Cheney was not a robot or other automaton. Machine systems generaly have better target aquisition and tracking ability, as well as friend/foe distinguish ability.
I think you underestimate the political clout of the puppy-curbstomping lobby, or PCuS. There's simply no WAY they'd allow the senators in their grubby pockets to allow the bill to go forward without the curbstomping rider. The donations they get are simply enourmous, Cruella DeVille is responsible for several million alone! And the rallies. It's best if we just don't discuss the rallies.... *shudder*
Now, as for the baby eating guys, they don't even have a lobbist, so, screw'em.
Infecting computers with a botnet the people's work? No, you're right, it isn't. But that's not what the article was saying. The botnet would be hosted on DOD owned hardware only.
Blowing a system away, foreign or domestic, that was generating or relaying an attack on a military network? Well, it sucks if you're the citizen who's machine got whacked, but the people's work is a bit more murky then. If one citizen was, intentionally or not, aiding the enemy, it might very well be the people's work to take their ass out. Collateral damage is in our lexicon for a reason. It sucks, but war is hell.
Yes, there is a "law" enabling the populace to remove a government that has turned on them. Unfortunately, I has been ignored for this purpose for over a century.
The sad truth is, if the USAF turns on the populace, You'd better hope they're the only branch that does so. If the DOD turns against the populace, You're pretty much screwed. USAF wouldn't be good at actual population suppression, holding action type missions. Of course, they could functionally wipe human society from the face of the planet, but that's not very good for actually controlling a country. And the Navy could pretty much do it too...
If the US government decides you're an enemy, I hope you have some mountainous, cave riddled real estate. But botnets will be the least of your worries.
Does it really matter? So, say it's some stateless, even goal-less entity that just wants to cause chaos. It doesn't really matter, they attack us, we have to defend ourselves. It doesn't matter if that's on a computer network or in a jungle. And in a military context, defending yourself includes several offensive options.
In Vietnam, do you think guys in the jungle gave a damn if the guy they couldn't see who shot at them was Vietnamese Army, Viet Cong, or just some farmer firing at him? No, offensive action got taken against a military unit, and they have a tendency to return such aggression in kind. Often multiplied. Would it matter even if it was some American who had gone rouge or been brainwashed to attack others? Not really. A shame that you'd had to inflict a casualty on a countryman, but when you are under attack, you tend to return fire. You can contemplate the identity of the attacker afterward, but one must always remember it's only hindsight that's 20/20.
This article is well fine and good, but it fails to recognize that there are two types of packet discrimination being kicked around. Protocol filtering/prioritization, and Source/Destination filtering/prioritization. There are certainly good and bad ways of doing the former, and some of the bad ways are really bad (for a "for instance", see Comcast). However, the basic concept, that network bandwidth is finite over a set period of time, and that finite resource must be utilized efficiently, is not one most geek types will disagree with you on. Smart treatment of packets is something few object to.
What brings a large objection is the Source/Destination filtering. I'm going to downgrade service on packets coming from Google video, because they haven't paid our "upgrade" tax, and coincidentally, we're invested in Youtube. This is an entirely different issue, and is not an engineering issue at all. It is entirely political. We know is technologically possible. People block sites today, for parental censorship reasons, among others. It would be little challenge, as an engineer, to set to a VERY low priority an arbitrary set of packets from a source address. This however violates what the internet is for, and in the end, if my ISP is doing this, am I really connected to the "Internet", or just a dispersed corporate net, similar to the old AOL.
This is, and will be, a political question, and if it goes the wrong way, will destroy what is fundamentally interesting about the net. The ability to, with one connection, talk to anyone else, anywhere in the world, no different then if they were in the next town over.
That is, assuming you can use a beach then without the use of SPF50, an umbrella, a tent, heavy blanket, and possibly concrete shielding.
Semi-moral of story; while saving for your future is important, you'd better enjoy the benefits of life today, because those same benefits may not be there tomorrow!
So, if your congresscritter was in office in 1998, you really have to assume he/she voted for it. I suppose you could troll the attendence logs for the day in question and see if they were absent, but I don't know how much that washes their hands. And potentialy, House reps may have voice voted against it, but it's unlikley.
So, Pretty much any Senator/Rep who's been in office for more than 10 years is responsible.
So, by that measure, Neal Stephenson should be an Instant Classic!!
An entire chaper describing the proper process of eating Capt. Crunch, a significant (10 pages or so) fragment of erotic fiction. Cryptonomicon should be required reading in schools!!!
"Does MobiTV and Verizon have the right to send a cease and desist letter? Yes. Anyone can write a letter. It means nothing."
I agree with your entire post except for this. A C&D is not simply a letter. In this case, it wasn't even just sent to the "offending" party. It was sent to their ISP, and was a legal document, sworn to be true under penalty of perjury. This could have some very real consequences, both for the sender and sendee. A legal document isn't simply speech, in a lot of ways, it's action. And a C&D, or a DMCA notice, isn't just a letter requesting you do something, it's a demand, backed by threatened legal concequences, for you or anyone else, like a skittish, lawsuit averse ISP, who dosn't go along.
The problem, as it seems to me, is that the proper focus of attack isn't the expert witness per se. If we assume that everything provided to him by media sentry and verizon are correct, which the judge's denial of the motion seems to assume, then the witness himself and his testimony are indeed valid.
The real problem is there are some massive unresolved questions on just how valid the data is that the expert testimony is based apon. I'm no lawyer, and have no real involvement in legal cases, but in most cases, isn't evidence investigated by expert witnesses either collected by, or provided via a verifiable chain of custody to, said expert? We have no idea how this "evidence" was collected, what methods were used to avoid contamination, and how reliable those methods were for drawing conclusions linking it to other evidence (say, from Verizon).
So, it is not necessary, or even very likely to be successful, to try and impeach the witness. What is at question is the underlying evidence. If the underlying evidence is faulty, no expert in the world could be expected to draw relevant conclusions. Is there a way to directly challenge the "facts
used by the expert witness? The judge seems to feel the information is simple fact and requires no interpretation, and says as much in his denial. This is simply untrue, and the judge's misinterpretation needs to be corrected, though I'm sure this is a delicate thing to attempt.
"Women are marginalized by too many seeking money so it works out both ways."
Not true! Yes, perhaps there are some gold diggers out there, but lets face it, most men simply aren't good targets for them.
I may be well off with my tech job, but I won't be paying for boob jobs or have a "Cribz" style house anytime soon.
When GP says Men are marginalized by other men who just want sex, that's more problematic. All men might not have scads of money to give out, but the overwhelming majority of women have sex they can give out. And in amounts only limited by time and attention, and, possibly friction.
And the plain fact is, even the nice guys who look you in the face and not the chest when you talk, and who are really good at listening and making you laugh, still probably want to get laid at some point. So, really the difference between them and the other, "shallow" type is a lot more fuzzy, and much harder to filter for. Whereas most "Good" women would never expect me to, at some advanced part of the relationship, buy them a yacht.
If you're going to do work for the airforce in any way computer related, Contracting is the way to go. As a disclaimer/disclosure, I got out of the AF in Nov06. And retention bonus? For computer people? Forget it. They just got done with a systematic drawdown of computer people. I made Staff first attempt (For non-mil, This is not easy, as much of your score is determined by time in grade/time in service) shortly before seperating and did better than 97% of peers testing on the career half, but had a CJR over 250 to stay in if I gave a damn (For you non military types, Read that as, "was 250+ on a waiting list to KEEP my own job").
The point is, they didn't care how good or bad the airmen were they were getting rid of, they just had a target number to hit. My commander was begging me to take on a contracting position with the unit I was with, but I was tired of dealing with the crap anyway.
Oh, and Perks? Don't get me started. Recruiter types always list them, but then forget to mention the downsides. Free airflight anywhere you want right? Well, no, only where there are cargo routes, which probably Won't include your base, and you have to be already burning leave before you even get on a waiting list to get on one. You think a 2 hour delay in an airport is bad? You can be sitting for days, burning your vacation, as you hope to get on a "free" flight. Their recomendation? Don't be so picky about a destination! Just get on whatever flight has room and go wherever it's going!
Free tuition? Forget it, you won't have time to use it. Not till after your an NCO at the least, and by that point, you've got a career and you won't NEED a degree. You've got the airforce.
And about the best clothing benefit I ever got was being stuck in Kyrgystan for a week on my way back from a deployment, and they had North Face gear available from the locals at crazy low prices. But that's not a stricly military benefit, that's just third world fun.
Plain fact is, as a contractor, you can leave the job at the door when you go home, you can tell your boss that his security ideas are completely fucking stupid without risking federal charges, and if you get tired of the job, you can quit, and it isn't a federal crime. Really, computer people need to be able to speek truth to power, and the military just isn't setup that way. You can tell your NCO that your network is up shit creek, but there's no way that the commander is ever going to hear that news.
Who let the recruiter on here? Let me take these one by one Free housing: On base is open to inspection by commander at any time. Off base, your supervisor is recomended to "Stop by for a visit to your airmen frequently". Screw that. When the commander let's me check out his house whenever I want, we'll talk.
Guaranteed food: Food allowance is a joke. Fact is, even with it, most airmen below NCO will qualify for WIC if they have a kid, and you'll USE IT. We're talking below poverty level. Chow hall, excuse me, Space age dining facility, is only open at specific times, and your elementary caffeteria puts it to shame in all but a few places.
Guaranteed health care: Have you ever had a 19 year old Airman try to clean your teeth? Or take your blood? Or do a damn x-ray? If you join, look forward to it. Healh care professionals? Those are for paying customers, You get the kids.
Guaranteed work: No argument here. Plenty of that. In fact, you can expect your router config or server maint to be interupted to go clean some toilets, because, even though you're the most qualified computer person, you're the lowest ranking around, and you wouldn't expect TSgt Luddite to go clean a toilet would you???
Commisary and BX: If you've ever gone to Wal-Mart and said, "Damn, this stuff would be oh-so affordable if it weren't for these blasted taxes", Then these bennies are for YOU!
I addressed SpaceA and Tuition in an earlier post, check it out if you want, but the short version is, Many obstacles to actualy USE them. Mostly for NCO's and SNCO's. And after 20 years of mindless computer work far from the cutting edge, Forget about getting a real tech job when you get out. Retirement indeed. Base pay per month for an E-7 (a respectable rank) after 20 years? 3,715.50. Can YOU live on 1,857.75 a month?
And in case you think I didn't get to see exotic places and fun things, I did a long tour in Germany, a Deployment in Pakistan, hops through Turkey and Kyrgistan, a short in Tucson, before leaving. Being overseas is no picnic. Friend getting married back home or relative going into surgery? Well, hope a phone call is enough for you to feel a part of things.
Since I know that terror suspects will probably get sent to Gitmo, I can safely simply ignore any of these pesky National Security Letters I get since I know they violate human rights, because they don't get approved by a judge, and may well result in illegal incarceration right?
What you are talking about is prioritization by service. What they are talking about is prioritization of service PROVIDER. They don't care if it's Google webpage or google video. They just care if Google has paid their extortion tax this month or not.
Prioritization of service is an entirely different animal and an entirely different argument. I don't think anyone is arguing that VOIP packets can't be routed differently than FTP packets or HTTP packets. That's not the issue.
The issue is when packets from redhat.com are passed more slowly because redhat hasn't paid for their speed "upgrade" to whatever Tier1 the packet happens to pass through. Nevermind that their connection and yours both have plenty of room. It's an artificial bottleneck created simply to generate revenue, when in truth both parties have already paid for their connection.
It's not the ISP that is going to be charging their extortion tax. It's the long haul telcos. So, it won't matter if I start my own ISP, I still have to hook into ATT, or some other major telco. And that's why the lack of net nutrality sucks. I'm already paying (as an ISP) ATT big bucks for my T3's or whatever pipe I need.
That bandwidth is PAID FOR. Repeatedly.
Google pays for the bits that go to and from their pipe. So, If I send a packet to google, I pay to send the packet (admitedly, only fractions of a penny for a single packet, but you'll have that), Google pays to recieve and reply to that packet, and then I pay to recieve that reply (every bit going over my line requires bandwidth, and therefore I have paid for that bandwidth, even if not paying per bit or minute etc).
The packet both ways uses up bandwidth on two connections that are both paid for. The consumer pays the ISP, the ISP pays the Telco, and so on. So, that comunication has already been paid for. And now, the telco wants MORE money just to keep the packets going at the speed they are at today.
This is just pure greed. Period. And not one person who advocates doing away with net nutrality has brought up one argument to explain why the Telco should get paid a third to possibly a FIFTH time for the same message sequence. If anyone can explain why, I'm all ears.
I think Homeworld is the example that the "cut scenes don't count" crowd are looking for. Perhaps it was the music (Agnus Dei has been used to good emotional effect in many a movie, see Platoon) but the early mission where you limp back to your home planet and everything is destroyed, and they are slowly battering and destroying the cryo trays of the last of your race, I know I had an emotional response. You're trying to hurry to get some kind of offensive force to save what little of your civilization is left, and the longer you take, the more die. That's tragedy that's at your hands. And once you have the trays protected, as you slowly load each one in, the narrator, in a resigned voice, recites how many colonists are saved. And when there are no more, the resigned comment that there is nothing more we can do here. You can hear the sorrow, and I know the first time I played it, I felt the sorrow too. None of this occurs in a cut scene. It's as directly under your control as can be expected.
Does the music play a part? Sure, but it does so in movies too. Imagine Forrest Gump without the music (both the pop and the score. Especially the score). Far less emotional impact.
Perhaps games like PeaceMaker, which put you at the helm of Israel Or Palestine, will give people some emotional connection to the actions they are performing. Realizing that, while their decisions are only determining the fate of pixels on a screen, someone somewhere is in a very similar seat and making real decisions about real lives.
Shadow of the Colossus brushes on this (and is mentioned in the article), but because of the nature of the game, there is no way to elect a peaceful path. You are not allowed to simply grieve your lost love, and depart the land peacefully. The fateful decision has been made before the game started, and you are now committed to your path of murder, even if you or your character isn't yet aware of it. It would be an exceedingly boring game otherwise. However, with an RTS, diplomacy is a viable option for something worth playing. Indeed, it's often harder. Unfortunately, to date, all RTS games have cannon fodder, cookie cutter units. Perhaps a game on the order of Superpower 2, where you have to elect to attend the services of dead soldiers, approve the letters sent to grieving parents, would provide some connection with the actions taken (possibly more than our sitting president even!).
Will try not to get too far off topic here, but you're missing the point a bit. The Sciences of Climate and Tectonic Plate movement aren't necessarily about events like storms and earthquakes. That's at a Micro level, and what's being referred to is at a Macro level.
For instance, the difference between predicting climate change and predicting a storm in 10 years is roughly equal to the difference between Computer security trends, and predicting the guise of the virus de jour in 10 years time. One is macro, and is subject to identifiable trends. The other is micro, and subject to more chaos than we can reliably see through (Nostradamus aside).
Changes and trends in the long term for Computer Security are just as relevant and predictable as long term climate change. Will it be 100% right? No. But the discussion is still important and relevant.
There is a difference between Stock, and Stock Options. These guys aren't just the CEO's, they are the founders. When they sell off stock, they are selling off their parts of the company they founded. You know, the one you use every day for searching, that has enriched your internet experience. Presumably they and their investors have some split of the available stock, and they are simply adjusting this ratio more toward the investors. They could quit tomorrow, and STILL sell that stock, or keep it, and just live off the work they've already done.
The point is, they aren't being PAID in stock (That's not part of their current salary, reimbursement for their current work), that is the reward they have for risking their money, work, and reputations building this thing called Google in the first place.
I think you're missing the point a bit. He's not worried about people that have heard of their band, go to get their CD, then stop because they see the DRM markings. He's worried, and rightly so, IMHO, about the people who never get to hear about the band in the first place because of the word of mouth killing effect of DRM.
Really, Artists don't make all that much money on albums to begin with, as compaired to live shows and merchendise, and what I really see in the future is albums and recordings as advertizing for a band's live shows. I hear an MP3 of Band X. Band X is really good, I go to see Band X's live show. Band X gets paid for their music and work. I hear Band Y's mp3, It sucks, I don't pay to go see Band Y. Simple, effective, rewards quality work directly to the artists, and weeds out the crap. And it seems like this artist almost gets it. He has a lingering mention of not liking his music "pirated" but it's a throwaway comment. The actual money for those albums is already pirated by the Label (in a much more historicly acurate, I get the gold, you get the shaft meaning of Piracy) So why should he care?
Slashdot Mirror
Cheney was not a robot or other automaton. Machine systems generaly have better target aquisition and tracking ability, as well as friend/foe distinguish ability.
I think you underestimate the political clout of the puppy-curbstomping lobby, or PCuS. There's simply no WAY they'd allow the senators in their grubby pockets to allow the bill to go forward without the curbstomping rider. The donations they get are simply enourmous, Cruella DeVille is responsible for several million alone! And the rallies. It's best if we just don't discuss the rallies.... *shudder*
Now, as for the baby eating guys, they don't even have a lobbist, so, screw'em.
Infecting computers with a botnet the people's work? No, you're right, it isn't. But that's not what the article was saying. The botnet would be hosted on DOD owned hardware only.
Blowing a system away, foreign or domestic, that was generating or relaying an attack on a military network? Well, it sucks if you're the citizen who's machine got whacked, but the people's work is a bit more murky then. If one citizen was, intentionally or not, aiding the enemy, it might very well be the people's work to take their ass out. Collateral damage is in our lexicon for a reason. It sucks, but war is hell.
Sue the Federal government in a Federal court, for an act of war?
HAHAHAHAHAHA.
Case Dismissed.
Yes, there is a "law" enabling the populace to remove a government that has turned on them. Unfortunately, I has been ignored for this purpose for over a century.
The sad truth is, if the USAF turns on the populace, You'd better hope they're the only branch that does so. If the DOD turns against the populace, You're pretty much screwed. USAF wouldn't be good at actual population suppression, holding action type missions. Of course, they could functionally wipe human society from the face of the planet, but that's not very good for actually controlling a country. And the Navy could pretty much do it too...
If the US government decides you're an enemy, I hope you have some mountainous, cave riddled real estate. But botnets will be the least of your worries.
Does it really matter? So, say it's some stateless, even goal-less entity that just wants to cause chaos. It doesn't really matter, they attack us, we have to defend ourselves. It doesn't matter if that's on a computer network or in a jungle. And in a military context, defending yourself includes several offensive options.
In Vietnam, do you think guys in the jungle gave a damn if the guy they couldn't see who shot at them was Vietnamese Army, Viet Cong, or just some farmer firing at him? No, offensive action got taken against a military unit, and they have a tendency to return such aggression in kind. Often multiplied. Would it matter even if it was some American who had gone rouge or been brainwashed to attack others? Not really. A shame that you'd had to inflict a casualty on a countryman, but when you are under attack, you tend to return fire. You can contemplate the identity of the attacker afterward, but one must always remember it's only hindsight that's 20/20.
This article is well fine and good, but it fails to recognize that there are two types of packet discrimination being kicked around. Protocol filtering/prioritization, and Source/Destination filtering/prioritization. There are certainly good and bad ways of doing the former, and some of the bad ways are really bad (for a "for instance", see Comcast). However, the basic concept, that network bandwidth is finite over a set period of time, and that finite resource must be utilized efficiently, is not one most geek types will disagree with you on. Smart treatment of packets is something few object to.
What brings a large objection is the Source/Destination filtering. I'm going to downgrade service on packets coming from Google video, because they haven't paid our "upgrade" tax, and coincidentally, we're invested in Youtube. This is an entirely different issue, and is not an engineering issue at all. It is entirely political. We know is technologically possible. People block sites today, for parental censorship reasons, among others. It would be little challenge, as an engineer, to set to a VERY low priority an arbitrary set of packets from a source address. This however violates what the internet is for, and in the end, if my ISP is doing this, am I really connected to the "Internet", or just a dispersed corporate net, similar to the old AOL.
This is, and will be, a political question, and if it goes the wrong way, will destroy what is fundamentally interesting about the net. The ability to, with one connection, talk to anyone else, anywhere in the world, no different then if they were in the next town over.
That is, assuming you can use a beach then without the use of SPF50, an umbrella, a tent, heavy blanket, and possibly concrete shielding.
Semi-moral of story; while saving for your future is important, you'd better enjoy the benefits of life today, because those same benefits may not be there tomorrow!
The DMCA was passed in the House by voice vote, and the Senate by Unanimous Concent.
See the "Major Actions" section of this address
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d105:HR02281:@@@L&summ2=m&
So, if your congresscritter was in office in 1998, you really have to assume he/she voted for it. I suppose you could troll the attendence logs for the day in question and see if they were absent, but I don't know how much that washes their hands. And potentialy, House reps may have voice voted against it, but it's unlikley.
So, Pretty much any Senator/Rep who's been in office for more than 10 years is responsible.
So, by that measure, Neal Stephenson should be an Instant Classic!!
An entire chaper describing the proper process of eating Capt. Crunch, a significant (10 pages or so) fragment of erotic fiction. Cryptonomicon should be required reading in schools!!!
Beggars can't be choosers....
"Does MobiTV and Verizon have the right to send a cease and desist letter? Yes. Anyone can write a letter. It means nothing."
I agree with your entire post except for this. A C&D is not simply a letter. In this case, it wasn't even just sent to the "offending" party. It was sent to their ISP, and was a legal document, sworn to be true under penalty of perjury. This could have some very real consequences, both for the sender and sendee. A legal document isn't simply speech, in a lot of ways, it's action. And a C&D, or a DMCA notice, isn't just a letter requesting you do something, it's a demand, backed by threatened legal concequences, for you or anyone else, like a skittish, lawsuit averse ISP, who dosn't go along.
The problem, as it seems to me, is that the proper focus of attack isn't the expert witness per se. If we assume that everything provided to him by media sentry and verizon are correct, which the judge's denial of the motion seems to assume, then the witness himself and his testimony are indeed valid.
The real problem is there are some massive unresolved questions on just how valid the data is that the expert testimony is based apon. I'm no lawyer, and have no real involvement in legal cases, but in most cases, isn't evidence investigated by expert witnesses either collected by, or provided via a verifiable chain of custody to, said expert? We have no idea how this "evidence" was collected, what methods were used to avoid contamination, and how reliable those methods were for drawing conclusions linking it to other evidence (say, from Verizon).
So, it is not necessary, or even very likely to be successful, to try and impeach the witness. What is at question is the underlying evidence. If the underlying evidence is faulty, no expert in the world could be expected to draw relevant conclusions. Is there a way to directly challenge the "facts
used by the expert witness? The judge seems to feel the information is simple fact and requires no interpretation, and says as much in his denial. This is simply untrue, and the judge's misinterpretation needs to be corrected, though I'm sure this is a delicate thing to attempt.
"Women are marginalized by too many seeking money so it works out both ways."
Not true! Yes, perhaps there are some gold diggers out there, but lets face it, most men simply aren't good targets for them.
I may be well off with my tech job, but I won't be paying for boob jobs or have a "Cribz" style house anytime soon.
When GP says Men are marginalized by other men who just want sex, that's more problematic. All men might not have scads of money to give out, but the overwhelming majority of women have sex they can give out. And in amounts only limited by time and attention, and, possibly friction.
And the plain fact is, even the nice guys who look you in the face and not the chest when you talk, and who are really good at listening and making you laugh, still probably want to get laid at some point. So, really the difference between them and the other, "shallow" type is a lot more fuzzy, and much harder to filter for. Whereas most "Good" women would never expect me to, at some advanced part of the relationship, buy them a yacht.
If you're going to do work for the airforce in any way computer related, Contracting is the way to go. As a disclaimer/disclosure, I got out of the AF in Nov06. And retention bonus? For computer people? Forget it. They just got done with a systematic drawdown of computer people. I made Staff first attempt (For non-mil, This is not easy, as much of your score is determined by time in grade/time in service) shortly before seperating and did better than 97% of peers testing on the career half, but had a CJR over 250 to stay in if I gave a damn (For you non military types, Read that as, "was 250+ on a waiting list to KEEP my own job").
The point is, they didn't care how good or bad the airmen were they were getting rid of, they just had a target number to hit. My commander was begging me to take on a contracting position with the unit I was with, but I was tired of dealing with the crap anyway.
Oh, and Perks? Don't get me started. Recruiter types always list them, but then forget to mention the downsides. Free airflight anywhere you want right? Well, no, only where there are cargo routes, which probably Won't include your base, and you have to be already burning leave before you even get on a waiting list to get on one. You think a 2 hour delay in an airport is bad? You can be sitting for days, burning your vacation, as you hope to get on a "free" flight. Their recomendation? Don't be so picky about a destination! Just get on whatever flight has room and go wherever it's going!
Free tuition? Forget it, you won't have time to use it. Not till after your an NCO at the least, and by that point, you've got a career and you won't NEED a degree. You've got the airforce.
And about the best clothing benefit I ever got was being stuck in Kyrgystan for a week on my way back from a deployment, and they had North Face gear available from the locals at crazy low prices. But that's not a stricly military benefit, that's just third world fun.
Plain fact is, as a contractor, you can leave the job at the door when you go home, you can tell your boss that his security ideas are completely fucking stupid without risking federal charges, and if you get tired of the job, you can quit, and it isn't a federal crime. Really, computer people need to be able to speek truth to power, and the military just isn't setup that way. You can tell your NCO that your network is up shit creek, but there's no way that the commander is ever going to hear that news.
Who let the recruiter on here?
Let me take these one by one
Free housing: On base is open to inspection by commander at any time. Off base, your supervisor is recomended to "Stop by for a visit to your airmen frequently". Screw that. When the commander let's me check out his house whenever I want, we'll talk.
Guaranteed food: Food allowance is a joke. Fact is, even with it, most airmen below NCO will qualify for WIC if they have a kid, and you'll USE IT. We're talking below poverty level. Chow hall, excuse me, Space age dining facility, is only open at specific times, and your elementary caffeteria puts it to shame in all but a few places.
Guaranteed health care: Have you ever had a 19 year old Airman try to clean your teeth? Or take your blood? Or do a damn x-ray? If you join, look forward to it. Healh care professionals? Those are for paying customers, You get the kids.
Guaranteed work: No argument here. Plenty of that. In fact, you can expect your router config or server maint to be interupted to go clean some toilets, because, even though you're the most qualified computer person, you're the lowest ranking around, and you wouldn't expect TSgt Luddite to go clean a toilet would you???
Commisary and BX: If you've ever gone to Wal-Mart and said, "Damn, this stuff would be oh-so affordable if it weren't for these blasted taxes", Then these bennies are for YOU!
I addressed SpaceA and Tuition in an earlier post, check it out if you want, but the short version is, Many obstacles to actualy USE them. Mostly for NCO's and SNCO's. And after 20 years of mindless computer work far from the cutting edge, Forget about getting a real tech job when you get out. Retirement indeed. Base pay per month for an E-7 (a respectable rank) after 20 years? 3,715.50. Can YOU live on 1,857.75 a month?
And in case you think I didn't get to see exotic places and fun things, I did a long tour in Germany, a Deployment in Pakistan, hops through Turkey and Kyrgistan, a short in Tucson, before leaving. Being overseas is no picnic. Friend getting married back home or relative going into surgery? Well, hope a phone call is enough for you to feel a part of things.
Sweet!
Since I know that terror suspects will probably get sent to Gitmo, I can safely simply ignore any of these pesky National Security Letters I get since I know they violate human rights, because they don't get approved by a judge, and may well result in illegal incarceration right?
You forgot "Open Bar". But, I guess that's just for the fighter pilots.
What you are talking about is prioritization by service. What they are talking about is prioritization of service PROVIDER. They don't care if it's Google webpage or google video. They just care if Google has paid their extortion tax this month or not.
Prioritization of service is an entirely different animal and an entirely different argument. I don't think anyone is arguing that VOIP packets can't be routed differently than FTP packets or HTTP packets. That's not the issue.
The issue is when packets from redhat.com are passed more slowly because redhat hasn't paid for their speed "upgrade" to whatever Tier1 the packet happens to pass through. Nevermind that their connection and yours both have plenty of room. It's an artificial bottleneck created simply to generate revenue, when in truth both parties have already paid for their connection.
It's not the ISP that is going to be charging their extortion tax. It's the long haul telcos. So, it won't matter if I start my own ISP, I still have to hook into ATT, or some other major telco. And that's why the lack of net nutrality sucks. I'm already paying (as an ISP) ATT big bucks for my T3's or whatever pipe I need.
That bandwidth is PAID FOR. Repeatedly.
Google pays for the bits that go to and from their pipe. So, If I send a packet to google, I pay to send the packet (admitedly, only fractions of a penny for a single packet, but you'll have that), Google pays to recieve and reply to that packet, and then I pay to recieve that reply (every bit going over my line requires bandwidth, and therefore I have paid for that bandwidth, even if not paying per bit or minute etc).
The packet both ways uses up bandwidth on two connections that are both paid for. The consumer pays the ISP, the ISP pays the Telco, and so on. So, that comunication has already been paid for. And now, the telco wants MORE money just to keep the packets going at the speed they are at today.
This is just pure greed. Period. And not one person who advocates doing away with net nutrality has brought up one argument to explain why the Telco should get paid a third to possibly a FIFTH time for the same message sequence. If anyone can explain why, I'm all ears.
I think Homeworld is the example that the "cut scenes don't count" crowd are looking for. Perhaps it was the music (Agnus Dei has been used to good emotional effect in many a movie, see Platoon) but the early mission where you limp back to your home planet and everything is destroyed, and they are slowly battering and destroying the cryo trays of the last of your race, I know I had an emotional response. You're trying to hurry to get some kind of offensive force to save what little of your civilization is left, and the longer you take, the more die. That's tragedy that's at your hands. And once you have the trays protected, as you slowly load each one in, the narrator, in a resigned voice, recites how many colonists are saved. And when there are no more, the resigned comment that there is nothing more we can do here. You can hear the sorrow, and I know the first time I played it, I felt the sorrow too. None of this occurs in a cut scene. It's as directly under your control as can be expected.
Does the music play a part? Sure, but it does so in movies too. Imagine Forrest Gump without the music (both the pop and the score. Especially the score). Far less emotional impact.
Perhaps games like PeaceMaker, which put you at the helm of Israel Or Palestine, will give people some emotional connection to the actions they are performing. Realizing that, while their decisions are only determining the fate of pixels on a screen, someone somewhere is in a very similar seat and making real decisions about real lives.
Shadow of the Colossus brushes on this (and is mentioned in the article), but because of the nature of the game, there is no way to elect a peaceful path. You are not allowed to simply grieve your lost love, and depart the land peacefully. The fateful decision has been made before the game started, and you are now committed to your path of murder, even if you or your character isn't yet aware of it. It would be an exceedingly boring game otherwise. However, with an RTS, diplomacy is a viable option for something worth playing. Indeed, it's often harder. Unfortunately, to date, all RTS games have cannon fodder, cookie cutter units. Perhaps a game on the order of Superpower 2, where you have to elect to attend the services of dead soldiers, approve the letters sent to grieving parents, would provide some connection with the actions taken (possibly more than our sitting president even!).
Will try not to get too far off topic here, but you're missing the point a bit. The Sciences of Climate and Tectonic Plate movement aren't necessarily about events like storms and earthquakes. That's at a Micro level, and what's being referred to is at a Macro level.
For instance, the difference between predicting climate change and predicting a storm in 10 years is roughly equal to the difference between Computer security trends, and predicting the guise of the virus de jour in 10 years time. One is macro, and is subject to identifiable trends. The other is micro, and subject to more chaos than we can reliably see through (Nostradamus aside).
Changes and trends in the long term for Computer Security are just as relevant and predictable as long term climate change. Will it be 100% right? No. But the discussion is still important and relevant.
Somebody is making a penny.....
There is a difference between Stock, and Stock Options. These guys aren't just the CEO's, they are the founders. When they sell off stock, they are selling off their parts of the company they founded. You know, the one you use every day for searching, that has enriched your internet experience. Presumably they and their investors have some split of the available stock, and they are simply adjusting this ratio more toward the investors. They could quit tomorrow, and STILL sell that stock, or keep it, and just live off the work they've already done.
The point is, they aren't being PAID in stock (That's not part of their current salary, reimbursement for their current work), that is the reward they have for risking their money, work, and reputations building this thing called Google in the first place.
I think you're missing the point a bit. He's not worried about people that have heard of their band, go to get their CD, then stop because they see the DRM markings. He's worried, and rightly so, IMHO, about the people who never get to hear about the band in the first place because of the word of mouth killing effect of DRM.
Really, Artists don't make all that much money on albums to begin with, as compaired to live shows and merchendise, and what I really see in the future is albums and recordings as advertizing for a band's live shows. I hear an MP3 of Band X. Band X is really good, I go to see Band X's live show. Band X gets paid for their music and work. I hear Band Y's mp3, It sucks, I don't pay to go see Band Y. Simple, effective, rewards quality work directly to the artists, and weeds out the crap. And it seems like this artist almost gets it. He has a lingering mention of not liking his music "pirated" but it's a throwaway comment. The actual money for those albums is already pirated by the Label (in a much more historicly acurate, I get the gold, you get the shaft meaning of Piracy) So why should he care?