Free Republic

Israeli "plan to pull thousands from Gaza rocket areas"

Yawn.....believe it when I see it.

Another application for aerogels is in ultracapacitors as the dielectric material. Makes for very high value capacitors with a lot of peak current surge capability. Several electric vehicle applications use these in parallel with the battery bank. Very handy, as it can provide the peak current needed to get the electric motor turning much easier than batteries can. Also makes for smaller batteries, as they don't have to be sized to provide that peak current.

Any other weapons systems engineers out there that have an opinion on this issue?

I'm in the industry now as a junior level EE, doing some work on ground launch equipment. I seriously doubt I could do anything if I had to use US-only parts. Passive components that are mil-rated and QPL aren't typically made in the US from what I've seen (except for some exotic types of capacitors, from what I can tell). A lot of ICs are made by US-based companies, but in overseas fabs. I think that's even true for the -883 compliant ones. Again, not a supply-chain expert, but it seems to me that most bread-and-butter parts aren't made in the US. And don't get me started on the counterfeit parts in the chain and all the GIDEP alerts.....

Of even more immediate concern is RoHS. Most manufacturers are dropping their non-RoHS stuff, as, what, 90% to 95% of the market's going that way? It doesn't make sense for a lot of these folks to keep two production lines going, and even if they do, the non-RoHS stuff is a lot longer lead time. Really crimps me on parts selection, as we can't use RoHS parts in critical systems due to pure tin used in the component leads (leads to whiskering).

Hermetic sealing's another problem, as lots of IC manufacturers are dropping their CerDIP and similar hermetic packaging. Not enough of a market. Some will do hermetic parts on request, but expect long lead times and the price to go way up.

Just a report from the trenches. YMMV.

I'd offer the same proposition to Canada. Puerto Rico has already been petitioning for entry. I say we grant it to them.

Problem is, they'll all vote 'rat. I'm for annexation, but not admission as states, at least not right away, and no citizenship for the people there, until our own citizens are inter-settled among them and they petition for statehood. This would probably take a generation or two.

When the Boomers start squalling for boosts in their Social Security benefits these young "Progressives" will experience a sudden change of heart.

Won't matter by then. They'll be outnumbered by too many old, black, and Hispanic people that vote Democrat. All three of these groups break predominantly 'rat, especially if you threaten the retiring Baby Boomers with loss of benefits.

5. Establish a guest worker program.

One big hole: anchor babies.

Once they prove they can nominate a liberal and win, we have seen the last Conservative candidate.

This is a big sticking point for me about Rudy. The kingmakers in the GOP have never been comfortable with a lot of the social issue stuff. Too icky, too Southern for the taste of the Northeasterners who predominate the leadership. Rudy gets in and wins, forget about conservatism in the GOP for good, as they'll have proved that they no longer need social conservatives, thus breaking that dependency on a constituency that's too pushy and demanding for their tastes. You do see some of that here with some posters who support this view.

Between the GOP going left after '08 with Rudy getting in and the demographic shifts that'll put the Dems in permanent control in another 20 years or so, barring any major political re-alignment events, now to 2016 will likely be the last chance for any semblance of conservatism, either socially or fiscally. At that point between the "seasoned" citizens wanting to protect their benefits and all the newly-amestied illegals voting Dem, the GOP's going down unless it goes left.

Oh well. Warm up some more popcorn to watch in lurk mode...

Yeah boy! That's just what we need. 100,000,000 more uneducated DemocRat voters.

Who sez you gotta let them in as states? Could just declare Mexico a US protectorate with no US voting/citizenship rights, and we civilize the place at gunpoint.

Oh please, if it were divine intervention, it would have happened many, many years ago and it wouldn't have been a warning shot.

Agreed. If this was the real deal, it would've happened on the ground at a golf course!

This description is why I get so mad that I (born in 1973) am termed "Generation X". I read Generation X. A lot of the things that should be my memories are things I was too little to remember. But, I am sure my 42 year old neighbor does.

Same here (born in '76). I came in at the tail end of the time period generally assigned to the X'ers, but I identify more with the GenY crowd, as I was too young to remember the 70's. So mark me down as generationally confused!

The Sunnis would not let themselves shrivle up and die economically while the Shia and Kurds are awash in oil.

But they would live as a minority under people they once persecuted and who want payback (and will get it the nanosecond we leave)?

Sounds like the Sunnis are SOL no matter what they do, so why not continue to fight?

This happens most frequently with "hiring managers" who are themselves computer illiterate. IOw -- dumbed-down, paper-shuffling corporate bureaucrats who don't know their own arse from a hole in the ground.

Agreed. A pox on HR.

I have my current job with a major defense contractor in spite of HR, not because of them. My boss asked for HR to do a resume search to find what he wanted. When what they provided didn't satisfy him (guess the resume didn't have the keywords they were looking for), in desperation he asked for them to give him pretty much every resume they had for entry-level EE's. Out of that, he found me and a couple of other names that had some actual hardware experience. Interviewed, accepted, and the rest is history.

Mind you, I didn't even apply for the job. I submitted a resume several months before that for another position, and they just kept the resume in the database to gather electronic dust. HR folks even tried to dissuade my boss from hiring me because I didn't have a security clearance. He fired back "I'm not going to not hire him!", for which I'm grateful, to say the least. Pretty tough for somebody in engineering without clearance to get a job with the big employers here in Huntsville.

BREAKING Israel attacks terror base IN LEBANONBREAKING Israel attacks terror base IN LEBANON

Yawn. Wake me when Israel actually does something other than the usual tit-for-tat retaliation crap.

"It isn't just a feeling of rejection. It's against what we see as part of our life, our culture, our territory."

Hmm. And we still want the floodgates to stay open so these folks can pull a Kosovo on us?

In reality, " the strong will go to the stars and the meek shall inherit the Earth ."

Or, as I'd like to say "The meek shall inherit the Earth. The strong shall bomb them from orbit."

This is rich. Cry me a river pal. Now you know how the rest of us peasants feel.

Yep. Wonder how many times he personally enforced Chicago's gun laws against said peasants.

"The states say they don't have the money and manpower."

Not for busting illegals, anyway. Now if you're a citizen serf, that's another story. If one of us steps out of line, you better believe they've got the "money and manpower" to deal with them.

The way things are going, I'm nearly to the point of believing citizenship is for suckers.

In a similar vein (article from EETimes):

Teardowns find 'Microsoft Inside' Xbox 360

If all of our enviro-whackos really cared about mother earth, they'd be moving to China to protest and to help.

They'd help, all right. They'd become fertilizer, courtesy of the Chicom government.

Well, I'll be. I had no idea the Air Force Academy taught satellite construction. I thought they trained Air Force officers.

The academies are also engineering schools, and satellites are a helluva senior project.