This was the premise of the first naval battle in Clancy's Red Storm Rising. TFA is neither original nor insightful. Even armchair strategists understand the concept of attrition.

...there's still tons of work to do.

I've got a friend with brain cancer who was enrolled in one of the current virus trials - one which has shown great promise in animal studies. He ended up leaving the trial after a month or so, with tumor regrowth and tremendous swelling around the tumor site, causing all sorts of problems with speech, reading, and sight. He has surgery scheduled for tomorrow, after that, hopefully another trial.

Not to be a downbuzz, but it's a long road before this kind of therapy is anything more than an experimental crapshoot.

Political patronage in Chicago?

I'm shocked!

If I had to guess, despite the summary's "irony of taking out a newspaper ad to protect the Web" being "lost on no one", that the irony will be lost on the RIAA, the MPAA, Righthaven, LLC, and most members of Congress.

...because the latest in Virginia's IT outsourcing saga is that the State Police are having severe access problems to servers hosted by NG.

Outsourcing to these guys has been a disaster for the Commonwealth. And it happened on Vivek Kundra's watch.

+ 1.

Well played, sir, well played.

"If you're putting more than 50 words on a slide, you've fucked up."

50? Seriously? Unless you're showing a screenshot, listing some code, or pulling a quote, the magic number is seven. In general, if you have more than seven words on a slide, you've fucked up.

More than that, and the presenter is usually just reading the Powerpoint deck. And in that case, why are you wasting my time, when you could have just emailed it to me in the first place?

So, the Liberty will be able to put about 20,000 kg into LEO for about $9,000 per Kg. The Falcon 9 can put just over half that (10K kg or so) into LEO for somewhere between $5,400 - $6,000 per kg, depending on the load factor. (Numbers pulled from the SpaceX web site.)

Of course, there are other costs besides the raw launch cost (insurance, etc.), but it will be interesting to see how these two vehicles compete. For things like ISS resupply missions, it may make sense to just shoot the Falcon twice.

Once the Falcon 9 heavy gets into the mix (32,000 kg to LEO for $95M), ATK & Astrium will need to sharpen their pencils a bit. That'll be one and a half times the payload for half the cost or so.

Price wars for space launch capacity? I can't wait to watch!

just look how long it took to replace the M1911

With all due respect to your FPS experience, obviously, you've never fired a M1911 or one of it's variants. Personally, I find it much easier to hit what I'm aiming at (yeah, there's more recoil, but the energy profile is more easily controllable) , and there a lot of people in the field who will tell you that the stopping power of the 9mm Parabellum cartridge is simply inferior to the .45 ACP.

The 1911 is a sweet weapon. It's reliable, and is a lot of fun to shoot.

You might be surprised to know that the 1911 is still preferred by everyone from Delta Force to the FBI's HRT to Marine Recon.

I'd opine that the M1911 took so long to replace was that it did the job it was designed to do because it was the best at what it did - NATO politics notwithstanding. I'll take a 1911 (throated and ramped, to be sure) over a M9 any day of the week.

Really? You prefer a weapon that's "sorta in the vicinity of the target with a pretty large explosive charge" (mortar) , as opposed to "small munition with a CEP of one meter with a laser-measured target"?

Time to brush up on the old critical thinking skills.

I'm glad you pointed this out. 700 fps is less than the speed of sound, so the weapon is not just smart, it's suppressible. (For all you non-shooters, that means you can put a silencer on it.) Prolly not enough to cancel the report upon firing, but enough that you can design the weapon so it doesn't give away your position.

I want one now.

p.s. Bitching link. Lotta serious info. Thanks.

Just a hunch, but I'm guessing that they actually tested to see if it really works. Otherwise, and given that this thing is now in the field, there would already be a pissed-off bunch of Army riflemen complaining that it doesn't work. And in the age of bloggers, wikileaks, etc., we'd probably be hearing about it already.

If I'm facing a squad armed with one of these, my bet is to not be on the other side of the wall.