Sounds to me as if these companies want the government to sanction their status as middleman brokers of weather information, all at the public's expense.
Sorry, but I don't agree. If I'm not mistaken, the NWS exists on public funds; the info should be public also.
Besides, weather can make an actual life-and-death difference in some scenarios... just ask any sailor or pilot. Also, how about tornado warnings and such... will you have to pay to get those as well? I'd like to see them try to extract payment for such life-saving info, and watch the avalance of negative public outcry... you'd be more popular if you kicked a puppy.
They also discuss directed-energy weapons, which promise the ability to deny areas to opponents without killing them (unless they can tolerate the agonizing feeling of being on fire... I doubt too many people will be up for that gig).
Actually, if they can tune the output of their directed-energy weapons the way they discuss in the article, it gives all kinds of options unavailable to current vessels, and may be VERY handy in various MOOTW scenarios (Military Operations Other Than War).
of a unit whose members are actively instructed not to stand out... and most counter-terrorist units are taught this way. If you get outed as a 22nd regiment SAS guy in a bar in northern ireland, you'd better make yourself scarce... same thing if you're a Navy SEAL in a market in Pakistan.
The more you can blend in, the more effective you can be at gathering intel... something these type of units do very actively. Nobody should remember you, or anything about you... there are plenty of places in the world where getting ID'd can get you dead.
is not something I invented... I was introduced to the concept during my military days. In fact, I think the first time I heard the term was from a military intelligence type when we were at a deployed location.
"The grey man" is a mindset, and a useful one to know; it's practically second nature to anyone in the intelligence business. It refers to an individual who blends in... who notices things, but is not noticed himself... a person who becomes part of the background... whose only distinguishing feature is an utter lack of the same. A person who doesn't make eye contact, wears conventional clothes... has a normal haircut... walks at an unhurried pace... speaks only when spoken to, and then only in normal, steady, measured tones... doesn't joke or interact unnecessarily with others... is often reading a newspaper. This is the classic "grey man." Looking at him, you'd have a hard time guessing his nationality, profession, personality, destination, or anything else about him, precisely because he is deliberately very, very bland.
In a world of individualistm, most people are not this way... it's often necessary to actively cultivate this profile. This is also a concept taught in counter-intelligence schools, executive protection, counter-terrorism, etc. It's the ultimate evolution of the "keep a low profile" admonition.
Anyway, that's "the grey man." I hope that wasn't more long-winded that you wanted.
Godwins law satisfied in less than ten posts; that's gotta be some kind of Slashdot record... (and modded +5 no less).
As I read the ruling, it seems to have more to do with someone being stopped on reasonable suspicion (something the officer must articulate in court), rather than stopping people willy-nilly to check their ID.
I'm as much a privacy advocate as the next guy, but I don't have a big problem with this.
If a cop stops me on the street for no good reason and hassles me, I'll go along with it, as long as we're on the street and it's mano-a-mano. Once we're no longer on his playing field, the game changes. There's a time to assert your "rights," and on the street where the officer is on his home turf is not the best time... if he's really a bad cop, you're taking an awful chance in provoking him. Be cool, be the "grey man," and make a mark in your accounts receivable.
Restitution is best arranged later, either in court, or in front of his sergeant/chief.
That amount of pipe was for the entire base, and included all traffic, not just plain-text email. When you add in web-surfing and email attachments, that pipe bogged down quickly. It was very helpful when we added a webcache that aggressively cached popular pages locally, but that equipment came later; it wasn't in our original boots-on-the-ground manifest.
It sounds like you're inferring that I selfishly sucked down the entire base's bandwidth for my kernel downloads, preventing fathers from receiving pictures of their newborn children and causing marital strife and hardship. No sir, I stayed up and downloaded my kernel updates in the middle of the night to minimize the impact on more-important traffic. I may be a geek and love my computers, but I'm not a complete cretin.
Also, for the record, a bunch of that download traffic consisted of mappacks and updates for the multi-tent counterstrike LAN we had constructed (with our own cables/laptops/switches, BTW, not the military's stuff). Hardship is a given, but troops in the field are usually highly motivated to improve their lot as best they can... a couple of deployments will make almost anyone into a proficient scavenger, jury-rigger, and duct-tape mechanic (the Marines in particular are masters at this). Don't discount the value of a fatter pipe for the troops; I'm sure they'd find creative ways to use it, just as we did.
Besides... 300 baud? Where is your humanity, sir? I think that's against the geneva conventions.
not servers. On one of my trips to the middle east a few years ago, we had about 5000 soldiers at our location, and about five 56k modems worth of bandwidth to serve them all. Yes, you read that correctly.
Think the neighborhood node for your cable modem is slow in the evenings? Brother, you aint seen nothin'.... and to make matters worse, they also throttled that bandwidth down even more by port... 80 was always the slowest. Fortunately for me, ftp wasn't throttled... so my downloads from kernel.org took hours instead of days (hey, a geek's gotta do what a geek's gotta do).
Increasing the pipe is only part of the issue; you have to filter all that traffic. If you don't control that information stream, classified information will leak, and viruses/worms will run riot. Even on a filtered system, one virus can really make your life miserable. I witnessed this on another delployment... the Anna Kournikova virus got loose in our network... it wrecked havoc for days before we got it under control (send a bunch of lonely, hormonally-poisoned, computer-equiped 19-year-olds a file purporting to be a picture of Anna Kournikova and see what happens... total chaos).
Increasing services to the troops is good, but it has to be done right, or you might end up with more problems than you started with.
that's an important rule... and it goes for people in all kinds of professions.
Reporters often have an idea of where they want to go with a story, and creative editing can turn you from expert to idiot in a matter of minutes. Besides, your time is valuable... why would you give it up for a reporter? You have NO IDEA who he's out to hang... and in case it's you, you'd be a fool to give him a whole spool of rope.
Plenty of police officers, EMS workers, military, public figures, crime suspects, litigants, etc have learned this lesson the hard way. And even if you've checked with your organization's public affairs people, it's still risky. Back in my military days, a friend of mine talked to a reporter with public affairs' blessing... and got into some pretty hot water. The reporter (who clearly ignorant of OPSEC) published some very sensitive info in his article, and my buddy was dinged simply because his name was mentioned (he had nothing to do with the sensitive material). Another friend was raked over the coals for an informational email he sent to a major national newspaper (subsequently forwarded to all kinds of people and eventually into the hands of his boss)
This isn't Star Search; you gain nothing by talking to the press... that's what the PR/media affairs people get paid to do. It can be easy to become seduced by the camera, but don't fall into the trap of thinking the reporter is interested in you when they're more interested in what they can get from you.
Clam up and graciously excuse yourself. If you do, don't worry... you're not missing your fifteen minutes of fame, you're probably dodging a bullet.
But I think it was the appropriately-named The New Style where they said "I had to get a beeper cuz my 'puter is tapped, better keep your mouth shut cuz I'm fully strapped"
I was forward-deployed during the early phase of the Afghanistan war, and the KBR guys were great.
In case you were unaware, these contractors keep guys on the ground in those countries; some of them have been there for 20 years or more. These are local people who live there, speak the language, and are employed/paid by these companies to maintain caches of equipment, buildings, etc... these companies don't just fly in a bunch of pale-faces, rake in the cash, and fly out.
They subcontract with a lot of local people to cook food, do construction, and all manner of services for the military, and they do a fair job of it. They maintain a lot of relationships... It's probably a little unfair to simply characterize them as profiteering gluttons (and no, I don't work for them, never have, and don't plan to).
Contractors provide a lot of services, and while they certainly do it for a profit, that's no different from 99% of people in a capitalist system. Doing things out of the goodness of your heart is very noble, but money's a powerful motivator, and people going out into a war zone to do a job (particularly if they're providing expertise that the Iraqis need) should get a fair wage... I'd say they're earning it.
what do you call a doctor that graduated from the worst medical school on earth at the bottom of his class?
Doctor.
Too true... and since I am a doctor, I'll vouch for this. But the truth is that class rank has very little to do with whether your doctor is worth a damn.
For instance, one of the best psychiatrists I have ever met or known was DEAD LAST in his class. Why? He marches to his own drummer, and refused to play the med school game (cmon...you know the game. Every time you're in a class or on a rotation, whether it's surgery, pediatrics, plastics, etc, it magically becomes your "future specialty" and/or the most interesting subject you've ever studied). Some people simply refuse to kiss up, and I respect those folks, because it's definitely the road less-traveled. You can go reasonably far in school by being a fawning yes-man, but if you don't know the science, you won't make the cut.
I'd personally rather have a doctor who's a bit lacking in the personality department, but really, really knows his stuff. I fully recognize that my perspective as an insider in my own profession makes my priorities a bit different from the average patient, yet I've always found it fascinating that marginal doctors with great personalities get sued far less than brilliant doctors who are brusque.
There IS value to be found in objective measures; they give some sense of whether you've learned the material. Some people test well, and some do not, but if you don't know the minimum material, forget passing the three steps of the US Medical Licensing Exam, to say nothing of your specialty boards. As an example, we had people in medical school who did very well on tests throughout their rotations and subsequently failed the USMLE (as it turned out, they had access to old test files). Make enough hurdles, and those who cheat and cut corners will eventually stumble.
I don't have a problem with testing... because there's frankly no feasible substitute. An objective measure of knowledge has value if sufficiently rigorous. It definitely has value in medicine... but having never taken any sort of computer cert, I can't say whether that's the case for IT or not.
1. Is it really more stable? Sure has been for me (though I don't run XP... I've got a bit of a beef with their "Product Activation," since I change out hardware almost as often as I change my socks).
2. More secure? Oh yes... I'd say definitely fewer attacks. You can argue whether there's a selection bias with the number of windows systems out there, but the vast numbers of attacks/viruses/worms still stands. Besides, even if some 1337 linux worm comes along and compromises your unpriviliged user account, so what?
3. Aggravation? What aggravation? I've got a bunch of neighbors, friends, and family members running redhat and mandrake linux. Setup these days is no problem... and once installed and configured, you don't have to do too terribly much.
I don't think linux is perfect for everyone either... but the look of wonder on a win98 or winME user's face once they start using a nice KDE desktop under Mandrake warms my heart, particularly once they find out that they don't have to sweat the lastest windows Worm-du-jour.
After I've rescued/recovered someone's hosed windows system a few times, they always ask me what I use. I hand them a knoppix CD, tell them to try it out for a few days, and let me know if they're interested. You'd be surprised what an eye-opening experience that is for many windows users...
and cannibalized the parts to do other things... those little electric motors and gears were useful for all kinds of stuff.
This was all after I got bored/frustrated with it, of course.
The most frustrating thing about the big trak was that it never got its turning radii correct... if you told it to turn right 90 degrees, it was always off by several degrees, enough that it would subsequently bump into a wall or corner. Adding in the corrections for all those not-quite-90-degree turns was a hassle, so I introduced Big Trak to Mr. screwdriver.
I did miss the laser-cannon effect though... that was pretty cool in a dark room.
Or you can try to bring them over to the dark side...
I must confess... I've tried it with my wife, but thus far have had no luck. Back in the day she was a relentless MUD'er, but now doesn't seem to have any interest in computer games whatsoever (I feel like Luke trying to drag Vader back to the Light side of the force... "there is good in him... I have felt it").
Still, sacrifices are what makes a relationship work. She's intelligent, beautiful, funny, a good cook, a great mom, and makes more money than I do. Her only flaw seems to be that she married far beneath her station... a flaw for which I am eternally thankful.
I'd give up the games for her... but she'd never force me to do that... give-and-take is a beautiful thing.
I agree with the parent poster... you don't end a relationship for a lousy video game... I don't care how 1337 it is.
on the subject... it takes sniffing a major amount of packets to crack a 128bit WEP key... something a low-traffic home network is going to take MONTHS to generate...
Seriously... my memory may be failing in my old age, but it's about 6-9GB of network traffic to get enough packets to recover the encryption key... hardly "broken really easily."
I set up APs for friends/colleagues/family all the time... three things:
-Turn on WEP.
-Enable MAC address filtering
-Disable SSID broadcasting (and change the default name, naturally)
That's probably all the home user really needs to do (and may be overkill). It will certainly remove you from the low-hanging-fruit list.
that's a good way to put it. I wasn't casting any aspersions on the intelligence of EOD and bomb guys (God knows, they come in mighty handy... I've always been thankful to have their expertise in the appropriate situations).
I don't know what it is about some bomb guys, but some of them like what they do... I don't mean that they're simply cheerful... I mean they really, really like their work. Some of those guys literally have a gleam in their eye when they're working. They remind me of the kid in school who was kind of a pyromaniac (you know who I'm talking about... every school has one) who's found his niche in life; getting paid to do what he'd probably be doing anyway.
It's nice to see enthusiasm in your job... but I was always worried about that level of enjoyment involving high explosives.
not to question an ex-EOD tech (you guys are all a little nuts), but I was under the impression that only some explosives (rather than all) are sensitive to heat, and some to percussion... while some require both to initiate a high-order detonation. C-4, for instance, can be safely set on fire, and will not detonate. It can also be safely exposed to significant mechanical shock, and will not detonate (exposing it to both simultaneously isn't advisable). I've never seen pure cyclonite (RDX) used much... probably due to its sensitivity, as you mentioned.
Most military high-explosives I've been around don't require much chaining (setting off sequential explosives to detonate a less-sensitive material)... I can't remember the last time I saw anyone use more than a standard cap. (I'm not an bomb/EOD-guy... I've simply been around the stuff a bit).
The original poster's comment about shooting at TNT is funny... because that's exactly how a fair amount of ordinance gets detonated these days. The last time I was in theatre, the EOD guys were using Barrett light-50's (with a type of european incendiary ammo) to detonate mines and other ordinance... a whole lot easier and safer than walking up to it and setting up the shot by hand. My tactical gear was heavy and unwieldy enough... I don't know how you guys are able to do anything in those bomb suits...
at the New River Gorge bridge in West Virginia, USA. It's legal to jump off that bridge exactly one day per year (known, appropriately enough, as bridge day). It's not a bad way to introduce yourself to base jumping legally... jail time sucks.
Incidently, it's only ten feet shorter than the bridge mentioned in the article (but has a much smaller landing area... people jumping the New River Gorge bridge should have good canopy control skills... it might be tough for a rookie parachutist). The only more-difficult famous base jump landing I know of is Angel Falls... there's a tiny clearing in the jungle you have to hit, or you're in the trees.
I got invited to do my first base jump when I was a low-time skydiver (only had 13 jumps under my belt) it involved breaking-and-entering, climbing an antenna at night, jumping from said antenna, and avoiding the guy wires... needless to say, I declined. I like adrenaline as much as the next guy, but there's something to be said for living to jump another day...
Sorry to offend you, but as someone who has dealt (and fought) with many psychotic patients, I'd have to say the manics are the most problematic.
They can be incredibly strong, and they are VERY emotionally labile; they can go from crying to homicidal rage literally in the blink of an eye. They are very unpredictable when in the manic phase... couple that with an ability to fight to the death, and the smart clinician will be very careful in handling these folks. The key is to have lots of backup... and the necessary pharmaceuticals.
No offense intended, but that's just the reality of mania... great care is always called for when dealing with a manic patient who's floridly psychotic.
what a story... there you have it, folks... straight from the horse's mouth. Tom, my heart goes out to your family; talk about living a nightmare.
While schizophrenics are often characterized as violent and dangerous (and some definitely are), they are usually more dangerous to themselves... about 10% end up committing suicide. Paranoid schizophrenics can commit violence against those around them, particularly if those people are included as a part of their delusions of persecution.
I'll never forget an older grandmother that a middle-aged daughter brought into my ER... that older family member was schizophrenic, lived with them, and had made dinner for the whole house (BIG family). Thank God the daughter caught the mother as she was stirring the rat poison into the food... a lot of it. (she was convinced the family was trying to kill her, and was going to do them in first).
It happens, folks... and schizophrenia is a life-long illness. One of relatives has an 20-years-past ex-wife that he STILL gets called about every time she gets arrested or institutionalized. Why? She always gives them my uncle's address and phone number as her "husband." Incidently, she always seems to have his current contact info, despite being unlisted/unpublished, despite moving multiple times, and despite the fact that they haven't spoken in 15 years. Yeah... think about that in the wee hours of the morning...
It's already been said, but mental illness is sometimes just as hard on the family as it is on the patient.
though my exhortation to keep taking his medication is based on the empirical observation that they appear to have worked for him... ala the poster's description of his clinical improvement.
Your description of feeling better off your medication is common... and dangerous. Bipolar patients often feel better off their medication, particularly when they're entering a manic phase. They feel GREAT... I've had them tell me they feel like God. They're often grandiose (obviously), don't need to eat or sleep, and can be very hypersexual (I've seen some of these patients masturbate continuously for hours and hours). Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there... some manics will continue to progress to the point of raving, psychotic madness. Some develop so much psychomotor agitation that they require intubation and IV sedation to prevent rhabdomyolysis.
Like meth/crack abusers/ODs, manics have been known to successfully fight a half-dozen police officers... then drop dead in the back of a patrol car (the human body is capable of a lot more than most people realize... manics are capable of tremendous exertion, and will fight, fight, fight. Exert yourself long enough, and you can dig yourself into a very deep metabolic hole... sometimes so deep that you die as a result).
You can stop your medication... but untreated schizophrenics and bipolars commit suicide, get arrested, etc at a very high rate. It's your choice, but that's a cold comfort to your family visiting you in prison or a funeral home. Choose wisely... somebody out there probably loves you, and would miss you if you were gone.
Feel free to google/webmd/emedicine.com any point I make on here. I'm simply sharing my expertise in this forum, as others do... and I have no problem backing up anything I write.
I rarely respond to ACs, so post under your actual account next time, coward.
People who are diagnosed as schizophrenic are often characterized as a bit "different," even before diagnosis. Granted, it's always easy to say that in retrospect, but there are often subtle signs before the first actual psychotic "break."
It also sounds like your friend was in the right age group... Schizophrenia usually pops up in the late teens/early twenties in most men (and women get it a few years later than that, but usually before age 40). New-onset psychosis in an elderly person should prompt a search for a medical reason... drugs, infection, intracranial bleed...
Your friend had some very classic signs of schizophrenia, probably paranoid subtype. He was delusional and paranoid. He also exhibited "Thought Broadcasting," which is when the patient thinks others can read their thoughts.
Curiously, your friend also exhibited some signs of mania... a component of Bipolar Disorder. In fact, his psychosis and other symptoms (hypersexuality, racing thoughts) are also consistent with a Bipolar patient in the manic phase (manics are the most dangerous of all psychiatric patients).
Truthfully, he could easily have been given either diagnosis... but these are the cases where you need a trained psychiatrist to better-delineate the nature of the disorder.
You also make an important point: medications usually help, and these are life-long disorders. The most common reason I get schizophrenic patients in my ER is because they're off their meds. If you hang out with your buddy enough, and witness a few exacerbations of his condition, you may learn to recognize behavioral cues that will tip you off that he's "off his meds."
Good luck... and encourage him to keep taking his anti-psychotics.
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If I played guitar I'd be jimmy page... the girlies I sue, are underage
Sounds to me as if these companies want the government to sanction their status as middleman brokers of weather information, all at the public's expense.
Sorry, but I don't agree. If I'm not mistaken, the NWS exists on public funds; the info should be public also.
Besides, weather can make an actual life-and-death difference in some scenarios... just ask any sailor or pilot. Also, how about tornado warnings and such... will you have to pay to get those as well? I'd like to see them try to extract payment for such life-saving info, and watch the avalance of negative public outcry... you'd be more popular if you kicked a puppy.
You're quite welcome.
They also discuss directed-energy weapons, which promise the ability to deny areas to opponents without killing them (unless they can tolerate the agonizing feeling of being on fire... I doubt too many people will be up for that gig).
Actually, if they can tune the output of their directed-energy weapons the way they discuss in the article, it gives all kinds of options unavailable to current vessels, and may be VERY handy in various MOOTW scenarios (Military Operations Other Than War).
Doesn't seem that cold-war-ish to me.
of a unit whose members are actively instructed not to stand out... and most counter-terrorist units are taught this way. If you get outed as a 22nd regiment SAS guy in a bar in northern ireland, you'd better make yourself scarce... same thing if you're a Navy SEAL in a market in Pakistan.
The more you can blend in, the more effective you can be at gathering intel... something these type of units do very actively. Nobody should remember you, or anything about you... there are plenty of places in the world where getting ID'd can get you dead.
is not something I invented... I was introduced to the concept during my military days. In fact, I think the first time I heard the term was from a military intelligence type when we were at a deployed location.
"The grey man" is a mindset, and a useful one to know; it's practically second nature to anyone in the intelligence business. It refers to an individual who blends in... who notices things, but is not noticed himself... a person who becomes part of the background... whose only distinguishing feature is an utter lack of the same. A person who doesn't make eye contact, wears conventional clothes... has a normal haircut... walks at an unhurried pace... speaks only when spoken to, and then only in normal, steady, measured tones... doesn't joke or interact unnecessarily with others... is often reading a newspaper. This is the classic "grey man." Looking at him, you'd have a hard time guessing his nationality, profession, personality, destination, or anything else about him, precisely because he is deliberately very, very bland.
In a world of individualistm, most people are not this way... it's often necessary to actively cultivate this profile. This is also a concept taught in counter-intelligence schools, executive protection, counter-terrorism, etc. It's the ultimate evolution of the "keep a low profile" admonition.
Anyway, that's "the grey man." I hope that wasn't more long-winded that you wanted.
Godwins law satisfied in less than ten posts; that's gotta be some kind of Slashdot record... (and modded +5 no less).
As I read the ruling, it seems to have more to do with someone being stopped on reasonable suspicion (something the officer must articulate in court), rather than stopping people willy-nilly to check their ID.
I'm as much a privacy advocate as the next guy, but I don't have a big problem with this.
If a cop stops me on the street for no good reason and hassles me, I'll go along with it, as long as we're on the street and it's mano-a-mano. Once we're no longer on his playing field, the game changes. There's a time to assert your "rights," and on the street where the officer is on his home turf is not the best time... if he's really a bad cop, you're taking an awful chance in provoking him. Be cool, be the "grey man," and make a mark in your accounts receivable.
Restitution is best arranged later, either in court, or in front of his sergeant/chief.
That amount of pipe was for the entire base, and included all traffic, not just plain-text email. When you add in web-surfing and email attachments, that pipe bogged down quickly. It was very helpful when we added a webcache that aggressively cached popular pages locally, but that equipment came later; it wasn't in our original boots-on-the-ground manifest.
It sounds like you're inferring that I selfishly sucked down the entire base's bandwidth for my kernel downloads, preventing fathers from receiving pictures of their newborn children and causing marital strife and hardship. No sir, I stayed up and downloaded my kernel updates in the middle of the night to minimize the impact on more-important traffic. I may be a geek and love my computers, but I'm not a complete cretin.
Also, for the record, a bunch of that download traffic consisted of mappacks and updates for the multi-tent counterstrike LAN we had constructed (with our own cables/laptops/switches, BTW, not the military's stuff). Hardship is a given, but troops in the field are usually highly motivated to improve their lot as best they can... a couple of deployments will make almost anyone into a proficient scavenger, jury-rigger, and duct-tape mechanic (the Marines in particular are masters at this). Don't discount the value of a fatter pipe for the troops; I'm sure they'd find creative ways to use it, just as we did.
Besides... 300 baud? Where is your humanity, sir? I think that's against the geneva conventions.
not servers. On one of my trips to the middle east a few years ago, we had about 5000 soldiers at our location, and about five 56k modems worth of bandwidth to serve them all. Yes, you read that correctly.
Think the neighborhood node for your cable modem is slow in the evenings? Brother, you aint seen nothin'.... and to make matters worse, they also throttled that bandwidth down even more by port... 80 was always the slowest. Fortunately for me, ftp wasn't throttled... so my downloads from kernel.org took hours instead of days (hey, a geek's gotta do what a geek's gotta do).
Increasing the pipe is only part of the issue; you have to filter all that traffic. If you don't control that information stream, classified information will leak, and viruses/worms will run riot. Even on a filtered system, one virus can really make your life miserable. I witnessed this on another delployment... the Anna Kournikova virus got loose in our network... it wrecked havoc for days before we got it under control (send a bunch of lonely, hormonally-poisoned, computer-equiped 19-year-olds a file purporting to be a picture of Anna Kournikova and see what happens... total chaos).
Increasing services to the troops is good, but it has to be done right, or you might end up with more problems than you started with.
that's an important rule... and it goes for people in all kinds of professions.
Reporters often have an idea of where they want to go with a story, and creative editing can turn you from expert to idiot in a matter of minutes. Besides, your time is valuable... why would you give it up for a reporter? You have NO IDEA who he's out to hang... and in case it's you, you'd be a fool to give him a whole spool of rope.
Plenty of police officers, EMS workers, military, public figures, crime suspects, litigants, etc have learned this lesson the hard way. And even if you've checked with your organization's public affairs people, it's still risky. Back in my military days, a friend of mine talked to a reporter with public affairs' blessing... and got into some pretty hot water. The reporter (who clearly ignorant of OPSEC) published some very sensitive info in his article, and my buddy was dinged simply because his name was mentioned (he had nothing to do with the sensitive material). Another friend was raked over the coals for an informational email he sent to a major national newspaper (subsequently forwarded to all kinds of people and eventually into the hands of his boss)
This isn't Star Search; you gain nothing by talking to the press... that's what the PR/media affairs people get paid to do. It can be easy to become seduced by the camera, but don't fall into the trap of thinking the reporter is interested in you when they're more interested in what they can get from you.
Clam up and graciously excuse yourself. If you do, don't worry... you're not missing your fifteen minutes of fame, you're probably dodging a bullet.
But I think it was the appropriately-named The New Style where they said "I had to get a beeper cuz my 'puter is tapped, better keep your mouth shut cuz I'm fully strapped"
Apparently it is the new style.
I was forward-deployed during the early phase of the Afghanistan war, and the KBR guys were great.
In case you were unaware, these contractors keep guys on the ground in those countries; some of them have been there for 20 years or more. These are local people who live there, speak the language, and are employed/paid by these companies to maintain caches of equipment, buildings, etc... these companies don't just fly in a bunch of pale-faces, rake in the cash, and fly out.
They subcontract with a lot of local people to cook food, do construction, and all manner of services for the military, and they do a fair job of it. They maintain a lot of relationships... It's probably a little unfair to simply characterize them as profiteering gluttons (and no, I don't work for them, never have, and don't plan to).
Contractors provide a lot of services, and while they certainly do it for a profit, that's no different from 99% of people in a capitalist system. Doing things out of the goodness of your heart is very noble, but money's a powerful motivator, and people going out into a war zone to do a job (particularly if they're providing expertise that the Iraqis need) should get a fair wage... I'd say they're earning it.
what do you call a doctor that graduated from the worst medical school on earth at the bottom of his class?
Doctor.
Too true... and since I am a doctor, I'll vouch for this. But the truth is that class rank has very little to do with whether your doctor is worth a damn.
For instance, one of the best psychiatrists I have ever met or known was DEAD LAST in his class. Why? He marches to his own drummer, and refused to play the med school game (cmon...you know the game. Every time you're in a class or on a rotation, whether it's surgery, pediatrics, plastics, etc, it magically becomes your "future specialty" and/or the most interesting subject you've ever studied). Some people simply refuse to kiss up, and I respect those folks, because it's definitely the road less-traveled. You can go reasonably far in school by being a fawning yes-man, but if you don't know the science, you won't make the cut.
I'd personally rather have a doctor who's a bit lacking in the personality department, but really, really knows his stuff. I fully recognize that my perspective as an insider in my own profession makes my priorities a bit different from the average patient, yet I've always found it fascinating that marginal doctors with great personalities get sued far less than brilliant doctors who are brusque.
There IS value to be found in objective measures; they give some sense of whether you've learned the material. Some people test well, and some do not, but if you don't know the minimum material, forget passing the three steps of the US Medical Licensing Exam, to say nothing of your specialty boards. As an example, we had people in medical school who did very well on tests throughout their rotations and subsequently failed the USMLE (as it turned out, they had access to old test files). Make enough hurdles, and those who cheat and cut corners will eventually stumble.
I don't have a problem with testing... because there's frankly no feasible substitute. An objective measure of knowledge has value if sufficiently rigorous. It definitely has value in medicine... but having never taken any sort of computer cert, I can't say whether that's the case for IT or not.
I'll try to answer this from my own experience:
1. Is it really more stable? Sure has been for me (though I don't run XP... I've got a bit of a beef with their "Product Activation," since I change out hardware almost as often as I change my socks).
2. More secure? Oh yes... I'd say definitely fewer attacks. You can argue whether there's a selection bias with the number of windows systems out there, but the vast numbers of attacks/viruses/worms still stands. Besides, even if some 1337 linux worm comes along and compromises your unpriviliged user account, so what?
3. Aggravation? What aggravation? I've got a bunch of neighbors, friends, and family members running redhat and mandrake linux. Setup these days is no problem... and once installed and configured, you don't have to do too terribly much.
I don't think linux is perfect for everyone either... but the look of wonder on a win98 or winME user's face once they start using a nice KDE desktop under Mandrake warms my heart, particularly once they find out that they don't have to sweat the lastest windows Worm-du-jour.
After I've rescued/recovered someone's hosed windows system a few times, they always ask me what I use. I hand them a knoppix CD, tell them to try it out for a few days, and let me know if they're interested. You'd be surprised what an eye-opening experience that is for many windows users...
and cannibalized the parts to do other things... those little electric motors and gears were useful for all kinds of stuff.
This was all after I got bored/frustrated with it, of course.
The most frustrating thing about the big trak was that it never got its turning radii correct... if you told it to turn right 90 degrees, it was always off by several degrees, enough that it would subsequently bump into a wall or corner. Adding in the corrections for all those not-quite-90-degree turns was a hassle, so I introduced Big Trak to Mr. screwdriver.
I did miss the laser-cannon effect though... that was pretty cool in a dark room.
Or you can try to bring them over to the dark side...
I must confess... I've tried it with my wife, but thus far have had no luck. Back in the day she was a relentless MUD'er, but now doesn't seem to have any interest in computer games whatsoever (I feel like Luke trying to drag Vader back to the Light side of the force... "there is good in him... I have felt it").
Still, sacrifices are what makes a relationship work. She's intelligent, beautiful, funny, a good cook, a great mom, and makes more money than I do. Her only flaw seems to be that she married far beneath her station... a flaw for which I am eternally thankful.
I'd give up the games for her... but she'd never force me to do that... give-and-take is a beautiful thing.
I agree with the parent poster... you don't end a relationship for a lousy video game... I don't care how 1337 it is.
on the subject... it takes sniffing a major amount of packets to crack a 128bit WEP key... something a low-traffic home network is going to take MONTHS to generate...
Seriously... my memory may be failing in my old age, but it's about 6-9GB of network traffic to get enough packets to recover the encryption key... hardly "broken really easily."
I set up APs for friends/colleagues/family all the time... three things:
-Turn on WEP.
-Enable MAC address filtering
-Disable SSID broadcasting (and change the default name, naturally)
That's probably all the home user really needs to do (and may be overkill). It will certainly remove you from the low-hanging-fruit list.
that's a good way to put it. I wasn't casting any aspersions on the intelligence of EOD and bomb guys (God knows, they come in mighty handy... I've always been thankful to have their expertise in the appropriate situations).
I don't know what it is about some bomb guys, but some of them like what they do... I don't mean that they're simply cheerful... I mean they really, really like their work. Some of those guys literally have a gleam in their eye when they're working. They remind me of the kid in school who was kind of a pyromaniac (you know who I'm talking about... every school has one) who's found his niche in life; getting paid to do what he'd probably be doing anyway.
It's nice to see enthusiasm in your job... but I was always worried about that level of enjoyment involving high explosives.
not to question an ex-EOD tech (you guys are all a little nuts), but I was under the impression that only some explosives (rather than all) are sensitive to heat, and some to percussion... while some require both to initiate a high-order detonation. C-4, for instance, can be safely set on fire, and will not detonate. It can also be safely exposed to significant mechanical shock, and will not detonate (exposing it to both simultaneously isn't advisable). I've never seen pure cyclonite (RDX) used much... probably due to its sensitivity, as you mentioned.
Most military high-explosives I've been around don't require much chaining (setting off sequential explosives to detonate a less-sensitive material)... I can't remember the last time I saw anyone use more than a standard cap. (I'm not an bomb/EOD-guy... I've simply been around the stuff a bit).
The original poster's comment about shooting at TNT is funny... because that's exactly how a fair amount of ordinance gets detonated these days. The last time I was in theatre, the EOD guys were using Barrett light-50's (with a type of european incendiary ammo) to detonate mines and other ordinance... a whole lot easier and safer than walking up to it and setting up the shot by hand. My tactical gear was heavy and unwieldy enough... I don't know how you guys are able to do anything in those bomb suits...
at the New River Gorge bridge in West Virginia, USA. It's legal to jump off that bridge exactly one day per year (known, appropriately enough, as bridge day). It's not a bad way to introduce yourself to base jumping legally... jail time sucks.
Incidently, it's only ten feet shorter than the bridge mentioned in the article (but has a much smaller landing area... people jumping the New River Gorge bridge should have good canopy control skills... it might be tough for a rookie parachutist). The only more-difficult famous base jump landing I know of is Angel Falls... there's a tiny clearing in the jungle you have to hit, or you're in the trees.
I got invited to do my first base jump when I was a low-time skydiver (only had 13 jumps under my belt) it involved breaking-and-entering, climbing an antenna at night, jumping from said antenna, and avoiding the guy wires... needless to say, I declined. I like adrenaline as much as the next guy, but there's something to be said for living to jump another day...
Jump smart... you'll live longer.
Sorry to offend you, but as someone who has dealt (and fought) with many psychotic patients, I'd have to say the manics are the most problematic.
They can be incredibly strong, and they are VERY emotionally labile; they can go from crying to homicidal rage literally in the blink of an eye. They are very unpredictable when in the manic phase... couple that with an ability to fight to the death, and the smart clinician will be very careful in handling these folks. The key is to have lots of backup... and the necessary pharmaceuticals.
No offense intended, but that's just the reality of mania... great care is always called for when dealing with a manic patient who's floridly psychotic.
what a story... there you have it, folks... straight from the horse's mouth. Tom, my heart goes out to your family; talk about living a nightmare.
While schizophrenics are often characterized as violent and dangerous (and some definitely are), they are usually more dangerous to themselves... about 10% end up committing suicide. Paranoid schizophrenics can commit violence against those around them, particularly if those people are included as a part of their delusions of persecution.
I'll never forget an older grandmother that a middle-aged daughter brought into my ER... that older family member was schizophrenic, lived with them, and had made dinner for the whole house (BIG family). Thank God the daughter caught the mother as she was stirring the rat poison into the food... a lot of it. (she was convinced the family was trying to kill her, and was going to do them in first).
It happens, folks... and schizophrenia is a life-long illness. One of relatives has an 20-years-past ex-wife that he STILL gets called about every time she gets arrested or institutionalized. Why? She always gives them my uncle's address and phone number as her "husband." Incidently, she always seems to have his current contact info, despite being unlisted/unpublished, despite moving multiple times, and despite the fact that they haven't spoken in 15 years. Yeah... think about that in the wee hours of the morning...
It's already been said, but mental illness is sometimes just as hard on the family as it is on the patient.
though my exhortation to keep taking his medication is based on the empirical observation that they appear to have worked for him... ala the poster's description of his clinical improvement.
Your description of feeling better off your medication is common... and dangerous. Bipolar patients often feel better off their medication, particularly when they're entering a manic phase. They feel GREAT... I've had them tell me they feel like God. They're often grandiose (obviously), don't need to eat or sleep, and can be very hypersexual (I've seen some of these patients masturbate continuously for hours and hours). Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there... some manics will continue to progress to the point of raving, psychotic madness. Some develop so much psychomotor agitation that they require intubation and IV sedation to prevent rhabdomyolysis.
Like meth/crack abusers/ODs, manics have been known to successfully fight a half-dozen police officers... then drop dead in the back of a patrol car (the human body is capable of a lot more than most people realize... manics are capable of tremendous exertion, and will fight, fight, fight. Exert yourself long enough, and you can dig yourself into a very deep metabolic hole... sometimes so deep that you die as a result).
You can stop your medication... but untreated schizophrenics and bipolars commit suicide, get arrested, etc at a very high rate. It's your choice, but that's a cold comfort to your family visiting you in prison or a funeral home. Choose wisely... somebody out there probably loves you, and would miss you if you were gone.
if posted in a somewhat juvenile fashion.
Feel free to google/webmd/emedicine.com any point I make on here. I'm simply sharing my expertise in this forum, as others do... and I have no problem backing up anything I write.
I rarely respond to ACs, so post under your actual account next time, coward.
People who are diagnosed as schizophrenic are often characterized as a bit "different," even before diagnosis. Granted, it's always easy to say that in retrospect, but there are often subtle signs before the first actual psychotic "break."
It also sounds like your friend was in the right age group... Schizophrenia usually pops up in the late teens/early twenties in most men (and women get it a few years later than that, but usually before age 40). New-onset psychosis in an elderly person should prompt a search for a medical reason... drugs, infection, intracranial bleed...
Your friend had some very classic signs of schizophrenia, probably paranoid subtype. He was delusional and paranoid. He also exhibited "Thought Broadcasting," which is when the patient thinks others can read their thoughts.
Curiously, your friend also exhibited some signs of mania... a component of Bipolar Disorder. In fact, his psychosis and other symptoms (hypersexuality, racing thoughts) are also consistent with a Bipolar patient in the manic phase (manics are the most dangerous of all psychiatric patients).
Truthfully, he could easily have been given either diagnosis... but these are the cases where you need a trained psychiatrist to better-delineate the nature of the disorder.
You also make an important point: medications usually help, and these are life-long disorders. The most common reason I get schizophrenic patients in my ER is because they're off their meds. If you hang out with your buddy enough, and witness a few exacerbations of his condition, you may learn to recognize behavioral cues that will tip you off that he's "off his meds."
Good luck... and encourage him to keep taking his anti-psychotics.