You had so much room! I learned to program on an Ollevetti Programma 101 in 1971. It was essentially a programmable calculator with 120 possible instruction locations. It used RPN sort of.. and as you went beyond 60 or so instructions you started eating up register storage in chunks until you used up have the available registers with program storage!

The language looked something like

AV ( A label)
S (Stop for Input)
M+ (Add the Input register to the Accumulator)
A This was literally a diamond symbol and meant print the Accumulator
V - Branch back to AV..

Does that sound like fun??

Your first statement is historically correct, i.e. China doesn't want the entire Korean peninsula under US influence.

I gotta wonder if this calculus isn't going to change soon. China is becoming a dominant economic power all by itself. It has likely past South Korea in that vain on the world market. The US influence is waning at the same rate. Point being - what do they have to worry about having a unified Korea anymore? The US influence there is becoming irrelevant!

Looking at history ( a novel concept I know) you find that indeed this has happened before.

You have a few things coming together that is causing this noise. 1) New leader in NK trying to show his ability to stand up to the West. 2) New leader in South Korea which is a cue for NK to become bellicose. 3) Annual SK/USA war games which NK always uses as a provocation. 4) Even tougher sanctions just put into place.

The US has no desire to go to war, nor does SK. The US is doing what has been doing for 50+ years as far as demonstrating capability but not employing it. The problem is that in the past US leaders have fed the ego of the maniacs in charge in NK by dealing with him. That has NEVER worked! Clinton thought he had peace with NK by giving them food and money. Whoops - Neville Chamberlain moment. It actually is very much like dealing with the local gang trying to run a racket on a business. It doesn't go away until the Gang is thrown in jail. The only ones who can do that are the Chinese or the people of NK.

I think we're in for a whole new Code War. I'm sorry - I just couldn't help myself.

"Isn't as stealty" is an understatement. The SH has no significant stealth technology. It is a 1970's design that is supped up. It's a great plane for it's era, but it isn't going to survive the next 50 years in the expected high-threat environment.

In any place where the environment is protected by SAMS the SH requires jamming and perhaps Wild Weasel type missions to accompany it. F35 wont require that.

The other thing I don't get. We already HAVE the SH deployed. Why will we buy more of the same?

No - simply no. He broke in to a private network without permission That is equivalent to "Entering" of a Breaking and Entering charge in the US in a brick/mortar situation. There is not ethical difference between the two. What he did with his ill-gotten gains aren't relevant to the discussion. That is the same thing as killing someone today, then joining Amnesty International the next day?!?

You have never paid premiums. These are not savings accounts, they are taxes. Social security is the biggest ponzie scheme ever invented. That being said:

The 2011 defense budget was $687Billion. We are running a $1.6Trillion deficit per year right now and have been during the current administration. If you cut defense out completely we would have a $900 billion deficit PER YEAR!

The left needs to get off their political high horse and admit that we have a huge problem and it is called a huge and abusive government across the entire range of their activities.

Lastly - there ARE other models to pay for ones retirement. I believe it is Chile that has a system that is based on savings plans. Maybe that model. They did a transfer from one system to the other over time. Those on the current system stayed, while those entering the system stared on the new system.

We are to involved at calling each other names to look for fresh answers.

So the Tea Party is just astro-turfing? Yet the Occupy Wall Street is grass roots?

It is more a matter whether your Ox is being GORED! (Pun intentional!)

How is it different than George Soros paying for the opposite services? (Which is also occurring!) It only amounts to one side adopting the other sides tricks and using them effectively for the first time.

What a shocker!

In CA we've had protection from this nonsense since the 1980s.

It is a reasonable for a company to claim ownership of something you do on their time. It is completely unfair for them to claim ownership of things you develop on your own time. In my mind, even if they are home work assignments, anything designed by the kids is theirs. End of discussion.

However, teachers doing lesson plans on their own time for their employment? That becomes gray in my mind. I guess the best policy is get your work done during work hours. I suspect that isn't a realistic statement though.

There are different generations of PSOC - PSOC1 runs on a proprietary 8 bit micro, PSOC3 uses the 8051, and PSOC5 uses the M3 ARM processor. So depending on what you're familiar with you choose the processor you're most comfortable with.

The comment about Halted needs a little context. Halted (still in business) is an Electronics part store in the Silicon Valley (Sunnyvale off of Central Expressway & Lawerence for those who care..) I is the place you go when you need the odd-ball capacitor or resistor for your electronics project. Lots of good quality junk there.

Some people can't seem to see the comparison between a state EPA making stupid decisions with poor science, or ignoring science and economics or even covering it up and perhaps the Federal EPA doing the same thing! THAT is the moral of the story.

Most decisions by bureaucrats SUCK!

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan - the most feared statement in the English language should be "I'm from the government and I'm here to help!"

The MTBE story is about suppression of science that doesn't fit your political agenda. It's about screwing the public because of a political agenda.

Also - the claims that Ethanol can harm engines (a similarity with MTBE) isn't something that's made up. It is why the manufacturers are saying it will void your warranties! Then there is the little bit about it is carbon neutral. BS! It takes more more energy to make it than you recover by using it in your car engine. If you don't accept those facts, then you have a promising career ahead of you as a bureaucrat!

Yep - this is right up there with the MTBE debacle in CA about 10 years ago.

The Cal EPA (yes California has it's own set of idiot Environmental Regulators) decided that we needed Oxygenation in our fuel mix. The Refiners had this great additive that they had NO market for called MTBE that they claimed would do the job. A report was done describing the effect of use of the additive. CalEPA literally removed dozens of pages of negative results from the report documenting that the additive would corrode the neoprene used in Gas Hoses in most vehicles! Did I mention that MTBE is a major carcinogen!

So the state merrily adopts the stuff!

Well, sure enough, CHP starts to have a huge number of car fires in their patrol vehicles as proof that the original report (the suppressed part) was correct! The bureaucrats can't sweep that CHP fleet numbers under the rug.

Then the stuff starts showing up in drinking water all over the place!

The bureaucrats are running around in circles (think circular firing squads) pointing fingers at each other. Turns out that once MTBE enters the Ecosystem, it doesn't leave. The bureaucrats (without any scientific basis) start banning motorboats on reservoirs arguing that they must be all leaking the stuff. Nope - rain! The stuff is in the air, and the rain is bringing it down into the entire water shed.

Finally tally - 20K drinking wells are polluted with the stuff.

Next - it turns out that MTBE doesn't really do the original job it was claimed to!

Well - the public is incensed! How could this all happen! This is about the time the rest of the original report shows up documenting the fact that MTBE destroys gas engines. Everything from lawn mowers to cars had problems with the stuff. A new form of gas hosing was invented to contain this mess.

The public outrage grows and eventually the governor decrees that the stuff will not be allowed into CA gas.

Final insult. The biggest manufacturer of the stuff sues CA for 1 billion dollars because of voided contract with them - and wins!

Excuse me - I've seen this movie before and know how it ends.