I seem to recall that in the mid-1980's the US sent a carrier battle group up through the (North) Atlantic in the middle of a gale (hurricane?) to sneak up on the Soviet Union to do some fleet exercises. When the dust cleared the USSR went ape-shit when, without warning, they found US Navy AWACS, F-14s, F-18s and Intruders flying a dozen miles off their coast. This even caught several NATO countries off guard.
The USSR protested against "US aggressive" behaviour and some Allies immediately asked that the US tone down the exercises because the USSR got very very nervous and began responding with sending high alerts to Warsaw Block forces.
Let's not forget that most wars are usually started by "a surprise first attack" and that tensions between Japan and the USA were extraordinarily high in 1941 -- probably about the same level as were the tensions between the USSR and the west in the mid-1980's.
Just installed RH 7.1 and decided to use Raid 1 with 2 hard disks but I think it still uses ext2 filesystem. Can I run XFS (or ReiserFS) with Raid? Does anyone have this info or know where to find it?
Re:They were from the AVROW Arrow Team!
on
Review: The Dish
·
· Score: 1
Countries are created not just out of there location, but attitudes, education, culture, etc.
This can manifest itself in simple terms like music, art or even aircraft design.
Re:They were from the AVROW Arrow Team!
on
Review: The Dish
·
· Score: 1
Actually the entire Arrow design team generated over 20,000 patents and a huge amount of the plane was very much ***NOT*** off the shelf being the very first "fly-by-wire" jet in the world.
Most of the core engineers on the Arrow itself were hired as "a working group" because they were the only ones in the world with "fly-by-wire" design experience and were exclusively responsible for designing the Moon Lander portion of the Apollo program for that very reason! But please recognise that this team, while largely Canadian, also included some of the very best engineers from the UK, France and the USA. I had the pleasure of working for one UK member 20 years ago (his wife didn't want of move to the USA) and he was just brilliant -- but you couldn't get him to talk about the Arrow without his eyes watering over.
Further, part of the Arrow program included developing the Iroquois jet engines -- at the time the most powerful in the world. This happened because Roll Royce, the original contractors, gave up because the design requirements were said to be "impossible" to meet. BTW -- the Iroquois engines were designed by the head of the Avro Arrow engine "Integration and Test" team in only 18 months. Dessault Aerospace offered to buy a minimum of 200 engines from Avro for their Mirage Jet Fighter Program (who were also screwed by Rolls Royce's failings) at a profit that would have exceeded the entire development costs of both the Arrow and Iroquois engines -- but the government refused and ordered everything destoyed. The number of engines actually bought would likely have been three or four times that number and would have place Avro in the same world as Rolls Royce and Pratt and Witney WRT jet engines. Incidently, the core Iroquois development team (after the cancellation) went to France to "develop" the exact same engines for another plane called the Concord!!
Finally, many members of the Avro team stayed and worked for Avro's "Special Products And Research" group. This group finally split off when Avro went under and became known as Spar Aerospace, which before it was bought out, developed the Space Shuttle's Space Robotic Manipulator System (SRMS) more quantly known as the Canadarm. It's next generation product is now heading for ISS Alpha.
Lots to be proud of, too bad most of us Canadian's just don't get it.
Hope this helps
"The Disk": Part of the Continuing Moon Conspiracy
on
Review: The Dish
·
· Score: 1
Alright, lets get this out in the open. Everyone now really knows that the moon landings were faked and the secret cabal is doing as much damage control it can to get things back on the "right" track. This latest attempt at "historical correction" only proves that conspiracy theorists are right by the establishment's blatent attempts of pretending to not want the film "generally released" even though it's a financial success.
The grudging refusal will finally give way to wide spread release, then huge financial success, best film and acting Oscars, etc. and people will point to the initial reluctance of "Hollywood" as proof that the Cabal wasn't involved with the film because if they were then this would have, from the start, been promoted with billion dollar advertising, etc. Therfore the general conclusion will be that this film must be a true historical record (and hence we went to the moon) when in fact (from its initial outset) events regarding this film's "release" prove otherwise.
Further, it has been widely reported that single frames within the film have been substituted with pictures of bags of butter dripping popcorn (note the sexual overtones here) which cause large numbers of the audience to go out (during the film's showing) and "relieve" themselves by buying the same from the candy bar. During these times, the convoluted and contradictory elements of the film do not get noticed (and henced discussed) and instead everyone thinks the film is wonderful. In fact, Theater owner's and manager's world over are reaping the benefit of showing the film (by extended popcorn sales) and will promote the film even more. Unfortunately, the ushers, who may see the film over and over will finally catch on and will have to be killed (the latter being done by the ***HUGE*** excess popcorn profits reaped)
What sneaky bastards these master rulers truely are!!!
Actually there are automated hunter-tracker cruise missle systems that operate independently from direct human control. They are launched into an area and uses (thermal) image pattern matching to selectively hunt down and destroy targets. These systems have been in development for years and can intelligently decide which course to fly when detecting multiple targets, optimize its decision for maximum damage to the enemy (do I go after the tank or three personal carriers?) and act accordingly.
Given all the robot combat shows appearing on various networks, it appears that our mechanical brethren are being set to adopt all our worse qualities as well.
As one who also had a really rough time in HS, including living with a deep depression, I can also attest to the fact that things do get better. As it happened I took a couple of years off after HS and finally went to university where the universe really opened up. I went from few dates during HS to more then I could handle in any one week. I also started friendships then, that are now entering their third decade, including ones with professors and TAs.
The culture of HS is at best repressive and narcassistic, with some of the most narrow-minded, authoritarian individuals you will ever meet (read teachers/principals) in control of your life. The pressure to conform is extraordinary, largely driven by powerful personal needs to both conform and prove one's individuality, all done in a caudron of hormones and peer-pressure. You are at a point where your conscious is also driven to understand who you are -- and it can be easy to believe the bullshit others may tell you if there are many of them and too few of you.
Please do try and talk with someone about how you feel, preferrably outside of school (parent, minister, doctor, psychologist), if you need to let off some steam or have to express something that you don't otherwise want to share with someone you know, then please write to me. I will do my best to offer a friendly, helpful ear.
After many years in IT, working on enterprise computing, I have relunctantly concluded that there is very much a "research-like" scientific element to extending or maintaining/debugging complex systems.
When you are dealing with huge interacting systems with 100's of millions (billions?) of lines worth of code, its total absolute behaviour ***IS*** impossible to predict. Yes there are guidelines, requirements, previous behaviour, etc. but when a bug pops out, especially during new development, it takes forensic skill and competence to unmask the metasolutions that went into these systems that produced unexpected results. This requires "understanding" a solution that was implimented perhaps decades earlier. This understanding can be very much a scientific pursuit requiring enquiry and investigation, and sometimes even hypothesis and experimentation to uncover.
I think CS depts in general completely ignore this aspect and rarely (if ever) teach the skills necessary to perform this task. Further, CS depts have yet to teach or promote what it means to work in a team. For those with experience working in Labs, this can be an essential element in scientific thinking because doing scientific research usually involves building on the work of others, not necessarily in the sense of results obtained, but in understanding procedures and protocols that were used in determining those results.
Don't believe any of this for a moment. What's really going on is a secret plan to shoot it out if the Commies get the upper hand in Russia or the Chinese decide to go after Taiwan. At the first sign of trouble, just point the lasers downward, fire away and destroy the offending nations missle's right in their bunkers!
At first glance it might seem like it will take a little time to get a kill (for now), but what the hell, these new military systems always have a few bugs to shake out.
From a TLC (Discovery?) special shown last year: they said the African/hybrid bees actually produced more honey not less!!! This stemmed largely from their extremely active/aggressive behaviour in gathering pollen and production. It seems the rumour about less production came because farmers had difficulty gathering honey from hives because of the bees swarming/attacking behaviour and were simply emotionally/psychologically overwhelmed by what they experienced. Standard protocols developed over the centuries for use with european bees had to be modified and beekeepers/workers needed to retrained to handle these critters.
Eventually those South Americian farmers that were able to properly harvest honey (extending smoking time/adjusting harvesting schedules toward evening collection, extra thick collection suits and double/triple lined hoods, taping cuffs and collars, etc.) claimed production was much higher with equal quality. They have to endure many more stings and are forced to use extreme caution when dealing with the bees; moving hives and changing their placement had to be done with extreme care so as not to endanger the general public. Done correctly they were are able to get more honey/hive then using the pure european counterpart but not without the aforementioned costs.
I've actually had an opportunity to dine with a very senior designer and architect of OS/2 and did discuss with him some of the issues surrounding the possibilities of opening up OS/2 to the public domain. M$ licensing issues aside (which are major) he did also mention that some senior engineering staff are concerned with revealing some of the tricks/techniques were used to optimize and tune OS/2's kernel.
Apparently, when OS/2 went from versions 1.2 to 1.3 and later from versions 2.0 to 2.1, someone thoughtfully sent the code over to Watson (IBM main research group) and Rochester (AS400 development) Labs just prior to each release. The researchers and mainframe/mini OS tuning specialists pored over the code for a couple of months, tisked, tisked what they saw and really went to task. As anyone who experienced the improvements in performance and responsiveness could tell, they did an amazing job, but did so by applying very proprietary techniques and algorithms (developed over 30 years and 10's of millions of $$$) found on mainframes and minis.
I know that IBM has been looking at improving linux's kernel, but I understanding there is some internal debate as to what should or should not be revealed to the general public and their competition (M$, Sun, HP, SGI, et al).
Lets not forget that we are also facing an economic recession (perhaps a major world-wide one) and this campaign could be directly aligned with that. Bad times often results in people to being sentimental and the hippie movement aimed itself directly at the establishment (Microsoft?), idealized a minimalist existence (cheap OS), social commitment and getting along (Open source). This squares nicely against the immediate present and could create an illusion of "returning" to the "Good old days".
Also the very real need to reduce costs, likely arising from cutbacks, makes an emphases on "free" software very attractive. I suspect there is subtle psychology at play here and my kudoes go the IBM marketing for this.
The only real question that remains is -- where the hell were these people when OS/2 was around.;)
I was once in a situation here in Ontario working directly for a software contracting house as an newbie just-graduated engineer. A client of theirs (a major aerospace company) was so pleased with my work that after a year of being there (I was working on the ISS robotic control test systems and was nominated for the companies' Gold Medal -- as engineer of the year -- didn't get it, but what the hell) that a senior director (and lead scientist) from the board of the aerospace firm actually stopped by my desk. He said he personally reviewed my work and wanted to offer me (unsolicited) a job working for his "Advanced Technologies -- Special Projects" group at nearly double my then current salary (he said only company employees were allowed to work for the group, hence the offer). Unfortunately one of my fellow employees (from the contracting house) overheard the offer and the bastard called it in.
When word got back (to the contracting firm) the bells and whistles went off. Within an hour I was contacted by my manager, the VP, and the company's lawyer, who all told me (with varying degrees of emphases) that they would sue the sh*t out if me if I accepted. I was immediately ordered back to the home office and (apparently) very intense words flew back and forth between executives and directors of both Gigabuck firms.
The next two days were very very ugly and I was so completely terrified at being caught in the middle (and with over $35k in school loan debt back then) that I ended up searching for a new job (and got one the next day after looking). Both sides tried to go into damage control mode but I had already accepted the new offer.
I didn't do anything to raise the offer (except work my tail off and do a good job) and it did colour my perspective for a long time after that. 10 years later it still leaves me with a bad taste when I remember it.
For those that may want to compare information released by the NSA with that which is already known/understood about Tempest might want to check out the following site:
It seems that the most difficult concept for non-IT people to understand is that being a manager is a different job then developer/programmer.
The second most difficult thing for managers to understand is why people don't want to become managers and the more agressive the manager the more this can be a problem. To quote Vico:"Because of man's indefinate nature, when in ignorance, he makes himself the standard of all things". Having been placed in this position several times in the last 10 years I suggest you deal with the problem from the its most difficult prospective. Explain to whomever that the "job" of management is simply a different job from the one you were hired and you simply don't want to "change" jobs. I.E. spending 40 hours a week working on Gantt charts, resource planning, personel management, report generation, company management meetings, et al is not the same as cutting code/designing and you feel that it would not be in either yours or your employers interest.
Most senior management will buy the story if you explain it to them in these terms, otherwise it may appear that you are simply a hidden slacker unable to take responsibility for the "natural development" of your career and hence must be "irresponsible by nature" and therefore (by extension) unable to do any job responsibly by default (refer to the second most difficult thing above). Unfortuately, regardless of your reasons, you will likely be viewed with skepticism by senior management for failing to demonstrate proper initiative in following "the most obvious thing in the world" (that is being promoted). Unfortuanately it seems that a majority of managers will also view this as a form of very real "Human" rejection for their personal values which will likely cast you in a position as "one of them" vs. "one of us".
The problem with most Americian's view of the Canadian health care system is the distortion that permiates within the US media. Yes, there are problems but they usually represent less then 1-2% of actual cases out there. Most individuals see their doctor, get treated and be on their way.
I.E. Most of yapping about 4 month waits for heart surgery are complete nonsense. Yes, if you look up the surgical database you might see a wait, but most doctors sign up their patients at the first sign of trouble and then do the tests to determine whether a patient needs surgery, MOST doctors then pull the patients off the DB. The result is a wait of usually 2-3 weeks (depending on the patient condition) and only if it is non-threatening. Whenever a patient's condition listed as an critical, they will get surgery the next day as in any American hospital (assuming they have the insurance).
This is not to say there are instances where people didn't get surgery in time ***BUT*** the VAST majority do. The rate of survival for heart conditions is HIGHER in Canada then the US because there is no profitable benefit for hospitals to cram patients into surgery (for insurance $$$).
Problems have arisen because PEOPLE VOTE IN GOVERNMENTS WITH POLICAL MANDATES TO LESSEN THE MONIES GOING TOWARDS HEALTHCARE. Canadians spending only 2/3 the monies the US does on healthcare for 100% converage of all citizians. Don't blame the system when you specifically order a reduction in service.
Overall, I will take the Canadian healthcare system over the US -- I don't like the idea that fellow citizians should lose their livelihood or simply die because they (or their employers) don't have the monies to pay for healthcare. Within Government healthcare systems their is no tie-in between your job and your families health; only your job and your ability to do it!!! To force a person off the job because of the health of their children seems very very disturbing, something that is taken for granted in the US but raises the eyebrows of most other first world countries. I really love the US, enjoy its culture, cities, people (who are among the friendliest in the world) but regarding this issue -- it is a complete mystery for the rest of us to understand how you live with it.
Suppose your kid decided that kicking the shit out of "Blacks", "Whites", "Jews" or "put your favourite ethnic group here" was part of his value system. Would you still support him? There are lines in the sand and the only issue is where to put them and the costs for crossing them.
You demand special rights for yourself and your child without upholding them for the person making the argument that you so earnestly attack. It was his (her?) "Action/Decision" to print their opinion. Your claiming a right to enact infinite and unchallenged values and then not extending it to others is pure hypocrasy!!!
Slashdot Mirror
I seem to recall that in the mid-1980's the US sent a carrier battle group up through the (North) Atlantic in the middle of a gale (hurricane?) to sneak up on the Soviet Union to do some fleet exercises. When the dust cleared the USSR went ape-shit when, without warning, they found US Navy AWACS, F-14s, F-18s and Intruders flying a dozen miles off their coast. This even caught several NATO countries off guard.
The USSR protested against "US aggressive" behaviour and some Allies immediately asked that the US tone down the exercises because the USSR got very very nervous and began responding with sending high alerts to Warsaw Block forces.
Let's not forget that most wars are usually started by "a surprise first attack" and that tensions between Japan and the USA were extraordinarily high in 1941 -- probably about the same level as were the tensions between the USSR and the west in the mid-1980's.
Just installed RH 7.1 and decided to use Raid 1 with 2 hard disks but I think it still uses ext2 filesystem. Can I run XFS (or ReiserFS) with Raid? Does anyone have this info or know where to find it?
Countries are created not just out of there location, but attitudes, education, culture, etc.
This can manifest itself in simple terms like music, art or even aircraft design.
Actually the entire Arrow design team generated over 20,000 patents and a huge amount of the plane was very much ***NOT*** off the shelf being the very first "fly-by-wire" jet in the world.
Most of the core engineers on the Arrow itself were hired as "a working group" because they were the only ones in the world with "fly-by-wire" design experience and were exclusively responsible for designing the Moon Lander portion of the Apollo program for that very reason! But please recognise that this team, while largely Canadian, also included some of the very best engineers from the UK, France and the USA. I had the pleasure of working for one UK member 20 years ago (his wife didn't want of move to the USA) and he was just brilliant -- but you couldn't get him to talk about the Arrow without his eyes watering over.
Further, part of the Arrow program included developing the Iroquois jet engines -- at the time the most powerful in the world. This happened because Roll Royce, the original contractors, gave up because the design requirements were said to be "impossible" to meet. BTW -- the Iroquois engines were designed by the head of the Avro Arrow engine "Integration and Test" team in only 18 months. Dessault Aerospace offered to buy a minimum of 200 engines from Avro for their Mirage Jet Fighter Program (who were also screwed by Rolls Royce's failings) at a profit that would have exceeded the entire development costs of both the Arrow and Iroquois engines -- but the government refused and ordered everything destoyed. The number of engines actually bought would likely have been three or four times that number and would have place Avro in the same world as Rolls Royce and Pratt and Witney WRT jet engines. Incidently, the core Iroquois development team (after the cancellation) went to France to "develop" the exact same engines for another plane called the Concord!!
Finally, many members of the Avro team stayed and worked for Avro's "Special Products And Research" group. This group finally split off when Avro went under and became known as Spar Aerospace, which before it was bought out, developed the Space Shuttle's Space Robotic Manipulator System (SRMS) more quantly known as the Canadarm. It's next generation product is now heading for ISS Alpha.
Lots to be proud of, too bad most of us Canadian's just don't get it.
Hope this helps
Alright, lets get this out in the open. Everyone now really knows that the moon landings were faked and the secret cabal is doing as much damage control it can to get things back on the "right" track. This latest attempt at "historical correction" only proves that conspiracy theorists are right by the establishment's blatent attempts of pretending to not want the film "generally released" even though it's a financial success.
The grudging refusal will finally give way to wide spread release, then huge financial success, best film and acting Oscars, etc. and people will point to the initial reluctance of "Hollywood" as proof that the Cabal wasn't involved with the film because if they were then this would have, from the start, been promoted with billion dollar advertising, etc. Therfore the general conclusion will be that this film must be a true historical record (and hence we went to the moon) when in fact (from its initial outset) events regarding this film's "release" prove otherwise.
Further, it has been widely reported that single frames within the film have been substituted with pictures of bags of butter dripping popcorn (note the sexual overtones here) which cause large numbers of the audience to go out (during the film's showing) and "relieve" themselves by buying the same from the candy bar. During these times, the convoluted and contradictory elements of the film do not get noticed (and henced discussed) and instead everyone thinks the film is wonderful. In fact, Theater owner's and manager's world over are reaping the benefit of showing the film (by extended popcorn sales) and will promote the film even more. Unfortunately, the ushers, who may see the film over and over will finally catch on and will have to be killed (the latter being done by the ***HUGE*** excess popcorn profits reaped)
What sneaky bastards these master rulers truely are!!!
;-)
Actually there are automated hunter-tracker cruise missle systems that operate independently from direct human control. They are launched into an area and uses (thermal) image pattern matching to selectively hunt down and destroy targets. These systems have been in development for years and can intelligently decide which course to fly when detecting multiple targets, optimize its decision for maximum damage to the enemy (do I go after the tank or three personal carriers?) and act accordingly.
Given all the robot combat shows appearing on various networks, it appears that our mechanical brethren are being set to adopt all our worse qualities as well.
As one who also had a really rough time in HS, including living with a deep depression, I can also attest to the fact that things do get better. As it happened I took a couple of years off after HS and finally went to university where the universe really opened up. I went from few dates during HS to more then I could handle in any one week. I also started friendships then, that are now entering their third decade, including ones with professors and TAs.
The culture of HS is at best repressive and narcassistic, with some of the most narrow-minded, authoritarian individuals you will ever meet (read teachers/principals) in control of your life. The pressure to conform is extraordinary, largely driven by powerful personal needs to both conform and prove one's individuality, all done in a caudron of hormones and peer-pressure. You are at a point where your conscious is also driven to understand who you are -- and it can be easy to believe the bullshit others may tell you if there are many of them and too few of you.
Please do try and talk with someone about how you feel, preferrably outside of school (parent, minister, doctor, psychologist), if you need to let off some steam or have to express something that you don't otherwise want to share with someone you know, then please write to me. I will do my best to offer a friendly, helpful ear.
All that's best,
James (james@jamesk.org)
After many years in IT, working on enterprise computing, I have relunctantly concluded that there is very much a "research-like" scientific element to extending or maintaining/debugging complex systems.
When you are dealing with huge interacting systems with 100's of millions (billions?) of lines worth of code, its total absolute behaviour ***IS*** impossible to predict. Yes there are guidelines, requirements, previous behaviour, etc. but when a bug pops out, especially during new development, it takes forensic skill and competence to unmask the metasolutions that went into these systems that produced unexpected results. This requires "understanding" a solution that was implimented perhaps decades earlier. This understanding can be very much a scientific pursuit requiring enquiry and investigation, and sometimes even hypothesis and experimentation to uncover.
I think CS depts in general completely ignore this aspect and rarely (if ever) teach the skills necessary to perform this task. Further, CS depts have yet to teach or promote what it means to work in a team. For those with experience working in Labs, this can be an essential element in scientific thinking because doing scientific research usually involves building on the work of others, not necessarily in the sense of results obtained, but in understanding procedures and protocols that were used in determining those results.
Don't believe any of this for a moment. What's really going on is a secret plan to shoot it out if the Commies get the upper hand in Russia or the Chinese decide to go after Taiwan. At the first sign of trouble, just point the lasers downward, fire away and destroy the offending nations missle's right in their bunkers!
At first glance it might seem like it will take a little time to get a kill (for now), but what the hell, these new military systems always have a few bugs to shake out.
Just my $0.02
From a TLC (Discovery?) special shown last year: they said the African/hybrid bees actually produced more honey not less!!! This stemmed largely from their extremely active/aggressive behaviour in gathering pollen and production. It seems the rumour about less production came because farmers had difficulty gathering honey from hives because of the bees swarming/attacking behaviour and were simply emotionally/psychologically overwhelmed by what they experienced. Standard protocols developed over the centuries for use with european bees had to be modified and beekeepers/workers needed to retrained to handle these critters.
Eventually those South Americian farmers that were able to properly harvest honey (extending smoking time/adjusting harvesting schedules toward evening collection, extra thick collection suits and double/triple lined hoods, taping cuffs and collars, etc.) claimed production was much higher with equal quality. They have to endure many more stings and are forced to use extreme caution when dealing with the bees; moving hives and changing their placement had to be done with extreme care so as not to endanger the general public. Done correctly they were are able to get more honey/hive then using the pure european counterpart but not without the aforementioned costs.
I've actually had an opportunity to dine with a very senior designer and architect of OS/2 and did discuss with him some of the issues surrounding the possibilities of opening up OS/2 to the public domain. M$ licensing issues aside (which are major) he did also mention that some senior engineering staff are concerned with revealing some of the tricks/techniques were used to optimize and tune OS/2's kernel.
Apparently, when OS/2 went from versions 1.2 to 1.3 and later from versions 2.0 to 2.1, someone thoughtfully sent the code over to Watson (IBM main research group) and Rochester (AS400 development) Labs just prior to each release. The researchers and mainframe/mini OS tuning specialists pored over the code for a couple of months, tisked, tisked what they saw and really went to task. As anyone who experienced the improvements in performance and responsiveness could tell, they did an amazing job, but did so by applying very proprietary techniques and algorithms (developed over 30 years and 10's of millions of $$$) found on mainframes and minis.
I know that IBM has been looking at improving linux's kernel, but I understanding there is some internal debate as to what should or should not be revealed to the general public and their competition (M$, Sun, HP, SGI, et al).
Just some food for thought
Lets not forget that we are also facing an economic recession (perhaps a major world-wide one) and this campaign could be directly aligned with that. Bad times often results in people to being sentimental and the hippie movement aimed itself directly at the establishment (Microsoft?), idealized a minimalist existence (cheap OS), social commitment and getting along (Open source). This squares nicely against the immediate present and could create an illusion of "returning" to the "Good old days".
;)
Also the very real need to reduce costs, likely arising from cutbacks, makes an emphases on "free" software very attractive. I suspect there is subtle psychology at play here and my kudoes go the IBM marketing for this.
The only real question that remains is -- where the hell were these people when OS/2 was around.
I was once in a situation here in Ontario working directly for a software contracting house as an newbie just-graduated engineer. A client of theirs (a major aerospace company) was so pleased with my work that after a year of being there (I was working on the ISS robotic control test systems and was nominated for the companies' Gold Medal -- as engineer of the year -- didn't get it, but what the hell) that a senior director (and lead scientist) from the board of the aerospace firm actually stopped by my desk. He said he personally reviewed my work and wanted to offer me (unsolicited) a job working for his "Advanced Technologies -- Special Projects" group at nearly double my then current salary (he said only company employees were allowed to work for the group, hence the offer). Unfortunately one of my fellow employees (from the contracting house) overheard the offer and the bastard called it in.
When word got back (to the contracting firm) the bells and whistles went off. Within an hour I was contacted by my manager, the VP, and the company's lawyer, who all told me (with varying degrees of emphases) that they would sue the sh*t out if me if I accepted. I was immediately ordered back to the home office and (apparently) very intense words flew back and forth between executives and directors of both Gigabuck firms.
The next two days were very very ugly and I was so completely terrified at being caught in the middle (and with over $35k in school loan debt back then) that I ended up searching for a new job (and got one the next day after looking). Both sides tried to go into damage control mode but I had already accepted the new offer.
I didn't do anything to raise the offer (except work my tail off and do a good job) and it did colour my perspective for a long time after that. 10 years later it still leaves me with a bad taste when I remember it.
I believe that calling this a troll just proves my point!!!
For those that may want to compare information released by the NSA with that which is already known/understood about Tempest might want to check out the following site:
http://www.eskimo.com/~joelm/tempest.html
It seems that the most difficult concept for non-IT people to understand is that being a manager is a different job then developer/programmer.
The second most difficult thing for managers to understand is why people don't want to become managers and the more agressive the manager the more this can be a problem. To quote Vico:"Because of man's indefinate nature, when in ignorance, he makes himself the standard of all things". Having been placed in this position several times in the last 10 years I suggest you deal with the problem from the its most difficult prospective. Explain to whomever that the "job" of management is simply a different job from the one you were hired and you simply don't want to "change" jobs. I.E. spending 40 hours a week working on Gantt charts, resource planning, personel management, report generation, company management meetings, et al is not the same as cutting code/designing and you feel that it would not be in either yours or your employers interest.
Most senior management will buy the story if you explain it to them in these terms, otherwise it may appear that you are simply a hidden slacker unable to take responsibility for the "natural development" of your career and hence must be "irresponsible by nature" and therefore (by extension) unable to do any job responsibly by default (refer to the second most difficult thing above). Unfortuately, regardless of your reasons, you will likely be viewed with skepticism by senior management for failing to demonstrate proper initiative in following "the most obvious thing in the world" (that is being promoted). Unfortuanately it seems that a majority of managers will also view this as a form of very real "Human" rejection for their personal values which will likely cast you in a position as "one of them" vs. "one of us".
The problem with most Americian's view of the Canadian health care system is the distortion that permiates within the US media. Yes, there are problems but they usually represent less then 1-2% of actual cases out there. Most individuals see their doctor, get treated and be on their way.
I.E. Most of yapping about 4 month waits for heart surgery are complete nonsense. Yes, if you look up the surgical database you might see a wait, but most doctors sign up their patients at the first sign of trouble and then do the tests to determine whether a patient needs surgery, MOST doctors then pull the patients off the DB. The result is a wait of usually 2-3 weeks (depending on the patient condition) and only if it is non-threatening. Whenever a patient's condition listed as an critical, they will get surgery the next day as in any American hospital (assuming they have the insurance).
This is not to say there are instances where people didn't get surgery in time ***BUT*** the VAST majority do. The rate of survival for heart conditions is HIGHER in Canada then the US because there is no profitable benefit for hospitals to cram patients into surgery (for insurance $$$).
Problems have arisen because PEOPLE VOTE IN GOVERNMENTS WITH POLICAL MANDATES TO LESSEN THE MONIES GOING TOWARDS HEALTHCARE. Canadians spending only 2/3 the monies the US does on healthcare for 100% converage of all citizians. Don't blame the system when you specifically order a reduction in service.
Overall, I will take the Canadian healthcare system over the US -- I don't like the idea that fellow citizians should lose their livelihood or simply die because they (or their employers) don't have the monies to pay for healthcare. Within Government healthcare systems their is no tie-in between your job and your families health; only your job and your ability to do it!!! To force a person off the job because of the health of their children seems very very disturbing, something that is taken for granted in the US but raises the eyebrows of most other first world countries. I really love the US, enjoy its culture, cities, people (who are among the friendliest in the world) but regarding this issue -- it is a complete mystery for the rest of us to understand how you live with it.
Just my $0.02
Suppose your kid decided that kicking the shit out of "Blacks", "Whites", "Jews" or "put your favourite ethnic group here" was part of his value system. Would you still support him? There are lines in the sand and the only issue is where to put them and the costs for crossing them.
You demand special rights for yourself and your child without upholding them for the person making the argument that you so earnestly attack. It was his (her?) "Action/Decision" to print their opinion. Your claiming a right to enact infinite and unchallenged values and then not extending it to others is pure hypocrasy!!!