one by one your cargo containers end up missing, you chalk it up to random coincidence every so often, then one day while doing inventory you find a horde of socks^H^H^H^H^H^ *cargo* stuffed away in a cubby hole of your shipyard.
Couple countless vote rigging and voter suppression stories in the past with this story and the fact that Republicans are still trying to 'game the system'shows that they are out to win regardless of principle or honesty.
They got their asses kicked in 2006, polls show more is coming in 2008 yet they still act like thugs. I guess these cretins are gluttons for punishment and deserve to be in the political Siberia they are due for.
Wouldn't surprise me if we see more of that in the future, sold to us consumers, er, I mean citizens under the guise of tax relief **cough** bullshit **cough**. Look at all the public arenas, sports stadiums, and parks around the (Danger Will Robinson! US Centric terminology in effect..) country that have changed longstanding, and well known to the community names to some corporate name and cheesy logo/banner. In Indiana alone we now have the RCA Dome instead of the Hoosier Dome, and Verizon Wireless Music Center instead of Deer Creek Music Center. Granted, only the Hoosier Dome was built with tax dollars (that I know of, but it still makes even a libertarian like me want to vomit just hearing it. Have I seen my taxes lowered in any significant way? Fat chance. Not only do I not have a lower tax burden, but then the sports teams often use the threat of take-my-ball-and-play-elsewhere, essentially blackmailing us into subsidizing a bigger arena or whatever their whim-du-jour is if they don't get their way.
...of this bullshit. I play games to get away from reality. Yeah, sure I stock up on the cheetos, pizza hut, and coke for LAN parties, that doesnt mean I need these damn advertisements in my games to reinforce that I need to go buy some. Every aspect of my life is covered in ads, spam, junkmail, signs, telemarketers, etc ad nauseum. When I get home from work and want to relax, I dont want to be bombarded as if I'm walking the aisles of Walmart where every square inch of the store, up, down and on all sides there are stickers, flashing lights, intercoms going off etc telling me about this "great deal! (tm)" that I should take advantage of. As far as games go, the ONLY ones I can think of that ads would be actually beneficial to all parties are sports games. Nascar and football games alone would be really realistic to actually see ads in the game, but only as static banners or some such in the background as you would actually see at a sporting event (ok, maybe the Goodyear blimp too..). But when I start seeing ads for websites or other marketing bozo trash, it ruins it for me and actually pisses me off to the extreme. Case in point. Look at the starting spawn points for both the terrorist and the counterterrorists of the new CS 1.1 map de_dust2. A permanent "spraypaint" on the walls for I think www.gamecenter.com. CS is one of the more realistic FPS games out, (though not quite up to par with Rogue Spear, but realistic has to be balanced with fun gameplay and Rogue Spear, well, IMO sucks). Whatever game I'm playing I want to be apart of the story, to make it very immersive. As far as CS goes, I dont recall seeing any CNN terrorism stories where theres a large "Pepsi: Choice of a new generation" in the background.
From someone who was raised Adventist, lives in Indiana, and is currently a hopeless Counterstrike
addict:) this article definitely caught my eye.
Ashcroft isn't an Adventist. He's an
Assemblies of God member
I'm a diehard Van Halen fanatic thats biased towards the David Lee Roth era. Sammy Hagar was cool, 5150 and Balance were the only oustanding albums from him, the others were just average, but the first six with DLR were just the epitome of raw ass kicking rock and roll that even the mediocre not-commonly known tunes sound far better than the shit that is
Top40/MTV/Boy Band/Bubblegum pop/angst filled alterno-crap on the airwaves now.
Don't even get me started on that 3rd singer/bastard son of Freddie Mercury and Judy Garland known as Gary Cherone...WTF were they thinking when they hired that flaming wannabe??
My nickname started from my online gaming alias, especially counterstrike servers so I just carried it over to here, and wa-la! found it wasnt taken.
I was one of (U)ncle (S)ams (M)isguided (C)hildren for six and a half
years in the reserves. (Sergeant (E-5), MOS 2531 - Field Radio Operator)
(Oohrah, radio operators do it with frequency til it 'hertz)
I've been in your shoes, not quite the same situation, but very
similar and I fully understand your anxieties. Difference between your
situation and the one I was in (I got out in '95) is that I'm a blue collar
worker, most of the jobs where I live in Indiana are factory/industrial.
Anyhow, most places I worked at never gave me ANY problem whatsoever about
reserve duties. Even the one technical job I had, (temp/manpower for EDS for
a year) respected my reserve duties with no questions asked. Most jobs I held had
policies that they would pay you the difference from your regular civilian pay to
what you got in the military during your two week summer duty if that pay was less
than your normal paycheck. My employer, DaimlerChrysler does this as well. The only
time I was really worried about losing my job was when I was I first got a call to
work for Chrysler (before the Daimler takeover[H[H[H[H[H[H[H[Hmerger fiasco, ahem)
after trying to get on there for about 4 years *FINALLY! WoOt!*
For a bit of perspective for my situation, getting hired by Chrysler or Delco Electronics
(as it was then called, now Delphi Automotive) was like hitting the lottery in comparison
to all other jobs in my area. Anyhow, I was hired by chrysler just one month before
I was to go on a major combined arms exercise (CAX); note: get used to acronyms...you think
you see alot of acronyms or buzzwords in the IT world you haven't seen shit til you get in
the military. I was really worried about asking my supervisor for two weeks off when I had
just got hired and it was a closed union shop, but you dont get in the union til you get 90
days in, and until then you have to walk on ice, be on time, all eyes are on you, and basically you cant screwup or miss/be late for work at all. Period. Well, everything turned out ok, my supervisor was a hard ass type (think of Hitler and Mini-me from Austin powers genes in one person), but only jokingly gave me a hard time about it and wished me luck.
It wasn't til a bit later that I found out that it was MANDATORY for them to let me go.
I found out from my commanding officer that the U.S. government highly frowns upon employers
who dont give their reservists some accomodation and can come down with a vengeance legally
and hammer them for noncompliance. I also found out later that at least in cases like mine
where working for a major company it would have looked real bad for them to not cut reservists some slack if they have major purchase contracts with them and could jeopardize future business.
Of course it helped that one of my commanding officers from one of my reserve units I was in
was a attorney in his civilian job, and he meant business...Noone was going to fuck with his
Marines, or they would have hell to pay for it.
Anyways this point is moot for me, because Chrysler gives me better benefits (education included)
than GI bill benefits and they ACTIVELY SEEK OUT VETERANS for their employees. As one other
poster touched upon, alot of employers realize that most vets have an excellent work ethic, are
honest, intelligent, more disciplined, have developed or have been trained in a variety of
skillsets, able to work easily with nearly anyone (military people move around alot, heh)
and are more mature generally than the average joe sixpack whos last job was either flipping
burgers or working the slurpee machine at a 7-11 store. I was really shocked to find out
that where I work (Kokomo Transmission, UAW 685 - close to 6500 people), a vast, vast, vast
majority of them are veterans. Lots of vet support groups there, every thursday was "Marine day"
and we all wore marine corps t-shirts, and in my old dept we still celebrate the Marine Corps Birthday
every Nov 10th, EVERY MARINE IN THE WHOLE PLANT shows up on that day to sing the marine hymn,
cut the ceremonial cake for the youngest and oldest marine, etc (You'll learn soon enough if you
are joining the marines as you say, that the marines are VERY heavy into tradition). Noone in the
plant, supervisors, managers, I mean NOONE gives us any shit about it. I've been there for 6 years
and tradition still holds strong. That says something when you have that many employees to begin with.
The only points of advice I give to you is that (1) Dont worry about your job.
(2) If you do join the marines, get used to "hand me downs" from the army and very stringent
training budgets. The phrase "marines do better with less" is a widely held view
and not far at all from just being a "stereotypical service rivalry thing".
I would have to say that the Navy is *THE SHIT* when it comes to computer and/or
electronics training. The few ex navy guys in my classes thought what we were going through
was comparitively grade school material after their training in the navy.
Also, the Marines in comparison have a budget comparable in worth to the value of a cracker
jacks box prize. I nearly aced my ASVAB (armed services vocational
aptitude battery) test and scored in the top 10% of the Marine Corps when I entered and
they put me in MOS 2841, which is electronics/ground radio repair. To make a long story short,
I may have had the aptitude, but I didnt know jacksquat about electronics past the meme of
"..flip the switch, the light comes on..." nor did I have any interest in it. It was a year long
course, and about 4/5th's of the way into it I failed ONE test below 70% (and I believe that
was due to a really fucked up oscilloscope (test once, voltage there, try 5 secs later, it wasn't
and no parameters had changed) and was kicked out of the program. Why? Not enough money in the budget.
In the Navy or Air Force where budget money is passed out in crates the size of texas they have nearly
infinite chances for retaking a test or course.
One other pro and con for you to consider. Promotion in the marines is almost like watching flys
mate. Only other service that is worse is the Coast Guard (both are very small as I'm sure you are
aware). However, TECH's in the marines get very nice sign on and retaining bonuses and certain
fields get promoted FAR faster than other MOS's (military occupational skill).
Case in point: I was a lance corporal (E3) in my reserve unit when I witnessed a a guy join my unit
temporarily for a week or two as a civilian (forgot what they call this classification). 12 months later
after boot camp, and ground radio repair schooling he shows up same rank as a lance corporal, I got
promoted to corporal, then just a few short months later he was promoted to corporal in way less than
half the time it took me. I picked up the rank of sergeant right at the end of my contract and by that
time he had already been promoted to staff sergeant (E7). Pissed me off. He was a pencil carrying
desk jockey (albeit very, very intelligent) with way less time than I had, never carried a radio
on his back, and always stuffed in some air conditioned portable tech bench/lab. Turned out to be
a very good friend of mine, but it still gnawed at me. Well, enough of my rambling post. I hope
I have given you some insight.
I just realized as soon as I posted this (duh) that halflife is what, 3 yrs old now? But my point was meant from the fact that counterstrike is *THE* most played online game. I read somewhere that the total number of counterstrike servers are greater than all the ones running quake/unreal and all the other FPS games combined.
Not ports of games that are 2-3 years old.
Just think if there was a port of halflife rather
than going thru wine. Counterstrike mod alone would be worth it.
Is by requiring that some classed be taken online.
Sure, this article:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/cti667.h tm
mentions just one class, but what's to stop them
from adding more mandatory online-only courses?
One would really have to stretch the limits
of your naivete to really believe that this is
only done for convenience. I just wonder if they will reduce college fees (all the stuff thats
wrapped in; computer lab fees, misc building fees, etc) when these sort of things go into effect.
I HIGHLY DOUBT IT. I kind of see a parallel between these college adminstrators and insurance salesmen. They both want the $$$ to keep flowing
in, but are constantly thinking of ways to limit
what services they have to give in return for that money.
Slashdot Mirror
one by one your cargo containers end up missing, you chalk it up to random
coincidence every so often, then one day while doing inventory you find a
horde of socks^H^H^H^H^H^ *cargo* stuffed away in a cubby hole of your shipyard.
You need the Bitchin'fast3D2000
Couple countless vote rigging and voter suppression stories in the past with this story and
A ID=/20070731/NATION/107310062/1001
the fact that Republicans are still trying to 'game the system'shows that they are out to win regardless of principle or honesty.
California electoral vote split proposed
http://washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?
They got their asses kicked in 2006, polls show more is coming in 2008 yet they still act
like thugs. I guess these cretins are gluttons for punishment and deserve to be in
the political Siberia they are due for.
I miss the old atari football game circa 1978 at the local pizza joint.
http://www.thelogbook.com/phosphor/1970s/f.htm
"....and double-damnit on you!"
http://www.skoopy.com/show2.php?id=755&type=VI D/
GUComics also had a nice one..c date=20 041011
http://www.gucomics.com/archives/view.php?
Old Glory Insurance
http://www.werewolves.org/~follies/
Wouldn't surprise me if we see more of that in the future, sold to us consumers, er, I mean citizens under the guise of tax relief **cough** bullshit **cough**. Look at all the public arenas, sports stadiums, and parks around the (Danger Will Robinson! US Centric terminology in effect..) country that have changed longstanding, and well known to the community names to some corporate name and cheesy logo/banner. In Indiana alone we now have the RCA Dome instead of the Hoosier Dome, and Verizon Wireless Music Center instead of Deer Creek Music Center. Granted, only the Hoosier Dome was built with tax dollars (that I know of, but it still makes even a libertarian like me want to vomit just hearing it. Have I seen my taxes lowered in any significant way? Fat chance. Not only do I not have a lower tax burden, but then the sports teams often use the threat of take-my-ball-and-play-elsewhere, essentially blackmailing us into subsidizing a bigger arena or whatever their whim-du-jour is if they don't get their way.
...of this bullshit. I play games to get away from reality. Yeah, sure I stock up on the cheetos, pizza hut, and coke for LAN parties, that doesnt mean I need these damn advertisements in my games to reinforce that I need to go buy some. Every aspect of my life is covered in ads, spam, junkmail, signs, telemarketers, etc ad nauseum. When I get home from work and want to relax, I dont want to be bombarded as if I'm walking the aisles of Walmart where every square inch of the store, up, down and on all sides there are stickers, flashing lights, intercoms going off etc telling me about this "great deal! (tm)" that I should take advantage of. As far as games go, the ONLY ones I can think of that ads would be actually beneficial to all parties are sports games. Nascar and football games alone would be really realistic to actually see ads in the game, but only as static banners or some such in the background as you would actually see at a sporting event (ok, maybe the Goodyear blimp too..). But when I start seeing ads for websites or other marketing bozo trash, it ruins it for me and actually pisses me off to the extreme. Case in point. Look at the starting spawn points for both the terrorist and the counterterrorists of the new CS 1.1 map de_dust2. A permanent "spraypaint" on the walls for I think www.gamecenter.com. CS is one of the more realistic FPS games out, (though not quite up to par with Rogue Spear, but realistic has to be balanced with fun gameplay and Rogue Spear, well, IMO sucks). Whatever game I'm playing I want to be apart of the story, to make it very immersive. As far as CS goes, I dont recall seeing any CNN terrorism stories where theres a large "Pepsi: Choice of a new generation" in the background.
From someone who was raised Adventist, lives in Indiana, and is currently a hopeless Counterstrike addict :) this article definitely caught my eye.
Ashcroft isn't an Adventist. He's an
Assemblies of God member
In wartime...I believe control of the USCG is transferred to the DOD.
I'm a diehard Van Halen fanatic thats biased towards the David Lee Roth era. Sammy Hagar was cool, 5150 and Balance were the only oustanding albums from him, the others were just average, but the first six with DLR were just the epitome of raw ass kicking rock and roll that even the mediocre not-commonly known tunes sound far better than the shit that is
Top40/MTV/Boy Band/Bubblegum pop/angst filled alterno-crap on the airwaves now.
Don't even get me started on that 3rd singer/bastard son of Freddie Mercury and Judy Garland known as Gary Cherone...WTF were they thinking when they hired that flaming wannabe??
My nickname started from my online gaming alias, especially counterstrike servers so I just carried it over to here, and wa-la! found it wasnt taken.
I just notice that since their change from
"Hacker News Network" to "Security News Network"
my slashbox is spelled "Securtity News Network"
Geez.
I was one of (U)ncle (S)ams (M)isguided (C)hildren for six and a half years in the reserves. (Sergeant (E-5), MOS 2531 - Field Radio Operator) (Oohrah, radio operators do it with frequency til it 'hertz) I've been in your shoes, not quite the same situation, but very similar and I fully understand your anxieties. Difference between your situation and the one I was in (I got out in '95) is that I'm a blue collar worker, most of the jobs where I live in Indiana are factory/industrial. Anyhow, most places I worked at never gave me ANY problem whatsoever about reserve duties. Even the one technical job I had, (temp/manpower for EDS for a year) respected my reserve duties with no questions asked. Most jobs I held had policies that they would pay you the difference from your regular civilian pay to what you got in the military during your two week summer duty if that pay was less than your normal paycheck. My employer, DaimlerChrysler does this as well. The only time I was really worried about losing my job was when I was I first got a call to work for Chrysler (before the Daimler takeover[H[H[H[H[H[H[H[Hmerger fiasco, ahem) after trying to get on there for about 4 years *FINALLY! WoOt!* For a bit of perspective for my situation, getting hired by Chrysler or Delco Electronics (as it was then called, now Delphi Automotive) was like hitting the lottery in comparison to all other jobs in my area. Anyhow, I was hired by chrysler just one month before I was to go on a major combined arms exercise (CAX); note: get used to acronyms...you think you see alot of acronyms or buzzwords in the IT world you haven't seen shit til you get in the military. I was really worried about asking my supervisor for two weeks off when I had just got hired and it was a closed union shop, but you dont get in the union til you get 90 days in, and until then you have to walk on ice, be on time, all eyes are on you, and basically you cant screwup or miss/be late for work at all. Period. Well, everything turned out ok, my supervisor was a hard ass type (think of Hitler and Mini-me from Austin powers genes in one person), but only jokingly gave me a hard time about it and wished me luck. It wasn't til a bit later that I found out that it was MANDATORY for them to let me go. I found out from my commanding officer that the U.S. government highly frowns upon employers who dont give their reservists some accomodation and can come down with a vengeance legally and hammer them for noncompliance. I also found out later that at least in cases like mine where working for a major company it would have looked real bad for them to not cut reservists some slack if they have major purchase contracts with them and could jeopardize future business. Of course it helped that one of my commanding officers from one of my reserve units I was in was a attorney in his civilian job, and he meant business...Noone was going to fuck with his Marines, or they would have hell to pay for it. Anyways this point is moot for me, because Chrysler gives me better benefits (education included) than GI bill benefits and they ACTIVELY SEEK OUT VETERANS for their employees. As one other poster touched upon, alot of employers realize that most vets have an excellent work ethic, are honest, intelligent, more disciplined, have developed or have been trained in a variety of skillsets, able to work easily with nearly anyone (military people move around alot, heh) and are more mature generally than the average joe sixpack whos last job was either flipping burgers or working the slurpee machine at a 7-11 store. I was really shocked to find out that where I work (Kokomo Transmission, UAW 685 - close to 6500 people), a vast, vast, vast majority of them are veterans. Lots of vet support groups there, every thursday was "Marine day" and we all wore marine corps t-shirts, and in my old dept we still celebrate the Marine Corps Birthday every Nov 10th, EVERY MARINE IN THE WHOLE PLANT shows up on that day to sing the marine hymn, cut the ceremonial cake for the youngest and oldest marine, etc (You'll learn soon enough if you are joining the marines as you say, that the marines are VERY heavy into tradition). Noone in the plant, supervisors, managers, I mean NOONE gives us any shit about it. I've been there for 6 years and tradition still holds strong. That says something when you have that many employees to begin with. The only points of advice I give to you is that (1) Dont worry about your job. (2) If you do join the marines, get used to "hand me downs" from the army and very stringent training budgets. The phrase "marines do better with less" is a widely held view and not far at all from just being a "stereotypical service rivalry thing". I would have to say that the Navy is *THE SHIT* when it comes to computer and/or electronics training. The few ex navy guys in my classes thought what we were going through was comparitively grade school material after their training in the navy. Also, the Marines in comparison have a budget comparable in worth to the value of a cracker jacks box prize. I nearly aced my ASVAB (armed services vocational aptitude battery) test and scored in the top 10% of the Marine Corps when I entered and they put me in MOS 2841, which is electronics/ground radio repair. To make a long story short, I may have had the aptitude, but I didnt know jacksquat about electronics past the meme of "..flip the switch, the light comes on..." nor did I have any interest in it. It was a year long course, and about 4/5th's of the way into it I failed ONE test below 70% (and I believe that was due to a really fucked up oscilloscope (test once, voltage there, try 5 secs later, it wasn't and no parameters had changed) and was kicked out of the program. Why? Not enough money in the budget. In the Navy or Air Force where budget money is passed out in crates the size of texas they have nearly infinite chances for retaking a test or course. One other pro and con for you to consider. Promotion in the marines is almost like watching flys mate. Only other service that is worse is the Coast Guard (both are very small as I'm sure you are aware). However, TECH's in the marines get very nice sign on and retaining bonuses and certain fields get promoted FAR faster than other MOS's (military occupational skill). Case in point: I was a lance corporal (E3) in my reserve unit when I witnessed a a guy join my unit temporarily for a week or two as a civilian (forgot what they call this classification). 12 months later after boot camp, and ground radio repair schooling he shows up same rank as a lance corporal, I got promoted to corporal, then just a few short months later he was promoted to corporal in way less than half the time it took me. I picked up the rank of sergeant right at the end of my contract and by that time he had already been promoted to staff sergeant (E7). Pissed me off. He was a pencil carrying desk jockey (albeit very, very intelligent) with way less time than I had, never carried a radio on his back, and always stuffed in some air conditioned portable tech bench/lab. Turned out to be a very good friend of mine, but it still gnawed at me. Well, enough of my rambling post. I hope I have given you some insight.
"Linux is a top threat to MS......."
I mean cmon, Well, DUUUUUUH!
He might as well be going around screaming
"HEY! Did you know Kennedy was shot?!?!"
I nominate Steve Ballmer as the next
Nostradamus wannabe.
I just realized as soon as I posted this (duh) that halflife is what, 3 yrs old now? But my point was meant from the fact that counterstrike is *THE* most played online game. I read somewhere that the total number of counterstrike servers are greater than all the ones running quake/unreal and all the other FPS games combined.
Not ports of games that are 2-3 years old.
Just think if there was a port of halflife rather
than going thru wine. Counterstrike mod alone would be worth it.
"Hey it told me to insert $1.25 for the next minute, next thing I know my floppy drive wont work..."
Or INXS?
Is by requiring that some classed be taken online.h tm
Sure, this article:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/cti667.
mentions just one class, but what's to stop them
from adding more mandatory online-only courses?
One would really have to stretch the limits
of your naivete to really believe that this is
only done for convenience. I just wonder if they will reduce college fees (all the stuff thats
wrapped in; computer lab fees, misc building fees, etc) when these sort of things go into effect.
I HIGHLY DOUBT IT. I kind of see a parallel between these college adminstrators and insurance salesmen. They both want the $$$ to keep flowing
in, but are constantly thinking of ways to limit
what services they have to give in return for that money.
....bald is a hair color
they can make it to the International
Space Station in 30 minutes or less.
(or there's going to be alot of astronauts
getting free pizza)
"And bring me a hard copy of the Internet so I can do some serious surfing." - Pointy Haired Boss
Dilbert comic strip, 6 June 1999