A search +java +site:android.com will make it abundantly clear what Google is "presenting".
Excellent. You can use the Java language to program for Android. Now show me the Java VM that Google produced like Microsoft did. So far, the only VM I've seen mentioned is Dalvik.
Second request addressed above.
Not really, no. Google is not creating a Java VM that only works on Google devices. They are not claiming to implement Java and breaking compatibility with other Java environments. And even if you take offense to coding in Java for a Dalvik environment, anyone can take the Apache License Dalvik VM and port it to other platforms (which more than one entity is doing).
You and several posters are being deliberately obtuse.
I thought thats what you were doing. I mean - your nickname implies that. But lets not fall in to the trap of calling each other names while forgoing a good conversation on the issues at hand.
You make a very interesting point. There are similarities between Google's DalvikVM and Microsoft's JavaVM. But there are also some pretty stark differences as well. And I find it a stretch to imply Google is causing confusion in the Java application space, damaging the write-once / run-everywhere promise of Java, and creating a lock-in subset of Java in the process as did Microsoft.
And then you have customers like my employer who are heavily invested in Oracle tech and are going to have a hard time getting away from it. But believe me, we are looking at doing our best to remove as much Oracle as we can. We just admit that we can't do a clean sweep (at least not yet).
A very big difference is that Microsoft presented what they did as Java. Google is not presenting Java, they're presenting Dalvik. And as others have noted, Dalvik is Open Source and is being ported to various non-Android platforms by various entities that are not Google.
In a climate like that anyone that knowingly carries personal data of another person's is simply a fool.
You cannot possibly know about all of the ways that data can be compromised. Similarly, at my doctor's office the doctors themselves use wireless laptops to update patient information and send out prescriptions. This is of course stupid because there is utterly no security through something like this. I'm sure the connection is not through a VPN or SSL because wireless is encrypted, right? Except today most professionals know that wireless encryption is easily broken. Fortunately for the doctors, there is no assumption of risk like that in the US.
Welcome to HIPPA. You have a lot of reading to catch up on.
There is no such thing as "enough" security measures. Hardwired networks inside a secure facility is a beginning, but the first person that installs GoToMyPC or something like that has just opened the door to unlimited access.
Right. And it is impossible, impossible I tell you, to compartmentalize systems and do egress filtering.
Fortunately, credit card numbers aren't worth all that much or we would be seeing physical break-ins to get them. But anyone that believes the state of computer security allows someone to say they have "enough security measures in place" is an idiot.
Physical trespassing involves a lot more risk and a lot more logistics - it's a lot less attractive for this kind of thing. But you're completely right on the concept of security being a definitive goal one matches. One can match requirements and meet compliance. But too often people think they are "secure" as if risk can be whisked away by being in a state of grace / arriving at security nirvana.
There simply is no such thing when you are faced with a determined person or group of people. The security is going to be defeated.
Not a given but the attackers tend to have the advantage.
This story kind of gives me a chill. I mean, I do manage servers and for sure a "carefully planned, very professional, highly sophisticated criminal cyber attack" would come into my systems.
If this is your wake-up call, you've been sleeping pretty hard for the past few decades.
Now if we can eliminate speeding tickets based on license plate numbers...
Where do you live that speeding tickets are based on license plate numbers? Everywhere I've gotten a ticket involved a cop actually handing me a ticket or having a photograph of my plate and my face on the ticket (actually - this happened to some friends, not me. They borrowed someone's car. Got busted by a speed camera. Ticket came in the mail to the car's owner. Owner noted that the photographed driver wasn't him. Driver was actually on their way to the airport and has left the country. End of ticket).
But this probably will close the door on the 99 cases out of 100 where an IP actually does equal a bad person who needs to be caught.
Unless you have something to back up the "99 cases out of 100" figure, we'll just throw that out off-hand as a WAG to draw attention your point. The real point is what do we do to catch Bad People. Build a case on more than an IP address. A case is not built on a street address. Nor is a case based on a license plate number. And these are much more static in nature than IP addresses. While all this might be part of a the chain that leads to an arrest and consequently part of the case, it's going to take more than just that to identify and prosecute.
What had me giving up the experiment for now and switching to "classic" was that the panel doesn't hide / stays on top of a full-screen application. I'm playing WoW and want 100% of my screen dedicated to WoW (I've got virtual desktops to switch to for anything not-WoW). Digging around implies that this is a known bug, not intentional.
That's exactly what people complained about with the move from gnome1 to gnome2 back in the day tho, gnome2 removing configuration options and forcing the desktop to work in a certain way.. People just fear change mostly, and really love to feel affronted about something to get attention and validation.
Or maybe it's a long-standing, on-going concern that didn't fade with gnome2.
I would think 10 years of war and shennanigans under a cease-fire agreement would have been a better indication than Bush's Texas heritage. We were over-due during Clinton's watch.
All his WMD programs were aimed to keep up the appearance of strength, and nothing more. And they were all verified to the ability of the UN, CIA, MI6, FSB, etc. to be that and nothing more. There was no operational WMD in the country when we invaded, and all the WMDs he ever used were given by the US. And the worst part was that everyone knew (or suspected) that was the case. But those in the points of power in the US purposefully chose to believe the known lies and ignore the truths, as long as it supported their goals of invasion. The decision to invade was made before 9/11. They were just looking for excuses and "got lucky" with 9/11.
The Soviets and the US played games with each other. When it came time to put the cards on the table, a cornerstone to that was a set agreement that any structure with doorways of set dimensions were available to inspectors with short notice. And while the details may have been different - unimpeded access by inspectors is the way one shows one really has nothing to hide. Saddam did not play by those rules. And because of his delaying and blocking inspectors, it puts reasonable doubt out there.
Now - we all know after the fact that he felt the need for doubt to play games with Iran and others in the region. Meanwhile, he believed he sent strong signals to the UN, US, etc. that he was complying. But US paid a lot of attention to the doubt. And that was a problem.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying the "evidence" put out by the Bush Administration was truthful (as I said: "It doesn't take much cynicism to look at that as not simply mistakes or selective cognition but outright lies"). In fact, I do agree with you in so far as 9/11 was a convenient excuse (or perhaps induced a feeling of urgency that the new order for the Middle East needed to come about sooner than later). But I don't agree that the motivation was revenge as you propose.
But again - this is all getting rather far afield from the original statement that "most Americans" thought Iraq was a terrorist hotbed.
The true reality of the situation was that Saddam tried to hide the fact that he no longer possessed WMD. He wanted others, in particular Iran, to think he may still have them. Saddam feared appearing weak. He admitted this under US interrogation. And no there was no water boarding, it was the effective type of interrogation - long term contact, establish a relationship, use psychology, etc. National Geographic had a pretty interesting documentary about Saddam's interrogation.
Saddam often thought himself a great strategist but so often missed the mark. The interrogation in question revealed that he thought he had shown enough to the West (read: US) for them to believe he had nothing and satisfy their concerns while leaving enough doubt to play on with Iran. A similar miscalculations happened during the Gulf War. Iraq sent a number of their air force in to Iran thinking that after Iran joined The Great War, they would have those aircraft back. I'd hate to have been those pilots - having spent previous years bombing Iranian forces and now landing on Iranian soil.
The reality was that the president wanted personal revenge because he blamed Saddam for Daddy losing out on a second term. And Cheney/Rove (who actually ran the country) allowed it because they knew they would be able to funnel not just hundreds of billions, but multiple trillions to their friends and supporters. There was no other reason why the US should invent some coalition and make up reasons to invade. For that, Bush and Cheney should face one murder charge for every dead person. But no, the Republicans talk like they support responsibility, unless it was they who were responsible.
Because Saddam was a viscously successful survivor. The US didn't roll in and oust Saddam during the Gulf War because they didn't want to get involved in the power vacuum that would follow. And they certainly didn't want to provide a wedge for Iran to get involved. So they parked with the intent that Iraq would take care of its own problem. The problem is that Saddam uncovered coups and plots, killing any attempts to do so. When the Shias rose up (likely thinking the US would help), the spectre of Iranian influence reared its ugly head and the US didn't act to protect the uprising - which was put down brutally. Meanwhile, Saddam used his Oil-for-food money to rebuild military and construct palaces. While Iraq suffered, Saddam certainly didn't. So if the US wanted regime change, it was going to have to force it. But by the time that realization came about, we couldn't even make a strike on Bin Laden without "wag the dog" theories. So the Administration took advantage of a bad time in history to bring about the New World Order.
Now - was there WMDs? Its not far fetched to believe there were. The US had sold Iraq the basic chemicals needed to manufacture chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War. There was a fledging nuclear program. And inspections were not done to the extent that they had been agreed to - certainly not to the extent that the US and former Soviets conducted against each other under various nuclear non-proliferation treaties.
The problem with this is that these were not the talking points of the Administration. They told the public that they had definitive proof. And that proof turned out to be bunk. It doesn't take much cynicism to look at that as not simply mistakes or selective cognition but outright lies.
Of course, this is largely my own take on the situation. I'm also not a Democrat. I'm not a republican. I also wish 3rd parties could be relevant. But none of this has anything to do with the belief the statement "everyone said we had to attack the Iraqis because they were terrorists" which I find to be selective memory with strong political spin.
I remember a few years ago, when everyone said we had to attack the Iraqis because they were terrorists.
Really. Everyone. I seem to remember some "man on the street" interviews that were used to mock the idea. That's as close to "everyone" as I ever saw. It's like claiming that everyone believes that Obama was born in Kenya.
We had to attack the Afghanis because of terrorism, and of course we had to forget that most 9/11 hijackers were Saudis.
We attack the Taliban because they provided safe harbor and support for Al Qaeda. Whether that is a smart strategy / worthwhile is certainly up to debate. But if you're going to make a complaint about the overall lack of geopolitical knowledge of "most Americans", it might help not expressing ignorance in the process.
Fighting terrorism now means having a TSA agent fondle you or getting photographed naked.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could undo some of THAT damage with this event.
Unfortunately, that sacrifice of civil liberties and national character was unlikely to have had anything to do with this turn of events. As for the portion of that dollar amount - it would take considerable accounting to hash out. But I'm not inclined to rush down to the airport and congratulate the TSA on a job well done.
You know the answer to this. Embed more Facebook "pages" in programming! That way, everything from standard TV serials to the news can be edgy, hip, and completely worth watching!
Which is fine when you're playing football. Oddly enough, every situation in life is not football. Football involves two set teams with a set roster on a defined playing field attempting to achieve limited and directly contradictory goals through the application of a defined set of rules (as well as fundamental undefined rules - the laws of physics) over a limited and defined period of time. What we're dealing with is the exact opposite on every single point. There are not set teams. There are not set rosters (heck - its hard to even pin down any given action on any given possible actor). There is no defined playing field. The goals can vary greatly depending on the individual actors. There are no rules. And while the laws of physics apply to some extent as all this is eventually rooted in the physical world, much of it involves a digital environment who's laws of interaction can be rewritten with a few lines of code or the adoption of a new protocol.
Well, if you're going to the trouble to teach people how to make IED's to attack an occupying force, then you will probably try to teach them how to do it with materials that are easily available locally. So I think you can expect that, while Casios may not have been the most popular watch in Afghanistan, they were probably readily available and moderately popular.
I agree with the general concept - that these watches are probably readily available. But I don't think that implies that they are common. By this line of reasoning, the munitions they re-purpose for bombs must also be common within the population. Which strikes me as an absurd notion. The bombs require certain components and instructions are based on the most available examples of those components. But it doesn't mean any given component is going to be easily found within the population itself.
The point here is that there seems to be an assumption of absurdity ("those watches are all over the world") that may not be so absurd in the given environment. After all, I would expect certain clothing styles are common within the region yet you don't see those listed along with watches. The fact that this particular item is singled out may very well have significance in a region that's very different than where most of us live. Or it might be as silly as it sounds at face value. I don't know - I'm not familiar with Afghanistan. And I suspect that many of the people reeling from the perceived ludicrous singling out of watches are likewise not familiar with the actual environment.
Why would you let recruits wear army issued clothing off the base anyway?
Regulations allow for wearing a limited number of issued / uniform items with civilian attire. I don't remember the letter of the regulation but I want to say it was something like 2 items. Also - those items shouldn't have all the normal insignia / patches / markings. So a BDU shirt as one would wear in uniform wasn't OK but if you remove rank insignia, name tapes, etc. it's OK. Needless to say - wearing issued running shoes was completely within regulations.
I should probably also note that this isn't the US Army. Different branches of service tend to have variations in regulations. The exact letter of US Army regs may be different.
Don't they let you have any personal effects in the US army?
Indeed they do. Let me stress that it tended to be new recruits running around in their issued shoes. I never did. And the shoes weren't common among most of the military population. If I were to speculate, I'd guess it's a combination of re-adjusting to "normal" life and waiting to either buy new shoes or for all your personal effects to get shipped to your new location.
Slashdot Mirror
From the SDK: All applications are written using the Java programming language.
A search +java +site:android.com will make it abundantly clear what Google is "presenting".
Excellent. You can use the Java language to program for Android. Now show me the Java VM that Google produced like Microsoft did. So far, the only VM I've seen mentioned is Dalvik.
Second request addressed above.
Not really, no. Google is not creating a Java VM that only works on Google devices. They are not claiming to implement Java and breaking compatibility with other Java environments. And even if you take offense to coding in Java for a Dalvik environment, anyone can take the Apache License Dalvik VM and port it to other platforms (which more than one entity is doing).
You and several posters are being deliberately obtuse.
I thought thats what you were doing. I mean - your nickname implies that. But lets not fall in to the trap of calling each other names while forgoing a good conversation on the issues at hand.
You make a very interesting point. There are similarities between Google's DalvikVM and Microsoft's JavaVM. But there are also some pretty stark differences as well. And I find it a stretch to imply Google is causing confusion in the Java application space, damaging the write-once / run-everywhere promise of Java, and creating a lock-in subset of Java in the process as did Microsoft.
And then you have customers like my employer who are heavily invested in Oracle tech and are going to have a hard time getting away from it. But believe me, we are looking at doing our best to remove as much Oracle as we can. We just admit that we can't do a clean sweep (at least not yet).
A very big difference is that Microsoft presented what they did as Java. Google is not presenting Java, they're presenting Dalvik. And as others have noted, Dalvik is Open Source and is being ported to various non-Android platforms by various entities that are not Google.
MS were bad to embrace and extend Java to create platform lock-in.
Google are good to do so, right?
Demonstrate where Google was presenting an extended Java. Then explain how they were creating platform lock-in.
Fair enough. Me - I'm collecting links for my next "scare the horses" briefing where I have to explain why we go through all the hassle.
In a climate like that anyone that knowingly carries personal data of another person's is simply a fool.
You cannot possibly know about all of the ways that data can be compromised. Similarly, at my doctor's office the doctors themselves use wireless laptops to update patient information and send out prescriptions. This is of course stupid because there is utterly no security through something like this. I'm sure the connection is not through a VPN or SSL because wireless is encrypted, right? Except today most professionals know that wireless encryption is easily broken. Fortunately for the doctors, there is no assumption of risk like that in the US.
Welcome to HIPPA. You have a lot of reading to catch up on.
There is no such thing as "enough" security measures. Hardwired networks inside a secure facility is a beginning, but the first person that installs GoToMyPC or something like that has just opened the door to unlimited access.
Right. And it is impossible, impossible I tell you, to compartmentalize systems and do egress filtering.
Fortunately, credit card numbers aren't worth all that much or we would be seeing physical break-ins to get them. But anyone that believes the state of computer security allows someone to say they have "enough security measures in place" is an idiot.
Physical trespassing involves a lot more risk and a lot more logistics - it's a lot less attractive for this kind of thing. But you're completely right on the concept of security being a definitive goal one matches. One can match requirements and meet compliance. But too often people think they are "secure" as if risk can be whisked away by being in a state of grace / arriving at security nirvana.
There simply is no such thing when you are faced with a determined person or group of people. The security is going to be defeated.
Not a given but the attackers tend to have the advantage.
This story kind of gives me a chill. I mean, I do manage servers and for sure a "carefully planned, very professional, highly sophisticated criminal cyber attack" would come into my systems.
If this is your wake-up call, you've been sleeping pretty hard for the past few decades.
Now if we can eliminate speeding tickets based on license plate numbers...
Where do you live that speeding tickets are based on license plate numbers? Everywhere I've gotten a ticket involved a cop actually handing me a ticket or having a photograph of my plate and my face on the ticket (actually - this happened to some friends, not me. They borrowed someone's car. Got busted by a speed camera. Ticket came in the mail to the car's owner. Owner noted that the photographed driver wasn't him. Driver was actually on their way to the airport and has left the country. End of ticket).
I agree that IP != person is a good ruling.
But this probably will close the door on the 99 cases out of 100 where an IP actually does equal a bad person who needs to be caught.
Unless you have something to back up the "99 cases out of 100" figure, we'll just throw that out off-hand as a WAG to draw attention your point. The real point is what do we do to catch Bad People. Build a case on more than an IP address. A case is not built on a street address. Nor is a case based on a license plate number. And these are much more static in nature than IP addresses. While all this might be part of a the chain that leads to an arrest and consequently part of the case, it's going to take more than just that to identify and prosecute.
What had me giving up the experiment for now and switching to "classic" was that the panel doesn't hide / stays on top of a full-screen application. I'm playing WoW and want 100% of my screen dedicated to WoW (I've got virtual desktops to switch to for anything not-WoW). Digging around implies that this is a known bug, not intentional.
That's exactly what people complained about with the move from gnome1 to gnome2 back in the day tho, gnome2 removing configuration options and forcing the desktop to work in a certain way.. People just fear change mostly, and really love to feel affronted about something to get attention and validation.
Or maybe it's a long-standing, on-going concern that didn't fade with gnome2.
I would think 10 years of war and shennanigans under a cease-fire agreement would have been a better indication than Bush's Texas heritage. We were over-due during Clinton's watch.
All his WMD programs were aimed to keep up the appearance of strength, and nothing more. And they were all verified to the ability of the UN, CIA, MI6, FSB, etc. to be that and nothing more. There was no operational WMD in the country when we invaded, and all the WMDs he ever used were given by the US. And the worst part was that everyone knew (or suspected) that was the case. But those in the points of power in the US purposefully chose to believe the known lies and ignore the truths, as long as it supported their goals of invasion. The decision to invade was made before 9/11. They were just looking for excuses and "got lucky" with 9/11.
The Soviets and the US played games with each other. When it came time to put the cards on the table, a cornerstone to that was a set agreement that any structure with doorways of set dimensions were available to inspectors with short notice. And while the details may have been different - unimpeded access by inspectors is the way one shows one really has nothing to hide. Saddam did not play by those rules. And because of his delaying and blocking inspectors, it puts reasonable doubt out there.
Now - we all know after the fact that he felt the need for doubt to play games with Iran and others in the region. Meanwhile, he believed he sent strong signals to the UN, US, etc. that he was complying. But US paid a lot of attention to the doubt. And that was a problem.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying the "evidence" put out by the Bush Administration was truthful (as I said: "It doesn't take much cynicism to look at that as not simply mistakes or selective cognition but outright lies"). In fact, I do agree with you in so far as 9/11 was a convenient excuse (or perhaps induced a feeling of urgency that the new order for the Middle East needed to come about sooner than later). But I don't agree that the motivation was revenge as you propose.
But again - this is all getting rather far afield from the original statement that "most Americans" thought Iraq was a terrorist hotbed.
On reflection, spelling mistakes aside, I think I was really thinking "ruthless". :P
The true reality of the situation was that Saddam tried to hide the fact that he no longer possessed WMD. He wanted others, in particular Iran, to think he may still have them. Saddam feared appearing weak. He admitted this under US interrogation. And no there was no water boarding, it was the effective type of interrogation - long term contact, establish a relationship, use psychology, etc. National Geographic had a pretty interesting documentary about Saddam's interrogation.
Saddam often thought himself a great strategist but so often missed the mark. The interrogation in question revealed that he thought he had shown enough to the West (read: US) for them to believe he had nothing and satisfy their concerns while leaving enough doubt to play on with Iran. A similar miscalculations happened during the Gulf War. Iraq sent a number of their air force in to Iran thinking that after Iran joined The Great War, they would have those aircraft back. I'd hate to have been those pilots - having spent previous years bombing Iranian forces and now landing on Iranian soil.
But why Iraq?
The reality was that the president wanted personal revenge because he blamed Saddam for Daddy losing out on a second term. And Cheney/Rove (who actually ran the country) allowed it because they knew they would be able to funnel not just hundreds of billions, but multiple trillions to their friends and supporters. There was no other reason why the US should invent some coalition and make up reasons to invade. For that, Bush and Cheney should face one murder charge for every dead person. But no, the Republicans talk like they support responsibility, unless it was they who were responsible.
Because Saddam was a viscously successful survivor. The US didn't roll in and oust Saddam during the Gulf War because they didn't want to get involved in the power vacuum that would follow. And they certainly didn't want to provide a wedge for Iran to get involved. So they parked with the intent that Iraq would take care of its own problem. The problem is that Saddam uncovered coups and plots, killing any attempts to do so. When the Shias rose up (likely thinking the US would help), the spectre of Iranian influence reared its ugly head and the US didn't act to protect the uprising - which was put down brutally. Meanwhile, Saddam used his Oil-for-food money to rebuild military and construct palaces. While Iraq suffered, Saddam certainly didn't. So if the US wanted regime change, it was going to have to force it. But by the time that realization came about, we couldn't even make a strike on Bin Laden without "wag the dog" theories. So the Administration took advantage of a bad time in history to bring about the New World Order.
Now - was there WMDs? Its not far fetched to believe there were. The US had sold Iraq the basic chemicals needed to manufacture chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War. There was a fledging nuclear program. And inspections were not done to the extent that they had been agreed to - certainly not to the extent that the US and former Soviets conducted against each other under various nuclear non-proliferation treaties.
The problem with this is that these were not the talking points of the Administration. They told the public that they had definitive proof. And that proof turned out to be bunk. It doesn't take much cynicism to look at that as not simply mistakes or selective cognition but outright lies.
Of course, this is largely my own take on the situation. I'm also not a Democrat. I'm not a republican. I also wish 3rd parties could be relevant. But none of this has anything to do with the belief the statement "everyone said we had to attack the Iraqis because they were terrorists" which I find to be selective memory with strong political spin.
I remember a few years ago, when everyone said we had to attack the Iraqis because they were terrorists.
Really. Everyone. I seem to remember some "man on the street" interviews that were used to mock the idea. That's as close to "everyone" as I ever saw. It's like claiming that everyone believes that Obama was born in Kenya.
We had to attack the Afghanis because of terrorism, and of course we had to forget that most 9/11 hijackers were Saudis.
We attack the Taliban because they provided safe harbor and support for Al Qaeda. Whether that is a smart strategy / worthwhile is certainly up to debate. But if you're going to make a complaint about the overall lack of geopolitical knowledge of "most Americans", it might help not expressing ignorance in the process.
Fighting terrorism now means having a TSA agent fondle you or getting photographed naked.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could undo some of THAT damage with this event.
Unfortunately, that sacrifice of civil liberties and national character was unlikely to have had anything to do with this turn of events. As for the portion of that dollar amount - it would take considerable accounting to hash out. But I'm not inclined to rush down to the airport and congratulate the TSA on a job well done.
You know the answer to this. Embed more Facebook "pages" in programming! That way, everything from standard TV serials to the news can be edgy, hip, and completely worth watching!
Which is fine when you're playing football. Oddly enough, every situation in life is not football. Football involves two set teams with a set roster on a defined playing field attempting to achieve limited and directly contradictory goals through the application of a defined set of rules (as well as fundamental undefined rules - the laws of physics) over a limited and defined period of time. What we're dealing with is the exact opposite on every single point. There are not set teams. There are not set rosters (heck - its hard to even pin down any given action on any given possible actor). There is no defined playing field. The goals can vary greatly depending on the individual actors. There are no rules. And while the laws of physics apply to some extent as all this is eventually rooted in the physical world, much of it involves a digital environment who's laws of interaction can be rewritten with a few lines of code or the adoption of a new protocol.
The irony is that there's enough going on with those subjects to not (mistakenly or otherwise) make up additional events.
That doesn't give them the right to issue takedown notices to other sites on copyright grounds...
I don't believe that's what happened.
Just gimme gimme gimme gimme.... fried chicken!
Well, if you're going to the trouble to teach people how to make IED's to attack an occupying force, then you will probably try to teach them how to do it with materials that are easily available locally. So I think you can expect that, while Casios may not have been the most popular watch in Afghanistan, they were probably readily available and moderately popular.
I agree with the general concept - that these watches are probably readily available. But I don't think that implies that they are common. By this line of reasoning, the munitions they re-purpose for bombs must also be common within the population. Which strikes me as an absurd notion. The bombs require certain components and instructions are based on the most available examples of those components. But it doesn't mean any given component is going to be easily found within the population itself.
The point here is that there seems to be an assumption of absurdity ("those watches are all over the world") that may not be so absurd in the given environment. After all, I would expect certain clothing styles are common within the region yet you don't see those listed along with watches. The fact that this particular item is singled out may very well have significance in a region that's very different than where most of us live. Or it might be as silly as it sounds at face value. I don't know - I'm not familiar with Afghanistan. And I suspect that many of the people reeling from the perceived ludicrous singling out of watches are likewise not familiar with the actual environment.
Why would you let recruits wear army issued clothing off the base anyway?
Regulations allow for wearing a limited number of issued / uniform items with civilian attire. I don't remember the letter of the regulation but I want to say it was something like 2 items. Also - those items shouldn't have all the normal insignia / patches / markings. So a BDU shirt as one would wear in uniform wasn't OK but if you remove rank insignia, name tapes, etc. it's OK. Needless to say - wearing issued running shoes was completely within regulations.
I should probably also note that this isn't the US Army. Different branches of service tend to have variations in regulations. The exact letter of US Army regs may be different.
Don't they let you have any personal effects in the US army?
Indeed they do. Let me stress that it tended to be new recruits running around in their issued shoes. I never did. And the shoes weren't common among most of the military population. If I were to speculate, I'd guess it's a combination of re-adjusting to "normal" life and waiting to either buy new shoes or for all your personal effects to get shipped to your new location.