All military equipment is subject to the laws of economics: each piece of equipment, from guns to tanks to aircraft carriers are subject to tradeoffs between weight, power, size, affordability and lethality--which is why, for example, the U.S. has a variety of different sized ships with different functions, rather than just floating a few thousand general-purpose aircraft-carrier sized ships that do everything.

So when envisioning space war, it's going to be the same sort of tradeoffs dictated by economics and by physics: very large, heavy and well shielded (read: very think bulkheads with lots of iron) ships that serve as carrier vessels and the like, surrounded by a periphery of smaller ships which serve as a sort of "forward guard" to the heavy capital ships, in much the same way that a U.S. aircraft carrier sails with a whole bunch of support ships.

Further, because blowing something up will always be easier than guarding something, the things that will deliver bombs (small airplanes) will always be smaller, lighter and more maneuverable than their (much much much) bigger targets. That's especially true in space, where you don't need to run your thrusters continuously, but can just be carried along by momentum. And because life support is going to be very expensive (since you have to carry everything with you, not just food and power, but air as well), and (assuming there is no artificial gravity) only the large capital ships will be able to spin like a top to simulate gravity, most of the smallest ships will be cheap drones. (In fact, I could envision a world where only the largest capital ships carry people, mostly marines, for when you actually have to put boots on the ground.)

Beyond that, most materiel has developed over the years in response to new defensive or offensive challenges. Star-configuration castles where developed in response to heavier artillery; aircraft carriers developed when timeliness and range prevented putting planes over foreign territory. In space, I would expect a lot of emphasis on electronic and optical surveillance (especially on the forward facing ships in the outer perimeter of the protective zone around a capital ship), along with laser-based inter-ship communications (to reduce the EM footprint), and I would expect a constant rotation of larger "battleship" like ships (smaller and more nimble than the capital ships, mostly rigged with a lot of bombs) to the main capital ship, so that the crew can go back to simulated gravity on a regular basis. I would also expect high-powered lasers, very powerful railguns and other measures to throw fragments into the air in order to protect capital ships against attack.

On vacation on the other side of the country visiting my in-laws, thus around 10.5% of the circumference of the Earth from where I was born. My wife? 1%...

They guy may be wrong, but he's probably less wrong than the pointy haired boss in the corner office at some random large non-tech corporation.

And that's the key: the MBAs are groping in the dark barely able to find their own ass. One happened to grope his way slightly closer to the light. Give him kudos for that.

The real problem, one that the Fortune article almost correctly alluded to, is that in the Software Industry, wage stickiness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_(economics)) is extremely high. Corporations are willing to cost themselves tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of intangible damage in order to save a few thousand dollars on floor space because they either believe the slowdown in the general economy is also reflected in the Developer market, or because they don't understand the vast incremental value a talented developer brings.

Wage stickiness occurs because of imperfect information and from fairness concerns; it just doesn't seem fair to pay a senior developer doing 20 times more work what he's worth because then a company would have to figure out he's doing 20x more work and pay him a seven-figure salary. With imperfect information managers look to balance sheets, and because they can't effectively control their work force (because they don't understand them), they don't realize that one key person's departure caused the entire project to collapse or be delayed months, costing hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars.

The one thing I got from the Fortune article is that people are starting in the business community to wrap their heads (imperfectly, of course) around the problem. One thing I think we'll see in the next 10 years as software eats the world is a loosening of wage stickiness. And you will start seeing the top 1% of programmers making salaries that start to compare to the CEO in the corner office when enough information percolates to management that those top 1% programmers are bringing more value to the company than the CEO.

It also helps that the protesters are playing an asymmetrical game with reporters who are sympathetic to their cause.

Meaning the various transgressions taking place in the Occupy movement (the rapes, the thefts, the public masturbation, shitting on cop cars, lobbing human waste at street vendors who don't give them freebees, etc) are all being ignored and will be ignored because they don't play into the story of the downtrodden standing up to The Man. But the handful of cops who lose their cool and snap, or the frightened police officer who suddenly discharges his weapon when it wasn't called for--that is what will be reported ad-infinitum until it becomes the only reality that anyone remembers.

The panopticon won't matter, simply because with more information we don't get more truth; we just get a flood that more people will tune out. Oddly in the flood of information it will become easier, not harder, for the spinmeisters to weave a tale that their target audience will eat up without question.

Worse, because each of us have conformation bias, we'll tend to throw out the ten thousand images that don't confirm our bias, while clinging onto the one image that does as the grain of truth in the flood of lies.

My modem is reporting 18 items. I know between my wife and I we have two iPads, two iPhones, two iMacs, two Apple TVs (one in each room), and two MacBook Airs. (Noticing a pattern here?) I also have a Chumby, three Android devices (for testing Android development), a file server for backup, and another one for storage. The other two--I have no idea. Huh. Dunno.

One of the biggest problems I've seen with science as it is used in public policy is that otherwise unrelated correlations are mined for in order to support a politically convenient theory, in order to provide a scientific basis for that public policy. Science (both social science and medical science) is full of these unrelated correlations which can then provide a "scientific" fig-leaf that allows you to bash your opponents as being unscientific idiots. (Nevermind the fact that you distorted the process.)

And if you don't find the correlation, bias the numbers.

Porn causes rape, anyone?

If you don't believe there are all sorts of random, weird and ultimately unrelated correlations out there, may I recommend Correlated?

"Only one party has made it a party platform to attack scientific facts based upon religious or ideological principles."

The Green Party?

(ducks)

A basic Brother FAX machine (the FAX 575 Monochrome Thermal transfer Fax/copier) can be had for $30 at our local Office Depot.

it is also ironic that you people are ok with people like us working in private sector to be responsible for all their choices of their employment, for the better or for the worse, and go talking about the 'free market' and the 'realities of life' when something shitty happens to any particular segment of the workforce, but, SOMEHOW, start to see things in a different way when someone working for a torture organization gets into danger because of who they work for.

Sure they knew the risks, just as a truck driver knows the risks of getting into an accident while working--but that doesn't mean you don't go after the stupid son-of-a-bitch who was drinking and driving when he plowed into the truck driver.