But building and owning a "playground" for other rich people to invest in or spend their money on most certainly is something they do. This would be more of an investment than a retirement, at least for the people who initially fund it.
No, I don't hunt at all. I do know people who hunt with small caliber rifles, though. And once there is some more development caliber won't be an issue either. Accuracy will certainly be improved as well. The fact that you overlooked the self-defense aspects speaks volumes to your particular bias. Of course your bias is pretty obvious on this position, as I'm sure you intend it to be, so it's not really a surprise.
How many military veterans do you think there are that own guns? I'll tell you; as of 2011 it was over 21 million former military members. Let's assume the standard 36% (as of 2011) distribution of gun ownership amongst those veterans. That's what 7 1/2 million trained users of guns? The US military currently has approximately 1.5 million active duty. Now, consider that many, if not most, of those military members would not fight against US citizens and suddenly the likelihood of a massacre of armed civilians by the military seems much less likely. Hell, a lot of the military would fight for the civilians.
Training will never be a problem, even on military grade weapons.
As far as "terrorist tactics", how exactly do you think this country was founded? Welcome to reality, smaller "civilian" forces have overthrown governments throughout history. Just because it is currently the "most powerful military" doesn't mean the US couldn't be overthrown by a citizenry of armed amateurs. Mostly because many of them simply wouldn't be amateurs.
Really? Useless for hunting or self defense? How many shots do you think you need to defend yourself or take down a deer? While I think the people pushing this are a bit misguided, these are far from useless for "standard" purposes that people buy weapons.
So who gets to pay for the anger management techniques classes? What you're going to find is that these markers somehow only happen in the poor, or, worse, because they can't afford "treatment" the poor will be even further stigmatized and removed from a chance at a better life because they're "violent". It won't matter whether they've actually done anything or not, right, because they have the marker. Insurance anyone? How about being employable? Oh, sorry, we can't hire you, you might snap at any point and shoot someone. We can't afford that liability.
That's prenatal chemical lobotomy, and raises serious ethical concerns too, but it's not as bad as just shooting someone.
Isn't it? We're are at the infancy of understanding how our brains work and how these markers really interact and create the "final product" of who we are. Even implying this as an option is seriously premature.
Considering mailing addresses in some places are essentially landmark references rather than proper street addresses, this might actually be a useful tool if there weren't any GPS.
My address in South Korea, for example, was "pumpkin patch" and the town I lived in, with the house number. My street name was never once listed on my mail. For anyone other than the mailman, finding my house based upon my mailing address was a nightmare. I had to give specific directions from known locations. (Obviously the house I lived in was no longer a pumpkin patch.)
With the proliferation of GPS enabled devices, though, probably not particularly helpful.
I have an EE degree but rarely do any circuit design. I'm a system-level design type of person and I'd jump at a job that also allowed me opportunities to do some mechanical design work on top of EE work. The more varied skills I have the more employable I will be to my next employer and the more I can command. Sure, if the experience isn't relevant to them they may not like it but it denotes a certain level of trainability and adaptability that many other candidates won't have. Plus, I'm not looking for the same job I had before, when I'm looking for work. I want something new, something interesting, something different. Maybe it's just me.
Sounds like you were underpaid to start. Expect to job hop ever 3-6 years or so (more often makes you look like a job hopper always looking and less means you fall behind the pay scale of your peers) and look into a managing/business postgrad degree. If you really want to move up, you're not going to be doing technical work for very long. Sad but true.
Google is a big corporation. As such they are going to hold varying views and will play both sides (if you actually consider there to be only two) of the political fence. This is business as usual.
While I agree with most of what you say, I will dissent, slightly. As someone who has worked there and has friends who work there, your statement "the few actually involved in "the bad stuff" we all hate are probably the same ordinary civil service workers who just "doing their job" and give no more thought to the moral rightness of what theyre doing than a Chevy worker does as he tightens the same nut 50k times a day as the line moves past." just doesn't cut it.
There are moral (and legal) obligations outlined by NSA policy, and federal policy that whistle blowers should be protected. These policies clearly stipulate that if you are asked to do anything that breaks the law (which is perhaps arguable in the case of this "scandal") it is each and every employee's responsibility to report it.
Whether or not they are "just doing their job" they need to be held to a higher standard because their job isn't just tightening a nut, it's protecting people and their freedoms. It's not the same level of responsibility at all as the guy putting the blinker on your car.
It's not one drone. Please name one drone that doesn't have shadowing problems. Unless the wings are made of rf transparent canvas and wood, you're going to have shadowing problems. Any material with enough stiffness to provide support to modern wings in modern flight profiles (carbon, kevlar, aluminum, steel, even most fiberglass) is not RF transparent.
Wow, you must work for Raytheon or something. "The problem is impossible to solve, the wings HAVE to be made of metal."
Alternatively, antenna position, quantity, and quality could be adjusted to provide the desired results. We are not in the dark ages of radio, and it is a problem that could be solved.
And yet, no one has been able to solve it yet. Funny how people with no experience in the field think something is trivial to solve when the experts haven't solved it in 30 plus years of trying. Yes, you can mitigate a lot of the problem with multiple antennas, but any line of sight link needs line of sight. You can't fix that issue.
It's not a trivial problem. Until it has been solved, your post implying only one drone that has a "shitty" design problem making it susceptible to shadowing is simply wrong. It's all aircraft that require an RF link (or any form of line of sight link, be it laser, RF, or something not yet considered).
As for your ridiculous assertion that I implied the "wings HAVE to be made of metal" I think you need to reread my previous comment. Fiberglass, and kevlar are not metal, nor are canvas and wood, all of which were mentioned in my post. I specifically said it just has to be made of a material that is both stiff enough for modern wing design and RF transparent (for RF links).
I asked you to name one drone without shadowing problems and you clearly can't. Can the problem be solved? Probably, but we haven't yet. We're talking about now, not 50 years from now.
It's not one drone. Please name one drone that doesn't have shadowing problems. Unless the wings are made of rf transparent canvas and wood, you're going to have shadowing problems. Any material with enough stiffness to provide support to modern wings in modern flight profiles (carbon, kevlar, aluminum, steel, even most fiberglass) is not RF transparent.
You are aware that there are 318,979,564,000 possible ways to play just the first four moves in a single chess game, right? That's pretty damned complicated. Check out the "Shannon number" for a truly mind-boggling glimpse of how complicated chess can be.
While drones are very good at intelligence collection (staring at the ground) and air-to-ground combat, they are nowhere near capable of the complex flight profiles required for air to air dog fighting. We won't be for at least a couple of generations of aircraft, possibly more. At a minimum that's 20 years.
You don't earn institutional respect through conjecture and predictions about how uber-advanced the future is gonna be. Not unless you're Dick Cheney.
Why should the drone pilots be any more important than the mechanics, at this point? Do they go through the same rigorous tactical training that other pilots go through? Same educational requirements? Have they even proven themselves in actual combat, demonstrating their tactical and strategic skills in advancing the front-line?
Depends upon what service you're looking at and what country. In the US, at least up until recently, the AF required previous pilot experience. Now I believe it's just "flight experience", IE pilot, navigator, EW, but don't quote me on that. The US Army trains all drone pilots in the same basic ground school courses that maned aircraft pilots get. I haven't dealt much with Navy or Marine UAV pilots over the last 12 years so I'm not sure about their current training requirements.
Tactics? Who knows, flight school isn't about tactics. Weapons school is where you learn tactics, and that's aircraft (or aircraft type) specific. As far as I know UAV pilots learn tactics on the job. Most of them have had some "combat" experience at this point, so I'd say, yes they have proven themselves demonstrating tactical and strategic skills.
This is great resume writing advice! Thanks for sharing that.
Also, don't forget the clearance! Even when you're not trying for a job the requires it, having a clearance denotes a certain level of reliability and responsibility that employers want to see and if they're looking toward work where clearances might be needed, it can give you/them an edge, which they'll like.
Depends upon where you work and the size of your projects, but I'd generally agree with this. I've been a Systems Engineer since I got out of the military and have been very lucky to be a hands-on type of engineer but the majority of positions titled as "Systems Engineer" are powerpoint engineers who do a lot of meetings and briefings and documentation. (My actual title is Electrical Engineer but I've only designed one circuit in the last 15 years...)
If you want hands on work, look for hardware positions that are more "systems integration", which will provide a fair amount of design (both component and system level) and also give room for growth in management and "true" system engineering as described above. All of the companies the parent post mentioned have these types of positions but you'll have to dig to find them. Also, Northrop Grumman, SAIC, and any of the other big defense companies. Smaller companies will give you more incentives though and you may have better luck finding these types of positions as the need for "multi-discipline" engineers is higher at smaller companies.
If location isn't particularly important, that can play a major role too. The DC area is driven by the defense industry (just like Eisenhower predicted) so if considering defense work, it's a good place to be. Likewise southern California has a ton of defense jobs.
Don't bother. Market yourself as a mid-tier manager with the appropriate skills and look for jobs with technology companies. If you're still interested in supporting the war machine, look for jobs with defense contractors.
As someone who has been flying for 12 years, you're likely a Major or maybe a Lt Colonel, yes? The skills you've gained as a manager are far more relevant to prospective employers than your (likely outdated) electrical engineering background.
If you want technical work be prepared to start from the bottom and have everyone around you be much younger than you are or move into technical management and stress to your prospective companies that you're looking for positions that combine technical work with program/personnel management.
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Which is exactly what happens now. The difference is only when we get charged, not whether you get the bill or not.
But building and owning a "playground" for other rich people to invest in or spend their money on most certainly is something they do. This would be more of an investment than a retirement, at least for the people who initially fund it.
No, I don't hunt at all. I do know people who hunt with small caliber rifles, though. And once there is some more development caliber won't be an issue either. Accuracy will certainly be improved as well. The fact that you overlooked the self-defense aspects speaks volumes to your particular bias. Of course your bias is pretty obvious on this position, as I'm sure you intend it to be, so it's not really a surprise.
Please provide references for gun safe requirements for ownership of guns. Either way, your argument still doesn't dispute the GP post's argument.
How many military veterans do you think there are that own guns? I'll tell you; as of 2011 it was over 21 million former military members. Let's assume the standard 36% (as of 2011) distribution of gun ownership amongst those veterans. That's what 7 1/2 million trained users of guns? The US military currently has approximately 1.5 million active duty. Now, consider that many, if not most, of those military members would not fight against US citizens and suddenly the likelihood of a massacre of armed civilians by the military seems much less likely. Hell, a lot of the military would fight for the civilians.
Training will never be a problem, even on military grade weapons.
As far as "terrorist tactics", how exactly do you think this country was founded? Welcome to reality, smaller "civilian" forces have overthrown governments throughout history. Just because it is currently the "most powerful military" doesn't mean the US couldn't be overthrown by a citizenry of armed amateurs. Mostly because many of them simply wouldn't be amateurs.
Really? Useless for hunting or self defense? How many shots do you think you need to defend yourself or take down a deer? While I think the people pushing this are a bit misguided, these are far from useless for "standard" purposes that people buy weapons.
So who gets to pay for the anger management techniques classes? What you're going to find is that these markers somehow only happen in the poor, or, worse, because they can't afford "treatment" the poor will be even further stigmatized and removed from a chance at a better life because they're "violent". It won't matter whether they've actually done anything or not, right, because they have the marker. Insurance anyone? How about being employable? Oh, sorry, we can't hire you, you might snap at any point and shoot someone. We can't afford that liability.
That's prenatal chemical lobotomy, and raises serious ethical concerns too, but it's not as bad as just shooting someone.
Isn't it? We're are at the infancy of understanding how our brains work and how these markers really interact and create the "final product" of who we are. Even implying this as an option is seriously premature.
Considering mailing addresses in some places are essentially landmark references rather than proper street addresses, this might actually be a useful tool if there weren't any GPS.
My address in South Korea, for example, was "pumpkin patch" and the town I lived in, with the house number. My street name was never once listed on my mail. For anyone other than the mailman, finding my house based upon my mailing address was a nightmare. I had to give specific directions from known locations. (Obviously the house I lived in was no longer a pumpkin patch.)
With the proliferation of GPS enabled devices, though, probably not particularly helpful.
I have an EE degree but rarely do any circuit design. I'm a system-level design type of person and I'd jump at a job that also allowed me opportunities to do some mechanical design work on top of EE work. The more varied skills I have the more employable I will be to my next employer and the more I can command. Sure, if the experience isn't relevant to them they may not like it but it denotes a certain level of trainability and adaptability that many other candidates won't have. Plus, I'm not looking for the same job I had before, when I'm looking for work. I want something new, something interesting, something different. Maybe it's just me.
Sounds like you were underpaid to start. Expect to job hop ever 3-6 years or so (more often makes you look like a job hopper always looking and less means you fall behind the pay scale of your peers) and look into a managing/business postgrad degree. If you really want to move up, you're not going to be doing technical work for very long. Sad but true.
Google is a big corporation. As such they are going to hold varying views and will play both sides (if you actually consider there to be only two) of the political fence. This is business as usual.
While I agree with most of what you say, I will dissent, slightly. As someone who has worked there and has friends who work there, your statement "the few actually involved in "the bad stuff" we all hate are probably the same ordinary civil service workers who just "doing their job" and give no more thought to the moral rightness of what theyre doing than a Chevy worker does as he tightens the same nut 50k times a day as the line moves past." just doesn't cut it.
There are moral (and legal) obligations outlined by NSA policy, and federal policy that whistle blowers should be protected. These policies clearly stipulate that if you are asked to do anything that breaks the law (which is perhaps arguable in the case of this "scandal") it is each and every employee's responsibility to report it.
Whether or not they are "just doing their job" they need to be held to a higher standard because their job isn't just tightening a nut, it's protecting people and their freedoms. It's not the same level of responsibility at all as the guy putting the blinker on your car.
It's laughable that you don't even realize that anti-trust laws are protecting your "individual rights".
It's not one drone. Please name one drone that doesn't have shadowing problems. Unless the wings are made of rf transparent canvas and wood, you're going to have shadowing problems. Any material with enough stiffness to provide support to modern wings in modern flight profiles (carbon, kevlar, aluminum, steel, even most fiberglass) is not RF transparent.
Wow, you must work for Raytheon or something. "The problem is impossible to solve, the wings HAVE to be made of metal."
Alternatively, antenna position, quantity, and quality could be adjusted to provide the desired results. We are not in the dark ages of radio, and it is a problem that could be solved.
And yet, no one has been able to solve it yet. Funny how people with no experience in the field think something is trivial to solve when the experts haven't solved it in 30 plus years of trying. Yes, you can mitigate a lot of the problem with multiple antennas, but any line of sight link needs line of sight. You can't fix that issue.
It's not a trivial problem. Until it has been solved, your post implying only one drone that has a "shitty" design problem making it susceptible to shadowing is simply wrong. It's all aircraft that require an RF link (or any form of line of sight link, be it laser, RF, or something not yet considered).
As for your ridiculous assertion that I implied the "wings HAVE to be made of metal" I think you need to reread my previous comment. Fiberglass, and kevlar are not metal, nor are canvas and wood, all of which were mentioned in my post. I specifically said it just has to be made of a material that is both stiff enough for modern wing design and RF transparent (for RF links).
I asked you to name one drone without shadowing problems and you clearly can't. Can the problem be solved? Probably, but we haven't yet. We're talking about now, not 50 years from now.
It's not one drone. Please name one drone that doesn't have shadowing problems. Unless the wings are made of rf transparent canvas and wood, you're going to have shadowing problems. Any material with enough stiffness to provide support to modern wings in modern flight profiles (carbon, kevlar, aluminum, steel, even most fiberglass) is not RF transparent.
You are aware that there are 318,979,564,000 possible ways to play just the first four moves in a single chess game, right? That's pretty damned complicated. Check out the "Shannon number" for a truly mind-boggling glimpse of how complicated chess can be.
While drones are very good at intelligence collection (staring at the ground) and air-to-ground combat, they are nowhere near capable of the complex flight profiles required for air to air dog fighting. We won't be for at least a couple of generations of aircraft, possibly more. At a minimum that's 20 years.
You obviously haven't seen the re-release of Top Gun lately.
Potentially. In the future.
You don't earn institutional respect through conjecture and predictions about how uber-advanced the future is gonna be. Not unless you're Dick Cheney.
Why should the drone pilots be any more important than the mechanics, at this point? Do they go through the same rigorous tactical training that other pilots go through? Same educational requirements? Have they even proven themselves in actual combat, demonstrating their tactical and strategic skills in advancing the front-line?
Depends upon what service you're looking at and what country. In the US, at least up until recently, the AF required previous pilot experience. Now I believe it's just "flight experience", IE pilot, navigator, EW, but don't quote me on that. The US Army trains all drone pilots in the same basic ground school courses that maned aircraft pilots get. I haven't dealt much with Navy or Marine UAV pilots over the last 12 years so I'm not sure about their current training requirements.
Tactics? Who knows, flight school isn't about tactics. Weapons school is where you learn tactics, and that's aircraft (or aircraft type) specific. As far as I know UAV pilots learn tactics on the job. Most of them have had some "combat" experience at this point, so I'd say, yes they have proven themselves demonstrating tactical and strategic skills.
Disregard, someone beat me to it by 2 hours... duh.
I can't believe no one has mentioned tricorders yet. I can't be the only person that thinks this is another step in that direction...
This is great resume writing advice! Thanks for sharing that.
Also, don't forget the clearance! Even when you're not trying for a job the requires it, having a clearance denotes a certain level of reliability and responsibility that employers want to see and if they're looking toward work where clearances might be needed, it can give you/them an edge, which they'll like.
Depends upon where you work and the size of your projects, but I'd generally agree with this. I've been a Systems Engineer since I got out of the military and have been very lucky to be a hands-on type of engineer but the majority of positions titled as "Systems Engineer" are powerpoint engineers who do a lot of meetings and briefings and documentation. (My actual title is Electrical Engineer but I've only designed one circuit in the last 15 years...)
If you want hands on work, look for hardware positions that are more "systems integration", which will provide a fair amount of design (both component and system level) and also give room for growth in management and "true" system engineering as described above. All of the companies the parent post mentioned have these types of positions but you'll have to dig to find them. Also, Northrop Grumman, SAIC, and any of the other big defense companies. Smaller companies will give you more incentives though and you may have better luck finding these types of positions as the need for "multi-discipline" engineers is higher at smaller companies.
If location isn't particularly important, that can play a major role too. The DC area is driven by the defense industry (just like Eisenhower predicted) so if considering defense work, it's a good place to be. Likewise southern California has a ton of defense jobs.
Don't bother. Market yourself as a mid-tier manager with the appropriate skills and look for jobs with technology companies. If you're still interested in supporting the war machine, look for jobs with defense contractors.
As someone who has been flying for 12 years, you're likely a Major or maybe a Lt Colonel, yes? The skills you've gained as a manager are far more relevant to prospective employers than your (likely outdated) electrical engineering background.
If you want technical work be prepared to start from the bottom and have everyone around you be much younger than you are or move into technical management and stress to your prospective companies that you're looking for positions that combine technical work with program/personnel management.
100K+ isn't much profit, unless you're a lemonade stand.