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U.S. Plans Targeted Draft for Computer Personnel
waytoomuchcoffee writes "The US Selective Service System is drawing up plans for a 'special skills draft'. There is already a system in place to draft health care personnel, and this system would be expanded in order to 'rapidly register and draft' computer specialists."
Type 1 diabetes was never this handy! They don't want me anywhere near the military.
to move to canada =\
Just say you don't know how to use Microsoft products.
'rapidly register and draft' computer specialists
Better go out and start writing my e-mail with Outlook Express! That will immediately prove I am not a computer specialist
If they pay more than the paltry salary I'm making now, then draft me up!
'When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.' -HST
I thought they were outsourcing these things :)
Next up: Outsourcing missile control to China...
I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
you dont know how to close I tags either!
...how do they determine who has "computer skills"? And is this really feasible? How will they make someone work for them? How will they even know if a computer programmer is a computer programmer? Do they have some kind of national database of them? This isn't anything like normal conscription, and sounds like a dodgy idea to me.
If they're drafting you for 'special skills' you're pretty unlikely to get stuck out someplace where you have a high chance of catching a bullet (or some high explosive.) This is probably far less true in the case of people with language skills, however.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The present operation of the US Selective Service is more or less trivial because the draft system not active, and it takes an Act of Congress in order to activate it. However, an Act of Congress can also totally rewrite the rules,
The draft in its present form is also very unconstitutional because it discrimates between men and women. In this day and age, that makes it a political untouchable. To require women to register will spark protests, but to not require them to do so would lead to court injunctions halting the draft process.
Congresspeople also have learned something from the Vietnam war. If a war is so unpopular that we are out of "weekend warrior" reserves and we can't convince people to join on their own, as a politician you should be voting to force a withdrawl rather allow the war to continue. To be depleted to the point that a draft is needed in modern times is a sign that we've already lost and just can't admit it.
The only people in Congress who called for a draft during recent years have been those who oppose the president's military plans. By rolling out a draft, or even raising the possiblity of a draft, a war effort suddenly becomes less popular.
Bottom line... the Selective Service exists only as a tool to be used in a doomsday situation, just like all of the city fallout shelters that were built in the USA during the cold war to be prepared for a nuclear bomb that never came. I'd consider anything new we hear from the Selective Service to be a rarely-used bureaucracy trying to justify its existance because in tight budgets, cutting the Selective Service's staff is always a low-pain cut.
It's about a MILITARY DRAFT. One of the exemptions from draft is type 1 diabetes.
If they're this desperate for workers, is there desperation reflected in wage scales, benefits, etc?
What's a guy make with a freshly-minted bachellaureate in computer science make, working for the military? Where do most of them end up, both in geographical and task-related terms? How much control over where they put you does a new officer have?
Oh, great. This is going to be worse than the ASFAB test I took in my first undergraduate year. Before my eyes lost their 20/17 rating, I planned to fly for the Marine Corps, but I had dudes from a number of government agencies aside from the armed services calling my apartment and dropping by both home and work.
So, it is stuff like this that is going to make anonymity much more important than it is now. The problem of course is that unless you are completely disenfranchised from society your academic records are known, any published writing you have is known, your credit rating is known (believe it or not, certain government agencies look very carefully at your credit rating when recruiting you), and "virtual" persona are relatively easy to correlate with specific persons (all of you anonymous cowards take note). And all you folks that think: "Well, my Ph.D. or M.D. is going to keep me out of the draft", take note. If you are under the age of 45, we are prime candidates.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
This reminds me that I need to vote and participate in the democratic process.
I am going into a computer engineering major at UMBC. I was approached by recruiters, and they wanted me to do ROTC. I didn't want to, because if I was going to a good college, I wasn't going to negate the benefits by being stuck in the military for 5 years afterwards. Now again, this could potentially ruin my plans for after school. I will have to vote for a candidate who will try to keep us out of any major wars that would require a draft.
Disclaimer: I am from a military family, I have nothing against the military, but I personnally don't want to join.
Can't wait to design Access databases for the government. Just hope there isn't too much data, else my listboxes might be hard to scroll.
Will they be outsourcing this draft to india as well?
This has been going on in Israel for decades. As a result, Isreal has produced some of the best computer programmer's in the world. Most of the developers end up in VERY high paying jobs once they are released from military duty.
Of course, if you don't like the draft, you could always migrate to India India.
Nothing to see here
And what exactly is with the idea of giving something back to the country that makes your way of life possible? Pretty damn typical of Slashdotters - demand everything, give nothing, and complain about it.
change it to an MCSE. They should leave me alone then.
Why not just offer large enlistment bonuses and perhaps raise the age limits? I'll bet there are a lot of 40-something geeks who'd be willing to sign up. It would also be a lot easier politically than restarting the draft, and probably get better results: volunteers tend to do better work than draftees.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
note to kids at home- don't post on slashdot while you are on the phone
(sorry)
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
This doesn't make too much sense to me.
In the past 10 years, computer specialists in the military were offered large retention bonuses to stay in the military and reenlist. Now those bonuses aren't to be seen. I know from experience.
So why isn't the military trying harder to retain these already military trained computer specialists but supposedly drawing up a draft? Something doesn't jive here.
This guy is way out there
...i will not use my computing/programming skills to help the US subvert anyone.
At the risk of sounding unpatriotic **gasp**, they can take this, shove it and come find me in Canada.
*sigh* Mod me down for speaking ill of the US Gov if you like, they are your points.
there are twin bills in the house and senate in order to conscript for active duty, rerserve military, and homeland security civilian jobs. Male and female. 18-26. Manidtory 2 years.
I forgot the bill numbers. My little sister did a paper on it for her highschool government class. I'll stake my life and reputation that it's true, though. The bills have been in the works since early in 2003 and the schedual is to bring them into effect in 2005.
Remember that while each service has basic training, every Marine has a second mo as a rifleman. Semper Fi!
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
There is no Constitutional guarantee of equal rights for men and woman. The ERA didn't pass. There are still acceptable areas where men and women are different and may be treated differently. Women and men still go to seperate prisons, for example.
Microsoft will be a safe haven for people wanting to dodge the draft.
Only an administration as inept as the current one would be so ignorant as to choose Microsoft employees for this endeavor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
it just says 'just in case'. Frankly I'm suprised they didn't have this in place since the 80s.
They could always draft those skript kiddies, who want to show off their leet skilzs
They are likely even the right age.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
My friends and I (all mono-lingual CS degree holders) have all speculated about joining the military since graduation, but it just doesn't have much of a draw these days.
/. that all the interesting stuff in the military has been outsourced a decade ago, so what exactly is it that we'd be doing there? They should be competing with MBA programs, not private sector jobs, because it sounds like there isn't that much hands-on work to be done.
:)
All the ads are about learning basic skills and putting yourself through college -- what about officer recruiting? Don't they realise they're better off getting people who already have the skills?
And I get the distinct impression reading
Of course I'm talking about the Canadian military here. I imagine a draft would be pretty much required after watching how the US military has been using the cannon fodder they had so far.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Drop and give me twenty shell scripts!
If the military want to get a bunch of computer specialists, they can just hire them. Drafts are usually only used to acquire cannon fodder because the people who get drafted are often the unrepresented class. It hardly seams fair to pay one CS student's way thought college with ROTC, and then hijack another grad's career without proper compensation.
Don't spill my secret plan to the world!
No worries about slashdotters getting drafted. We'd still have to pass the physical ...
The US Military has huge books on procedure that essentially amount to: What to do if...
Everything from revolt in the US to if a toilet is backed up in the Officers' quarters.
This is an a suprisingly astute forward thinking move to plan for the possible needs of the Military in the future. But only as far as the technical skills go.
I graduated with a major in slavic language arts five months after 9/11. I wanted to apply with the CIA, but all they wanted were Turkic language skills. (The (Insert Previous Soviet Republic Here)-stan countries were the hot spot for US intell at the time.
Your creation grants you the freedom. The government's power comes from the people. The people make the government's way of life possible. How can you 'give' when said 'giving' is legislated and mandatory. You can't be free if you are legislated slaves to the state. The draft destroys your ability to 'give' to the state. That's called volunteering. A true form of giving.
The US Selective Service System is drawing up plans for a 'special skills draft'.
Would this include women?
Years ago in high school, a female friend once angrily declared the draft "sucked". I looked her straight in the face and said "What do you care?" "Huh?" "You' can't be drafted, only men can be." This was apparently a major revelation, and shockingly, the draft was forgotten about almost immediately.
Main theories I've heard are that a)"our nation's daughters" coming home in body bags during a war would be political suicide, and b)"women aren't as [strong/smart/whatever] as men". Oh, then there's c)"women would use their feminine wiles to distract the men busy fighting!"
Ever notice how feminists just really aren't torn up about any of that, even though most of it is deeply sexist? Also notice how Jessica Lynch was supposedly(according to the Army) beaten, raped, tortured, etc- when all evidence(and her own comments, before she developed permanent amnesia of events) point to all her injuries coming from the car accident she was in, and that Iraqi doctors took exemplary care of her? It's like the Army was saying "look, this is why you don't want women in the military! They're brave but helpless, and can get RAPED! Isn't she cute? She could be YOUR daughter!"
Please help metamoderate.
"Talking to the manpower folks at the Department of Defense and others, what came up was that nobody foresees a need for a large conventional draft such as we had in Vietnam," Flahavan said. "But they thought that if we have any kind of a draft, it will probably be a special skills draft."
The Selective Service, as it exists now, will never be called upon again according to experts. Therefore, it risks being totally deleted from the budget. Only if they can sell Congress on a modified plan do the bureaucrats keep their jobs, so of course the bureaucrats have written a modifed plan and are trying to sell it.
However, Congress doesn't seem to be buying.
...for all those jokes we made about him on Slashdot!
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
Well, I always suspected it. I am a member of the US Naval Reserve and about two years ago, the NAVRES asked all of it's members to fill out a "skills profile". This profile would be used to solicit qualified members and ask them to volunteer to fill temporary billets as they arose. The program was presented as a way to find the best service member for the task and to offer them the oppurtunity to take orders for that job. A lot of the billets that open up are from 6 weeks to 9 months.
I was always dubious of doing this, becuase if there were ever a "crisis" and they REALLY needed someone with my skills, I foresaw the "volunteer oppurtunity" becoming an "involuntary recall to active duty" in a heartbeat.
I doubt this decision is directly related, but now they have a massive database of skills that they can search through and draft from first.
Veritas patesco per quaestio questio. Truth is revealed through questions.
I only use and operate free software. I could not in good conscious work with proprietary commercial solutions because of the very real harm they do to others. Would I have to qualify for consentious objector status?
Since we're sending so much IT to India let's draft the Indians to do compulsory IT....Like my momma always told me, everything has its responsibilities.
Yehaa! A job, with the government to boot. It can't be outsourced either! Is this how dubya plans on resolving mass unemployment in the tech sector?
Isn't that a wider age gap then allowed for the general draft?
What is next, just draft the entire country, for their entire life? Shades of Orwell...
Not that I'm against defending my country. I just don't agree with drafting/serving for 'police actions', which is the most common use of personnel overseas.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
What a waste of valuable battlefield skill that can only be obtained by digitally blowing up peoples guts!!
Instead of moving into a combat zone, you could take the advice of last week's Slashdot article and move to India to work! :)
Agile Artisans
skilled officers are not cannon fodder. They want the unwashed masses that are otherwise useless drains on society in order to eliminate the problem by killing them off.
Besides, if you join the military with a college degree, they automagically put you in OCS (or so i have heard), or at least as a relativly well off NCO. I have no military experience myself. I had a cousin in Vietnam, grand parents in the Army and Navy in WW2, and an uncle who sucked so bad they sent him to Korea 3 times to get him out of the way, so don't quote me as an authority.
How did the military manage to get such a bad reputation in the private sector? If they played their cards right, those 5 years after college should look like an MBA or Professional Project Manager on your resume, but instead they look about as good as 5 years at McDonalds. Remember: staff officer schools in Europe invented the very style of education (plus much of the content) that is being taught in business schools today, and yet look how far they have fallen.
If the military was seen as providing something to their employees, they wouldn't have a recruiting problem.
Father Mulcahy: He was drafted.
Yeah, right.
But how do they determine who has "computer skills"?
Doesn't matter. They never put you to work in your specialty anyhow.
Or do it nearly so - like the expert electronics guy they assigned to dig (by hand) trenches to drive the radar trucks into so only the antenna was above ground, back in WW II.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The US military has a don't-ask-don't-tell policy about homosexuality, right? So if you've outed yourself as a civilian, doesn't that prevent them from drafting you?
If those are there excuses for women, what are their excuses for keeping gays out of the military? Will they be distracted by their comrades' wiles? Are they worried about the Muslim enemies raping them?
Crazy country you guys got down there...
For all those GNOME using computer professionals out there...
OK, so where do I send my resume?
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
What about if your freaking 100 pounds overweight? They can't take ya if you can't do a pull up!
Now, if they want to draft me into a Quake-playing brigade, I'm all for it, but RL guns? Forget it.
You are not the customer.
Just seems to me that more and more of modern day warfare will take place in network/computer form. Not to say that traditional warfare will be done away with, that would be ridiculous.
Amateur radio operators were an important source of technically skilled recruits during World War II. Computer hackers could fill a similar role in future conflicts. Not so much for their civilian skills, but for a pool of people with demonstrated intelligence and aptitude for technical jobs.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
There is a 'fat boys' program in all branches of the military. They force you to do the two things that most dieters can't (they typically only do one): excercise -and- reduce calorie intake.
Picture waking up at 4 every morning to "I'm gonna make you strong!".
Why don't they, like, have a special draft for lawyers? Why pick on us techies? Okay, sure they won't be much use in battle, but still.. wouldn't everyone like to see the fellas at SCO trying to put a restraining order on an Iraqi guerilla army?
I wonder how they will be able to know if we are indeed experts in our field? Will they draft only the pioneers of our field? Only those names that have published books?
Perhaps they'll surf Monster.com for resumes.
(believe it or not, certain government agencies look very carefully at your credit rating when recruiting you
They most certainly do. They can get all the "He's such a good boy" answers from neighbors/family, but an employer can't vouch for a persons honesty based on anything other than experience. They can, however, check your credit history. If, for instance, you had a lean on your property, or possessed a significant ammount of debt, you would be an attractive target for foreign intel recruiters, if you were working on anything sensitive.
Banks don't like to hire tellers who NSF their checking accounts either. They're more likely to dip in the till.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
I wonder how 'quick' a call up of drafted computer specialist could be. To touch a government computer system anywhere requires at minimum a SECRET clearance. Most positions (like those that would probably be filled by drafted specialist) would most likely need TOP SECRET /TS SCI clearances at minimum.
:)
These investigations take from 1 to 3 years and in this case would be largely involuntary.
Just drink underage or smoke some pot in front of the people that you plan to reference on your clearance paper work.
I think that in 97 or 98 I read that there was a possibility that, if the government couldn't get their act together, they would draft programmers to get them ready to go.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
Which is the problem with this "jobless recovery".
Too many people don't have jobs. People without jobs are NOT paying taxes. People without jobs ARE taking money in the form of unemployment benefits. If someone loses a job, that person goes from a net gain for the system to a net loss for the system.
Bush's theory is that if you give lots of money to rich people, then they'll hire more people and there will be a enough additional people paying taxes to offset the loss of the tax cut.
Except that the people being hired are NOT US citizens in the US. So the government is taking in less money because of the tax cuts and the jobs are going to India so the US citizens aren't being hired so they can't pay into the system to offset the original tax cut.
Now, this means BIGGER profits for the corporations which mean BIGGER profits for the execs of those companies.
But rich people do NOT spend money the same way the average person does. One person buying $500,000 boat is NOT the same as 25 people buying $20,000 cars.
So, tax cuts and increased profits actually yielded ZERO new jobs last month.
There seems to be a very basic flaw in your logic. Your process does not accurately predict events.
This is America, you'd think by now we'd be fighting with robot armies and other new-age weaponry.
Besides, I'd rather put effort into improving infrastructure than destroying it. Give every Iraq cable TV and start a bunch of McDonalds and they'll be too lazy and fat like us Americans to give a shit about their government.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
it's the can of worms that gets opened up. Just raising of discrimination the issue is enough to scare off most congressmen. It's like Social Security; it's one of those things you can't fix without pissing off some large group of people. Congressmen are in the business of getting elected, they're not leaders. So, yes, in the end you're not likely to see women drafted, but in the meantime no one wants to no one wants to deal with the the politcal fallout when the issue comes up.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Do you really want draftees running your IT/IS? Christ, there is enough documentation about the effectiveness of conscript vs volunteer troops out there, which pretty much make it clear that the ones who volunteer are the ones you want to have "doing stuff". A lot of that material refers to infantry (also known as the "shoot back or die" department of the armed forces) but I'm sure there is an equally significant ton of documentation about support troops.
Can you imagine the complete and utter lack of motivation of drafted rear echelon computer guys?
Besides the fact that most geeks tend not to be the most motivated people when it comes to things that are forced on them, I'd venture to guess that 50%(conservative? I think so) would be disqualified outright, for either being a bit too hefty or for other medical reasons.
Also, geeks are pretty bright and shall we say rather "inventive" when it comes to thinking up excuses (i.e. hemorrhoids) and getting doctor's notes etc.
And, of course, those not bright enough to avoid the draft are not the ones you want running your IT, but that is getting back to the whole conscript thing.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
"Don't need you, don't want you... if you're not willing to become a slave..."
is that where this was going?
Got news for you. Don't need you, don't want you.
Your failing economy, sagging tech, and ever privacy-encroaching government, says that, yes, you do need computer engineers like myself to stay in this country. Else we'll just have geniuses as yourself posting flames as AC's - yeah, way to help out there, guy.
M&M enterprises contracts with the Germans to have the squadron bomb its own airfield in exchange for taking a load of Egyptian cotton off its hands.
Bleak view of human and corporate nature.
All of you who finished college.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
O deary me, I wonder what would have happened if the USA had not revolted against British rule, because we all know that there are no examples of a north american colony that didn't revolt ;)
For people lacking in sarcasm detection software, I'm talking about Canada.
Actually the army PFT is based on push ups, situps, and a 2 mile run. Pull ups are required for entry into ranger school, but they otherwise aren't a factor. There are however height&weight/body fat requirements.
Yes, my only tool is a hammer. And you're starting to look like a nail.
to further the copyright protections of the Disney Corporation.
Give something back! To a government that stood by and allowed 3000 people to die! My ass! Fuck them.
In case you weren't paying attention, this war isn't for America, this is a war for oil and for big business.
We were lied to. There was no threat from Iraq. There were no WMD's. All lies.
You want me to give something back? After the same government gave me so much, like letting Ken Lay crash the economy, and letting him go scotfree. Or importing tens of thousands of foreign workers to undercut our wages. Or exporting hundreds of thousands of jobs overseas.
Or how about my fine healthcare? Or you must be talking about our precious freedoms?
Please, this country didn't give me shit. You can't exercise your right to protest without some fascist like Miami's Timoney calling you an "anarchist" and shooting you in the head with lead filled beanbags.
This country is worthless to me. All the good ole USofA ever did to me was tax the fuck out of my paychecks when I did good, and give me the shaft when I did bad.
My state government and local government did give me quite a lot - a good public education, and a good community college - but no thanks to the fed.
Wake up. You were programmed to say, like an Pavlov's dog, "America is the best country in the world", and "America is a free country".
Really, please, wake the fuck up. Don't you see what's really going on? We have a fucking moron in office who got there by manipulating the republican primary (which he was losing to McCain) and then by blatantly cheating in Florida. He made sure his brother Jeb kept black people from voting to make sure he won the election.
Then, 9 months later, after the longest vacation in Presidential history, 9/11 happens. Where was our military that fine morning? Where are the squadrons of F-16s that are supposed to keep us safe?
Where? THEY WERE ORDERED TO STAND DOWN.
Everyone would know it if our imperialist leader wouldn't be such a coward and actually testify in front of the 9/11 commission.
This is a country where democracy was overthrown by the top 1%. They own the politicans, they own the voting mechanism and they own the media. They tell you what to think and what to say.
I've given enough to this country. I vote and I pay taxes. I see my taxes go to corporate welfare and my votes go nowhere, because they don't count.
I saw my job dissappear and unemployment skyrocketing. There is no assistance for us, but there is plenty of money to bail out American Airlines. And now, you're telling me I should give something back?
I'll give them what they gave me. I'll give Bush a one-way ticket to Crawford Texas. I'll give them crushing bills for things people in other countries take for granted - like health care and education.
The middle class have been stepped on long enough. They have devastated the manufacturing industry, and now the information industry. They short change their middle class investors, have congress grant them monopoly powers by abusing copyrights and patents, and then use these new laws to invade our homes with bullshit subpeonas because we want to exercise fair use of media. They stand by while companies like lil' Dick Cheney's Halliburton does business with Iraq, Iran and Libya, and then give them huge contracts to rip us off in Iraq.
They demoralized and ruined the military by abusing the Guard and Reserves. Our vets get the shaft at VA hospitals and the GI Bill is a joke, you can't pay for college with what they give you.
Now, because they can't get any more dupes to go fight for oil, they want to draft me? Fuck that noise. Let the chickenhawks go and fight. Or better yet, why don't we do the smart thing with the middle east? Develop clean, renewable alternative energy so we can tell those SOBs what to go do with themselves.
Or, we can take your advice and get our asses shot off so Halliburton can charge $40 for a gallon of gas, in the place where's its made.
I hear they've been shuffled to Iran now...
And you don't know how you use the shift or apostrophe keys!
c++;
Perhaps they wouldn't have such a shortage of enlisted and non-commissioned technical workers if it wasn't so freakin' hard to figure out how to find and apply for the jobs! Have you ever tried to decipher a federal job posting? Ack. They never list specific skills they are looking for. I wonder if there are any recruiters that specialize in placing technical workers in federal positions? I would love the chance to work for my country using the skills that I've developed over the past 12 years, and I hear that the pension and benefits are pretty good too!
"Who hasn't slipped into the break room for a quick nibble on a love Newton before?" - Mr. Peterman.
Excellent! Do it! Anything that tosses even a little whiff of reality toward the Tweedledee and Tweedledum parties gets my support (in spirit, of course).
Seriously, if/when you do find the citation, post it here - it would make a good read. Or, here's another idea. Why don't we citizens try to skim over ALL the bills filed each year. It would be an eye opener.
"Someone" should index all this crap and make it publically available (REALLY available, with a GOOD search engine).
On my ship we called them the "Dancing Bears". If you failed mandatory PT, you would have to get up on the flight deck an hour before everyone else to excersise. There were a few E-6 and below, but the majority were lardass NCOs that spent most of their time in the Chief's Mess.
At least then I would HAVE a job
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
I recommend staying in school and learning basic spelling before attempting anything. I knew Dan Quayle, and you are no Dan Quayle.
...sorry to break it to you, but suppose this draft ends is indeed called for, the computer specialists are going to get rather rare (again).
:)
Thus, other people will have to take their place. Compare it to woman in WO-II working at armories, because all the men were enlisted.
I guess in a way that is good for people who sit on the bench right now, for they will have a (normal) job again
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
One word: India.
JUST KIDDING!!!!!
[the lameness filter rears its ugly head - YET AGAIN - forcing me to type lower-case nonsense to get around the fact that yes, indeed, I am writing in all caps to simulate yelling.]
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
The "bachelor's degree" = "officer" assertion hasn't been true since the seventies. Of the eight people I went through basic and AIT with, five had their B.S., in engineering, physics, physical therapy, and english (2). None of us were officers.
Three did not have their B.S. The individuals without degrees tended to make a little less money from the beginning of their service, but time in service requirements are hard to get a waiver for, and so they tended to be promoted at the same time, or a little later, than those with a degree.
Slashdot is my Mercer Box.
I don't know how much demand for physicians where would be in a draft. The Army, Navy, and Air Force all have scholarship programs for people in med school. They pay the full tuition cost, books, fees, and give a stipend for living expenses. Then after you finish your residency you owe X number of years of active service (The number of years depends on how long your residency was). After that, some people leave but a fair number sign on for another tour. Getting into this program is pretty competitive as well, with more applicants than positions every year. So I would think for the most part the branches of the military would be pretty set on the physicians they need.
that a major war is coming and the government knows it - and the reason for drafting computer people? it's because the next one is going to be nuclear and the resulting EM damage to electronics will require specialized skill to repair quickly... Look at Iran hiding stuff, Iraq hiding stuff, India and Pakistan, both militantly anti-US, having nukes, unaccounted for Russian suitcase nukes, North Korean long range nuclear ballistic missiles, China, the Balkans, the slow painful collapse of the world economy... the "perfect storm" for another world war...
Aha! Clever, you just proved that you can't even keep your secret plan secret!
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Time to start making up funny nicknames like "Hawkeye" and "Trapper John" for each other.
OK, so it's a time of national crisis: a few more system failures and the US goes down the pan. You're going to solve this problem by giving Slashdotters root on DoD and FBI computers?
It's a plan, but I can see a few eensy teeny flaws...
-he who laughs last, is a bit slow.
journal
Actually you make a good point.
I never understood why the military sets height/weight limits and requires 6 weeks of physical training (at basic) in order to wire up a network/program a database.
Is completing 20 pushups in 5 minutes really going to help me troubleshoot a network? Will completing the obsticle course in the given time improve my C++ skills? I don't think so.
If the military were to get off this kick and open up their recruiting requirements for high tech fields, I'd enlist tomorrow.
Minne-snow-da: Winter is comming...
just imagine a beowulf cluster of angry, pissed off, offshored slashdotters with automatic weapons...
That thought alone should probably be enough to frighten any of our enemies into submission...
With nuclear weapons proliferated widely among nations at this point in time, it'd be hard to imagine that the world wouldn't go up in a big mushroom cloud. Remember, during WWII the nuke was really, REALLY new. Not so any more.
Anyway, we're going to be making our robot-drone army soon, so we won't even need humans for our plans to conqu^H^H^H^H^Hsave the world!
I'm warning you kids.
/dev/null for 12 hours a day!
If you are drafted and declare yourself to be a "Conscientious Objector", you'll be cleaning out
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Dubya's descended from King Edward I. (And, frankly, I'd prefer Elizabeth II to Dubya any day).
Just when I thought our government couldn't get any scarier...
/. number.
I wonder if changing my resume' to not include my 6 years at SAIC working on DoD healthcare systems would help?
Maybe it's time to write a virus so they won't want me?
20yrs - 44 yrs?! I thought the draft was for 19 year olds! This is really scary stuff.
Now wait a sec...how is it that they can force me to be creative and efficient? How do they think something like this could ever work? Anyone they draft will just make copious subtle errors until they get canned. E.g. "Ooops, I forgot to check authentication when listening on that port...it was only supposed to be commented out during testing."
I guess it's time to re-register to get a higher
"God is dead." - Frederik Nietzsche
A shot at employment!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
there used to be an 'e' at the end of potatoe, and i'll be in my cold, dark grave before I eliminate it.
I don't know how many other slashdotters are like me, but I'm rather happy I did my 4 ('92-'96) years in the US Army Signal Corps already.. I worked as a digital comms network engineer (MOS 31F), and honestly, it is what opened the door for me into the field that I work in now.
Now class, can anyone tell me why there would be such a large, quite push to restaff so quickly? Mark my words, the draft will be back.
Here's my guesses:
1. If something goes really wrong this summer in Iraq or Afghanistan (like the Tet Offensive in Vietnam) then they will quickly draft and deploy before the November elections.
2. If Bush is reelected then the draft will start Jan or Feb 2005, slow for the first few months and then when they are up to speed they'll start pulling large amounts of young men.
3. If Kerry is elected I can't guess what he would do. I don't if there would be a major difference.
Watch how the US Govt handles draft, induction, training and deployment this time. You'll see companies created that go through boot together, post recruit train together, deploy together, what's left of them will get discharged together and the company disbanded. No more singles in, singles out. This is much more like WWII than Korea or Vietnam.
If you are 14 - 20 years old then I'd seriously start making plans on what you'll do. Speaking as someone who toted a 16 for his uncle I'd recommend not going at any cost. We use to say "the only thing worst than cleaning a body bag is being in one". As a parent I would do whatever it took to keep my son away from any unjust and immoral war like that clusterfuck going on in the Mid East.
As Frank Zappa once said: "What they do in Washington is take care of number one and number one ain't you. You ain't even number two."
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
Its a ploy to kill all the known hackers!! They will put us in the front line... rid the US Of possible hackers!! I see right through them!! You will never take me!! NEVER!
But.. Look on the bright side... Our general will be Linus!!!
Just me
For HR.163, go here and type hr 163 into the "Bill Number" field.
my sister jsut walked in as i saw this was posted. Thanks for the foresight.
And my unit spent most of its time in the motor pool, or in the field, digging in the dirt. Not once did I train to perform a mission as a linguist with my unit while I was in uniform, because officers can't lead soldiers who aren't in the field. It doesn't get them promoted, so they uniformly oppose it. Every bit of funding for every linguist mission was cut, and the mandatory eight hours of language maintenance required for all linguists was gradually reduced to no maintenance at all.
The only time I was actually useful was while on TDY.
Any assertion that the military needs people in these specialties is not true. They had them, indeed have them, and I can pick up the phone right now, call the RSDNCO of my former unit, and ask what they will be doing on Monday. I am confident that the answer will be: "motor pool".
This is something that has been brewing since before the Kennedy Report, and it still pisses me off, especially in light of all the back-pedalling from the FBI and military that they "don't have the resources". They did have them. Due to mismanagement and fucked-up priorities (primarily the OER system), they couldn't keep them. My re-enlistment counseling with my commanding officer (whom I respected a great deal) was, "well I can offer you the Army nurse program, or physician's assistant, but unless you want to become an officer, you won't be able to transfer out of your MOS because it's short".
During my time in the military, I think about one in three linguists re-enlisted, always for choice of duty station. I cannot count the number of linguists that disappeared, that training wasted, because they spent four (or more) years doing nothing. If they left the military under good terms, they should have been actively pursued by the FBI or NSA so that training wouldn't have been wasted. But it wasn't a priority until 9/11. Then, all those three-letter agencies suddenly realized that they'd better come up with effective damage control fast, so they settled on: "we don't have the resources."
It's a lie.
Slashdot is my Mercer Box.
Really, if the Indians take all of the programmer work from the USA, I could see getting drafted to do some programming for Uncle Sam.
This is my sig.
Did anyone wonder where the Selective Service would get your skills info from? Last I knew, they had my date of birth, SSN and the address I was at when I was 18. What kind of data mining will they be the beneficiaries of to find out that Joe's an IT geek?
My point here is that the rationale that the US invaded Iraq for humanitarian reasons is demonstorably false. If the US government had cared about the plight of the victims of Hussein's government they wouldn't have given him all the money and technology they did. Since we have established that the US government gave him aid while it was aware of his behavior we can only conclude that there is a non-humanitarian reason for the invasion.
Don't misunderstand, one less evil bastard in the word is a good thing. But the US government continues to persue a policy of giving money and technology to similar evil bastards (the thugs in charge of Uzbekistan, for example). Thus the procolamations of concern for the Iraqi people can only be a rather revoltingly hypocritical smokescreen to try and hide their true motives.
Just *what* the true motives of the US government are I won't pretend to know, but I will say that its quite obvious that their stated motives are not what's really pushing policy. I suspect that the real motives are a mixture of economic desires (oil), military foreward planning (Iraq is centrally located, thus stragetically valuable), and distraction ("don't worry about the economy, there's a war on!"). That's merely what I suspect, but there can be no doubt that humanitarian reasons are not the cause for the war.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
Enough said. :)
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Who do you think is going to build and maintain those very small robots?
But seriously, the problem is that it's cheaper to pay for the college educations of cannon fodder than invest in the R&D to produce technology to lower the bodybags. The Pentagon have done careful cost-benefit analysis and they only spend as much as they need to on protecting US lives. The rest is spent on shock&awe, because that's way cooler.
You can't draft us, we all moved to India. Assholes.
Women are drafted in Israel but they need every warm body they can get. I think they are drafted for a shorter period though.
Women won't be drafted because it would be political suicide to have women coming back in body bags in an undeclared war that half or more of the country disagrees with.
As for the issues of rape, I think there is a lot more to worry about with rape by our own troops than by the enemy. Islamic thinking on rape is pretty strict. Lynch was almost definitely not raped or beaten by her captors, that was just a story that was told to the media to give them something to go on. And I might add that if she weren't a little white girl from Lynchburg no one would give a shit because several black women were captured in Iraq and no one gave two shits about them. They don't have any ghostwritten books out or movie deals. You can't very well make a movie about being treated nicely by the hated enemy can you?
It's obvious that not just the draft, but even enlisting, is a form of slavery, and by all rights ought to be declared unconstitutional. No other job lets you sign a contract whereby you can't quit your job for four years. It's one thing to say you can't walk away in the middle of a firefight, but when you can't even walk away in peacetime, it's just slavery by a different name.
Yet courts have consistently ruled that military necessity trumps the constitution. I figure sooner or later that will change, and I for one will be glad for it, but it won't happen any time soon.
Furthermore, why does everyone think the draft was ok, even necessary, during WW II? Seems to me, if a war is popular, you don't need the draft. It's only unpopular wars that you have to force people to join the army by threat of going to prison. I'd much rather have the threat of soldiers quitting be the main protection against unpopular wars. Get rid of that 4 year slavery signup, get rid of the draft.
(I volunteered for 4 years in the navy, many years ago, had a great time floating around the Pacific, just in case anyone thinks it pertinent.)
Infuriate left and right
Posting AC because I'm telling the truth,
AC
And so you're criticising them because in a few years time, when the bad guys are from Slovakia and Karjakistan, they'll be running around trying to find enough Slavic language speakers, right? I mostly agree although I have to ask: what did you expect them to have you do until then? Translate love letters sent by the Karjakian ambassador?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
2 years of military duty might teach our nations emerging adults a thing or two about self disipline, respect, hard work, and preparedness.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Just imagine the Slashdot editors being drafted.
One can only dream...
This guy is way out there
i'd go in draft or not. A nice accident with my car jack should sort it.
But the thing that I have often though about, if say it was boom time for contractors again and you got drafted onto poor pay, but had big mortgage and loans and stuff, what would happen then? does the govt pick up the bill?
1. Nice try. The 13th Amendment has been interpreted to specifically not include serving on juries or being drafted by the military for over 100 years. These are part of your duties as a citizen. Do a Google search on "13th Amendment" and "military."
2. Leave. Bye. See ya. Good riddance, coward.
the constitution says that congress may raise an army for a period of no more than 2 years. The standing army is evil and unconstitutional. Plus, people don't pay attention if it's not their son/brother/cousin/friend/husband being shipped off to some god forsaken hell hole.
However, I do not believe in the PATRIOT Act or the Homeland Security people. We have a homeland security provision already: It is called the 2nd Amendment. I'll more than gladly join the militia, but i refuse to be forced to check bags at the airport, and i am less than enthused about the idea of going off to war outside of the country. However, I am still against the standing army and for the draft.
It's supposed to just pick the best people for the job, with (heh) no opportunity any more to pull strings to get you off?
That means:
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Is it possible that this is a plot for the government to get cheap programmers without the appearance of the national security risk associated with outsourcing to a foreign country? Will those drafted be placed under the supervision of a "manager" who works for a major contractor?
Or is it a way for the government to phase drafts back in, in a way that most people won't care about?
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
I've got a family and a great job. Matter of fact, I just bought a house. I have no desire to leave these things I've worked for years to gain.
However--as I always say when a discussion of the draft comes up--I also realize that what has enabled me to acquire a family and a house and be able to drive down the street and buy a gallon of milk for $3.00 is the fact that there are people willing to fight for those things.
Yeah, I'm a computer person. I love computers. Computers are putting food on my table and a roof over my head. I don't want to leave if I don't have to.
But if it ever got so bad that I was drafted, well, yeah I'd go. I'd go and fight so that others can have the same things I've been so fortunate to get. Things like freedom and happiness and generally living in a (mostly) free country.
My sentiment is probably not popular in this day and age. But if they tell me to go, I'll go. I'm not making a run for the border.
Myrrh
Put your money where your mouth is and leave, if you're so pissed off. Perhaps there's a country somewhere that won't ask you to do a thing to contribute. Maybe.
I bet you don't vote, either. Nah, that'd be too much like "involuntary servitude," to go to the polls for all of a half an hour once a year, right?
You know, one of the things I love best about this country is that, although you are guaranteed the right to mouth off about how shitty you think the country is, I also have the right to tell you to shut the hell up or leave.
And I am right now.
It really depends on the outfit. Where I'm at in the military, we use various OSes. Windows, Red Hat, Solaris... For the most part, the OSes with out support are shunned for obvious reasons. Most specifically if things really crap out, there's some one to fall back on. On a slight tangent, I do miss the fact that the military contracts everything out and develope very little of their own.
Ok, I can understand this for health care personnel in case of another 9/11 scale attack... but computer specialists?
Is it to help Homeland Security protect us by installing "telescreens" in our houses?
Maybe I'm just being dense... which works in my favor. Thankfully I was dumb enough to go for an arts degree and mess with computers as a hobby instead of a career.
It's easy to laugh when you're beyond the recall age.
I don't know but I've been told, Slashdot read-ers are migh-ty bold! Sound off like you got a pair, ladies!
In case you're interested, the address for donating the John Kerry campaign is:
http://www.johnkerry.com/
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I bet all of you who played the Army's "free game" will be sorry when this happens.
Like my comments? Try my podcast: http://www.baldmove.com
Most of the employers I've worked for wouldn't have a problem hiring an ex-Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, or Army, depending on their rate/MOS. It's mostly Marines who get the reputation of being more dangerous and less useful than ex-cons.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Since when has the draft stopped a war? The only thing the draft ensures is that politically unconnected people are forced to fight and die for causes supported for the politically connected, while their kids get cushy jobs in the Air National Guard, where no one cares if they show up or not.
The draft is slavery. I am a veteran, and I proudly volunteered. But if they were to show up claiming they had a right to my life and time - I'd go to jail first.
" And how, exactly, do they "force" you to excercise?"
You're a guy with no right and a sadistic drill sargeant whose job it is to make you lose those 100 pounds.
I suspect you wouldn't go to prison; you would be compelled to lose those pounds or die trying. Remember, the military has guns, they will smack you around, they will break you down and remold you.
And if you think you'll outsmart them, keep in mind that today's military training is a result of 1000's of years of human experimentation on how to make good soldiers.
You are a young boy who hasn't been able to wipe your ass for 20 years. I suspect thousands of years of experience gives them an edge in ways you're not capable of.
Look sonny, just lose the weight. It will be easier now than with a drill sargeant beating you down.
I guess it's a good thing I have virtually no actual IT work experience. If they ever get so desperate that tech support personnel are in high demand, they deserve me.
-----------------------
You are what you think.
You didn't say a word about hating the government. You said you hated this country. There's a fine but critical distinction.
I have no love for President Bush and a lot of his staff's policies and antics either. However, I do love my country.
And, uh, I have no intention of leaving. I like it here. Things need a little tweaking now and then, but overall it's a great place.
Sure beats a lot of the alternatives.
Don't you think "corrupt government" is all but redundant?
I defy you to give me an example of any government, anywhere, at any time, that did not have at least *some* corruption.
Why not get into politics? Try to change things from the ground up? You sound like someone who could make a difference, if only you can stay pissed off for long enough.
Exactly how will they get at all those Indian programmers?
Did you file this year's taxes? Don't feed me this loyalty shit. I'm loyal up to the minute when I'm forced to be loyal.
The draft isn't allowed for that. The US doesn't do normal military conscription where everyone goes into military service for a time. That is falling out of practice most everywhere. France did away with conscription around 2000, Germany is working on getting rid of it as well. Countries are facing the fact that in modren wars, you need technology to win and conscripts aren't the ones you want to put in a jet.
The US doesn't have conscription, except in times of emergency, eg the draft. Congress has to activate it and there has to be a reason, not just because we need a bigger military.
This is a contingency plan. It's what our miliraty planners do. I mean let's say that we got into a war with someone like China. Now I know realisticaly it would probably go nuclear, but suppose it didn't (planning requires thinking for all endpoints). Well we are going to need more people than our military has to fight and win, so we'll need a draft.
However with our military as it is now, we'll need people with special technical skills. Thing is the draft was mostly setup to just get people in, give them basic training, and then send them out as infantry. This is not what is now needed. We need to identify technical people, put them on a technical fast track, and get them into technical support positions.
Is this really going to happen? Almost certianly not. However, having plans in place is how you prepare for the unexpected. Our military planners do this all the time with all sorts of long-shot scenarios. The idea being, in the highly unlikely, but potentially catastrophic, occurance of one of those scenarios, we aren't caught unprepaired. We have a plan, a system, and can start fighting back.
In a war just HAVING a plan is the most important thing. It might not be the best plan, but just about any plan is better than no plan.
20yrs - 44 yrs?! I thought the draft was for 19 year olds! This is really scary stuff.
Welcome to the exciting world of being a trained professional. There's no such thing as a 19 year old with 10 years industry experience (1337 hax0ring does not count).
Computer experts are not the only ones with a longer than average draft eligibility. Doctors can be drafted until they are 35 (assuming there is a draft at all).
-- I Am Not A Terrorist.
I wonder who read them out to him. And explained them.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Man, nothing to nitpick about in your post. And you're an AC.
Actually, they'll do everything short of aggrivated assault. They certainly won't shoot you. They might pull out a gun with blanks in it to scare you into submission, but you won't be shot full of holes if you fail.
My words are backed with NUCLEAR WEAPONS!
Thanks to the economic benefits of imperial war, you can soon return to the jobs that major US corporations regrettably had to ship overseas to boost their CEOs' and shareholders' profits. Those profits simply were not high enough after a decade of record earnings! Now that our economy is unable to provide jobs, we will create jobs by fighting for, er, freedom!
Outsourcing was a painful lesson; we understand. But with our exciting new insourcing, you'll be right back doing what you're used to - writing software, patching Microsoft technology, and answering basic user questions (but politely this time, or we'll have to mercilessly beat you, ha ha!). Heck, we'll even throw in room and board. Can Starbucks give you that?
Now, you're asking: O Mighty and Glorious Leader Bush, what do I have to do to make myself more deserving? At ease, citizen. Remember: the Enemy is everywhere, and he has no respect for frequent backups or the single-OS monopoly that is the foundation of our free society. Keep your shoes shined and your trap shut, and we'll be in touch when the time comes to fight for the CEOs!
What the article doesn't mention is that they'll all come from India.
paintball
...to quit wearing women's clothing.
I'm updating my resume to highlight my fast-food skills right now.
paintball
There are 4 or 5 comments I wanted to drop these links into, I'll just stick them out here.
"We see the direct link between registration, the draft, and aggressive war."
"Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft"
"Help Oppose Hollins and Rangel's Draft!"
No I am not a Liberitarian, but they have some interesting points on this issue. I remember being freaked out about registering for the "SS" when I was 18. -Scared of being forced to fight somebody elses war if I did... and horrified of the things they said would happen if I did not (not qualifying for school loans being one of them).
If there's one place on the planet there aren't any Americans in tents maintaining tanks, it's Syria.
paintball
The AF is just beginning to downsize some 16,000 AF jobs. Why, then, would they implement a draft? The whole notion seems so unlinkely as to be incredulous! Here's a good link... and yes, I am in the AF. However being an intel geek, I'm not elegible for the downsizing.
I get the feeling this'll never get read, but really, people need to check their facts before they start crying "wolf!!"
-jokerghost
Note that one of the areas where they want talent is linguists (and specifically arabic speakers).
Remember that just prior to the current conflict, all the openly gay arabic speakers in the military were tossed out. A CNN story on the matter
I was a 31K, as you can see from my username.
Best Slashdot Co
I'm a Mac and sometimes Linux evangelist. Will that get me out?
What?
And one thing Iraq and 9/11 have shown is that there are NO "safe rear area jobs".
Best Slashdot Co
1) get drafted
2) crack a windoze box and make yourself a colonel.
3) assign yourself to Fiji.
4) wait for the war to end.
5) crack another windoze box and sign yourself up for twenty or thirty colonel's pensions.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I'm an Ada programmer; I'm the last person they'll want!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
As long as *EVERYBODY* has to do it. It's like that in most countries - you have to do a year or two of three of service, whether it be in the military or civilian sector (i.e. help at hospitals or some such). It builds character. It makes the world a better place. And if everybody has to do it, it doesn't put certain people who don't have to do it at an advantage, and it doesn't penalize people for getting the skills to make them valuable.
Drafting people with computer skills alone is stupid. You may be able to do it for a year or two, but once you start, nobody is going to go into the computer sector anymore because they don't want to be drafted, so you'll just have a country which suddenly isn't producing any new programmers. Yeah, that's a brilliant long-term strategy.
paintball
Well, draftees ran them in previous wars, so what's the difference? You could make the same argument about draftees turning the keys together in the missile silos or performing open heart surgery. It's just how it works.
Maybe the opposite argument is more compelling: do you really want a bunch of volunteers who all think this is a really good idea running your operations? Isn't that like have a team trainer who has money on the game evaluating whether a player's health and career are at risk by going back in? Jimmy Carter thought it dubious; and that's why he (probably the most anti-war president in decades) reinstituted draft registration
I'd rather have press-ganged specialists who are experts and bring a professional set of ethics than a bunch of gung-hos who got their jobs because of a bureaucratic assignment after basic.
Because that's exactly what I said: "degree" != "officer".
k? thx. bye.
Slashdot is my Mercer Box.
I'd just like to say that people get the government they deserve (snicker, snicker, snicker).
Not currently gay, but in the grand scheme of things I am MORE afraid of bullets than I am afraid of other men's hairy asses. Plus with the way television is going it could be a nice career move.
Get your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape
If you're too fat, at some level I'm sure the military won't bother with you.
But is 100 pounds overweight enough? Maybe you should start eating harder, add on one or two hundred pounds.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
Wow, I guess marijuana does save lives.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
im sick of working $9/hr jobs with no job security and little to no benifits.. i'd join the air force in a heart beat, but i'd never pass their entry requirements..
now if on the other hand they drafted me.. hello 45k(+)/year job + full benefits + affordable housing + job security + pension + way more stuff than my shitty private sector jobs...
The PNAC agenda + our current military status = the draft.
Its like the lottery, except when you win you lose. Don't like it? Kick out Bush and his PNAC buddies.
"All those whose parents were not born in the US and speak Arabic, Kurdish, Pashtu, Dari, Persian and Turkic please step forward. We have a nice station for you call 'Port Chicago'."
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
Hey, it one way to get work with all of the offshoring.
Steve
very interesting move. while what did happen to the world trade center was pretty bad, for now it's mainly the volunteer us forces that went into "war" against terrorism. but thinking about a draft even just for specialized people means a lot for the civilian life out there. i wonder how i would react if my own country (france) would go back to draft (we're only out of it since a few years no more). having a draft in a country fighting for its way of life is, i feel, a really different situation than the current one in the US. the main reason for which it has been stopped in france is most people think a professional army like the US one would give better results than trying to spend time on people to see them leave after 1 or 2 monthes once they're ready to serve (it takes near a year just to get a base grunt). and a lot of young people in france could avoid it using various methods so only the not very rich and influent ones would have to serve for 10 monthes so it wasn't very democratic :/
"THIS IS MY DISTRO. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My distro is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I master 'Vice City'."
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
...except that pretty much everything you wrote in your post is wrong. You might try and look up *where* Hussein got his chemical weapons, for one thing (not from the US, but from European countries), and among military suppliers, the US comes in way down the list (at about 1/30 of what the Soviet Union sold Iraq in the same time period, for example).
While I don't like any of those things, I don't think fighting for a world dominated by a programmer elite where any end-user or HCI person who expresses grievances with the usability of the FOSS software forced upon them is covertly "silenced" is hardly an improvement.
.doc compatibility.
If and when someone manages to silence ESR, come tell me, because I will be truly amazed.
As for "forced upon them"...there are very few products, open or closed, that I consider "forced upon me". Perhaps Office, if I do a job that requires absolutely perfect
If you're uncomfortable with the state of FOSS usability, let me breathe a bit of reality into this thread. I started using Linux about five years ago, with Red Hat Linux 5.2. At that point in time, we didn't have GTK apps. We didn't have GNOME. We didn't have KDE or Qt apps. We had systems that were wildly insecure out-of-box, a crabby XFree86 configuration system that frequently required manual editing of the config file. We didn't have little "themes" that you could activate by just downloading them from "themes.org" and choosing them in a menu -- you wanted to customize your environent, you sat your butt down and spent a couple weeks reading through AfterStep documentation and figured out what config file entries were outdated or didn't work -- and little niceties like a window "close" button that you could move the mouse off of to cancel a close didn't exist. We didn't get a color prompt -- you wanted one, you sat down with the bash man page and started reading. We didn't get color ls output without a lot of poking around. Nautilus didn't exist, nor did Konqueror -- you wanted an easy-to-use filebrowser, you used mc and appreciated it. An out-of-box Red Hat system didn't start up to XFree86 -- it gave you a blinking text prompt, and if you knew the magic command "startx", you could get a graphical environment. We didn't have any of those "Windows-like" editors like gedit -- you used nedit, and if you didn't like it, that was tough, because that was all there was. Evolution wasn't around -- you used pine or maybe Netscape Communicator. You remember what Athena looked like? The desktop looked pretty much like the black-and-white Athena widget set with a smattering of Tk and the AfterStep menus. You learned config files and rc files and you learned your system. People didn't even dream of antialiased fonts or of plug-n-play USB configuration. OpenOffice wasn't around, nor was Abiword, nor was gnumeric, and Microsoft Office compatibility was just a glint in someone's eye. The really "idiot-proof" stuff was some TCL scripts hacked up (like printtool and Control Panel) that let you configure things from a GUI instead of learning the format of various config files to make the slightest change. Oh, and that was the *easy* distribution -- the real Linux nuts used Slackware.
That was only five years ago. Five.
That was about the same time that Microsoft was getting ready to release Windows 2000 and Windows ME. The standard on the way out was NT4 and Windows 98. I ask you to compare NT4/Windows 98 with the current Windows XP and then compare the Linux desktop of five years ago to the Linux of today. Can you honestly say that Linux usability has been "ignored"? I don't think that I could straight-facedly say that *Windows* usability has been improving anywhere nearly as quickly as Linux usability.
It's easy to underappreciate how incredibly rapidly FOSS usability has improved.
May we never see th
2 years of military duty might teach our nations emerging adults a thing or two about self disipline, respect, hard work, and preparedness.
That's quite a tradeoff for their independance, self-reliance, creativity and personal freedom.
Call for support because your tank's weapons control computer crashed and get routed to tech support in the country you're invading. Oh, the irony...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I believe there have been numerous cases where some lawyer tried to argue that bad work contracts were voluntary servitude and therefore legal, and they were thrown out on their ear. Voluntary != forever. You can't sign away your rights in any contract. Even lesser rights cannot be signed away in, for instance, rental agreements.
Infuriate left and right
Thank you for stating the case so much better than I :-)
Infuriate left and right
The simple fact remains: the US government supplied weapons, technology, and money, to Iraq during a period when it was known that Saddam Hussain was engaging in murder, rape, torture, etc. Donald Rumsfeld (currently Secretary of Defense) visited Iraq during this period, shook hands with Hussain (known at the time to be a vile dictator), offered help, etc. Whether other countries did worse is irrelivant. The actions of the Regan and Bush I administrations make it pathetically obvious that concern for human rights in Iraq is not the reason for the current war. The actions of the Bush II government in supporting and providing aid to the thugs in charge of Uzbekistan (among other places) demonstrate two things: 1) they haven't learned not to cozy up to dictators yet, and 2) human rights simply aren't a concern for them. This leads directly to the conclusion that there must be a non-human rights motive for the war. Nothing you wrote did anything to disprove this conclusion. Do try again though, I would be interested in anything that could prove my conclusion wrong.
I will also add that during the lead up to the current US/Iraq war several members of the Bush government, including President Bush himself, specificially excluded human rights violations as a justification for war. It is only now, after the fact, that the Bush government is claiming that human rights abuses were among their cuases for war.
I will also mention that this is not a partisin issue. The Clinton administration, and all administrations during the past 50 years, have made it policy to support dictators and surpress democracy. The actions of the US government are directly opposed to the values that make the US a great country. I am curious as to why you want to defend these anti-American people and their policies. Could you explain?
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
"Ah, the old "other people were worse" argument. "
No, it's the "you were wrong, and now you're trying to pretend you said something else" argument.
And I have the right to tell you to fuck off.
BECAUSE this country is so shitty. And because people like you are the ones making it shitty.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I refuse to believe this. I understand that in politics, there is a game to be played, but that does not stop me from wanting to initiate change by working with and through the system.
"The US Selective Service System is drawing up plans for a 'special skills draft'.
Yeah, and they draw up plans for a nuclear strike against the country Bwatswuni too, but that doesn't mean they'll ever see the light of day. Honestly, do we need to relive the Gulf War Draft sensationalistic hype again??
Gulf War Draft 2: IT Hell
This time it's closer to home than ever...
Rated PG-13
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Fight selective service??? We can't even fight who gets to post some of the assnine stories around here :P
You need a FREE iPod Nano
In theory, yes.
:-)
In practice...well, let's not get into another political debate just yet
Twenties Retirement
If things ever get bad enough that we'll NEED to reinstitute the draft then I'm all for it. No one will be drafting me however since I'll have signed up to put bullets in barbarians long before then.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
ow wait a sec...how is it that they can force me to be creative and efficient? How do they think something like this could ever work? Anyone they draft will just make copious subtle errors until they get canned. E.g. "Ooops, I forgot to check authentication when listening on that port...it was only supposed to be commented out during testing."
They're just asking you do to your part for your country. If you don't like it feel free to renounce your citizenship and try and find one elsewhere. There's no need to deliberately sabotage your country's defence force.
PS: I'm not a US Citizen, nor do I live in the US.
Want to make me program with a gun to my head? Yeah, try that and see how far it gets you? I'm a programmer, and an experienced one, and 63 years old and diabetic (among other things), but the clincher is that I'm the most recalcitrant son of a bitch you've ever seen! I can guarantee that no program I write with a gun to my head will ever do anything other than print out obscenities directed at the US Government. So shoot me, Government Mutherfucker!
I suspect that those of us who were booted from our jobs by outsourcing will be prime targets for such a draft. That way, the draft would become an employment program.
On the lighter side, those signal corps guys don't get very close to the front lines. Your chances of being killed as a programmer in Chicago may be higher than a army network admin at the Baghdad airport.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
My understanding is the guys who staff service bands have to be capable of firing a weapon if the shit hits the fan.
Imagine, hand to hand combat with trumpets and trombones, absolutely brutal!!!!!
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
For example, if you let all of your young college students go off and enlist, where exactly are you expecting to get your next generation of officer corp in the event the war is protracted? If you put rifles in the hands of engineers and others who are keeping your industrial machinery (which you need to prosecute the war) running how exactly are you going to continue to be able to fight?
Look at the experience of Britain in WWI. All of their young idealistic college students dropped out and enlisted. When the war dragged on they discovered they'd eaten the seed corn. They'd thrown their best human resources away as grunts on the front lines early in the war.
This is an old lie. Municipal agencies do a pretty damn good job at most of the services they provide.
Municipalities are the institutions of the people. They are the safety pin that picks up the slack that the private sector does not cover. Most of the services provided by government are those that have little profit attached to them (besides monopolistic utilities).
Government does have a role of providing UNIVERSAL services that the private sector has ZERO desire to do. Yes, Fedex would like to deliver the mail, but only to heavily populated areas. There are lots of private schools, but they only want to teach the brightest and richest, and most athletically gifted students.
Finally, government isn't burdened by the need to create a profit. Nor are they run completely by appointed MBAs whose only real purpose is to enrich their supervisor and themselves.
Non-profits are ALWAYS more efficient than profit-seekers because they are populated by people who are more interested in the MISSION than the self enrichment. They HAVE to be. In most cases they would make FAR MORE in the private sector.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
The irony is that anarchy leads to the formation of alpha-military leaders to protect themselves and their group. This leads to rigid top down hierarchies and
Anarchy is simply a DIFFERENT form of order. A more brutal one.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Amendment XIII
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
In World War II, we may well have needed enough soldiers that the free market couldn't provide them, but I can't see a draft in modern times as anything but a dodge for the military to avoid paying market rates for skilled workers by forcing them to work under threat of prison instead. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the draft is slavery, justifiable only under very limited circumstances that we're nowhere near right now---and politicans will ultimately make this decision on expediency rather than genuine need, as they do with everything else.
Let me get this straight...
they're going to draft hackers and put them in charge of military infrastructure.
Wow, that sounds incredibly smart.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
Lets talk about hard facts. Since you have all the answers, I'll ask you the following questions. 1) Why are people in the world trying to kil us? What did we do to make them so angry? 2) Why don't people of the world like Jews and Christians and Muslims? 3) What history do these groups have that could possibly warrant the world to dislike them? Hard facts please, thank you. Vox.
The last time the draft was instituted was not for Vietnam, it was for World War II. But that draft did not go away until after Vietnam. Drafts seem to be much easier to start than to stop. As for the domino theory--it was falsified in the clearest way possible. Its premise was fulfilled (the Hanoi government rules all of Vietnam) and its conclusion failed to occur (our last several presidents, with all their shortcomings, were not communists)
People bomb abortion clinics and kill those doctors. People grab an innocent man who was in a bar in Wyoming, beat him, tie him to a fence and leave him to die. These people are extremists, yet you seem to think that only people committing acts of terror under the guise of Islam are Extremists. I'm not standing up for them, but I'm sick and tired of racism being disguised as patriotism. In addition, I don't mean to insinuate that you are a racist. I just try to nip things like that in the bud whereever I see them. Just my beliefs, not to claim that mine are superiors to yours.
How do they determine who has computer skills?
:-(
My feeling is that they'll probably look for folks with MSCE or some other certifications.
Thankfully, it's a lot tougher to nail us down than health professionals. We don't have to have a MD, RN, or PT after our names.
Yet another reason to avoid certification...
- Murphy's Corollary: - It is impossible to make things foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
If you kill all the geeks, who is going to tell you your printer is simply out of ink, or the batteries are dead in your mouse?
Besides, why draft productive members of society? Go get a couple c130s and fill em up with supermax inmates. at 35000 feet, everyone gets a weapon, a chute, and flying leap out the back end into the sand.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
2 years of military duty might teach our nations emerging adults a thing or two about self disipline, respect, hard work, and preparedness.
Sure! And two years of work at dead end Wal-mart and McDonald's entry level positions will teach our nation's older generations a thing or two about humility, money management (how to live on a lot less), and the importance of groveling to superiors even when you're right.
I'll go to boot camp for a couple years, and when I come back I get to yell and scream at you that my burger has onions on it while you smile and apologize. Good deal?
"Anonymous cowards are just K-whores afraid of their accounts being modded down." - Bob the O (me)
I just joined the Marine Corps. I leave in Sept. I am not scared of some draft.
I'd imagine not, considering that you are already in the military. There are those of us, balls notwithstanding, that have become accusomed to our current ways of life and would not like to be forced into military service. There are also those among us who again, balls notwithstanding, would simply prefer not to die.
I can not think of any people other than my own for whom I would risk death to secure freedom. Using volunteers for our charity work around the world is all well and good, but I think drafts shold be reserved for actual threats to the nation's security.
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
will we need to have a certain level of experience before we can be drafted, or will it be anyone who is computer literate? Who decides this?
I used to be a computer worker until I got too sick to work and went on diability and became a college student. I am getting out of the computer industry and getting into business management. So if I switch careers can I still be drafted?
I used to work as a Federal Contractor for the US Army, so I delt with the government and military beore. I would be proud to serve my country, but my medical condition would prevent me from doing so. Also I am 35 years old, so what is the age limit here?
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Will failing the drug test keep you out of the military? If so, will there be any repricussions? If so, is it less than dodging the draft in Ca?
> There are those of us, balls notwithstanding,
> that have become accusomed to our current ways
> of life and would not like to be forced into
> military service. There are also those among us
> who again, balls notwithstanding, would simply
> prefer not to die.
There are two ways to look at it:
1 - Afraid to die/lose your current way of life
2 - Want to kill someone/change your current way of life
Most of the people who join the USMC fall into that second catagory. If their recruiter is even vaugely honest with them (which, I'll admit, is a streach for even the mildest mannered recruiter), they let prospective recruits know that, in the end, it's about killing the enemy dead either by pushing a button, pulling a trigger or by putting your fscking kbar through his heart.
Anyone who forgets that and still thinks military service is a good idea from them should probably join the peace corps and go off to get high with the natives in the next country that the USMC will be visiting shortly.
Personally, I'm with Robert Heinlein: No service, no vote.
So what exactly is the message they're trying to project with the whole "Army of One" slogan? I don't get it, it seems to me that the military works by training large groups of people to be able to act and react identically as a highly trained team.
The "Army of One" seems to convey more of a cowboy mentaility, like "Every man for himself" and seems more likely to end up in a bunch of uncoordinated individuals running around haphazardly doing whatever they want.
Someone in the know please explain what it really means!
Amendment XIV
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
The basic pay scale does not reflect the fact that both your housing (BAH) and subsistence (BAS, aka food) are provided for. If you live off the military base, this can take the form of tax-free money. Also, the amount of time served has a large effect on basic pay, especially after four years. Here are some numbers (BAH is based on location, these numbers are for San Diego 92055, and w/o dependents):
6
Rank..Yrs..Base.Pay...BAS......BAH.......Total
E1....<2...14320.80...3150.00..11088.00..28558.80
E4....2....19659.60...3150.00..11088.00..33897.60
E5....4....23893.20...3150.00..12204.00..39247.20
E6....6....27720.00...3150.00..12888.00..43758.00
E8....12...39675.60...3150.00..15276.00..58101.00
01....<2...27172.80...2102.76..12744.00..42019.56
03....4....48326.40...2102.76..16308.00..66737.16
04....8....57711.60...2102.76..18768.00..78582.36
o6....16...81687.60...2102.76..21240.00..105030.3
Now, what are those tax-free BAH dollars worth?
Tax A is the estimated Fed Tax for 2003 if base pay, BAS, and BAH were all taxed.
Tax B is the estimated Fed Tax for 2003 if only base pay and BAH are taxed.
Taxes calculated are based on single status with standard deduction.
Rank..Tax.A.....Tax.B.....Savings
E4....4104.00...2361.00...1743.00
E8....10154.00..6329.00...3825.00
03....12304.00..8229.00...4075.00
06....22824.40..18873.00..3951.40
Of course, you will never be paid for overtime, but there are other special pay items:
Family Separation Allowance $250 / month? (not sure about this one)
Hazardous Duty Pay $150 / month
Diving Pay $340 / month
Parachute, Flight Deck, Demolition, some Others $150 / month
if Qualified HALO, $225 / month
Submarine Pay (increases with cumulative years at sea): $75 - $595 / month
Sea Pay (increase with years at sea): $50 - $646 / month
Doctors and dentists get anywhere from 12,000 to 36,000 / year incentive pay.
All in all, I think it is a fair pay scale. Some may argue for more considering that lives are (sometimes) on the line. To each his own. There are other benefits... medical/dental, 401k equiv (TSP), education assistance, life insurance...
If memory serves, activating the selective service system can happen right around a "full mobilization," acting as the bridge between having all of your forces committed to whatever the current strategy of the National Command Authority is and starting to pick up blocks of soldiers out of the general populace. As has been touched on previously, this report is most likely some government agency trying to show their importance in a politically-driven military establishment. Someone, somewhere, figures that selectively taking blocks of the general public for pre-determined jobs is a brilliant meet-them-halfway sort of "draft," as to actually enact a draft would likely draw extreme public sentiment when the major parties could be focusing the energies of public sentiment elsewhere. Bottom line, this probably won't happen unless (as has been previously stated by others) all hell breaks loose.
like i said any questions or questioning will be answered...swiftly. Abortion clinics are killing babies, no matter what way you look at it your taking two lives and making one. I in no way condone bombing or killing of doctors. Just the same I in NO WAY condone bombing of babies or stripping them from their mother's wombs (you can talk to me later on more controversial subjects such as rampage, but i think you should attack the problem not kill innocents).
Obviously you can go over and over again how the fringe of society attacking one person in a fit of rage. Usually they get harsher sentences than OJ Simpson did for mercilessly slaughtering two people in his own home. But these are separated subjects, in third world countries the masses are frenzied into terrorism by there local religions and frequently supported by the very figureheads that claim to be messengers of god.
If you want the facts straight; the average joe in American isn't running around killing 100's because he thinks their religion is perfect, instead tolerance has tempered that WAY down.. But when you see 100's or 1000's killed by one person you have to wonder if the system or even the beliefs are skewed.
I don't think it is the society itself but the people who control the religion, because frequently in these third world countries they are also the ones that lead the army, and have the money as well.....very bad connection if you ask me...if the pope as the richest man in Europe and controlled 3 world armies i think we would have a similar problem of misconstrued belief systems.
This sounds interesting. The economy is in the crapper anyway. If the country went to war, I'd rather be working for the government doing code breaking or electronic warfare than working in a factory or be given a rifle.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
This makes clear that the "U.S. Plans Targeted Draft for Computer Personnel" headline is pure scaremongering. No one is about to get drafted. This is not "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming" for those of you trapped in the 1970s. This is deep, long-range contingency planning by a government agency that needs to look busy to keep their funding from being cut.
Too many people seem to be ignorant of the difference between "contingent" and "imminent." Just because, say, for example, FEMA updates its plans on recovering from a nuclear war DOESN'T MEAN we're planning to launch a nuclear war. Likewise, that whole "Pentagon plans for possibility of global climate change" had nothing to do with them planning for what they thought was going to happen, but everything to do with laying in contingency plans for what MIGHT happen, just like we had "rainbow" plans before World War II as to what we might have to do if involved in a global war against various enemies; just because we made plans for a global war against England, Russia and China (as well as Japan and Germany) didn't mean such an event was likely.
Will anyone here on Slashdot be called up? If, say, al Queda or North Korea nukes DC or Los Angeles, maybe. Otherwise all this talk is a bunch of blather from people who like to over-react anytime anyone in the Bush administration mentions the words "national security" and "computers" in the same sentence.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
...then write bugs, drag your heels, code in forth and J2EE and Ada (all on the same project), drop down into assembler to preemptively hyper optimize bubble-sort, stack-allocate fixed length arrays to hold dynamic input (nobody needs more than ten characters to type a password!), misuse threads with time-loops instead of mutexes, and build everything you think you might need (indirected for several unnecessary layers of genericity) before you pay attention to coding any of the actual algorithm.
The Man can make you sit at a workstation and type, but he can't make you think. Or stop you from thinking.
If GWB wins, we're most probably going to have a conflict with Syria or Iran and he's going to need more troops for that.
Ah, but it's okay if he drafts some troops -- GWB is, after all, a "war president".
May we never see th
So long as we understand "service" properly:
Never confuse serving the state with serving your country.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Where better to get the 1st round of canidates. Admins are going to be worse of than developers. They seem to be a more certification happy bunch. If you have your CCIE you are almost guaranteed to get drafted.....hehe
When i first read the topic, I thought it ment the army would draft my pc...and I just bought this 9800!!!
Its their job to fight, and yours to vote. Their life can depend on your vote. ie: Take your vote more seriously than whether the candidate is pro-life.
So, are you willing to put your money where your mouth is? Are you willing to wager cold, hard cash that your paranoid liberal view of the world is rooted in fact rather than delusion? I've even given you four months longer than you're "sure" the draft will be reinstated. Or are you all just talk?
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
The last draft tore this Republic apart. Vietnam ended, for those of you too young to remember, because the AWOL and desertion rate exceeded the draft rate--the army was evaporating. Americans will face the Bowels of Hell to protect the homeland, the Constitution, their girlfriends, and secure access to broadband, but you better have a leader with cajones. These guys ain't Nazi Germany or the Soviets. Far cheaper a $10 million bounty on each and every one of the bad guys. Long live free enterprise! (Opening paragraph to my new novel...)
"...while history is usually explicable it is often irrational" --Roger Spiller
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is adamant that he will not ask Congress to authorize a draft, and officials at the Selective Service System, the independent federal agency that would organize any conscription, stress that the possibility of a so-called "special skills draft" is remote.
He would never ever ever mislead people. Look how honest he was during the run-up to the War on Iraq!
If Rumsfeld says there's no draft, then that settles the issue. Yes sir, this administration means what it says and never ever flip flops.
I honestly would consider shooting myself (as a last resort of course) before helping Bush mutilate whatever oil-bearing country he feels like going after next. There's a great number of pawns out there who would blast anyone in sight going "Yeah! I'm protecting my country! Die!" and God knows they've got the mindless patriots behind them, "You're protecting your country! Now go out there and die! I meanwhile will be watching TV because I'm over the drafting age. Kill the world to protect your country! Die!" Oh they love it.
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
There goes Godwin's law. You lose ;)
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
This goes both ways. When I figure "my" country is looking out for _me_ (not me in particular, but people in my "class"), then I'll reciprocate. If I figure "my" country is actually looking after arrogant rich bastards who have arranged for everyone else to do the dying for them, then I'll be focused on getting my ass out of the so-called "defense force" alive, by _any_ means possible.
But who do you vote for? In most elections, there are zero "good" candidates, it's always picking the lesser of the two evils. So why waste the time? You can't vote for an outsider, they won't win, and the two major parties will both cause more harm than good. You'll either be taxed to death, lose your job and starve, be killed by terrorists, or be killed because the government says you ARE a terrorist. Hell, Janet Reno already ate the bill of rights, and Ashcroft is burning the constitution, so we now have an elected dictatorship.
Tinfoil hat note: My theory is that the government knew about 9/11 before it happened, possibly even directly provoked it, just to get things like the PATRIOT act passed, and distract people from what their true intentions were. It's an old political tactic (think British parliament vs. royal families), just with a new spin. Want to take away your citizen's rights, make them think they need some of them taken away for protection from someone else.
To paraphrase Microsoft's old slogan, "What basic human rights do you want us to violate today?"
--That's the point of being root, you can do anything you want, even if it's stupid.
Were you even replying to what I wrote? or did you hit reply at some odd point in the thread?
I just can't put together what you are talking about with what I said.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
" not any more immoral than removing a tumor or any other parasitic growth"
remember to tell your wife she was a parasitic growth up until she remembered her first mental images....remember to tell your son you meant nothing to him until he came out of the womb. And up until he cried he was basically a tumor. The only thing that most people dont understand is that abortion is all fine and dandy on paper, because most people think it happens early early in the game of baby+mother hood. We are not a secular society, a secular society would say no to feelings, beliefs, religion, and the individual. Unfortunatly most people still don't understand that our forefathers weren't secular but infact the people that populated this country had MANY religions all of which did not support abortion.
quote me on this: "the day that you decide to put your life into the hands of people that want to kill you, then you can mandate wether or not a tumorus baby or parasitic wife lives or dies."
Besides this being a far cry from the original post, i still reitterate my original post, i believe that the draft is nothing to run from.
Answers to your very similar questions.
1.)The "people" (terrorists) are trying to kill all things that resemble western society, everything from capatilisim, to a free market....that's a fact...go ask them. The REASON we should take up arms against them or prevent them through non-violent means is because their premise is wrong, thereby we did nothing other than being ourselves to make them "angry"
2.)People do not like Christians, Jews, (and even muslims) because they are a peacful people by nature. The fact that most democratic nations (based on judeo-christain values) are successful at being themselves means they must destroy that in order to gain attention and to justify their own religion. Personally any religion, government, or belief, that has to justify itself through the destruction of inocent people is incorrect. (not saying that we havn't done so in the past)
3.)The history that these groups have (including christainity) that makes the Middle-Eastern third world countries dislike them, is linked back to the crusades, when the christain world was dedicated to wipping out heathens. Again i separate myself from this belief that heathens should be destroyed. The places in the world such as Isreal have been the forefront of "religious war" for the last 800 years or more. Provided that we understand that we have to PROTECT our allies while we win over the popular masses of the third world countries with logic and understanding, you can understand the need for the draft if we are running low on reserves.
ummm....yes
You haven't read the book then, there are more ways to serve then join the military. You could always do space suit testing on Io.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
You sir, have made my 'friends' list. Gotta say, I also love the sig.
A man who can't pronouce "nuclear arsenal" shouldn't have one -sig ends here.
And please, no more "The USSR was worse!"-style finger-pointing. The USSR isn't the one occupying Iraq under the pretense of moral superiority.
A man who can't pronouce "nuclear arsenal" shouldn't have one -sig ends here.
Thoreau had his head up his rear. Any one who has actually been in the military knows that serving "as machines" is hogwash. Such people are quickly eliminated from the gene pool.
d4,...,Nf3, or maybe I should use a Ratfaced Mcdougal?
"I think drafts should be reserved for actual threats to the nation's security" -- and then be limited to being handed a gun and a helmet. Everything else costs extra. Depending on the kind of work they can "draft" my services starting at $80/h + expenses. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to work with a bunch of unhappy and angry draftees on projects.
Asking me to do my part for my country is one thing, but making me fight in a conflict I may or may not support is tantamount to slavery.
You're talking to someone who thinks the draft should be made unconstitutional.
I do hope you realize that only Democrats like Orrin Hatch and Chuckie Rangel want to bring back the draft... specifically because they think that "rich" folks aren't doing enough of the fighting.
Sorry to pick on you for this, but I'm seeing this argument all over the place today.
Who said the military was an economic organisation? They may have to deal with some of the same issues as private companies during peacetime, but I think it's important to remember that the purpose of the military is to ensure the continued existence of our political and economic system, not to be a profit-generating part of it.
It may be nice to have an economic system that could be protected by an organisation which plays by its rules, but the realities of the world we live in do not always allow such romantic visions to be effective.
Sometimes you just need to do what works.
Dan
I don't buy that excuse. If everything is so helplessly fvcked up and there is no point is voting, why do you stay here? I agree about the crookedness of political parties, but the differences seem obvious to me. You say it doesn't matter, then say that GWB & Co. provoked the act that started the war. Even if you don't believe that, there is no question he dragged our country into war that no one wanted but the White House.
How can you say it doesn't matter? Do you believe that Gore would have invaded Iraq for non existant WMD's? They will tell you they had the same intellegence as Clinton, but Clinton didn't invade Iraq, so obvoiously he reached different conclusions from the evidence. The difference is that Bush was looking for an excuse. 9/11 gave him that. In a frenzy of flag-waving patriotism, the US went along. Anyone who dared to speak against the war was branded a pinko, commie, unAmerican libral. It got so bad that folks were being arrested for wearing 'Give Peace a Chance' T-Shirts. Do you really think it would have played out this way under Gore?
Obviously it DOES matter who you vote for, even in a system as corrupt as ours.
There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
How can you be so glib about the idea of forcing people into military service? This is not a trivial thing; it is the use of violence against our own people, which can only be justified by great need. As I said, I recognize that it can be justified by great need, but I want you to recognize that we're nowhere near that. The economic argument is exactly the issue here: if the military offered a fair wage for sysadmins or programmers, I might well be working for them; but they don't, so I'm not, and millions like me aren't, and so they have a "shortage". A shortage that can reasonably be answered with the free market is not the same thing as a shortage because we're at war and men are dying faster than they are volunteering.
You can get papercut infections anywhere, not just in Pentagon offices...
Seriously, one thing I learned serving in the military is that it is the best place to hide from a war... join up, get a cushy desk job specialist rating in some stateside coding outfit that will never see a battlefront in a million years, and watch all the nutless idiots get sent off to be cannon fodder.
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves
I'm currently in the Army Reserves and write software on the civilian side. For the past 8 years I've been trying to find a way to help out the Army Reserves with my computer skills - and from my perspective there are lots of others just like me.... problem is, the Army doesn't know what to do with us. Sure, they have set up special 'Information Operations' units filled with talented people... but most of these people waste their time ordering computers, installing microsoft 2000 on them, and upgrading patches.... not to mention filling out paperwork and stacking boxes... its a complete waste of time. And these are smart people who really want to help out with their skills. I would prefer seeing the military make a plan for how to USE the technology specialists they have before drafting up a plan to pluck people out of their civilian life.
http://www.congress.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:H.R.1 63:
It should be an obligation.
... just to put it on record, if we ever need computer guys in the military this bad, I volunteer.
And I'm old and fat.
From what I've read today, the military doesn't WANT the draft in the first place. They are dead set against it. They want soldiers who signed up voluntarily, not someone who is there under protest. The most valuable lesson that was learned from Vietnam is that you can't win a war unless your soldiers are there to fight. Pulling some guy in off the street, sticking him in a uniform, shipping him to the other side of the world, handing him an M-14, and telling him to go kill Charlie just doesn't cut it. You need bloodthirsty killers who WANT to be in the jungle looking for Charlie (or Ivan, or Haibib).
I also found out that it was the left who initiated the idea of bringing back the draft. This is very clever on their part because the draft is where they derived a lot of their power during the Vietnam war. After we went to the all volunteer system the turn out at war protests all but dried up. Today the left is having to scream and bitch REALLY loud because most people who aren't dyed in the wool bolsheviks aren't listening.
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will we need to have a certain level of experience before we can be drafted, or will it be anyone who is computer literate? Who decides this?
In a more poetic world they'd just pick up the MCSE's.
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Actually, yes, I do think it would have been the same. Whether intentional or not, 9/11 gave the highest levels of government the ability to grab more power, and they all did. Republican or Democrat, doesn't matter, both sides approved PATRIOT easily, as well as several other broad-reaching bills (Sarbanes-Oxley after the accounting scandals, for instance). Gore might not have invaded Iraq, or maybe he would have, but that's not the important part. The government didn't have to invade Iraq to take away our rights, they just did it as a side note. Clinton didn't invade Iraq, but he did bomb them, so what's the difference? He obviously thought that bombing them would solve whatever problem he had (which was probably public opinion, not Iraq). Whatever Clinton's true reasons were, it did a good job of distracting the media from what HE was doing.
Both parties in the US are corrupt, in fact probably all governments around the world are corrupt, but at least in some countries, public officials are cheaper. Does it really matter who is in the White House? Probably not. Al Gore would have signed PATRIOT just as quickly as Bush did, and he would have put on the same "Hunt for Al Queda" dog-and-pony show as Bush has, even going to Iraq, so long as it made him look good. Politicians care about their money, careers, power, family, food, personal goals, golf games, favorite type of toilet paper, the constitution, and their constituents, in that order.
--That's the point of being root, you can do anything you want, even if it's stupid.
Whoa, when did Orrin Hatch join the Democratic party?
...by which I mean "give" the military things it doesn't want, like extra B-2 bombers and the blood of innocents and stuff. Why? Search me. I can't even figure out who keeps getting santorum all over the floor.
...in two major ways: (1) it can play by its own rules, often avoiding restrictions imposed on ordinary businesses, and (2) its job is, in certain times and places, so critical to everything else that (1) is justified. What I am saying is that it is a bad idea to throw out the rules (e.g., that nobody can make other people work at gunpoint) without specific justification, and that "they don't want to work for us because we don't pay commensurate with risk and skill" is not sufficient justification.
Sorry, Fritz Hollings.
Well, when the economy is a mess and children of the poor who joined up because it was that or flipping burgers are sent off to war so the rich can drive their Hummers without taking it in the neck on gas prices, people see even a volunteer army as a social injustice.
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Won't work. Back in Gulf War I a lot of soldiers outed themselves, but they were sent to Iraq anyways, then discharged immediately upon rotating home. The Army claims that gays are a threat to morale in wartime, but when push comes to shove they just care about more able bodies carrying guns.
Most MCSE's I know cheated on their tests by getting a copy of it off the Internet with all the answers on it before taking it. The rest I have no idea how they passed their MCSE because they apparently do not know anything important about Microsoft technologies. There are few MCSEs that I know of who are worth more than a protozoan's waste. ;)
Disclaimer, I am not a MCSE, nor do I intend to be. In my humble opinion, it is a BS-Certification and while I could easily get one, I choose not to on the priciple of the thing.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
> Personally, I'm with Robert Heinlein: No service, no vote.
And where exactly, sir, does that leave people like me, who have a disability and are classified as automatic 4F? Does this mean that I do not get the right to vote because I cannot serve in the military?
I think you've been filling the position quite well, sir. I'll let you continue doing so.
Or maybe I'm wrong...
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You make a good argument, but it is all based on a flawed assumption: that your vote actually counts. If the system is as corrupt as some believe, then the elections are just a staged play, and the vote you cast, while it may be counted, does not actually play a direct part in selecting who takes office. In fact, it probably just gets your name added to a list labelled Potential Trouble-maker
"The Internet is made of cats."
From "Full Metal Jacket":
This is not to degrade the Corp in any way, shape or form. This quote reflects the view of someone who's been there and not of a wannabe. Those that edify the role of the soldier without having served degrade it. There are very few guys that have been in bad spots that ever talk about it to even those closest to them though they carry the memories everyday.Killing people sucks.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
It's called being "on message". You pick an idea that appeals to people and you repeat it as often as you can. Never mind if it's illogical or even irrelevent to the subject at hand. (Journalists complain that politicians don't answer questions any more, they just recide the message-du-jour.) What matters is the picture created in the minds of the voter the politician is targeting.
Appalling? Nauseating? Sure. But I'm darned if I know what to do about it.