ASL Veteran

Who wouldn't love to see all the old tank series like the M60, M48, M47, Chieftain, Centurian, AMX 30, and Leopard tanks squaring off against T-62s, T-54s, and T-55s or even each other? I would like to take the old M-60A2 for a spin just to see if putting a missile on a tank would make any sense. So many nations used those old tank models in the world (and even still use) that once the models were built you could include almost any nation's TO&E. If you replicate NATO vs Warsaw Pact from 1948 to the present there is no limit to the number of different nations you could potentially create since all the equipment used by NATO and Warsaw Pact was exported throughout the world during the whole Cold War. Pakistani M48s tangling with Indian Centurians and Shermans. Israeli Super Shermans tangling with Jordanian M48s. Iranian Chieftains, M-48s, and M-60s tangling with Iraqi T-72s. Turkish M-47s assaulting into Cyprus. Taiwanese M-60s holding the beaches against ... whatever the heck the Chinese are / were driving around in. It just seems like it would be logical to create all the NATO and Warsaw Pact cold war armies because of the utility of the models and how many nations they could be ported to. The battlefield combinations that some of these third world nations could field against each other would make for some very interesting tactical situations I think.

No, ADA in the US Army is not organic at the battalion level - at least in my day it wasn't. When I was on the FAAR Radar I was in a self contained ADA Battalion that was organic to the 1st Cavalry Division. At least I assume it was organic to the division because I don't recall having any higher level ADA HQ above us, just the division HQ. The Missile Batteries were in an entirely separate command structure (I was in West Germany). I think it was the the 32d Army Air Defense Command IIRC or the 32d AADCOM. I don't actually know where the individual Vulcan units drove around or who they were with, but they were too slow to keep up with the Abrams and the Bradleys since the Vulcan was on a M113 chassis. Plus the Vulcans were tied to our FAAR radar somehow. I'm sure they coordinated with the various armored and infantry battalions but I don't know that they were ever formally 'attached'. We pretty much did our own thing.

I just happened to have been in the US Army in Air Defense Artillery but alas, it was many moons ago and my poor memory is fading. You basically have two types of Air Defense Artillery though - short range in direct support of maneuver elements and more theater type units which in my day was the Hawk Missile batteries. The Hawk was basically replaced by the Patriot though. Yes, the missile units were deployed in batteries and you basically had IIRC about four actual missile launchers connected to one radar element (one that had a little thingy going up and down vertically and another that I called 'mickey mouse ears' that tracked the aircraft after the vertical up and down thingy picked up the target) and a trailer with a guy who did tracking stuff. I don't remember if the individual batteries had the tracking trailer too because I was at Brigade level and we had the tracking trailer. There were about four batteries IIRC each with four missile systems (which each had about three individual missiles mounted on them). Yeah, this is all very technical stuff . Sorry, but it's been about twenty five years so it's been a while . For the short range stuff we had Vulcans and Chapparals. There were also manpads systems but I think those were split off to the individual maneuver elements in teams of two men each. The Vulcans and Chapparals were set up in batteries too, but I think they were in pairs (the memory fades). For the short range stuff I had the pleasure of riding around in the back of a Gamma Goat that had the FAAR radar (a total waste of resources). The FAAR radar picked up aircraft and relayed the info to the Vulcans and the Chapparals. The range of the FAAR was really short though - something like 20 miles and really by the time we had that piece of crap set up, operating, and camoflauged it was time to redeploy it . And yeah, I think it's probably outside the scope of the game - except maybe the Vulcans and Manpads (Man Portable Air Defense - not sure what the S stands for ) could be used against helicopters or something I guess. More work than it's worth though if you ask me.

I just wanted to toss this old article about the Army's Land Warrior system - the article is about a year and a half old and I haven't seen anything on it since. Apparently it was on the chopping block but these guys who used it thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. http://www.militarytimes.com/news/2007/06/army_warrior_070623p/ I guess there is a new Land Warrior type system being developed now (called something else). The Kevlar helmet was new and exciting when I was in so I'm a little out of date with all this new organization and tech stuff

I can't answer that second question (and they do have lobbyists - no denying that). However, by waiting out the UAW I mean that the UAW could not work for about four months and GM would probably be toast by then (make no cars, make no income - pretty simple). The President can intervene but he doesn't have to. He can also appoint an arbitrator, but there is no guarantee that both sides will agree to it.

LOL. Simply filibustering the bailout bill to cause it to fail isn't enough since the majority of Americans are currently opposed to the passage of a bailout bill for the automakers (something like 60% opposed). Nobody knows what will happen for certain if GM files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy but we do know for certain that there will be some job losses. We don't know how many, but the dems are already saying ridiculous numbers like three million. If you get enough slanted or one sided articles like this one http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE4BB04B20081212 and if after Chapter 11 bankruptcy public opinion swings to a pro bailout position after seeing thousands of hours of NBC newscasts showing poor autoworkers who have been laid off while the government spends billions to bail out those fat cats on wallstreet or to pay for an unpopular war then it could hurt the Republicans at the polls. So the risk is that Chapter 11 causes enough job losses (doesn't have to be three million, but a couple hundred thousand would be enough) to give the dems and the UAW an opportunity to feed all sorts of stuff to the sympathetic press about fire and brimstone falling from the sky, dogs and cats living in sin, etc. Sure the dems and UAW are already blaming the republicans in the senate, but will it stick? Nobody knows for sure.

I would guess that since the UAW can give close to 100 million dollars to various democratic campaigns in the course of a year that they have a pretty significant war chest for keeping their members happy during a strike. Considering that GM is asking for money right now and guessing that the UAW has as much as several hundred million squirreled away in case they need to strike then they are probably confident that they could outlast the corporate leadership of the automakers if it came down to a contest of strength. The UAW could just refuse to work until the automakers cried uncle. This is just my speculation though.

This doesn't have anything to do with the banking 'crisis' or the 700 billion bailout. This is a completely separate issue. This deals with hedge funds and how they aren't regulated and things like "dark pools" that various wallstreet firms use. The fact that these things exist and are used for large transactions are the problem. If you make a trade on the open market (NYSE, AMEX, OTC, etc) then it's all above board and open. Large investment houses though set up 'pools' for their investors to trade in that are not connected to the open market. It's like an underground stock market in a sense and it's not regulated very much if at all. If this individual was running a Ponzi Scheme then he could have used the lack of regulation and oversight combined with his reputation to get people to invest in his scheme. It's an old trick. The unregulated hedge funds and dark pools just gave him cover because he never had to actually reveal what he was doing. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article5345051.ece Here is some info about hedge fund regulation from back in March of 07 (It's not a new discussion) http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1679 Here is a little bit about 'Dark Pools' http://www.nysun.com/business/dark-pools-threaten-wall-street/64598/ This won't be the end of the hedge fund as some are predicting, but it may very well be the end of the unregulated hedge fund and the dark pool is probably toast too.

No way a Commie can make tea. As General Ripper (Dr Strangelove for the reference impaired )noted 'On no account will a commie drink water. Vodka. That's what they drink." or something to that effect. No doubt the reason for the poor tasting coffee or tea has to do with the commie conspiracy of introducing flouridation to everything we eat and drink. That all started sometime in 1948

The UAW doesn't feel it needs to agree to anything. All they have to do is keep the Big Three (mostly GM) going until Obama takes office and the new congress is sworn in and they can get whatever they want. Now it's a matter of whether the Republicans will blink first - they don't want to upset all those Michigan voters either now that this whole thing has become a political circus act (McConnell has a stake in it too). If the Republicans can somehow get GM to file for Chapter 11 without giving the democrats an opening to pin it on them then we might see Chapter 11. If the Republicans will be painted as 'letting GM fail' and for causing fire and brimstone falling from the sky, dogs and cats living in sin, etc etc, then the Republicans will blink and you may even see some money coming from the 700 billion that was passed for the financial markets. The dems know they only have to get GM through to February - after that it's all gravy. For those non Americans looking on with fascination, the UAW has enormous power and the issue with the UAW even goes beyond the wages they are earning. Here is an article about a new state of the art manufacturing plant that was built in Brazil (completed sometime in 2007 I think) http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070822/AUTO01/708220407/0/SPECIAL It's a magnificent facility by all accounts, but you will never see a super efficient plant like that here in the US because the UAW won't have any of it. Here is a video about the same plant. http://info.detnews.com/video/index.cfm?id=1189 The big three are also profitable in overseas markets ... well at least Ford is (which is probably why they are in the best shape) http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/5726456.html You might ask yourself - "what's the difference between Ford overseas and Ford in the US?" The UAW (a weak dollar helps too ) I also feel the need to point out that there are a lot of non union workers working at the big three. Engineers, accountants, ad reps, etc. This is a popular site for those guys (an old high school friend of mine is a brake engineer at Ford) and can give you a little insight about what they think of the whole thing http://www.autoextremist.com/ from his Dec 10th tirade His opinion of the auto bailout package yeah, they aren't too happy about the bailout either.

You must not have read the fine print for the Employee "Free Choice" Act. Basically, every employee is given a card where they indicate whether they want to join a union or not. This is not a privately made choice - this card is marked in full view of everyone involved so the Union bosses (and management) know exactly who has decided to unionize or not. With a system like this in place it doesn't take much of an imagination to see various Union Organizers making house calls on those employees who decided not to select unionizing. In fact, there are documented cases where Card Check has been used where Union Organizers visit employee homes so often that the employee ends up joining the union just to get the organizers to leave them alone. If you are thinking "well management could intimidate just as much as unions could" then you may want to also wonder why Unions want this piece of legislation so much. It's all spelled out in the last two articles I linked to.

I just wanted to expand a bit on the previous post. Here is another article that touches on what might happen when this bailout takes place http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/11/the_washington_stock_market.html I just want to highlight this bit right here This article here from the Cato institute is a little over the top, but basically talks about what an elimination of competition would mean for the auto industry. In other words, if, in an extreme case, you had the big three all being run by congress and you could somehow make the competition a little less ... ummm ... competitive then you have the potential to do all kinds of ideologically driven stuff. http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9834 Yeah, it's a little over the top but make no mistake about it; big labor and the democratic party are not 'free traders'. That camp believes in protectionism, tariffs, etc as a means of keeping domestic companies solvent (and pumping out 'green' vehicles). So how do you make your competition a little less competitive? Here is what I am personally looking at. First, you can raise tariffs on imported autos. The problem with that is many foreign automakers have plants in the US. An unfortunate addendum to that as far as the UAW is concerned is that these foreign auto makers employ non union workers. Auto workers who aren't members of the UAW. The frustrating part is that those auto workers don't seem to want to join the UAW either. What to do? Along with the auto company bailout coming in January this little baby is headed to a non unionized foreign owned auto plant near you: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/12/efca_brief.html That article is from the Center for American Progress. It all sounds pretty good doesn't it? Who would be against something called the Employee Free Choice Act? Look at all those positive things they list in the article. The only thing they don't explain is actually how this act would work, although they strenuosly say that it's democratic. Here are two articles that offer a counterpoint to the article from the Center for American Progress http://www.heritage.org/Research/Labor/bg2175.cfm Here is a PDF file that goes into even more detailed study of the issue http://www.unionfacts.com/downloads/report.cardCheck.pdf It's a fairly large document but it has some interesting stuff in there. Yes, I expect that once the Employee Free Choice Act finally passes (Obama is already on record as saying he will sign any legislation that has that in it) the UAW leadership will all pile into a Chevy truck and drive on down to South Carolina and pay a visit to the BMW plant.

Here is an article that the UAW sympathizers should love. This comes from the Center for American Progress which is as far left as they come: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/12/uaw_concessions.html I honestly think the debate about 'whether' there should be a auto company bailout or not is really pointless (and who is to blame). With the dems in charge of both houses of congress and Obama coming into office in a month there is no question that the auto companies will get bailed out. The UAW is a big dem contributor and there is no way the dems will let a bankruptcy judge determine the UAW's fate. The part I'm watching is what will happen when the bailout does take place. Even though the article from the Center for American Progress discusses the Unions and how they are blameless for the big three's problems, the operative bit in the article is this bit Emphasis added by me. A small and innocuous statement in that article perhaps? Let's look to these two articles to see how to interpret that code http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/11/commandeconomy_bailout_would_h.html This article also discusses the issue of what the dems would like to do with the 'Auto bailout' http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm2164.cfm He then follows that up later with this bit For the record I'm all for the big three filing for chapter 11. It isn't going to happen because the UAW has too much political clout with the democrats in charge and the CEOs don't want to get canned as they doubtless would be if the big three file for Chapter 11. This article is a counterpoint to the arguments against filing for Chapter 11, not that it will matter one way or another. This isn't about what's sensible or logical. This is about politics influence, and constituencies. If the Republicans still controlled congress this debate wouldn't even be happening. The Big Three wouldn't have even bothered to fly to Washington to plead their case and GM would have filed for Chapter 11 by now. http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm2165.cfm

Incidentally they just added two more articles about the auto bailout on the Heritage Foundations website for the interested. This one also speaks directly to the issue raised by DieselTaylor and the 70 per hour wages: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm2162.cfm One sample quote in the article because I think someone raised an accounting issue The second article speaks to the economic impact of the failure of the big three and the "millions of job losses" etc stuff being bandied about. http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm2160.cfm another sample quote from that article The article then goes on to discuss the various ways of calculating economic impact. Once again though, the Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank so you won't find too many 'pro' bailout articles on their website

Well the volume is important because if you are a hedge fund and you really like this stock, when you place your order for 200,000 shares you may take a hit because if you can't find a seller large enough to give you the stock in a block trade your average price will go up with each dinky buy. You will literally move the market with your one order. Low volume generally means big spread too because the market maker doesn't want to get stuck with a bunch of lousy stock, so if the spread is say 40 by 45 then if you can get your entire order filled at the ask (45) then you can't unload it for anything more than the bid (40) if you need to unload it in a hurry. So by default you are already losing five bucks a share on your buy. Multiply that by 200,000 and you are risking a million bucks out of the gate just by buying that stock. In some cases you can't even find enough buyers if you want to sell a large enough order and you get stuck with it (effectively making it worthless if you can't sell it). I'm sure someone like GE has their knife and fork out and are watching pretty closely. If the technology looks promising enough GE will eat them. You will know that rumors are out for something like that when the volume steadily spikes up because everyone will want to get in on the ground floor before the acquisition. Once GE starts looking at these guys with a hungry appetite then you will know that they are on to something. If GE (insert big turbine manufacturer here) doesn't care about it, then nobody else will either.

Looks like it's still pretty speculative to me. It's hard for me to get decent info on it because it doesn't trade on the NYSE, but from their own website's investor relations sections you can see that there isn't much volume on that sucker and the trend has been down. You can go into the press release section and compare the press releases to certain ... I guess call it 'higher volume' days (up to 300,000 shares). Most days though almost nobody is interested in this security. I'm sure that you are just excited about the technology, but the market is telling us that it doubts whether these guys can pull it off. If this was the next huge breakthrough in power generation the stock price would be skyrocketing and the volume would be tremendous. Apparently 23000 shares traded today in Europe and the market there is closed by now - compare that to a mature company like IBM that trades over 11 million shares in one day or GE that trades 107 million shares and you can see that 23000 shares is practically not trading at all. I've personally placed orders in the millions of shares (not for me personally of course )The spread on that baby is probably huge, but they don't have the spread listed on their website and I can't tell what currency they are using or what it means in dollar terms. If the spread is like a couple of bucks though I wouldn't be surprised. Buy at your own risk.

Diesel Taylor, in fact, in the first Heritage Foundation article I linked to the author directly discusses what you linked to and rebuts it. Basically the entire second half of that first article addresses what you just posted about. You may want to read that first article a little more closely. Here is one of the key parts in that first article about it There is plenty more about that though and I wouldn't want to make a giant post just to quote about what's in the article already.

My intent is not to get into a discussion about this issue, but I have to mention that in the first Heritage Foundation article the compensation is broken down into base wages, health benefits, and all other benefits http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/images/wm2135_table1.gif The base wages on that chart come to 29.15 per hour which is consistent with the base wage the unions are claiming in the article you linked to. Of the eight articles I linked to for general reading I don't think any of them exclusively 'blamed' UAW wages, but they do consider it a major factor (well, except for the two by Brookings Institute - but they lean left so I would expect that - the two Brookings Institute articles counterpoint the other six I linked to). Anyway, I just wanted to post here for clarification purposes only.

Having finally fired up a PBEM game for that city fight on the demo vs my friend I've also discovered that ... hey, the game works without the CD in the drive when playing the regular game! That was kind of wierd. The PBEM file swap has been improved too - now it just takes two file exchanges to get through a turn rather than the three it used to take! Very big improvement and a huge time saver. I'm taking the Syrians in the town fight from the demo and my friend is cautiously advancing down the road alongside the market .... right towards my IED . I've got some artillery lined up to come down on him pretty soon and I've got several AT missiles in position for after the IED blows up. Steady boys. Maybe I can avenge our terrible loss in Metal Grind where I literally had one man left firing a pistol (and the scenario still didn't end ). Unfortunately for me my friend set up the game with the basic difficulty so the borg spotting is still enabled - huge disadvantage for me.

Asked and answered ... lol. Back in 2002 an almost identical issue was discussed for CMBO http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=259 there might be some interesting info in this old thread about mines for those who are curious.

German soldiers living on Beer and Sausages!!?? I find that incredibly hard to believe!!

I just wanted to pass through here and provide some extra reading material for those who are interested. Three articles from the Heritage foundation (leans right): http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm2135.cfm http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm2137.cfm http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/WM2133.cfm Three articles from the Cato Institute (leans right): http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9804 http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9787 http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9783 and two articles from the Brookings Institute (leans left) http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2008/1127_detroit_selloff_crandall_winston.aspx http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2008/1202_automakers_burtless.aspx

The worst part of it is that the App Data file is apparently a hidden file, and all files in it are also hidden (thus making it so I couldn't find it during my file search). I was wondering about that because when I wanted to attach the PBEM file to my e-mail I tried to go down the path to get to the file and the App Data file wouldn't come up - yet I was looking right at it in the search box!! I did create the desktop short cut, but then I also went into the properties for the App Data file and took off the hidden file status and .....ding ding ding ding ding - there it was. Wow, I mean, have this file that is active and that a lot of files default into, then make it a hidden file so nobody can find anything after it goes in there. Brilliant!

Yes, this is where the file was, although it was extremely difficult to find. A regular search ended up with no hits at all (for all locations). I had to do an 'Advanced' search and check the box to search for non indexed, hidden, and system files before the file was located. I then had to figure out where it was because when it located the file it just had the individual file pop up in the search box, but not where the file was located. I eventually figured out how to get the thing to tell me where it was. I found several other files that I had 'lost' previously too. I've actually lost entire games on Vista. I still can't find Civ 4 BTS . I haven't had any real problems with Vista since I got this rig, but wow, they sure made explorer difficult to navigate (hard to believe I'm sure for those who aren't on Vista). It seems like games exist in several locations at once. Accessing this file location for every PBEM turn is gonna be a total pain in the ..... beeeep.