What? No. I have lots of friends. Why, there's my friend...uh Gee. Yeah, Good Old Gee Fore! And sure, then there's my uh..friend Petey A. Lots of fun with him! He goes everywhere I go. And let's not forget my uh...other friend..um..yeah...his name is...uh...H. P. Laaptop. See? I have lots of "friends"!
And that's not all...I work for the IT Consulting department of the local New Horizons franchise (The worlds' largest technical training school) and they and Microsoft have just started offering a free software incentive to people who take a Server 2003 related class-A free! copy of Server 2003 Enterprise PLUS 25 Client Access Licenses. A $2600 value. Obviously an attempt to get people to use their product and see how "good" it really is. And of course, this is a time-honored and effective way of growing your customer base. Why, I remember all the Crack dealers in my neighborhood offering all us kids our first hit for free! While I think MS Products are more like a "frustrating-poke-your-eyes-out-with-red-hot-steel -pokers " product than a "euphoric-inducing-and-feel-good-mind-altering" product, they can still impose that vacuous, brain-dead response that brings the customer back for more and more and more.
Yes, that's right-I just equated MS with drug-pushers and I don't think I'm too far off the mark there.
Yes, I know it's too bad that you can't just join the reserves and sit on your fat butt and mooch off the government. Is that why you never joined? Again, I've got over 10 years of service under my belt. How about you?
After 7 years active and 3 years (and counting) reserves (with one 12-month involuntary recall and still in the reserves), I don't think you can describe me as 'mooching'. Prepared to fight? Always. Look forward to it? Happy to be leaving my wife and 2 children for extended periods of time? No. Still will do it if called upon? Yes. Still dislike them having ONE MORE REASON to pick me? Yep. And in this case, my skills as an IT professional are some skills that the Navy needs a lot of. Being an IT professional just makes it that much more likely that I will be called up MORE OFTEN and for LONGER PERIODS than other people. If I wanted that, I would have stayed ACTIVE DUTY.
Well, I always suspected it. I am a member of the US Naval Reserve and about two years ago, the NAVRES asked all of it's members to fill out a "skills profile". This profile would be used to solicit qualified members and ask them to volunteer to fill temporary billets as they arose. The program was presented as a way to find the best service member for the task and to offer them the oppurtunity to take orders for that job. A lot of the billets that open up are from 6 weeks to 9 months. I was always dubious of doing this, becuase if there were ever a "crisis" and they REALLY needed someone with my skills, I foresaw the "volunteer oppurtunity" becoming an "involuntary recall to active duty" in a heartbeat. I doubt this decision is directly related, but now they have a massive database of skills that they can search through and draft from first.
How about: Working 7-hours on, 7-hours off, then 5-hours on, 5-hours off. Repeat. For days and days. Job consisting of sitting and staring at a RADAR scope trying to find little blips that might signify physical objects (air or sea depending on which position you are sitting at), in a dark room with a bunch of other semi-grumpy people that you are tired of looking at because you have been doing this for 21 days in a row so far (some ships have gone much longer than 21 days at sea, so I consider myself lucky that the longest I ever spent between port visits was 21 days). Throw in the sound of the ventilation system and the gentle (mostly) rocking of the ship and just TRY to stay awake. If you are lucky(?) enough to be working on an aircraft carrier, you may be lucky enough to only hear the muffled roar of the jet engines while working in the tower. Or you may be unlucky enough to work in Combat directly below the flight deck. The launch of the aircraft isn't too bad, it's the 'traps' that are ungodly loud. And if they miss the cable, the sound of the tailhook slamming into the deck and dragging across the deck is horrible. At least you won't fall asleep. These are the working conditions of Operations Specialists in the (U.S.) Navy. Actually not too bad considering some of the other posts, but the schedule was just a killer. And it was non-stop until you got into port. Oh! Yeah, here is the kicker, in your non-watch time, there were often times General Quarters drills that would last from 2 to 3 hours. EVERYONE on the ship is up and doing something -or at least waiting at their GQ station to do something. THEN you get to go back to sleep. Oh wait! Don't forget to shower, eat and maybe send a letter home. Or nowadays, try to find an empty computer and send email home. Oh! Yeah, then make sure that your collateral duties get done too. Ok, now you can go to sleep. Ooops! Too late. Time to go back on watch.
"Only about half, actually":) Yes, but 51% is about half, and 51% is most. And no, I don't have hard numbers. Just my experience with talking with 3 commercial airline pilots (all of which were ex-military).
"Aside from about 10 years of their lives, after training, with the added opportunity of being shot at."
True, but the argument was that the high-salary is justified by their high MONETARY cost of training. In the case of the military trained pilots, their initial training and experience is no cost to them AND they are getting paid while being trained.
"The military pays for medical school, too."
True again. However, MOST doctors in practice today are NOT ex-military. Hence, I cannot use the argument that most doctors don't deserve a higher salary because their training was free. Therefore, the point that the military pays for medical school is moot.
"Most of them are ex-military types..." "Over 25% of US pilots come from a single university..."
Ok, so 25% come from a Embry-Riddle. This is still less than 51%, so, for now, the "most are ex-military" seems correct-but that comment doesn't have any corrborating evidence either-so saying most are ex-miltary or most are not is about equal as far as facts go so far. Does anyone have any hard data about where pilots get their training?
Huge investment? Next time you see a commercial airline pilot, ask him where he/she got their training and you will find that a majority of them will say either the Air Force or the Navy. Cost to former military pilot for training: Almost $0.00. Yes, there is additional training required to go from flying an F-14 to a 747, but some of these pilots have been flying modified 737's (Air Force) all their careers anyway. And it's not like becoming a doctor-which IS a much bigger investment in time and money than training to become a commercial airline pilot after being trained in the military.
A little off topic...but the DNC list (apparently) does not apply to businesses that make calls within their state borders. I had a client (I'm a software developer) ask me to develop a database application to help them keep track of who asked to be put on their DNC list and to keep track of how long it has been since a customer had a "business relationship" with the client. After developing the estimate, the client (a carpet cleaning business) did some checking and found a loophole. Apparently, as long as they are only calling people in Washington (home of the wonderful beachfront property towns of Ritzville, Moses Lake and Spangle), they do not have to query the national DNC list. I haven't reviewed the law regarding the NDNCL, but if that loophole is extremely broad enough, I foresee corporations setting up call centers in nearly every state! Or, my client was simply trying to back out of the proposal graciously without admitting that they couldn't afford the development costs.
I called them too. I asked her who they were and why they were calling me (which they haven't) The only thing I got out of them was "This is NCO Financial Services". She (politely) offered to confirm that my phone number was actually associated with my name (perhaps there was a typo and the real-number was entered incorrectly resulting in me being called).
You can to to their FAQ page which has a link to their uninstaller 'Course, it requires you to download and run another application from the same slimy people that gave you the spyware anyway. And yes, it IS spyware-Read their privacy policy-they freely admit it.
I cannot vouch for how well their uninstaller works because I was never infected (I use a Mac).
As an aside, I was just talking to my friend yesterday on the phone and he mumbled something like, "Xupiter? what the hell is this? This isn't my home page." (He uses a Gateway).
I don't buy that theory, but it is similar to another theory. There is a similar theory about prescient dreams. Throughout my life I have experienced dreams that have later "come true". That is, I have dreamed of events and later (weeks, to months to years) have witnessed the events that I dreamt about so long ago. I never think about these dreams between when I experience them and when the event actually occurs. Nothing sets the dreams apart from "normal" dreams and I go on with life oblivious to the possiblity that I may know a small part of my future. There is no knowledge after I wake up that what I dreamt actually will come true. What has been proposed as one theory to explain this "deja vu" is that the signals being received by the brain at the moment of the "deja vu" get mis-routed or routed twice. That is, the signals are perceived as a memory AND as a current event AT THE SAME TIME. As I have grown older (now 33), this happens very infrequently and I wonder if now that my brain has grown and matured, maybe my brain doesn't get "confused" as easily and all the signals get properly routed.
From reading some of the responses, it appears as if many people (the majority) here can recall very early periods in their lives. If you were to gather demographical data about all of the slashdot users, would you find that a majority of us are involved in one particular field or type of job? Did we all have similar experiences at birth or during gestation that could explain the ability to recall such early memories? I have talked to some people about their earliest memories and most cannot remember anything before they were five years old.
My two cents: Same as most of the other respondents. No one ever told me about several of the things I remembered before the age of three. I have reminded my parents of the stories because they have forgotten.
What has my life come to that I measure success by whether or not I make the First Post?:)
Re:Take it from a Navy Radar Operator...
on
DOD vs. 802.11b
·
· Score: 1
Well...can't say anything on the record...you know how it is.
And, IMHO, the SPY-1D Rocks!
Take it from a Navy Radar Operator...
on
DOD vs. 802.11b
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
...there is more risk to the WiFi networks being jammed by military radar than the other way around. The newest radar's pump out hundreds to thousands to millions of watts of power depending on the type of radar and the platform. Plus, today's military radar's are frequency agile and extremely adaptable to interference and jamming. This appears to be just another attempt by the DOD/DOJ/Big Brother Government to control things that they feel are a threat to their control.
My friend ended up buying a Gateway PC and I told him to go back to "Gateway Country" to get his refund because he wanted to install Windows 2000 Pro-Not ME. The schmuck's at the GW store were clueless and refused to honor the EULA. A quick trip to the Washington State Attorney Generals Online Consumer Complaint Form and Corporate Gateway was calling him! They ended up (in an effort to keep a Gateway customer happy) paying him the price he paid for Winodws 2000 and the amount that I charged him to install it on his machine. The check he received from GW was around $500 US! If they had simply honored the EULA, GW would only have been out about $90? $120 tops. AND he got to keep all the software CD's that came with the PC. I don't think they ever really understood that he was entitled to the refund under the EULA.
I know I upgrade my Macs. I am currently upgrading my Umax S900 604e/225 to a G3/400 with additional SCSI drives, new/used IDE controller, 60GB IDE drive, USB/Firewire PCI card and another 256MB of memory. I'm looking at spending around $250-$300 (already had the 60MB hard drive sitting around). As for upgrading my PC or buying a new one, I've never had a compelling need to buy a newer/faster Windoze machine. My Pentium II/266 has over 300MB of RAM, an upgraded IDE controller, second hard drive, 8MB (upgraded from 4MB) VRAM and runs all the programs I need like a champ. The only thing I can't do is run games that require more than 8MB of VRAM. And if I wanted to, I would just by a new video card instead of a new computer. Why would I buy a new machine? My serious work and game playing I do on my 333MHz iMac or my 400MHz G4 tower. And eventually instead of buying a new G4 Tower, I will simply buy a processor upgrade card-or, wife permitting, a DUAL G4! (drool!) processor upgrade card- and a faster video card-maybe in two years.
Well, to be truthful, I will upgrade to the new processor as soon as my wife....uh..our finances allow.
Slashdot Mirror
What? No. I have lots of friends. Why, there's my friend...uh Gee. Yeah, Good Old Gee Fore! And sure, then there's my uh..friend Petey A. Lots of fun with him! He goes everywhere I go. And let's not forget my uh...other friend..um..yeah...his name is...uh...H. P. Laaptop. See? I have lots of "friends"!
You mean there is someone else in Spokane who reads Slashdot? Sweet! I thought I was the only one.
And that's not all...I work for the IT Consulting department of the local New Horizons franchise (The worlds' largest technical training school) and they and Microsoft have just started offering a free software incentive to people who take a Server 2003 related class-A free! copy of Server 2003 Enterprise PLUS 25 Client Access Licenses. A $2600 value. Obviously an attempt to get people to use their product and see how "good" it really is. And of course, this is a time-honored and effective way of growing your customer base. Why, I remember all the Crack dealers in my neighborhood offering all us kids our first hit for free! While I think MS Products are more like a "frustrating-poke-your-eyes-out-with-red-hot-steel -pokers " product than a "euphoric-inducing-and-feel-good-mind-altering" product, they can still impose that vacuous, brain-dead response that brings the customer back for more and more and more.
Yes, that's right-I just equated MS with drug-pushers and I don't think I'm too far off the mark there.
Yes, I know it's too bad that you can't just join the reserves and sit on your fat butt and mooch off the government. Is that why you never joined? Again, I've got over 10 years of service under my belt. How about you?
After 7 years active and 3 years (and counting) reserves (with one 12-month involuntary recall and still in the reserves), I don't think you can describe me as 'mooching'. Prepared to fight? Always. Look forward to it? Happy to be leaving my wife and 2 children for extended periods of time? No. Still will do it if called upon? Yes. Still dislike them having ONE MORE REASON to pick me? Yep. And in this case, my skills as an IT professional are some skills that the Navy needs a lot of. Being an IT professional just makes it that much more likely that I will be called up MORE OFTEN and for LONGER PERIODS than other people.
If I wanted that, I would have stayed ACTIVE DUTY.
Sorry-let me be more clear: These are my CIVILIAN skills.
Well, I always suspected it. I am a member of the US Naval Reserve and about two years ago, the NAVRES asked all of it's members to fill out a "skills profile". This profile would be used to solicit qualified members and ask them to volunteer to fill temporary billets as they arose. The program was presented as a way to find the best service member for the task and to offer them the oppurtunity to take orders for that job. A lot of the billets that open up are from 6 weeks to 9 months.
I was always dubious of doing this, becuase if there were ever a "crisis" and they REALLY needed someone with my skills, I foresaw the "volunteer oppurtunity" becoming an "involuntary recall to active duty" in a heartbeat.
I doubt this decision is directly related, but now they have a massive database of skills that they can search through and draft from first.
How about: Working 7-hours on, 7-hours off, then 5-hours on, 5-hours off. Repeat. For days and days. Job consisting of sitting and staring at a RADAR scope trying to find little blips that might signify physical objects (air or sea depending on which position you are sitting at), in a dark room with a bunch of other semi-grumpy people that you are tired of looking at because you have been doing this for 21 days in a row so far (some ships have gone much longer than 21 days at sea, so I consider myself lucky that the longest I ever spent between port visits was 21 days). Throw in the sound of the ventilation system and the gentle (mostly) rocking of the ship and just TRY to stay awake. If you are lucky(?) enough to be working on an aircraft carrier, you may be lucky enough to only hear the muffled roar of the jet engines while working in the tower. Or you may be unlucky enough to work in Combat directly below the flight deck. The launch of the aircraft isn't too bad, it's the 'traps' that are ungodly loud. And if they miss the cable, the sound of the tailhook slamming into the deck and dragging across the deck is horrible. At least you won't fall asleep. These are the working conditions of Operations Specialists in the (U.S.) Navy. Actually not too bad considering some of the other posts, but the schedule was just a killer. And it was non-stop until you got into port. Oh! Yeah, here is the kicker, in your non-watch time, there were often times General Quarters drills that would last from 2 to 3 hours. EVERYONE on the ship is up and doing something -or at least waiting at their GQ station to do something. THEN you get to go back to sleep. Oh wait! Don't forget to shower, eat and maybe send a letter home. Or nowadays, try to find an empty computer and send email home. Oh! Yeah, then make sure that your collateral duties get done too. Ok, now you can go to sleep. Ooops! Too late. Time to go back on watch.
"Only about half, actually" :) Yes, but 51% is about half, and 51% is most. And no, I don't have hard numbers. Just my experience with talking with 3 commercial airline pilots (all of which were ex-military).
"Aside from about 10 years of their lives, after training, with the added opportunity of being shot at."
True, but the argument was that the high-salary is justified by their high MONETARY cost of training. In the case of the military trained pilots, their initial training and experience is no cost to them AND they are getting paid while being trained.
"The military pays for medical school, too."
True again. However, MOST doctors in practice today are NOT ex-military. Hence, I cannot use the argument that most doctors don't deserve a higher salary because their training was free. Therefore, the point that the military pays for medical school is moot.
"Most of them are ex-military types..."
"Over 25% of US pilots come from a single university..."
Ok, so 25% come from a Embry-Riddle. This is still less than 51%, so, for now, the "most are ex-military" seems correct-but that comment doesn't have any corrborating evidence either-so saying most are ex-miltary or most are not is about equal as far as facts go so far. Does anyone have any hard data about where pilots get their training?
Huge investment? Next time you see a commercial airline pilot, ask him where he/she got their training and you will find that a majority of them will say either the Air Force or the Navy. Cost to former military pilot for training: Almost $0.00.
Yes, there is additional training required to go from flying an F-14 to a 747, but some of these pilots have been flying modified 737's (Air Force) all their careers anyway. And it's not like becoming a doctor-which IS a much bigger investment in time and money than training to become a commercial airline pilot after being trained in the military.
A little off topic...but the DNC list (apparently) does not apply to businesses that make calls within their state borders.
I had a client (I'm a software developer) ask me to develop a database application to help them keep track of who asked to be put on their DNC list and to keep track of how long it has been since a customer had a "business relationship" with the client.
After developing the estimate, the client (a carpet cleaning business) did some checking and found a loophole. Apparently, as long as they are only calling people in Washington (home of the wonderful beachfront property towns of Ritzville, Moses Lake and Spangle), they do not have to query the national DNC list.
I haven't reviewed the law regarding the NDNCL, but if that loophole is extremely broad enough, I foresee corporations setting up call centers in nearly every state!
Or, my client was simply trying to back out of the proposal graciously without admitting that they couldn't afford the development costs.
I HOPE they call me on my cell phone, then I can charge them with breaking TWO federal laws!
I called them too. I asked her who they were and why they were calling me (which they haven't) The only thing I got out of them was "This is NCO Financial Services". She (politely) offered to confirm that my phone number was actually associated with my name (perhaps there was a typo and the real-number was entered incorrectly resulting in me being called).
Isn't fake Spam uh...Spam?
Isn't that like saying "I want you to separate the flammable material from the inflammable."
You can to to their FAQ page which has a link to their uninstaller
'Course, it requires you to download and run another application from the same slimy people that gave you the spyware anyway. And yes, it IS spyware-Read their privacy policy-they freely admit it.
I cannot vouch for how well their uninstaller works because I was never infected (I use a Mac).
As an aside, I was just talking to my friend yesterday on the phone and he mumbled something like, "Xupiter? what the hell is this? This isn't my home page." (He uses a Gateway).
I don't buy that theory, but it is similar to another theory. There is a similar theory about prescient dreams. Throughout my life I have experienced dreams that have later "come true". That is, I have dreamed of events and later (weeks, to months to years) have witnessed the events that I dreamt about so long ago.
I never think about these dreams between when I experience them and when the event actually occurs. Nothing sets the dreams apart from "normal" dreams and I go on with life oblivious to the possiblity that I may know a small part of my future. There is no knowledge after I wake up that what I dreamt actually will come true.
What has been proposed as one theory to explain this "deja vu" is that the signals being received by the brain at the moment of the "deja vu" get mis-routed or routed twice. That is, the signals are perceived as a memory AND as a current event AT THE SAME TIME.
As I have grown older (now 33), this happens very infrequently and I wonder if now that my brain has grown and matured, maybe my brain doesn't get "confused" as easily and all the signals get properly routed.
From reading some of the responses, it appears as if many people (the majority) here can recall very early periods in their lives. If you were to gather demographical data about all of the slashdot users, would you find that a majority of us are involved in one particular field or type of job? Did we all have similar experiences at birth or during gestation that could explain the ability to recall such early memories?
I have talked to some people about their earliest memories and most cannot remember anything before they were five years old.
My two cents: Same as most of the other respondents. No one ever told me about several of the things I remembered before the age of three. I have reminded my parents of the stories because they have forgotten.
What has my life come to that I measure success by whether or not I make the First Post? :)
Well...can't say anything on the record...you know how it is.
And, IMHO, the SPY-1D Rocks!
...there is more risk to the WiFi networks being jammed by military radar than the other way around. The newest radar's pump out hundreds to thousands to millions of watts of power depending on the type of radar and the platform. Plus, today's military radar's are frequency agile and extremely adaptable to interference and jamming. This appears to be just another attempt by the DOD/DOJ/Big Brother Government to control things that they feel are a threat to their control.
Hmmmm...looks like there is someone out there who is thinking like me. Here is a summary of the invoice that we sent Gateway:
Purchase of WIndows2000: $399.00
Tax on 399.00: 32.40
Express Shipping: 18.94
Also on the invoice was the charge for 2.0 hours of installation at the low-low price of $30.00/hr.
My friend ended up buying a Gateway PC and I told him to go back to "Gateway Country" to get his refund because he wanted to install Windows 2000 Pro-Not ME. The schmuck's at the GW store were clueless and refused to honor the EULA. A quick trip to the Washington State Attorney Generals Online Consumer Complaint Form and Corporate Gateway was calling him! They ended up (in an effort to keep a Gateway customer happy) paying him the price he paid for Winodws 2000 and the amount that I charged him to install it on his machine. The check he received from GW was around $500 US! If they had simply honored the EULA, GW would only have been out about $90? $120 tops. AND he got to keep all the software CD's that came with the PC. I don't think they ever really understood that he was entitled to the refund under the EULA.
I know I upgrade my Macs. I am currently upgrading my Umax S900 604e/225 to a G3/400 with additional SCSI drives, new/used IDE controller, 60GB IDE drive, USB/Firewire PCI card and another 256MB of memory. I'm looking at spending around $250-$300 (already had the 60MB hard drive sitting around).
As for upgrading my PC or buying a new one, I've never had a compelling need to buy a newer/faster Windoze machine. My Pentium II/266 has over 300MB of RAM, an upgraded IDE controller, second hard drive, 8MB (upgraded from 4MB) VRAM and runs all the programs I need like a champ. The only thing I can't do is run games that require more than 8MB of VRAM. And if I wanted to, I would just by a new video card instead of a new computer. Why would I buy a new machine? My serious work and game playing I do on my 333MHz iMac or my 400MHz G4 tower. And eventually instead of buying a new G4 Tower, I will simply buy a processor upgrade card-or, wife permitting, a DUAL G4! (drool!) processor upgrade card- and a faster video card-maybe in two years.
Well, to be truthful, I will upgrade to the new processor as soon as my wife....uh..our finances allow.