re: In late August, Chancellorsville successfully used an SM-6 missile to hit a target drone

Clearly, there is a history to be examined.

The Coriolis Effect story is a myth.

Short take: the Royal Navy's fire control of the era did not address Coriolis Effect in any way, shape or form (nor did the German navy treat this minor effect). Not handling this effect is a minuscule factor in accuracy in an engagement along a line of fire that changes only slowly over the course of a battle.

What I'm confused by is the seeming absence of the two suspects in any of the photos that were pawed over by reddit users. Has anyone seen the two brothers in the photos that were so widely reviewed? It seems to me that the photos from the two men who were overlooking bomb location 1 would have had a rough time NOT seeing the older brother placing his bomb.

Not trying to imply anything untoward, but it seems to me that although the Reddit crew had a fair number of very good photos, they were seemingly not seeing a single photo by which they could have identified the right people.

I misstated this. They were not ever at the 7/11. The photo taken of suspect 2 was perhaps from the Shell Station at which their hostage escaped.

Actually, they didn't rob a convenience store. It was later determined that the robbery was entirely unrelated to them, though suspect 2 was in the same store within minutes of the robbery. Incredible? Yes.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/19/7-eleven-robbery-boston/2097915/

People who see slippery slopes everywhere should take up skiing

Even the Brits only "carried on" after emerging from their bomb shelters during the Blitz.

Claims of erosion of freedom while people determine the dimension of a threat are pretty silly and reek of armchair quarterbacking (or "thimbly bobton scrubbing", in UK English, I'm guessing).

These probably are not meant to kill anything but suicide attack boats.

CIWS and even 5-in guns with optimized shells are not good at killing agile craft at ranges beyond point-blank. When a small target with judiciously applied armor jinks, it is almost unkillable until the time of flight comes under 3 seconds (about 1-2 km), as any "motivated" use of the rudder causes a wild displacement in deflection that makes perfect aim mean a perfect miss on every shot. The "best" fire control in such a condition is a pattern of fire about the projected aim point, and this actuarial risk is moderate to a determined enemy who has numbers on his side: the guy you fire at goes defensive and becomes all but invulnerable while his friend bore in with rudders centered and throttles opened wide.

These weapons, if they can keep their power up with enough regularity, will bleed a swarm attack at the intermediate range, leaving the ballistic weapons for the few that might have bobbed past.

...when it's traditional to use pH?

I'd like to see a Date that can be missing some fields, such as "early january", or "2013" and have the objects be Comparable and yet not forget that their actual value is not exact. For instance, "early" in a month might mean the 5th in terms of comparison, but its toString() would say "early January", and a year without further specification might compare as June 30th.

These sorts of things are helpful when you're recording researched data and don't want the persnickety exactness of the representation to hide the fact that you don't know all the fields.

What does this have to do with sea urchins?

All security is by obscurity. As in "you don't know my password."

The issue appears to be using a password that is one of a top N passwords.

The XKCD comic is laughably inaccurate, .e.g, in that it says that the presence or absence of capitals is one bit of entropy. Of course it is -- if you regard the first character ONLY as the candidate for capitalization.

tone

People who see these slippery slopes everywhere should take up skiing

Why can't Apple stop using these hokey names for their software versions after release? There is no means of knowing what version it is, and it requires out-of-band knowledge of the most useless type. "About this Mac" quotes the grown-up version number. The names are 100% pure loss