley or an open window. Professionals planing crimes against individuals is exceedingly rare because there is very little to gain compared to other things such as bank and armored car robberies.

Comment Re:Ban guns (Score 1) 2166

by Paintballparrot (#34807750) Attached to: Congresswoman and Staff Gunned Down

Also, let's look at our southern neighbors: Guns are very highly illegal in Mexico, yet gun violence there is much, much worse than it is in the US.

Owning an automatic weapon is illegal in most if not all African countries, in some (Kenya for example) it is a capital crime. This hasn't stopped Africa from becoming one of the most dangerous places in the world.

Comment Re:Ban guns (Score 1) 2166

by Paintballparrot (#34807696) Attached to: Congresswoman and Staff Gunned Down
You are implying that just owning a gun (or guillotine) automatically turns you into a crazed murderer, this is not the case in fact every year of all the people in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania with a License to Carry Firearms only 0.1% of them commit any felony or misdemeanor. You would be hard pressed to find crime rates lower than that and all of these people own guns and most carry them frequently.

Instead of blaming an inanimate objects for crimes and passing draconian laws that only serve to keep law abiding citizens defenseless from criminals and tyranny we could try and do a better job of keeping career criminals and violent mental patients separated from the rest of society or at least under tabs. Unfortunately it is much easier to pass laws banning scary looking guns knowing that law abiding citizens will surrender them and criminals who bought them from a smuggler will just ignore that law like so many others, this way you can say you took thousands of guns off 'the street' and line a bunch of scary black assault rifles on a table for the media. It looks like you've made the world a safer place for everyone when in reality its now only safer for criminals.

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