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User: oodaloop

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  1. Re:Why not do it like AZ? on Daylight Saving Time Wastes Energy · · Score: 1

    I think this says it all. From TFA: "One study of the situation in Indiana cannot accurately asses the impact of [daylight-saving time] changes across the nation, especially when it does not include more northern, colder regions," the congressman notes. Just because DST in Indiana causes waste doesn't mean other areas don't offset it. I don't know whether DST causes more or less energy usage, but like they say in TFA, moe research needs to be done. Did anyone seriously think one study in Indiana definitively proved that DST was wasteful in Hawaii, Alaska, et al?

  2. Re:More than 7 hours needed? Slashdot editors? on One in Ten Americans Are Chronically Sleep Deprived · · Score: 1

    Yeah, PSTD is real. And some soldiers and Marines come back with it. Some come back with Athlete's Foot, too. Some who never killed or were in a combat unit come back with it. Some saw their friends killed in front of them, some can't take being away from home, some saw mass graves from Saddam's regime, some saw AQI's torture chambers. Most come back and start careers, raise families, and become highly productive members of society. Returning WWII vets didn't come back the same, as another poster pointed out, but some of them also saw other horrors of war, like, I don't know, concentration camps. Kids don't come back the same from college, boot camp, or hitchhiking across Europe, either. To say that killing people leads to PSTD or some other form of brain damage is a little strong. The correlation is from far from 1 to 1. Also, when you factor the rate of suicide and violence of returning veterans for their age group, they are much LESS likely than their civilian peers to kill themselves or others. The numbers only seem high because the military is so small. Perhaps the best way to keep violence down in 18-25yo males is to send them to the Marines. And before we start in with how we're "treating" our service members, let's remember that this is what they signed up for. We're more than 4 years into this war, the typical enlistment period. Almost everyone in the military has either joined since the Iraq war began or reenlisted since then, and the reenslistment rates have never been higher. I know liberal America can never believe that people would voluntarily sign up to go to war, but it's true. Tens of thousands each year sign up, because they want to go to Iraq and serve their country, and tens of thousands more reenlist each year despite (or maybe because of) the frequent deployments. And soldiers are questioning themselves? Really? Because from what I've seen (and I am intel, so I've seen quite a lot), soldiers are seeing the fruits of their labor. Violence is down, Awakening groups are taking control of their nighborhoods, we now have 9 out of 18 provinces turned over to total Iraqi control, Sadr just extended his 6-month cease-fire on Jaysh al Mahdi, oil production is on the rise, etc etc. Morale is high and things are looking good (though if you only watched CNN, you'd think just the opposite). The fact that AQI uses "desperate civilians" just shows how desperate they are. AQI is on the run, and they know it. And BTW, we have Vietnam veterans in Iraq right now, and they've all made public statements that Iraq is nothing like Vietnam, but you'd know more about both than they would, right?

  3. Re:More than 7 hours needed? Slashdot editors? on One in Ten Americans Are Chronically Sleep Deprived · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wow, way to turn an article about sleep deprivation into a political diatribe. First of all, neither I nor any of my coworkers kill anyone. We are intelligence analysts, providing strategic guidance to GEN Petraeus. Second, I resent the implication that killing people leads to damaging a person mentally. Just because you disaprove of it doesn't mean it's on par with brain damage to those who choose to serve our country. Third, you obviously have NO concept of what is going in here so try to keep your uninformed opinions to yourself in the future.

  4. Re:Cue the 3AM jokes... on One in Ten Americans Are Chronically Sleep Deprived · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, it's 2:30PM here in Iraq and I'm wide awake. While not sleep deprived myself, many of my coworkers here and at my last unit work 16-20 hour days for months on end. I think some of them think they're being hard (and some get paid for evey hour worked), but their lack of sleep is counter-productive. Many will fall asleep in the middle of a conversation with you. I also have to wonder about brain damage as another side effect. The people who have been doing it the most look like they've been lobotimized even right after they've woken up. It's the same sort of look in someone's face who's wasted their mind on alcohol; they look like they were bright once but have killed too many brain cells. The effects I've seen of long-term sleep deprivation here are enough to make me get 8 to 9 hours sleep every night.

  5. Re:Wave powered boat on Wave Powered Boat to Sail From Hawaii to Japan · · Score: 1

    Well, the summary does he is going to "sail" the wave-powered boat, though I don't know of a better word for driving a boat. It also says it's a catamaran which, according to wikipedia, can be sail or engine powered. What happens though when he's in completely still water? This is the 'Pacific' Ocean after all.

  6. Gold Medal on Wave Powered Boat to Sail From Hawaii to Japan · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Woohoo!! First Post! I actually tried to RTFA, but the link doesn't seem to want to load at work. If the max speed is only 5 knots, I'm skeptical there'll be much of a market for it. Can it be incorporated into power boats as a means to conserve energy and stabilize the ride?

  7. Re:Security is impossible on Former FBI Agent Calls for a Second Internet · · Score: 3, Informative

    Funny thing is, we already HAVE a secure internet. It's called SIPRNET (Secret Internet Protocol Router Network). It's a massive secure global intranet totally separate from the internet that the government and military use for Secret-level and below information. Then there's JWICS (Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System) for Top Secret and below, which is even bigger and more secure. They both have plenty of problems, but spammers, hackers, etc are not among them. I have one of each of them on my desk right now at work, plus a few others. If the FBI really wanted a new secure network, they could start with the SIPRNET boxes they already have and improve it.

  8. Oblig on Gmail CAPTCHA Cracked · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I, for one, welcome our help information-reading CAPTCHA-breaking bot overlords.

  9. Re:You'd think... on New Tools Available for Network-Centric Warfare · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As a defense contractor who's worked on (and taught) Net-centricity and as a former Marine, I can say that what we're facing is an enemy that is capable of much more speed and agility than we are. The whole point of Net-centric warfare is to move away from top-down Cold War era Command and Control to something more along the lines of what these emergent, adaptive, complex terrorist and insurgent networks use. Intead of wasting time and energy trying to adapt to a moving target, so to speak, these kinds of technologies allow tactical commanders to make faster decisions on the battlespace.

  10. Re:I am a member of the US Intel community. on US Set to Use Spy Satellites on US Citizens · · Score: 1

    True nuff. I'd rather we did less intel-type of collecting on U.S. citizens on U.S. soil for various reasons, not more. And I'd rather we'd also cut our funding to Israel, move out of Saudi Arabia, etc, but that's another can of worms. We've prevented many 9/11 type attacks over the years, but the intel community never gets credit for them. When one gets through, we get demonized. And we did have plenty of info pre-9/11. In fact it was way too much and it didn't get processed in time. We need better systems, better analysts, better processes, a need-to-share mentality to replace the need-to-know mentality, etc etc. For some reason, our answer to every problem is MORE information, despite the fact we're drowning in it already.

  11. Re:I am a member of the US Intel community. on US Set to Use Spy Satellites on US Citizens · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm also a member in the intelligence community, and I'd like to point out a few things. First, Google Earth has allowed people all over the world to view your house in recent color imagery for quite a while now. And frankly, depending on what kind of bird was used to shoot it, the imagery on Google Earth is certainly comparable to military satellite imagery since it's built mostly from low-flying airplanes. Google Earth, as a platform and as a source of imagery, is so good we routinely use it as a GIS application over the much more expensive applications the government has built. Second, there's a real limit to what overhead imagery can provide. It can't see into your home or car, and it can't see if you committed a crime. Granted, there are other types of assets than overhead imagery (which I dare not even allude to), but you've already lost all your privacy in case you haven't noticed. Now everyone's upset that the government's going to use this to catch dangerous criminals and terrorists. Remember when everyone blamed the government for not doing more to prevent 9/11? It's either this or you don't complain when there's a 9/11 style attack every year in a major city in the U.S. Your choice.

  12. Re:These cables were cut on purpose on Egypt Calls for Bandwidth Rationing · · Score: 1

    Neither the NSA nor anyone else did this on purpose. A ship dragged an anchor and accidentally severed the line, period. I work in the Intel community and saw this in our daily brief. If we did it, it wouldn't have been there at all (I'm not read onto those programs). And I would have posted this sooner, but our connection in Iraq is seriously degraded because of this.