This report (paid subscription required) says that the Navy wants to start replacing the C-2 in 2017, with a complete replacement by 2026.
They are planning to let out the contract in 2011.
It’s not going to happen. Big defense cuts are on the way, and the 6 year time frame for designing what has to be a from scratch replacement (carrier landings, folding wings) given the ponderous nature of defense procurement.
A proof of concept engine developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) was used for the flight from a LongEZ.
The purpose of the test was to show that the vibrations would not shake apart the airframe, though noise behind the aircraft was in the 195-200 dB range, which is around the noise level of a howitzer firing.
And so goes the technological war between BitTorrent and Comcast. A coalition of BitTorrent software providers are developing an encryption technology to allow the connections to be obscured.
What Comcast does not realize is that BitTorrent is the canary in the coal mine. Any issues that they create are an artifact of a network that is heading towards inadequacy, and they need to fix it.
Toshiba officially discontinues HD-DVD.
Why it never pays to be an early adopter.
The entire accusations of “plagiarism” against Obama in his speaking are bogus.
There is a qualitative difference between a politico using someone else’s catch phrase, which is done all the time, and what Joe Biden did in 1988, when he lifted an entire speech and life story.
John F. Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” phrase came from a speech from Warren G. Harding, for example.
This some seriously lame stuff.
This is pretty close to unprecedented, see here and here.
The judge, Jeffery White, had the registrar take down the page, and prevent any transfer of the domain.
FWIW, I’ve not reviewed his background, but Judge White does not seem to be a lockstep Bushite, he has allowed environmental groups and cities sue federal agencies over global warming.
This was in response to a lawsuit brought by a Swiss banking group over documents leaked that imply that they were aiding tax evasion and money laundering.
FWIW, a Belgian mirror is accessible at this time, and the number of mirror sites is probably growing exponentially.
There is even a name for folks who squat in abandoned homes, they are called “bandos”.
The US is sounding more like a post-crash Argentina every day.
I’ve already posted about returning Hoovervilles (Favelas), and this appears to be more of the same.
Clinton is saying that if elected, she will ask the Justice Department to see if the trials can be moved to US courts, Obama is splitting the difference, saying that they should be tried in “traditional military” or federal courts, and McCain thinks the military kangaroo courts are just fine.
I think that it should be a core value of any candidate, not just the Democratic party candidate, that all efforts should be made to try the defendants in open court under US civilian rules.
Good for Hillary Clinton, and a C- (at best) to Barack Obama on trying to split the difference. This should be a core American value.
F- to the sick, old man.
He is not running, but there is aDraft Lessig effort going on, and to this point, the potential candidate has been non-committal.
Congress needs someone who understands that the IP system has run amok, and better still that he would be from California, which typically produces legislators in the pockets of the movie and record industries.
As the late, great Steve Gilliard says, never stop a your enemy from stepping on his own dick, and George W. Bush’s proposal to raise Medicare premiums is such an example.
It turns out that the Medicare costs projected by the lying sacks of excrement in the Bush admin are wrong, so the lying chimpy usurper boy is proposing an increase in premiums, along with the proposed cuts he put forward earlier.
FWIW, I think that this is an excellent time to reintroduce legislation granting authority to the government to negotiate with drug makers.
The Republicans are going to have to vote for higher premiums, which is a political loser, and for Medicare cuts, which is a political loser, and against the power to negotiate with drug manufacturers, which is a political loser.
Heck of a job Georgie.
Good. The Serbia lost any claim to the region when it attempted Genocide.
The Russians are upset, but with recognition from the US, UK, and France, that does not mean much.
EzraKlein has found this study by the Harvard School of Public Health, which shows that a plurality support “socialized medicine” even when it’s called “socialized medicine”.
Here is the picture:
[img]http://pic60.picturetrail.com/VOL1689/10590113/18913141/304823818.jpg[/img]
and here is why the picture looks that way:
This is important because “SOCIALIZED MEDICINE” has been the scare word used by Republicans for years to kill any healthcare reform, and now nearly half of the people have a favorable opinion of this, even when it’s called by those scare words.
Last year, McCain and Obama agreed to go with public financing in the general if they were the nominees, and now McCain is demanding that Obama adhere to his so-called pledge.
Obama is in a no-win situation right now, and it may very well not be his fault.
It appears that the argument regarding the “pledge” is that he made some inquiries regarding going on public financing in the general seem to be statements that have some wiggle room, but considering how far the press has their tongue up McCain’s asshole, it will be sold as a pledge.
I think that a good plan of attack against this is to show how McCain attempted to use public financing as an insurance policy for his campaign, where it would only kick in if he lost to retire his debts.
Human Rights Watch has released a tape of an interview with the Pakistani AG saying this.
It appears that they were conducting a phone interview, and than Attorney General Malik Qayyum initiated a second phone call without terminating the first, and he was recorded saying, “They will massively rig to get their own people to win.”
Oops.
It appears fairly likely from the whole conversation that the “they” in question is Pervez Musharraf’s Pakistan Muslim League-Q party.
We are now getting skeptical reports from media sources, such as BBC News and Wired that the administrations justifications for shooting down the dead surveillance satellite are a 6 pounds of fertilizer in a 5 pound bag.
The justification is that it carries 400 l of UDMH (unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine) fuel for maneuvering is a threat to life and limb.
The fact is that UDMH is about as benign a propellant as is used in rocketry (it’s still nasty), and the effected area would be on the order of two football fields, but that is only for irritant, not life threatening effects.
One explanation is that the, “MDA [Missile Defense Agency] is always looking for ways to pimp their systems”, and another is that this is actually an anti-satellite (ASAT) test in response to the Chinese test last year.
My guess is a combination of both, and that Bush and His Evil Minions&trade intend to create an arms race in this area, so as to further constrain a future administration.
After not receiving what they considered to be adequate bids, Britain is nationalizing Northern Rock Bank, which was one of the top home mortgage providers in the UK. The bids received, “failed to meet the government’s criteria for protecting taxpayers.”
I think that we will see more of this in the UK, which is suffering from the Anglo-Saxon contagion much as its American counterparts are. We won’t in the US, substituting instead ruinous (for the taxpayer at least) bailouts, because the American body politic will not accept this solution.
In a related note, it appears that there is a lucrative business developing aiding banks in finding people who have skipped out on mortgages. With the costs of foreclosures typically nearing $100K, it makes sense to find and cut a deal with these people, but they leave without providing a forwarding address.
From September 2005 to August 2007, 53 percent of the loans backed by Freddie Mac that went into foreclosure involved borrowers who could not be reached.
As an insight as to just how bad this has gotten, some lenders are allying with ACORN, an organization with a mission that is seriously at odds with those of banks, to find the mortgage holders.
In much higher finance, we have signs of trouble in credit default swaps, a complex derivative whose market is estimated to be twice that of the stock market.
These instruments are largely unregulated, to the degree that the exact size of the market is not known.
Basically, it’s an agreement between two parties. One pays the other a fee, and if something bad happens, such as a default, the second party pays off the default.
How flaky and unregulated is this market?
But during the credit market upheaval in August, 14 percent of trades in these contracts were unconfirmed, meaning one of the parties in the resale transaction was unidentified in trade documents and remained unknown 30 days later. In December, that number stood at 13 percent. Because these trades are unregulated, there is no requirement that all parties to a contract be told when it is sold.
One out of 7 people did not know who owed them money.
Following his disgraceful interview with the BBC, the National Lawyers Guild has requested that Antonin Scalia recuse himself from any torture related cases, as he has clearly prejudged this case, and shown himself not to be impartial in this matter:
Justice Scalia’s remarks inevitably pre-judge the issues in every case in which the Constitution might dictate suppression of evidence because of illegal police interrogation techniques, or the right to compensation of a person subjected to a violation of civil rights. We therefore call upon Justice Scalia to recuse himself from any case which comes before the Court in which such issues are at stake.
Increasingly, we have heard these outrageous statements from Scalia, the case of the obscene gesture in church comes to mind, and I’m wondering if we are seeing early onset Alzheimer’s.
Well, it appears that the US and Iraq are in the process of renegociating their security agreements, and the Iraqis consider the removal of immunity for contractors to be non-negotiable.
I think that this is the first time that the representatives of the Iraqi government are behaving in a way that is both beneficial to, and supported by its citizens regardless of ethnicity.
Good for them. As for the mercenaries, the rules in a foreign country are that if you do the crime, you do the time, in that country’s jails.
Well, it looks like the nail in the coffin of my prediction regarding the format wars (see also here, here, here, here, here, and here), has been driven, we have reports that Toshiba will be ending production of HD-DVD players.
For my next prediction, George W. Bush will not be impeached.
If only my predilection towards erroneous prognostication worked that way.
From Eric Alterman’s reader mail:
Name: Julie Nelsen
Hometown: Salt Lake CityOne reason to support Senator Clinton that I’ve not seen anywhere, (probably due to the high-minded notion currently in the air that we need to unite and avoid retribution), would be the video of George and Laura forced to greet Bill and Hillary at the White House on Inauguration morning next year. Since George is unlikely to be tried for his crimes, would not such a humiliation be at least a small down payment on the punishment he deserves?
Agreed, though I still want to see him in the dock at the Hague.