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That particular article pays tribute to one of many of the narco's "saints". One must understand a bit of history, to understand the myriad other "saints". The Azteca were death worshippers. Their capital was home to that infamous pyramid, atop which captives, slaves, and/or political opponents were killed.

Along came the Spaniards, and the Catholic church. Officially, and openly, people converted to Christianity. Covertly, however, the Azteca pulled off the same trick that others throughout the Caribbean and South America did. They clothed some of the old gods and "saints" in robes borrowed from Catholicism.

http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents/Santa-Muerte/santa-muerte.htm

Of course, if one only looks at the flag of Mexico, he will see that Mexico has incorporated nothing of Catholicism, Chritianity, democracy, or any other European ideas into that flag. The flag depicts the legend of how Mexico City was established in the middle of a swamp, by a death worshipping druggy, later deified as part of the Azteca cult.

In short, you're about 1000% right!

I would assume that it's grounds for discharge.

In 1998 in the US the answer is No. HIV is not grounds to be discharged. Heck, in the 90's you'd probably have even made it though enlistment and be HIV positive. They did make sure that they were in non critical jobs. The med requirment to keep it in check basically means you cant put them on front line duty. The GOP had a big argument about it in the 90's about trying to force the military to discharge them. I don't know what ultimatly became of that or if their rules currently apply. You're free to shuffle though the manuals to find out if you'd like to now definitively. Though whether or not our soldiers are clean is irrelevant if it's not the case of all soldiers since I doubt we do exclusive killing of our own men.

CIA, NSA, NRO don't report to the Secretary of Defense or DoD, they report to the President of the United States.

Intelligence for the Department of Defense is from the branch intelligence services. For example, INSCOM
http://www.inscom.army.mil/Default.aspx?text=off&size=12pt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Military_Intelligence

Well, if statecraft were Starcraft, the entire UN would have been completely pwned in the Korean War. So, I guess that's not the case.

Although it's an interesting analogy, isn't it? Complete with infantry rushes in the early game, resource build-up, and then a scripted NPC army add.

Bah - forgot the link.

the oath is to defend the constitution but also to obey the orders of the President, who is Commander in Chief, and the Officers, who serve as the President's representative at various levels of the chain of command (technically, all commissioned officers are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, but that all pretty much happens in batches through bureaucracy these days). Here are the full texts of the oaths of enlistment and of officers:

http://www.history.army.mil/html/faq/oaths.html

Speaking as somebody who had a seat in bleachers to a government project that went under because of a misplaced faith in COTS: Fuck you. You don't have any idea what you are talking about, and because there are people like you making decisions, that is why so much money is wasted on shit that doesn't work, and then hundreds lose their jobs because some genius decided to cut corners in proposal.

It's easy to blaise about the Toughbook, never mind how much R&D was necessary to make it COTS. To hear you talk it sounds like you think some guys just picked up a laptop and said 'hur dur, let's make this *tougher*!' and it magically happened, and now you can buy them. You should take a look at the Army's standards for certifying these units, and maybe you'll be able to deduce that the 'modification' required to achieve these ends is rather more than 'a bit'.

Designs for field use of this kind have to build from the ground up at a component level. Chassis construction and composition has to be different, circuit board substrate has to be different, component quality, solder and soldering methods have to be different, QA has to be different, hell, for government work even supply chains, distribution, export control and the training and clearance for the staff at all levels of the operation have to be different.

Armchair fucktards like yourself have not even the first inkling of how shit like that comes together.

I've often wondered since then how much more effective that process would have been if it had been possible to attach a team of computer scientists and structural engineers to an Army unit.

http://www.usace.army.mil/

US Army Corps of Engineers

http://www.army.mil/symbols/officerdescription.html

"captain" is a rank in the united states military. you have openly accused scores of military personnel of being dictators. why don't you try saying that to an enlisted man's face instead of online, and find out just how cowardly he really is. unless, of course, you're too cowardly to try it.

If you bothered to use your brain for a 2#$!% minute, you would realize a few things:

1) Soldiers are not out there because they wanted to, they decided to serve their country so you could stay home and play your video games. If they did not sign up in enough numbers, they would force you to serve as soon as they run out of volunteers. Remember every time that a soldier gets killed or looses his legs because of a bomb, that it could had been you out there had he and many others not volunteered.

Or cause it is the only job they can get as there are not that many opportunities around. Or to pay for college. Or cause they are members of the Green Card Brigade.
As for "your ass there instead" - there is always Canada. That is, unless your dad can arrange for you to "serve" behind a desk somewhere.
Or to dick around in a military jet.

2) It is good to know military budget goes into medical research that can also be used to save civilians in, say, burning buildings and not entirely to develop new guns and bombs.

$9.7 billion budget divided over 5 million beneficiaries, 27,000 soldiers and 28,000 civilian employees, another 20,000 active-duty medical soldiers in field units, plus over 30,000 medical soldiers in the National Guard and Army Reserve.

That is only 1.29% of the $721.3 billion DOD budget, which is again only between 49.7 and 68% of the annual US Military budget.
So it's actually more like 0.64 - 0.87% of the total military budget, for 2011 alone.

Just to illustrate how ridiculously little that is...
A person making ~$50k a year, who would donate $50 each month to medical R&D - would do more for medical research funding, per dollar earned, then the entire military and defense budget of the United States of America.
That is less than $2 a day.

I'm not sure, but I think the tanks that the Egyptian army did not turn on protesters are a combo of American and old Soviet tanks.

That's the way I understand it, if memory serves me correctly, in the late 70s or 80s USATACOM was busy installing US M60A1 turrets on Soviet built T72 tank hulls for the Egyptians, so some would even be hybrids of the two.

Personally, I think you're more likely to get funding to build sexbots.

Really?

Quote: "Telepresence can be defined as a human-computer-machine condition in which a user (a Soldier) receives sufficient information about a remote, real-world site (a battlefield) through a machine (a robot) so that the user feels physically present at the remote, real-world site."

CC.

Here,
here annnd here

Not quite the same as banana republics, but still diplomacy for the purpose of controlling the production of foreign raw materials.

The U.S. Army's guide to dressing up right is 362 pages.

And they have total control of the manufacture and issue of the clothes. They're not suffering all the randomness that the fashion and retail industries insert into civilian clothing choices.

VOD - I would assume that the shell uses a solid explosive with a very high velocity.

  And I'd be willing to bet that there are more like 40 fragments. (88mm shell has ~100 fragments) even if you think that the size is directly proportional to the shrapnel number, it is more like 30 fragments. I'd guess they designed it to have smaller fragments, but more numerous than its 25mm size would normally produce, using the 88mm as a reference) Even without shrapnel, if this thing is accurate to a meter, the explosive force alone is going to seriously injure and likely kill.

Less than 1% die in the line of duty.

I don't want to debate their pensions, but 1% attrition is not that low. Compare to writers, engineers, or sandwich makers. You graduate from the Police Academy with 99 other people and know that one of them will be killed. Oakland is hiring officers, I heard, so anyone who thinks 1% is a low enough ratio is welcome.

Even though only 1% may be killed, there are certainly other hardships of police work that are not that obvious to people with office jobs of "9 to 5" type. Police works 24/7/365.25, in any weather. I personally don't want to chase a drunk driver who is determined to kill himself (and others) on an icy 2-lane country road at 3:30am. Police officers have to do that if they have no better options. Also LEO's job brings him to worst places of cities, in worst circumstances. They are universally hated by their "clients," and in a sufficiently large city an officer has to watch his back - and his family's - at all times.

That said, you can certainly say that there are other jobs with similar hardships - sailors, oilmen, fishermen, even construction workers. I have no idea what, if any, benefits they have and how that compares to the police. My only point is that 1% of dying on the job is not something that I would dismiss out of hand. To compare, Shuttle astronauts have 2% chance of dying in any single flight.

That'd be like joining the army as a private at 20, serving for 20 years and then getting a colonel's salary until you die at 80 or so of old age. Soldiers don't get that

Sure soldiers don't get that. You need to be born as a colonel to become a colonel. There is absolutely no way for a soldier to become an NCO and then to study and become an officer. It's just so sad [/s]

You even got the 20 years term right:

The officer may request the retirement to be effective any date not later than 6 months from the date of PCS alert or the first day of the month after the officer attains 20 years of Active Federal Service, whichever is later.

Let me just use some flashy marketting material:
Land, Air, Sea, Space and Cyber.
From the USAA posture statement 2009:

Why is this important to the Army?
Cyber intrusions and attacks are a real and emerging threat to national security. The Nation faces a dangerous combination of known and unknown vulnerabilities, capable adversaries, and limited situational awareness. It is critical for the Army to grow its cyberspace operations to counter adversary targeting of both our information and our information infrastructure. To maintain our dominance in cyberspace the Army will continue to grow our abilities to better defend our own networks and have capabilities in place to conduct network warfare against adversary networks.

Guess what with just that basic research I can tell you: according to that philosophy Wikileaks is an adversary, and Jullian Assange likely qualifies as an enemy of the state.

The Lake Erie mean outflow was 194,600 ft3/s (5510 m3/s), that's 1,455,709.090 gal a second! We got plenty so if you really want some good ol' Great Lakes water feel free to go down to the store and buy yourself a bottle of Vernors.

A similar calculus exists for the logistics in Antarctica. Most of the coastal stations can be supplied from the sea - McMurdo gets nearly all its materiel by boat. The South Pole station is another matter. Currently 99% of what's at the South Pole gets brought in by air, at an enormous cost for fuel.

Because of the enormous costs, the US Army Corps of Engineers has been developing the logistics and technology to have supply convoys go overland from McMurdo to South Pole station. It's a lot slower: a few weeks on ice versus a half a day in the air, but the logistical cost is much much lower.

Unfortunately, while some renewables have been tested and deployed in Antarctica, by and large they haven't panned out. Wind turbines shred themselves in a -80 C gale, and solar panels are no good during the winter. Nuclear is banned by the Antarctic treaty.

Unless Apple's technology can now penetrate the veil of death, that won't do much good.

His web site is still up, though, and is an interesting read:
http://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/

Actually, they can: http://www.usarec.army.mil/hq/warrant/

The real-world version is a bit more expensive, but has been an excellent investment:

http://www.irwin.army.mil/Pages/default.aspx

American soldiers often "play" the enemy during training, and don't feel guilt for playing OPFOR.

Have some (BIG) OPFOR:

http://www.irwin.army.mil/Pages/default.aspx

"The Mind Has No Firewall"
Army article on psychotronic weapons

"The Mind Has No Firewall" by Timothy L. Thomas. Parameters, Spring 1998, pp. 84-92.
http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/

The human body, much like a computer, contains myriad data processors. They include, but are not limited to, the chemical-electrical activity of the brain, heart, and peripheral nervous system, the signals sent from the cortex region of the brain to other parts of our body, the tiny hair cells in the inner ear that process auditory signals, and the light-sensitive retina and cornea of the eye that process visual activity.[2] We are on the threshold of an era in which these data processors of the human body may be manipulated or debilitated. Examples of unplanned attacks on the body's data-processing capability are well-documented. Strobe lights have been known to cause epileptic seizures. Not long ago in Japan, children watching television cartoons were subjected to pulsating lights that caused seizures in some and made others very sick.

Defending friendly and targeting adversary data-processing capabilities of the body appears to be an area of weakness in the US approach to information warfare theory, a theory oriented heavily toward systems data-processing and designed to attain information dominance on the battlefield. Or so it would appear from information in the open, unclassified press. This US shortcoming may be a serious one, since the capabilities to alter the data- processing systems of the body already exist. A recent edition of U.S. News and World Report highlighted several of these "wonder weapons" (acoustics, microwaves, lasers) and noted that scientists are "searching the electromagnetic and sonic spectrums for wavelengths that can affect human behavior."[3] A recent Russian military article offered a slightly different slant to the problem, declaring that "humanity stands on the brink of a psychotronic war" with the mind and body as the focus. That article discussed Russian and international attempts to control the psycho-physical condition of man and his decisionmaking processes by the use of VHF-generators, "noiseless cassettes," and other technologies.

An entirely new arsenal of weapons, based on devices designed to introduce subliminal messages or to alter the body's psychological and data-processing capabilities, might be used to incapacitate individuals. These weapons aim to control or alter the psyche, or to attack the various sensory and data-processing systems of the human organism. In both cases, the goal is to confuse or destroy the signals that normally keep the body in equilibrium.

This article examines energy-based weapons, psychotronic weapons, and other developments designed to alter the ability of the human body to process stimuli. One consequence of this assessment is that the way we commonly use the term "information warfare" falls short when the individual soldier, not his equipment, becomes the target of attack.

Information Warfare Theory and the Data-Processing Element of Humans

In the United States the common conception of information warfare focuses primarily on the capabilities of hardware systems such as computers, satellites, and military equipment which process data in its various forms. According to Department of Defense Directive S-3600.1 of 9 December 1996, information warfare is defined as "an information operation conducted during time of crisis or conflict to achieve or promote specific objectives over a specific adversary or adversaries." An information operation is defined in the same directive as "actions taken to affect adversary information and information systems while defending one's own information and information systems." These "information systems" lie at the heart of the modernization effort of the US armed forces and other countries, and manifest themselves as hardware, software, communications capabilities, and highly trained individuals. Recently, the US

They are not alone...

The BBC has this problem.

As does CNN.

Even Engadget has their finger on this pulse...

And the odd TV station.

And just plain odd sites.

The U.S. Army got in on this one.

And Rutgers University chimed in. Well, someone at Rutgers.

If your point was that Fox News got snookered, well, they are in good company. If your point was that this is jsut another example of Fox News incompetence, well, you can use the same brush to tar CNN and the BBC. Though what the threee have in common escapes me. Oh, wait, I know.

They all purport to deliver the truth.

Right.

Nice try though. Keep swinging. In baseball, succeeding once in 4 at bats will get you a decent job. In politics and Slashdot, you need much less. Way much less.

an Apache helicopter gun-site

That would be "gun-sight", unless the video was shot from a website that focused on guns for Apache helicopters like this http://tri.army.mil/lc/cs/csa/aptoc.htm

1) It is a liquid. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VX_(nerve_agent)

2) It was the British. Information on the substance was passed to Porton Down in 1954 and research there led to VX within a year. This was traded to the United States as the British passed over VX in favor of continuing with sarin as the UK chemical weapon of choice,... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VX_(nerve_agent)

3) The US is destroying their stockpile.
http://www.cma.army.mil/aboutcma.aspx
http://www.opcw.org/chemical-weapons-convention/

The Project Manager – Chemical Stockpile Elimination manages the safe treatment and disposal of chemical agents and weapons using incineration and neutralization technologies.

Incineration technology is being used at Anniston Army Depot, AL; Pine Bluff Arsenal, AR; Umatilla Chemical Depot, OR; and Deseret Chemical Depot, UT.

Disposal operations using neutralization technology were completed in February 2006 at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD, facility - eliminating more than five percent of the nation’s chemical agent inventory. The disposal facility is now closed. The Newport Chemical Depot, IN, facility completed chemical stockpile disposal operations in August 2008 – eliminating four percent of the nation’s chemical agent inventory. Closure operations at the site are now underway.

# Level 4: Assaultive (Bodily Harm). The subject may physically attack, but does not use a weapon. Use defensive tactics to neutralize the threat. Defensive tactics include Blocks, Strikes, Kicks, Enhanced pain compliance procedures, Impact weapon blocks and blows.
# Level 5: Assaultive (Lethal Force). The subject usually has a weapon and will either kill or injure someone if he/she is not stopped immediately and brought under control. The subject must be controlled by the use of deadly force with or without a firearm.

- Marine Corps Close Combat Manual (MCRP 3-02B)
I realize they were army not marines but the rules are likely similar. The armies rules seem to change based on the military action? Either way I couldn't find it online, tell me if you can.

SFA rules (Hague/Geneva): http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/Repository/FM3071.pdf
Some main points of the above rules from the wikipedia summary which may be of interest (full thing is pretty long):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOAC#Roles_of_laws_of_war_in_the_United_States_military

Fight only enemy combatants.
Collect and care for the wounded, whether friend or foe.
Do not attack medical personnel, facilities, or equipment.
Destroy no more than the mission requires.
Treat all civilians humanely.

I would contend that the family in the van hadn't been shown to be enemy combatants hence civilians. The unnarmed guy crawling in the dirt has been effectively neutralized and wounded. And I would certainly argue that they destroyed more then REQUIRED.

If you are a typical programmer, you'll be using libraries that already have the difficult math-y stuff worked out. If you can understand simple arithmetic, you've got all the math skill you need to be a programmer.

There's plenty of "math-y" stuff that the libraries can do for you, but if you don't know what to do with them they don't help much.

I'd like to see programmers knowing more about the basics of using math (or even arithmetic) at least for the application they're working in.

Example: When numbers are used to represent real-world values like quantities, volumes, speeds, and amounts of currency, you need to know how to properly handle such things as rounding and truncation for your particular application. If a number is the result of a sensor measurement of mass (or if you prefer, weight of the mass at 1g), your sensor will have a certain precision. Maybe you measure 2.608 pounds and your sensor is precise to +/- .001 pounds. Your application needs to be able to present or store this in other metrics. So you call PoundsToKg from your math library. You'd saved your pounds as a floating point number, so your result is floating point as well. Perhaps you know the range of expected values well enough that you pick the proper size of float. Well, I just did this with Google. They query "what is 2.608 pounds in kg" yields: "2.60800 pounds = 1.1829689 kilograms". Google apparently assume that my 2.608 was accurate to the limit of single precision floating point. If you ask about 1 pound, you get "1 pound = 0.45359237 kilograms". So google's library knows the ratio of lb to kg to 8 significant figures. So google's result is not only more precise than my original data (4 places) or even of google's assumption of my original data's precision (6 places), it's the 8 places from the kg/lb value it used. In reality, we only know the result to be 1.183 kg.

Is the Google calculator wrong? Not really, it's just behaving as a calculator or a math library. This is where it's important for the user/programmer to know the limitations of the data and the libraries operating on the data. I've had this situation come up with programmers. I was an EE working with other EEs and Computer Engineers on a measurement and recording system. When it came time to write the PC interface to the system, we brought in temporary CS-type guys to provide more manpower to the app written. On multiple occasions, I had just this sort of problem with the programmers. I'd tell them to round to the actual precision of the data and they'd be shocked, asking me why I would throw away all those perfectly good digits the libraries gave them! In cases where this was merely cosmetic, I just let it slide because there was no way in Hell I was going to convince them that the computer was "wrong". In more crucial areas, I noted where the problem was and came back to fix it after the temps were gone.

Lest anyone think that ignorance of this issue is unimportant, consider this example that predates the modern practice of "programming": THE FIELD ARTILLERY JOURNAL - NOVEMBER - DECEMBER - 1929.

If you use numbers from the real world in your programming you need to know enough math to manipulate them properly, even if you are relying on your software libraries to do the heavy lifting. Perhaps the errors/miscalculations/misrepresentations/etc. are trivial or cosmetic. But if you don't know your math, how do you know that? How do you even know to think of it?

And we haven't even begun to discuss the limitations of floating point representation itself. Let alone all the other issues with numbers that can come up.

I believe such monuments are usually funded by subscription by private organizations; and I find evidence that such is the case for this Memorial. So, NO, your tax dollars did not pay for this, though it is on public land; I do not know if the Federal government maintains the site or a private organization does so (as is the case with e.g. Monticello).

The court summary statement mentions it was contracted under an Army Corp of Engineers contract, so I would presume that govt dollars were used. http://www.nab.usace.army.mil/projects/WashingtonDC/korean.html also states the project was managed and now maintained by the Army COE.

Care to point me in the direction of any women who have managed to make General, in any branch of service? Last I checked, there were none. So women may be in the military, but they either lack the same potential as men -- or environmental factors are holding them back. Which one do you suppose it is?

You didn't check hard enough:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/23/woman.general/index.html

http://www.army.mil/women/profiles.html

There are a bunch of women generals (up to 4 star) past and present in the army.

"The Mind Has No Firewall"
Army article on psychotronic weapons

>>> The following article is from the US military publication Parameters, subtitled "US Army War College Quarterly." It describes itself as "The United States Army's Senior Professional Journal." [Click here to read a crucial excerpt.]

http://www.thememoryhole.org/mil/mind-firewall.htm

"The Mind Has No Firewall" by Timothy L. Thomas. Parameters, Spring 1998, pp. 84-92.

http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/

The human body, much like a computer, contains myriad data processors. They include, but are not limited to, the chemical-electrical activity of the brain, heart, and peripheral nervous system, the signals sent from the cortex region of the brain to other parts of our body, the tiny hair cells in the inner ear that process auditory signals, and the light-sensitive retina and cornea of the eye that process visual activity.[2] We are on the threshold of an era in which these data processors of the human body may be manipulated or debilitated. Examples of unplanned attacks on the body's data-processing capability are well-documented. Strobe lights have been known to cause epileptic seizures. Not long ago in Japan, children watching television cartoons were subjected to pulsating lights that caused seizures in some and made others very sick.

Defending friendly and targeting adversary data-processing capabilities of the body appears to be an area of weakness in the US approach to information warfare theory, a theory oriented heavily toward systems data-processing and designed to attain information dominance on the battlefield. Or so it would appear from information in the open, unclassified press. This US shortcoming may be a serious one, since the capabilities to alter the data- processing systems of the body already exist. A recent edition of U.S. News and World Report highlighted several of these "wonder weapons" (acoustics, microwaves, lasers) and noted that scientists are "searching the electromagnetic and sonic spectrums for wavelengths that can affect human behavior."[3] A recent Russian military article offered a slightly different slant to the problem, declaring that "humanity stands on the brink of a psychotronic war" with the mind and body as the focus. That article discussed Russian and international attempts to control the psycho-physical condition of man and his decisionmaking processes by the use of VHF-generators, "noiseless cassettes," and other technologies.

An entirely new arsenal of weapons, based on devices designed to introduce subliminal messages or to alter the body's psychological and data-processing capabilities, might be used to incapacitate individuals. These weapons aim to control or alter the psyche, or to attack the various sensory and data-processing systems of the human organism. In both cases, the goal is to confuse or destroy the signals that normally keep the body in equilibrium.

This article examines energy-based weapons, psychotronic weapons, and other developments designed to alter the ability of the human body to process stimuli. One consequence of this assessment is that the way we commonly use the term "information warfare" falls short when the individual soldier, not his equipment, becomes the target of attack.

Information Warfare Theory and the Data-Processing Element of Humans

In the United States the common conception of information warfare focuses primarily on the capabilities of hardware systems such as computers, satellites, and military equipment which process data in its various forms. According to Department of Defense Directive S-3600.1 of 9 December 1996, information warfare is defined as "an information operation conducted during time of crisis or conflict to achieve or promote specific objectives over a specific adversary or adversaries." An information operation is defined in the same directive as "

'... or recruit people specifically to kill people it's not.'

Like these people?

Fighting spammers is like fighting against a guerilla army. Constant vigilance, swift response times, and, eventually, wholesale destruction of the people supporting the guerrillas will be necessary to win the war.

Is your use of "wholesale destruction" metaphorical, or do you really think guerilla warfare works that way? Because we tried that in Vietnam, and it didn't work. Which is why U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine got revised to exclude the myth that you can win a guerrilla war just by killing people. You also have to change the environment on the ground so that supporting your side instead of the guerrillas is a realistic option for the general population.

Now, if the war against malware is like a guerrilla war, then it's never going to be over. There will always be some place for the other side to run and hide. We can't order other countries to not host services we don't like, if only because we don't want them to do the same to us.

Fortunately, the analogy with guerrilla warfare only goes so far. The Internet is something people invented, not a foreign country with a complicated history and obscure customs. We can rework the thing so that the Bad Guys have a less friendly environment.

When you watch the precision of the people flying Predators and Reapers, one wonders what would be the incentive to give the machines more autonomy.

There have been armed UAV's that have gone off the reservation and failed to respond to commands or their default programming, which tells them to fly home.

I'm not sure we want to give something with that kind of bomb load more latitude. You could maybe automate the actual flying, let the auto-pilot handle the aircraft control but I'm not really seeing the motivation to drive the technology too far beyond that.

Now for reconnaissance I could see driving the autonomy envelope. Because that's largely repetitive and boring as all get out. And, if something goes wrong, you don't have a full load of ordnance crashing into some politically charged civilian target. Ironically Predators first mission was recon, then someone got the big idea to hang a couple Hellfire's on the wings and that's how we got where we are today.

Really, why would the U.S. Army's Cold Regions Test Center give a rat's ass about net neutrality?

(aka: Watch when you use acronyms. U.S.-centric acronyms are one thing, /. readers are used to it, but non-U.S. acronyms will be completely mis-construed by a vast majority of /.ers.)

He's so right. He references the Turkey City Lexicon, which lists most of the things that make bad SF. Also worth reading is the Evil Overlord List. (" 2. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through." "56. My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at 10 meters will be used for target practice." "67. No matter how many shorts we have in the system, my guards will be instructed to treat every surveillance camera malfunction as a full-scale emergency.")

There are some other annoying cliches in SF. One is copying historical battles. The Defense of Roarke's Drift has shown up in at least four SF novels. (Nobody ever seems to do the Defense of Duffer's Drift.) Star Wars space battles are copied from WWI biplane battles, where nobody can hit targets consistently, even at short range. There's also the embarrassing fact that, historically, heroism hasn't decided many major battles. (Roman saying: "The Legion is not composed of heroes. Heroes are what the Legion kills.") Military SF no longer reflects this, because the WWII generation, which learned that the hard way, has died off.

David Weber does battles better, but his stuff requires too much exposition for most people. His latest book in the Honor Harrington series consists mostly of transcripts of meetings, setting up the political background for the next book.

Stross himself has his moments. The Merchant's War series starts out as fantasy, but slowly, book by book, moves into hard fiction and then politics. In the last book out so far, a character modelled on Dick Cheney has dealt with a threat from a castle in an alternate universe by having his people blow up the castle with a nuclear weapon.

Or a Medal of Honor winner who pimps his heroism out to lobby for munitions makers seeking gov contracts?

Don't go there. Seriously. Every Medal of Honor in the past 25 years has been awarded posthumously. Every single recent Medal of Honor "winner" gave his life to save his friends. Anyone awarded the Medal of Honor deserves nothing but your respect. You've done nothing in your whole life that gives you the right you judge a succesful astronaut, let alone someone who has been awarded the Medal of Honor.

Read some citations on the Medal of Honor site. Since you're probably too lazy to click a link, here's one example, picked at random.

EVANS, DONALD W., JR.

Rank and organization: Specialist Fourth Class, U.S. Army, Company A, 2d Battalion, 12 Infantry, 4th Infantry Division. Place and date: Tri Tam, Republic of Vietnam, 27 January 1967. Entered service at: Covina, Calif. Born: 23 July 1943, Covina, Calif. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. He left his position of relative safety with his platoon which had not yet been committed to the battle to answer the calls for medical aid from the wounded men of another platoon which was heavily engaged with the enemy force. Dashing across 100 meters of open area through a withering hail of enemy fire and exploding grenades, he administered lifesaving treatment to 1 individual and continued to expose himself to the deadly enemy fire as he moved to treat each of the other wounded men and to offer them encouragement. Realizing that the wounds of 1 man required immediate attention, Sp4c. Evans dragged the injured soldier back across the dangerous fire-swept area, to a secure position from which he could be further evacuated Miraculously escaping the enemy fusillade, Sp4c. Evans returned to the forward location. As he continued the treatment of the wounded, he was struck by fragments from an enemy grenade. Despite his serious and painful injury he succeeded in evacuating another wounded comrade, rejoined his platoon as it was committed to battle and was soon treating other wounded soldiers. As he evacuated another wounded man across the fire covered field, he was severely wounded. Continuing to refuse medical attention and ignoring advice to remain behind, he managed with his waning strength to move yet another wounded comrade across the dangerous open area to safety. Disregarding his painful wounds and seriously weakened from profuse bleeding, he continued his lifesaving medical aid and was killed while treating another wounded comrade. Sp4c. Evan's extraordinary valor, dedication and indomitable spirit saved the lives of several of his fellow soldiers, served as an inspiration to the men of his company, were instrumental in the success of their mission, and reflect great credit upon himself and the Armed Forces of his country.

Fuck you if you think you are in any position to judge a Medal of Honor recipient.

Lol.. Way to be a history revisionist. We did not give Iraq any chemical or biological weapons. We took their names off the banned list and allowed them to purchase the chemical and biological technology from US and allied companies. I repeat, we did not give it to them, we allowed them to purchase it.

And no, we have and always had equipment that is desert-ready. The Yuma proving grounds is in a fucking desert. Carter didn't bother checking if the plan he micromanaged used desert capable crafts. Thats more of an indication of the failure Carter was as a president too. He ran the economy to crap in less then 4 years, caused one of the biggest bouts of inflation, created the real estate hodge podge that caused millions of farmers to almost go under, many of which might have if it wasn't for a bunch or guilty democrats starting farm aid.

By the end of Carters term as president, even the democrats in congress refused to support him. He was so bad of a president, he was the first president I know of to have a pariody song of him playing on the radio. It was set to the tune of the Oscar Myer hot dog song and went like this,
My Peanut has a first name,
j-i-m-m-y
My peanut has a last name,
c-a-r-t-e-r,
And all I have to say,
Is Jimmy Carter has a way of fucking the USA.

And yes, they bleeped the word fucking- but it was on the radio and we all knew what was missing.

http://www.armyg1.army.mil/HR/docs/demographics/FY08%20Army%20Profile.pdf

If you're talking about racial demographics of the US Army, there you go. 61% of enlisted personnel are white. I'd have to assume the percentage of casualties remains in the vicinity.

Of course, you could be referring the targets of the US military, in which case I'd make the argument that any cross-culture military conflict could be misconstrued as a race war.

"Really? You might want to tell that to the military... I can't get Firefox installed much less supported on a military computer"

Really, what exactly is the rule regarding Firefox on military computers?

'Here's an easy way to have Firefox allow popups for our site'

'If you have a CAC card and reader, use Internet Explorer instead of Firefox and follow the previously mentioned CAC installation instructions'

Jump to How to manage certificates in Firefox.:Enter the password for Firefox's certificate database

a bike collision involves different types and magnitude of force than a close explosion. the head also must be held in damping suspension to attenuate impact shock from bullets. take a look at the type of deformation that occurs when it takes a bullet. an explosive concussion would probably compress foam padding that would otherwise feel very secure on the head in normal wear.

Similar to improvements in body armour, more soldiers are returning crippled when they would have come home in body bags in past wars. The the TC2K is a much better helmet than the kevlar ones in the vietnam war. This "flaw" maybe blown out of proportion by the slashdot article; e.g. perhaps this is news because they started installing helmet sensors in 2008 to aid in helmet redesign. i don't think this is a design flaw, this is part of research that has been reported slightly out of context.

Another alternative would be to stop killing so many other people, and there'd probably be less explosions to worry about in the first place.

In a DoD environment I Tunes, Amazon Downloader, and other legal forms of downloading music are prohibited from being on the systems as being outside the baseline. I can only speak for the Army but the regulation does not consider music in general stealing. Quoting from AR 25-2 page 27...
 
 

(7) Certain activities are never authorized on Army networks. AUPs will include the following minimums as
prohibited. These activities include any personal use of Government resources involving: pornography or obscene
material (adult or child); copyright infringement (such as the sharing of copyright material by means of peer-to-peer
software); gambling; the transmission of chain letters; unofficial advertising, soliciting, or selling except on authorized
bulletin boards established for such use; or the violation of any statute or regulation.

In short DISA wrote bad flash training on this one scenario. DoD 8500 series and agency specific regulations DO NOT refer to it as stealing.

I fail to see how some "researcher" no doubt with a worthless degree in "Ancient Medievil History" or the like is more qualified that some who's, gasp, actually been in the field?

To view the active list of Army Field Manuals - excluding engineering and medical: Doctrine and Training Publications

You won't be able to access the files.

But it might just buy you a clue to what an Army college is all about.

Here is a sampling of Army field manuals in the public domain: Army Field Manuals

Secondly, using a limited communication system just to tell someone is ok is most likely a bad idea in the grand scheme of things. It may seem cold, but emergency situations and the communications related to life and death situations should always take precedence over "Hi mom. I'm ok."

If your ok. Then there are ok. No matter of lack of communication will change that.

You can always tell them the story when the ordeal is done. If you don't stay safe then that is the real problem.

The ARRL National Traffic System prioritizes messages between routine and emergency. We've been doing this for a while now, so a lot of those little details have been worked out. http://nts.ema.arrl.org/node/31 links to the training manual for a NTS operator. Also, It might be further down in the comments, but the DoD still places value on the amateur radio network with the 9th Signal Command's MARS Program. Hams handle health and welfare traffic and phone patches for service members abroad. Yeah, your kid can tell you he's OK when he gets home from the war, but wouldn't you like to hear from him once in a while when he's there?

Lastly, on satellite coms... Bandwidth & Throughput. If either were plentiful, they wouldn't cost $3.00/min.

Plan your drive around the missile test schedule http://www.wsmr.army.mil/wsmr.asp?pg=y&page=202

The drive out to the VLA is worth it to see the telescopes, though there's not much in the way of a museum there. http://www.vla.nrao.edu/ [nrao.edu]

Speaking of White Sands, don't forget Trinity Site. White Sands Missile Range opens the site to the public for two days a year. Stand on the spot where humanity detonated its first atomic bomb. The base folks provide a bus that makes a few side trips from the main site to the buildings where the gadget was built, and where the engineers witnessed the test. Most of the buildings still stand and some are in the process of being restored. If you ever played Infocom's Trinity, you'll recognize a lot of landmarks. (If you haven't, play it! It's some of the best interactive fiction ever written.)

The VLA gives guided tours on those two days, owing to the large number of fellow geeks in the neighborhood.

Plan your drive around the missile test schedule http://www.wsmr.army.mil/wsmr.asp?pg=y&page=202

The drive out to the VLA is worth it to see the telescopes, though there's not much in the way of a museum there. http://www.vla.nrao.edu/

I've also heard good things about lanl's Bradbury Museum, but I've never been there. http://www.lanl.gov/museum/

Spaceport America was originally scheduled to have a hangar and terminal in 2010, so there might be something there worth checking out. http://www.spaceportamerica.com/

which is the impact of street protest/riot on the military and specially the grunts.

Ah but you missed where military personnel and dependents supported the Montgomery Bus Boycotts. And as I said before I was in the Army, I was one of those grunts. My MOS was 11B, Small Weapons Specialist, or infantry which is often called grunts. Actually my first unit was one of the oldest army units and had the song "The Battle of New Orleans" written about it, the 7th Infantry Regiment or Cotton Balers that was led by Andrew Jackson during the War of 1812. Stationed at Fort Benning, GA, my unit trained the Officer Cadet School cadets and the Rangers and we also trained with the Special Forces. Please don't think that I'm bragging or anything I just wanted to point out I was one of those grunts and have inside knowledge of how other grunts will act.

Grunts fragged their CO's not because they didnt want to kill the 'little people', but because they didnt want to be killed for a pointless cause.

Some but not all.

don't kid yourself that locking up 20-30K dissidents (the leadership) won't have a chilling effect on the masses.

It will chill some but outrage others. Some will clam up and others go underground. I knew some who would take it as the ride of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as in "Behold a Pale Horse". Others would see it as a sign of the New World Order. Yes, I knew some of each, both civilians and in the military.

Given sufficient stressors people will turn on, even torture and kill, their neighbors.

Oh I agree, I also agree it will be bloody and messy but some will rise up to oppose the government. Look even now there's conspiracy theories floating around 911. Look at all the militia groups in the US. Heck the government can't stop the drug trades.

Falcon

which is the impact of street protest/riot on the military and specially the grunts.

Ah but you missed where military personnel and dependents supported the Montgomery Bus Boycotts. And as I said before I was in the Army, I was one of those grunts. My MOS was 11B, Small Weapons Specialist, or infantry which is often called grunts. Actually my first unit was one of the oldest army units and had the song "The Battle of New Orleans" written about it, the 7th Infantry Regiment or Cotton Balers that was led by Andrew Jackson during the War of 1812. Stationed at Fort Benning, GA, my unit trained the Officer Cadet School cadets and the Rangers and we also trained with the Special Forces. Please don't think that I'm bragging or anything I just wanted to point out I was one of those grunts and have inside knowledge of how other grunts will act.

Grunts fragged their CO's not because they didnt want to kill the 'little people', but because they didnt want to be killed for a pointless cause.

Some but not all.

don't kid yourself that locking up 20-30K dissidents (the leadership) won't have a chilling effect on the masses.

It will chill some but outrage others. Some will clam up and others go underground. I knew some who would take it as the ride of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as in "Behold a Pale Horse". Others would see it as a sign of the New World Order. Yes, I knew some of each, both civilians and in the military.

Given sufficient stressors people will turn on, even torture and kill, their neighbors.

Oh I agree, I also agree it will be bloody and messy but some will rise up to oppose the government. Look even now there's conspiracy theories floating around 911. Look at all the militia groups in the US. Heck the government can't stop the drug trades.

Falcon

which is the impact of street protest/riot on the military and specially the grunts.

Ah but you missed where military personnel and dependents supported the Montgomery Bus Boycotts. And as I said before I was in the Army, I was one of those grunts. My MOS was 11B, Small Weapons Specialist, or infantry which is often called grunts. Actually my first unit was one of the oldest army units and had the song "The Battle of New Orleans" written about it, the 7th Infantry Regiment or Cotton Balers that was led by Andrew Jackson during the War of 1812. Stationed at Fort Benning, GA, my unit trained the Officer Cadet School cadets and the Rangers and we also trained with the Special Forces. Please don't think that I'm bragging or anything I just wanted to point out I was one of those grunts and have inside knowledge of how other grunts will act.

Grunts fragged their CO's not because they didnt want to kill the 'little people', but because they didnt want to be killed for a pointless cause.

Some but not all.

don't kid yourself that locking up 20-30K dissidents (the leadership) won't have a chilling effect on the masses.

It will chill some but outrage others. Some will clam up and others go underground. I knew some who would take it as the ride of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as in "Behold a Pale Horse". Others would see it as a sign of the New World Order. Yes, I knew some of each, both civilians and in the military.

Given sufficient stressors people will turn on, even torture and kill, their neighbors.

Oh I agree, I also agree it will be bloody and messy but some will rise up to oppose the government. Look even now there's conspiracy theories floating around 911. Look at all the militia groups in the US. Heck the government can't stop the drug trades.

Falcon