I think sometimes things just have to arrive at the right time, and no amount of innovation can force the public at large to assign value to something if they're not socially ready for it (i.e. not a long enough adjustment period, or whatever). I think MySpace is a good example of success occuring when a huge group of people are "all of a sudden" ready for something... I've been a LiveJournal user for years, and it struck me as odd at first how MySpace got all sorts of press when they blew up on the scene. After all, they really didn't do anything all that different from LiveJournal, they just clicked in a way that a new generation could appreciate. Change happens in leaps and bounds, not gradually.
Exactly. If my tech-impaired wife actually finds OpenOffice and Ubuntu easier to use that XP Media Center Edition, and runs screaming away from Vista, it's definitely a sign of the times...
DISCLAIMER: This post is not intended to serve as any sort of official statement on the part of the U.S. Navy; it is solely a personal appraisal of how technology affects certain aspects of warfare. Take my thoughts for what you think they're worth, since nothing here is endorsed by anyone working for the D.O.D.
After reading the article, I had to go have a smoke and really collect my thoughts before replying here. I hope my perspective offers a bit of insight into "one man's view" of technology's role in modern combat. First a little bit of background information is in order...
I'm a 26 year old male, active duty enlisted in the Navy. I joined about 14 months ago, leaving a career in computing to serve in the submarine force. Prior to the Navy, I did several years of programming, database development, web application dev/support, and networking on Win32 and Linux/UNIX systems. Needing a change of pace, and generally feeling burned out after working full-time in I.T. since age 18, I woke up one day and enlisted in the service. My family and friends were a bit surprised, to say the least:).
Having been in long enough to form my own (albeit limited) opinion of computing/information technology's role in military systems, I have these thoughts:
(1) The military is mostly comprised of enlisted personnel. Enlisted men and women are, fundamentally, operators. This means they are trained to do a specific set of jobs according to a very specific set of guidelines. We don't make tactical decisions; our job is to inform officers in command of the status of whatever evolution is in progress, and obey orders handed back in response. This means we are trained on specific pieces of equipment, which is increasingly networked to allow for more efficient operations.
(2) It's no secret that the military (and government organizations in general) is a big fan of basing systems on "tried and true" technologies. We use what works, not what the industry is pumping out as the latest, greatest info-tech marvel.
(3) Our reliance on these systems means that we always have to be trained on multiple contingencies, i.e. "if doohickey X is broken, switch over to doohickey Y and proceed." Single points of failure are as much the enemy of fighting units as they are of networks in the civilian world. The human element is therefore still critical in avoiding situational breakdowns, hence the need for constant drilling to ensure proper performance under hostile or stressful conditions.
(4) Monday morning quarterbacking is an inevitable consequence of any large-scale conflict. It's always easy to look back and say "Wow, if only they'd done things this way, it's so obvious that things would have gone better." The military does make a concerted effort to learn from its mistakes; we have a saying that every rule we follow is written in blood, and we take that idea very seriously.
(5) In the final analysis, no amount of technology can prevent loss of human life in war. It's ugly, nasty, sad, but inevitable. Human beings will always defend whatever interests they consider crucial to the survival of their way of life. It's just our nature, the product of an evolutionary process that made us what we are today as a species. Since the dawn of time, we've been constantly incorporating new technologies into both civilian and military operations, with mixed results at every stage of innovation. Again, we learn from our mistakes and move forward.
I hope these thoughts can spark some dialog, and that my views might bring some new perspective to conversations on this topic. Thanks.
Nobody in my household uses any products from Microsoft at home, period. We're on Ubuntu. Got my wife switched over a while back. I know we're the exception, not the rule, but I've been meeting more and more people like us over the last year or so. Change might take time to start, but once it gets rolling things tend to evolve very rapidly.
Now, I am forced to use Win32 apps at work, but I'm in the military, an organization that takes a long time to change anything once it's implemented. If I were still a civilian doing software and database development work, I could easily comfortably support my household working purely with UNIX-based systems professionally. How do I know? That's precisely what I used to do for a living. It's all a matter of choice... the choice may not be "easy" for some, but it does exist nonetheless.
Microsoft is Microsoft's own worst enemy. While I applaud the intentions of the Justice Department in attempting to impose a longer period of fine-grained monitoring on Microsoft's activities, I think they're missing most of the "big picture" here. Popular news and media outlets are routinely running stories about the slow adoption of Vista by major corporations and small businesses alike. New sales of Office are apparently lagging, too. Basically, the old story of "what we have now is good enough" is, in many cases, happening all over again.
My personal opinion is that by the time consumers are truly "forced" into another Microsoft upgrade cycle, viable and attractive product alternatives produced by Google and others will already be gaining significant ground. Even in the face of what many consider corrupt business practices on the part of Microsoft, the market is deciding the best route, albeit slowly. It just so happens that the market is finally starting to feel the evolutionary push of technology moving in leaps, rather than a slow progression.
The tagging beta includes the word sopwith, a reference to "Sopwith Camel", a game I used to place on an 8086 box as a kid:). Your goal was to drop bombs on ground targets in a simplistic side-scroller sort of map. You can install a modern-day Linux version (pretty close to the original) by doing "sudo apt-get install sopwith" on Debian-based distros.
Maybe not as much fun as dropping real bombs out of a supersonic jet, but pretty darn close:).
I've also noticed that now, when you search without putting in a location (i.e. "pizza" instead of "pizza los angeles ca") it will search the nearby area visible on the map. With the previous version, for some reason, it kept giving me locations in the UK when I didn't specify a city/state in the US instead of just searching the area of the map that was currently visible.
Slightly offtopic, but funny: This part of your post reminded me of William Gibson's "All Tomorrow's Parties", wherein a character gets a map of downtown Rio de Janeiro while trying to find a place to eat in SoCal using his computing glasses. It's kind of a recurring problem throughout the novel:).
I'm not supporting censorship by any means, but I strongly suspect that your lack of exposure to terrorist material on the Internet may have to do with the following behaviors on your part:
(1) Predominantly searching the web for articles written in some dialect of the English language (might find some ultra-militia style groups, but not foreign organizations for the most part).
(2) A lack of historical searches that actively look for such materials, i.e. if you're not interested in committing terrorist acts, it wouldn't make sense for you to go an look for the stuff in the first place.
(3) As a minor influencing factor, content filters in email and web proxy systems may have filtered your view of the web somewhat.
I assure you, there are a lot of web sites devoted to hate groups, extremist cells, whatever... and they aren't all based on extreme Islam, either. All sorts of nutjobs are out there, and the web combined with differing legal systems from nation to nation makes communication extremely easy for them. I guess that's sorta the whole point of the Internet, to facilitate free communication among diverse parties... which is why I can't support any form of censorship of the 'net. That's the "problem" with democracy: you have to accept the drawbacks and dangers if you want to enjoy the freedoms and benefits.
(1) You apparently read the article. We don't "read" around here... we telepathically absorb article details from around the globe.
(2) You took time to derive logical deductions and causation factors from the ideas presented in the article. Way too much effort; your time would have been better spent trying to one-up the wild assertion that is the story headline.
(3) You implied that Congress has acted in anything less than a knee-jerk, know-knothing, insert-more-hyphenated-words-here manner. Anyone Slashdot user with half a brain knows that Congress has never produced any meaningful debate or results in all of history.
Sheesh, man... go drink some coffee and wake up, or something...
We in the community have no way of determining the truth in this matter without contacting the author ourselves. I found this link that further discusses the story: GPL Violation in ICO; embedded in the page is a link to the author's supposed place of employment: ONICOS, as well as a link to his profile page: Access (translated). Anyone care to give the number listed a ring or pop a fax out?
About the huge amounts of money part... I honestly wonder what the *real* economic impact of SCO's saga of scare tactics has been to the open source community at large, specifically employees and customers of leading Linux vendors. How many purchases of Linux-based products were shelved or cancelled based on SCO's claims of infringement?
How many businesses were on the verge of trying out a Linux distro at their office, but became became convinced that open source software was some kind of "poison?" How many might still think that way due to a lack of education or a residual feeling of unease? On the plus side, the old saying is "there's no such thing as bad advertising", right?:(
Good may indeed frequently be the enemy of better, but better will always eventually surface. Sometimes it pays to take a look at things from a somewhat broader perspective... large-scale cultural and economic shifts frequently precede major revolutions in technology. Look at any rapidly developing economy, specifically Asian economies, and you'll note all sorts of interesting ideas and social experiments in the works, which drives new technological innovations.
One more thing to keep in mind... as far as I've ever seen, change tends to happen in leaps, not in small steps. Seemingly small innovations tend to snowball into what can appear to be "overnight" changes in a society's technological state.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh my God, why oh why did you have to remind me of that? I'll probably have regression dreams of my childhood tonight filled with "BZZZZZZZZZ"... :)
I think sometimes things just have to arrive at the right time, and no amount of innovation can force the public at large to assign value to something if they're not socially ready for it (i.e. not a long enough adjustment period, or whatever). I think MySpace is a good example of success occuring when a huge group of people are "all of a sudden" ready for something... I've been a LiveJournal user for years, and it struck me as odd at first how MySpace got all sorts of press when they blew up on the scene. After all, they really didn't do anything all that different from LiveJournal, they just clicked in a way that a new generation could appreciate. Change happens in leaps and bounds, not gradually.
Exactly. If my tech-impaired wife actually finds OpenOffice and Ubuntu easier to use that XP Media Center Edition, and runs screaming away from Vista, it's definitely a sign of the times...
DISCLAIMER: This post is not intended to serve as any sort of official statement on the part of the U.S. Navy; it is solely a personal appraisal of how technology affects certain aspects of warfare. Take my thoughts for what you think they're worth, since nothing here is endorsed by anyone working for the D.O.D.
:).
After reading the article, I had to go have a smoke and really collect my thoughts before replying here. I hope my perspective offers a bit of insight into "one man's view" of technology's role in modern combat. First a little bit of background information is in order...
I'm a 26 year old male, active duty enlisted in the Navy. I joined about 14 months ago, leaving a career in computing to serve in the submarine force. Prior to the Navy, I did several years of programming, database development, web application dev/support, and networking on Win32 and Linux/UNIX systems. Needing a change of pace, and generally feeling burned out after working full-time in I.T. since age 18, I woke up one day and enlisted in the service. My family and friends were a bit surprised, to say the least
Having been in long enough to form my own (albeit limited) opinion of computing/information technology's role in military systems, I have these thoughts:
(1) The military is mostly comprised of enlisted personnel. Enlisted men and women are, fundamentally, operators. This means they are trained to do a specific set of jobs according to a very specific set of guidelines. We don't make tactical decisions; our job is to inform officers in command of the status of whatever evolution is in progress, and obey orders handed back in response. This means we are trained on specific pieces of equipment, which is increasingly networked to allow for more efficient operations.
(2) It's no secret that the military (and government organizations in general) is a big fan of basing systems on "tried and true" technologies. We use what works, not what the industry is pumping out as the latest, greatest info-tech marvel.
(3) Our reliance on these systems means that we always have to be trained on multiple contingencies, i.e. "if doohickey X is broken, switch over to doohickey Y and proceed." Single points of failure are as much the enemy of fighting units as they are of networks in the civilian world. The human element is therefore still critical in avoiding situational breakdowns, hence the need for constant drilling to ensure proper performance under hostile or stressful conditions.
(4) Monday morning quarterbacking is an inevitable consequence of any large-scale conflict. It's always easy to look back and say "Wow, if only they'd done things this way, it's so obvious that things would have gone better." The military does make a concerted effort to learn from its mistakes; we have a saying that every rule we follow is written in blood, and we take that idea very seriously.
(5) In the final analysis, no amount of technology can prevent loss of human life in war. It's ugly, nasty, sad, but inevitable. Human beings will always defend whatever interests they consider crucial to the survival of their way of life. It's just our nature, the product of an evolutionary process that made us what we are today as a species. Since the dawn of time, we've been constantly incorporating new technologies into both civilian and military operations, with mixed results at every stage of innovation. Again, we learn from our mistakes and move forward.
I hope these thoughts can spark some dialog, and that my views might bring some new perspective to conversations on this topic. Thanks.
Nobody in my household uses any products from Microsoft at home, period. We're on Ubuntu. Got my wife switched over a while back. I know we're the exception, not the rule, but I've been meeting more and more people like us over the last year or so. Change might take time to start, but once it gets rolling things tend to evolve very rapidly.
Now, I am forced to use Win32 apps at work, but I'm in the military, an organization that takes a long time to change anything once it's implemented. If I were still a civilian doing software and database development work, I could easily comfortably support my household working purely with UNIX-based systems professionally. How do I know? That's precisely what I used to do for a living. It's all a matter of choice... the choice may not be "easy" for some, but it does exist nonetheless.
Microsoft is Microsoft's own worst enemy. While I applaud the intentions of the Justice Department in attempting to impose a longer period of fine-grained monitoring on Microsoft's activities, I think they're missing most of the "big picture" here. Popular news and media outlets are routinely running stories about the slow adoption of Vista by major corporations and small businesses alike. New sales of Office are apparently lagging, too. Basically, the old story of "what we have now is good enough" is, in many cases, happening all over again.
My personal opinion is that by the time consumers are truly "forced" into another Microsoft upgrade cycle, viable and attractive product alternatives produced by Google and others will already be gaining significant ground. Even in the face of what many consider corrupt business practices on the part of Microsoft, the market is deciding the best route, albeit slowly. It just so happens that the market is finally starting to feel the evolutionary push of technology moving in leaps, rather than a slow progression.
The tagging beta includes the word sopwith, a reference to "Sopwith Camel", a game I used to place on an 8086 box as a kid :). Your goal was to drop bombs on ground targets in a simplistic side-scroller sort of map. You can install a modern-day Linux version (pretty close to the original) by doing "sudo apt-get install sopwith" on Debian-based distros.
:).
Maybe not as much fun as dropping real bombs out of a supersonic jet, but pretty darn close
I've also noticed that now, when you search without putting in a location (i.e. "pizza" instead of "pizza los angeles ca") it will search the nearby area visible on the map. With the previous version, for some reason, it kept giving me locations in the UK when I didn't specify a city/state in the US instead of just searching the area of the map that was currently visible.
:).
Slightly offtopic, but funny: This part of your post reminded me of William Gibson's "All Tomorrow's Parties", wherein a character gets a map of downtown Rio de Janeiro while trying to find a place to eat in SoCal using his computing glasses. It's kind of a recurring problem throughout the novel
Relatively speaking.
I'm not supporting censorship by any means, but I strongly suspect that your lack of exposure to terrorist material on the Internet may have to do with the following behaviors on your part:
(1) Predominantly searching the web for articles written in some dialect of the English language (might find some ultra-militia style groups, but not foreign organizations for the most part).
(2) A lack of historical searches that actively look for such materials, i.e. if you're not interested in committing terrorist acts, it wouldn't make sense for you to go an look for the stuff in the first place.
(3) As a minor influencing factor, content filters in email and web proxy systems may have filtered your view of the web somewhat.
I assure you, there are a lot of web sites devoted to hate groups, extremist cells, whatever... and they aren't all based on extreme Islam, either. All sorts of nutjobs are out there, and the web combined with differing legal systems from nation to nation makes communication extremely easy for them. I guess that's sorta the whole point of the Internet, to facilitate free communication among diverse parties... which is why I can't support any form of censorship of the 'net. That's the "problem" with democracy: you have to accept the drawbacks and dangers if you want to enjoy the freedoms and benefits.
There are problems with your post:
(1) You apparently read the article. We don't "read" around here... we telepathically absorb article details from around the globe.
(2) You took time to derive logical deductions and causation factors from the ideas presented in the article. Way too much effort; your time would have been better spent trying to one-up the wild assertion that is the story headline.
(3) You implied that Congress has acted in anything less than a knee-jerk, know-knothing, insert-more-hyphenated-words-here manner. Anyone Slashdot user with half a brain knows that Congress has never produced any meaningful debate or results in all of history.
Sheesh, man... go drink some coffee and wake up, or something...
We in the community have no way of determining the truth in this matter without contacting the author ourselves. I found this link that further discusses the story: GPL Violation in ICO; embedded in the page is a link to the author's supposed place of employment: ONICOS, as well as a link to his profile page: Access (translated). Anyone care to give the number listed a ring or pop a fax out?
About the huge amounts of money part... I honestly wonder what the *real* economic impact of SCO's saga of scare tactics has been to the open source community at large, specifically employees and customers of leading Linux vendors. How many purchases of Linux-based products were shelved or cancelled based on SCO's claims of infringement?
:(
How many businesses were on the verge of trying out a Linux distro at their office, but became became convinced that open source software was some kind of "poison?" How many might still think that way due to a lack of education or a residual feeling of unease? On the plus side, the old saying is "there's no such thing as bad advertising", right?
Good may indeed frequently be the enemy of better, but better will always eventually surface. Sometimes it pays to take a look at things from a somewhat broader perspective... large-scale cultural and economic shifts frequently precede major revolutions in technology. Look at any rapidly developing economy, specifically Asian economies, and you'll note all sorts of interesting ideas and social experiments in the works, which drives new technological innovations.
One more thing to keep in mind... as far as I've ever seen, change tends to happen in leaps, not in small steps. Seemingly small innovations tend to snowball into what can appear to be "overnight" changes in a society's technological state.
Don't forget books that discuss even more outrageous material, such as this one.