but people don't value the lives of Iraqis the same
Iraqi's don't value the lives of Iraqi's. When we'd get in a fire fight people would come out of their houses to watch. Would you come outside if there was a fight with machine guns going on in your front yard? They also like to blow each other up, indiscriminately. They attack each other as much as they attack us (US).
I wish you guys still in school or freshly graduated knew how often the rest of us roll our eyes every time we hear "my thesis" or "my prof". Your college education will be of marginal vaule to you as a programmer. Most of what you use will be from experience gained after you graduated. You won't necessarily be a good programmer just because you made good grades either.
I have an immense amount of professional respect for Martin Fowler. I'd like to qualify some of his and others informed statements about MDA and UML. There are a number of folks out there that tend to take casaul connections to the extreme (i.e. what works for some will work for all). I beleve that Martin was trying to guard his hearers against such thoughts. I think what he meant was that UML in it's entirety is not declarative enough (or just plain flexible enough) to serve as the sole language by which to holistically describe computer programs. This is an easy pill to swallow, because in fact, UML (plus OCL) is (in my humble experience) declarative enough to at least describe the entities of a system, the roles they play, their values, and the relationships betweent them. I wouldn't push for more however... really... I don't even see a benefit.
What makes *that* example usable or unusable however, really boils down the implemenation of the given MDA tool.
I for instance have had great success with a tool called AndroMDA. The code it generates is quite well formed and organized. I am so happy and impressed with the code it generates that I have actually learned a few things just by reading the generated code. This is a far cry from the "yuck" days of Rational Rose 1.0.
And can it take the opening shock of a parachute, impact with the ground, does it make my already heavy as f*** load heavier, and can it take abuse from privates in the infantry? Let me tell you, almost nothing can withstand the latter. We break everything.
Back when Internet Explorer 4 came out with all it's DHTML goodness, Microsoft started talking about selling Office as a service delivered via the browser.
the military lives by GPS these days, no GPS (or poor coverage) would almost halt military operations above the level of a patrol on foot with compass and map. but any infantryman will tell you, there's nothing more dangerous than a cherry ass Lt. with a map.
Before this turns into an us vs. them (no pun intended) please take into account the business, regulatory, and legislative tempermemt of each of the opposed parties. Also consider how special interests in other countries *will* influece a governing body's decisions, the same way they have in the states. I personally would want to keep something so crucial to us, close to the vest. But that's just my nationalistic tendencies, after all, I went to war for this country.
I'm in the (airborne) infantry and I love anything that makes my pack lighter or easier to carry. For this though, the only thing interesting is that they said it made them walk more efficiently. I'm not sure if this would be true over broken terrain, which is where it must be proven. The individual soldier really doesn't need to generate much power, most items carried by the individual soldier have very light power requirements (i imagine that is more by design than anything else). There are a few exceptions though. Radio batteries are heavy, but that is more a fault of purchsing from the lowest bidder than necessity. Commercial laptop batteries are much more efficient. Outside of radios the individual soldier can go weeks on a pack of AA's and watch batteries (infra-red lasers, nightvision, powered optics). I changed the batteries in my night vision goggles a handful of times in Iraq over a year. Some of the more advanced man portable weapons might be able to benefit, might. There's a system called the Javelin (light [army for "heavy as fuck"] anti armor system), it can be carried by one man (realistically two, missle and launch unit) and the thermal sight sucks batteries big time. The problem is, if you are walking around you are not sitting there in an OP (observation point) watching. If you expecting company from tanks anyway chances are you have a vehicle not to far away so you can GTFO (you can guess what that means). A vehicle means supplies, so new batteries. Really if the vehicle had an AC converter as many are popping up in HMMWV's and other places, you could just use rechargables. I always took shit loads of batteries with me on patrols when I had the Javelin, but it was in the trunk of the HMMWV so I could care less what they weighed.
The folks who might really enjoy this would be LRRS (recon), RRD, and SF in some capacities. They go long distances for long amounts of time and don't expect much resupply. Like I said though, if you have to get up and move to recharge your batteries it's going to suck. It's only while you are sitting still in a hide site, snapping pictures, uploading from your laptop via your sat coms, and talking on the radio or sat, that you are going to run out of power, and you might not have the luxury of moving for a damn long while. Maybe you could just send the lowest ranking joe to run laps around the objective to recharge your batteries. Then if he makes it back alive you can use the recharged batteries to call for fire on your now thuroughly pissed off enemy.
At the end of the day though the Army uses the WORST ruck frame design I have ever used and that's because of one thing, cost. When I joined I could carry alot more weight being in worse shape than I am now, but using my civilian pack. Moving 25M with an Army ruck makes you feel like someone beat you with a baseball bat. It's probably because I'm tall too. The rucks are made for short people. I guess they get their heads blown off less, hadji can't shoot straight anyway so who cares.
Alot of stuff we had occupied or blown up is in its pre-war state. This is only from my personal experience in certain areas of Baghdad, some areas might have more recent data.
i hate it when people talk about the infantry. it's like some mystical world full of video game and movie references and abstract concepts that seem totally logical to someone who hasn't done it. it's a culture shock and a different, very real, very harsh world. it's really agonizing to hear it discussed but that being said:
being in the infantry you get used to everything just being heavy and ungangly. it would be a shock to most slashdotters just how cumbersome our gear is. fighting at night with NVG's on is NOTHING like in a video game. half the time you can't see a thing because it focuses like any other optic. you have to adjust the focus everytime you look at something more than a few feet closer or further than what you were last looking at. and don't get me started on the skull crushers and rhino mounts. i've never been able to get a PVS 14 to sit properly over my eye. shooting in the prone position is even worse.
here's something funny to illustrate. in the army we have this thing called a PLGR (Portable Lightweight GPS Reciever) or "plugger". i assure you that there is nothing portable, lightweight, or GPS about it. it's huge, like the biggest text book you've ever seen. the batteries don't last for shit, it has only an alphanumeric display (no arrows and maps), it weights a good few pounds, it is TERRIBLE at getting a GPS signal. you practically have to climb a tree or be in the middle of open desert to use it.
which leads me to this: most of us use civialian and so called "special ops" (usually just civilian things that have been ruggedized) gear. we use alot of civialian GPRS/FRS radios (though ours can be encrypted), we use lots of civilian GPS too. pretty much anything special forces uses too gets trickled down into infantry use because our gear sucks and they've got the common sense and freedom to use what works.
now to counter that we do have alot of things that really give us a leap over the enemy. we have infared targeting lasers we use at night which really help in a fire fight. other cool things i dont' want to talk about. but of course the bad guys have night vision too. yea, they do. it's not really that expensive these days. good thing most of them are poor shots.
being a terrorist has it's advantages. you can really be effective in small groups. but our tactics work great too and we are constantly adapting. what they gain in autonomy is thwarted by lack of C2 (command and control), training, and good support channels. besides, we can move and act autonomously too.
This is essentially what trains have been doing for years. An engineer I met once explained to me that converting the energy from the diesel engine directly into electricity which through a series of batteries drove electric motors uses 70% less energy than a mechanical transmission.
You'll be happy to know that soldiers are first taught everything the hard, old way, before being taught the easy gadget way. I qualified using normal steel sights before I was given a CCO (close combat optic).
There were a number of guys in my company that wondered (with genuine amazement) how they could be so good at counter strike and quake but suck so bad at being an infantryman. I love tactical first person shooters, especially the one the Army released but when I decided to become an infantryman I did so knowing the difference between real pain, and blood on a screen. It takes something different than knowing how to use a joystick to become a great fighter pilot, and it takes something different than being able to twitch like an aim-bot to be a reliable infantryman.
The only way I can see a weapon of the same caliber (OICW and M16) having different effective ranges is either one of two things. Charge, or rifling. Either they plan to be shooting with new brass in a short mag style or maybe just using more powder, or the OICW is a bullpup design allowing for a longer rifle barrel.
That said, the vast majority of infantry engagements are done within 150 meters. That's why we can get away with using a weapon with shitty ballistics (velocity namely), like an M4. I don't care either way though, as long as anything I point my kill-stick at dies, I could give a shit less. When it boils down to it, alot of theory goes out the window once the bullets start to fly.
Hoooah!
Coming from a Computer Science background I think the best analogy I can make between DNA and computers is "bytecode vs. virtual machine". DNA is bytecode and proteins are the virtual machine. Bioinformatics research can be boiled down into trying to debug raw bytecode when you don't know the structure and rules of the virtual machine. Until we understand these massive and extremely complex molecular machines called proteins, we'll never fully understand what the code of DNA does.
...so not only will we have tons of nunces who don't even own *one* personal computer at home, "vat iz zlashd0t?", purporting to be Oracle "experts" in this country, but now we'll all have to deal with these same New Delhi Tech School non-geeks as our Linux administraitors too! Well hell, I think I'll just switch to Microsoft and go out and hire myself a couple of G0d d4mn3d MCSE's!
We're all going to hell I tell ya, just going to hell!
As far as price/performance it was in the middle of the top ten. I think if they had used PostgreSQL (or maybe SapDB, dunno haven't used it) instead of Oracle it could have been higher in the results.
I've been using spamassassin on my qmail server and it r4wKs hardcore. Striaight up kills spam. It has some very very intelligent features. Check it out.
Conscripted, by whom? I'd love to join up and defend my rights, no need to conscript, but it's not exactly like anyone is recruiting. I mean, where do I join?
Yesterday I was at the home of a family friend. He is in his late 50's and was asking me questions about his computer and why he was having trouble installing a particular Golf game a friend had purchased for him. To say that he could have installed it even if his computer was modern enough is a bit of a stretch but what stood out from our conversation was just how confusing computers can be to people. He had other problems too, like the fact that he thought he needed a faster computer because his email was so slow to download. He was using an ISP known for overselling their bandwidth. After our conversation I felt very ashamed for the state of consumer software and computers in general, and then it hit me. I know alot of young people who have absolutely no trouble dealing with their computer. Sure some things are confusing to them and could be simpler but by and large they know what is going on in their computer. If you compare computers to cars... well just ask any mechanic. There are loads of "Coffe Mug Holder" like jokes about people with average to sub-average intelligence who couldn't change their oil if their life depended on it, and many who don't even know too. The same people who, if they had a bad spark plug, you could sell them a new alternator.
What this says is that computers aren't simple and error free but they are easy enough for most people to use and get work done on, and things are getting better as of late. Cars, unfortunately are getting increasingly complex and increasingly difficult to deal with when they don't work. I think we are quickly approaching the threshold where only idiots will not be able to manage their computer (granted sufficient exposure to them).
Micron sells great quality RAM directly to consumers at great prices. That is one monopoly I am willing to live with. Honestly, if they get fucked by this and they are unable to offer competitive RAM prices anymore... I'm gonna be pissed!
-ryan
Re:Id like to see him try to stor the elements....
on
Periodic Table Table
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· Score: 1
It's not necessarily used for its hardness but rather it's density and weight. For instance, an arrow shot from a compound bow at about 15ft per second can puncture a bullet proof vest but a bullet traveling at 1500ft/s cannot. The difference being that an arrow puts about 2000 grains (a weight measurement) in a spot the diameter of a.22 caliber bullet, whereas a typical bullet (about the same size) is anywehere from 50 to 200 grain. A few gun smith friends of mine explained to me how you can puncture an inch of tank armor (fucking amazing) from a (granted almost point blank) 100yards with a.50 cal depleted uranium round fired from a BMG (.50 cal sniper rifle), granted you'd have to use high velocity powder.
you could always put a packet sniffer on the gateway and start emailing people the text of their online conversations and the searches they did on BearShare. That'd probably scare the shit out of them enough to stop.
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Iraqi's don't value the lives of Iraqi's. When we'd get in a fire fight people would come out of their houses to watch. Would you come outside if there was a fight with machine guns going on in your front yard? They also like to blow each other up, indiscriminately. They attack each other as much as they attack us (US).
I wish you guys still in school or freshly graduated knew how often the rest of us roll our eyes every time we hear "my thesis" or "my prof". Your college education will be of marginal vaule to you as a programmer. Most of what you use will be from experience gained after you graduated. You won't necessarily be a good programmer just because you made good grades either.
However, I really don't like OMG's MDA. There's an article on the Web by David Frankel that explains very well why UML isn't quite up to the task (see http://www.bptrends.com/publicationfiles/01-04%20C OL%20Dom%20Spec%20Modeling%20Frankel-Cook.pdf, and see also http://www.martinfowler.com/ieeeSoftware/mda-thoma s.pdf).
I have an immense amount of professional respect for Martin Fowler. I'd like to qualify some of his and others informed statements about MDA and UML. There are a number of folks out there that tend to take casaul connections to the extreme (i.e. what works for some will work for all). I beleve that Martin was trying to guard his hearers against such thoughts. I think what he meant was that UML in it's entirety is not declarative enough (or just plain flexible enough) to serve as the sole language by which to holistically describe computer programs. This is an easy pill to swallow, because in fact, UML (plus OCL) is (in my humble experience) declarative enough to at least describe the entities of a system, the roles they play, their values, and the relationships betweent them. I wouldn't push for more however... really... I don't even see a benefit.
What makes *that* example usable or unusable however, really boils down the implemenation of the given MDA tool.
I for instance have had great success with a tool called AndroMDA. The code it generates is quite well formed and organized. I am so happy and impressed with the code it generates that I have actually learned a few things just by reading the generated code. This is a far cry from the "yuck" days of Rational Rose 1.0.
And can it take the opening shock of a parachute, impact with the ground, does it make my already heavy as f*** load heavier, and can it take abuse from privates in the infantry? Let me tell you, almost nothing can withstand the latter. We break everything.
Back when Internet Explorer 4 came out with all it's DHTML goodness, Microsoft started talking about selling Office as a service delivered via the browser.
the military lives by GPS these days, no GPS (or poor coverage) would almost halt military operations above the level of a patrol on foot with compass and map. but any infantryman will tell you, there's nothing more dangerous than a cherry ass Lt. with a map.
Before this turns into an us vs. them (no pun intended) please take into account the business, regulatory, and legislative tempermemt of each of the opposed parties. Also consider how special interests in other countries *will* influece a governing body's decisions, the same way they have in the states. I personally would want to keep something so crucial to us, close to the vest. But that's just my nationalistic tendencies, after all, I went to war for this country.
I'm in the (airborne) infantry and I love anything that makes my pack lighter or easier to carry. For this though, the only thing interesting is that they said it made them walk more efficiently. I'm not sure if this would be true over broken terrain, which is where it must be proven. The individual soldier really doesn't need to generate much power, most items carried by the individual soldier have very light power requirements (i imagine that is more by design than anything else). There are a few exceptions though. Radio batteries are heavy, but that is more a fault of purchsing from the lowest bidder than necessity. Commercial laptop batteries are much more efficient. Outside of radios the individual soldier can go weeks on a pack of AA's and watch batteries (infra-red lasers, nightvision, powered optics). I changed the batteries in my night vision goggles a handful of times in Iraq over a year. Some of the more advanced man portable weapons might be able to benefit, might. There's a system called the Javelin (light [army for "heavy as fuck"] anti armor system), it can be carried by one man (realistically two, missle and launch unit) and the thermal sight sucks batteries big time. The problem is, if you are walking around you are not sitting there in an OP (observation point) watching. If you expecting company from tanks anyway chances are you have a vehicle not to far away so you can GTFO (you can guess what that means). A vehicle means supplies, so new batteries. Really if the vehicle had an AC converter as many are popping up in HMMWV's and other places, you could just use rechargables. I always took shit loads of batteries with me on patrols when I had the Javelin, but it was in the trunk of the HMMWV so I could care less what they weighed.
The folks who might really enjoy this would be LRRS (recon), RRD, and SF in some capacities. They go long distances for long amounts of time and don't expect much resupply. Like I said though, if you have to get up and move to recharge your batteries it's going to suck. It's only while you are sitting still in a hide site, snapping pictures, uploading from your laptop via your sat coms, and talking on the radio or sat, that you are going to run out of power, and you might not have the luxury of moving for a damn long while. Maybe you could just send the lowest ranking joe to run laps around the objective to recharge your batteries. Then if he makes it back alive you can use the recharged batteries to call for fire on your now thuroughly pissed off enemy.
At the end of the day though the Army uses the WORST ruck frame design I have ever used and that's because of one thing, cost. When I joined I could carry alot more weight being in worse shape than I am now, but using my civilian pack. Moving 25M with an Army ruck makes you feel like someone beat you with a baseball bat. It's probably because I'm tall too. The rucks are made for short people. I guess they get their heads blown off less, hadji can't shoot straight anyway so who cares.
Alot of stuff we had occupied or blown up is in its pre-war state. This is only from my personal experience in certain areas of Baghdad, some areas might have more recent data.
i hate it when people talk about the infantry. it's like some mystical world full of video game and movie references and abstract concepts that seem totally logical to someone who hasn't done it. it's a culture shock and a different, very real, very harsh world. it's really agonizing to hear it discussed but that being said:
being in the infantry you get used to everything just being heavy and ungangly. it would be a shock to most slashdotters just how cumbersome our gear is. fighting at night with NVG's on is NOTHING like in a video game. half the time you can't see a thing because it focuses like any other optic. you have to adjust the focus everytime you look at something more than a few feet closer or further than what you were last looking at. and don't get me started on the skull crushers and rhino mounts. i've never been able to get a PVS 14 to sit properly over my eye. shooting in the prone position is even worse.
here's something funny to illustrate. in the army we have this thing called a PLGR (Portable Lightweight GPS Reciever) or "plugger". i assure you that there is nothing portable, lightweight, or GPS about it. it's huge, like the biggest text book you've ever seen. the batteries don't last for shit, it has only an alphanumeric display (no arrows and maps), it weights a good few pounds, it is TERRIBLE at getting a GPS signal. you practically have to climb a tree or be in the middle of open desert to use it.
which leads me to this: most of us use civialian and so called "special ops" (usually just civilian things that have been ruggedized) gear. we use alot of civialian GPRS/FRS radios (though ours can be encrypted), we use lots of civilian GPS too. pretty much anything special forces uses too gets trickled down into infantry use because our gear sucks and they've got the common sense and freedom to use what works.
now to counter that we do have alot of things that really give us a leap over the enemy. we have infared targeting lasers we use at night which really help in a fire fight. other cool things i dont' want to talk about. but of course the bad guys have night vision too. yea, they do. it's not really that expensive these days. good thing most of them are poor shots.
being a terrorist has it's advantages. you can really be effective in small groups. but our tactics work great too and we are constantly adapting. what they gain in autonomy is thwarted by lack of C2 (command and control), training, and good support channels. besides, we can move and act autonomously too.
This is essentially what trains have been doing for years. An engineer I met once explained to me that converting the energy from the diesel engine directly into electricity which through a series of batteries drove electric motors uses 70% less energy than a mechanical transmission.
You'll be happy to know that soldiers are first taught everything the hard, old way, before being taught the easy gadget way. I qualified using normal steel sights before I was given a CCO (close combat optic).
-ryan
There were a number of guys in my company that wondered (with genuine amazement) how they could be so good at counter strike and quake but suck so bad at being an infantryman. I love tactical first person shooters, especially the one the Army released but when I decided to become an infantryman I did so knowing the difference between real pain, and blood on a screen. It takes something different than knowing how to use a joystick to become a great fighter pilot, and it takes something different than being able to twitch like an aim-bot to be a reliable infantryman.
That said, the vast majority of infantry engagements are done within 150 meters. That's why we can get away with using a weapon with shitty ballistics (velocity namely), like an M4. I don't care either way though, as long as anything I point my kill-stick at dies, I could give a shit less. When it boils down to it, alot of theory goes out the window once the bullets start to fly. Hoooah!
Coming from a Computer Science background I think the best analogy I can make between DNA and computers is "bytecode vs. virtual machine". DNA is bytecode and proteins are the virtual machine. Bioinformatics research can be boiled down into trying to debug raw bytecode when you don't know the structure and rules of the virtual machine. Until we understand these massive and extremely complex molecular machines called proteins, we'll never fully understand what the code of DNA does.
well, what tha hell... i had karma to sacrifice.
We're all going to hell I tell ya, just going to hell!
As far as price/performance it was in the middle of the top ten. I think if they had used PostgreSQL (or maybe SapDB, dunno haven't used it) instead of Oracle it could have been higher in the results.
The Chronicle is the scourage of our city. There must be another paper with a better article.
I've been using spamassassin on my qmail server and it r4wKs hardcore. Striaight up kills spam. It has some very very intelligent features. Check it out.
Conscripted, by whom? I'd love to join up and defend my rights, no need to conscript, but it's not exactly like anyone is recruiting. I mean, where do I join?
What this says is that computers aren't simple and error free but they are easy enough for most people to use and get work done on, and things are getting better as of late. Cars, unfortunately are getting increasingly complex and increasingly difficult to deal with when they don't work. I think we are quickly approaching the threshold where only idiots will not be able to manage their computer (granted sufficient exposure to them).
Thank God, I have been hoping and praying for this moment since NaN closed its doors.
And, in the words of the old Negro spiritual,
"Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
Micron sells great quality RAM directly to consumers at great prices. That is one monopoly I am willing to live with. Honestly, if they get fucked by this and they are unable to offer competitive RAM prices anymore... I'm gonna be pissed!
-ryan
It's not necessarily used for its hardness but rather it's density and weight. For instance, an arrow shot from a compound bow at about 15ft per second can puncture a bullet proof vest but a bullet traveling at 1500ft/s cannot. The difference being that an arrow puts about 2000 grains (a weight measurement) in a spot the diameter of a .22 caliber bullet, whereas a typical bullet (about the same size) is anywehere from 50 to 200 grain. A few gun smith friends of mine explained to me how you can puncture an inch of tank armor (fucking amazing) from a (granted almost point blank) 100yards with a .50 cal depleted uranium round fired from a BMG (.50 cal sniper rifle), granted you'd have to use high velocity powder.
you could always put a packet sniffer on the gateway and start emailing people the text of their online conversations and the searches they did on BearShare. That'd probably scare the shit out of them enough to stop.