The original Hummer had the key feature that makes the HMMWV so good offroad, the up angled axles which raise the vehicles clearance and substantially lower it's center of gravity, allowing a carefully driven HMMWV (non-uparmored version) to pull a U-turn on a 60% slope.
Then the brainiacs at GM decide to spread the logo, but just slapped it on a standard Chevy SUV frame with a boxy body to simulate the shape of the original. When they did this they used the Chevy frame and drive train, thus eliminating the primary reason to get an H1, incredible off-roading capabilities.
Anyone who buys an H2 or H3 is just tossing away good money that could be spent on extra features on a standard Chevy Tahoe or what ever.
I think you hit a big reason for the increase in prices. To push more people to packages.
Of course the companies could just start building the packages into the basic service, but then they would get no money. The main reason I see them trying to push people into getting the various texting packages isn't to make more money per se. Rather to reduce their call center service costs for all the calls when Jr.s texting has pushed the bill a couple hundred over the normal monthly cost.
A few years ago I worked as a CS rep for Sprint, texting was just starting to really take off then and I took dozens of calls from very irate parents. Irate at Sprint of course, when it was their child who they were failing to monitor or supervise, but that's beside the point.
The issue is that those calls were seldom short (or pleasant), and thus cost the company a lot of money to keep those customers as happy paying customers. The fix always included pushing the $10 or $15 texting packages $10 for a hundred texts or $15 for unlimited texts, to avoid the problem from reoccurring.
So I can see the companies increasing the per text fee to push more of their texting customers into getting the packages, and thus reducing the likelihood of having to pay for CSR's to handle those future long expensive calls.
Oh and FYI, before that job I had service with another carrier and have never been even slightly tempted to use Sprint.
The DoD has plenty of Security Nazi's, unfortunately most of them have no clue about real security.
Well before this event, all USB access was turned off by default. But then because the IT section got tired of having to respond to all the trouble tickets when people couldn't use the Printers, scanners external hard drives and similar equipment needed to do their jobs, let alone external keyboards and mice, so the appointed Informations Management Officer for each section and group was given the instructions on how to remove that setting. Add to the fact that USB thumb drives really are the most effective method for transferring large data files (size limits on per email attachements and total mailbox sizes). Add in the need for external HD's as an effective method for storing and maintaining large amounts of mapping and imagery data for which ever mapping tool is to be used and the need gets even greater.
My section lost the ability to use our mapping tools with this mandate. The map data files use most the space on a 500 gig external HD, Our newest machine (they are all laptops) has a 100 gig HD. Could a shared drive be set up with this data? Probably. Would it be effective, with multiple people trying to pull large map or imagery data files simultaneously, often over limited pipelines? Probably not.
Security Nazi's exist already, and are more pain than help.
Baloney: I haven't seen a win2k based production system for quite a while.(I regularly work with a win2k image training system, but that's only still in the training environment because those systems are not on the networks, and all that is really needed for that training is a viable office suite.) The vast majority of systems in the Army are running XP or Server03. In addition, Office 07 is being pushed out quite rapidly right now.
But when you have an infrastructure as vast as the DoD it's not reasonable to expect everything to be on the bleeding edge of up-to-dateness, And would you really want the Military to use Vista?
The real problem in this case is the AV setup, they use Symantec which is fine and dandy, but when you get on the Classified side, the virus definitions rarely get updated, leaving the systems open and vulnerable when someone does get lazy in following the protocols for airgapping information from unclass to classified networks.
The machines on the unclass side don't usually lag too far behind on the patches, but then as is heard very often here, very few netadmins allow M$ patches and upgrades to go live until they have been determined to not break the current setup.
I agree with you with one exception, this concept of crowd sourced funding is how this stuff is paid for in the first place. It's called the stock market, and investors buying the stocks of the media companies they feel are likely to make them a profit, are the crowd who are financing these movies.
The Studios aren't printing the money it costs to make these movies, they are using invested funds and the profits from prior sucesses to fund new movies. The only hard thing to understand is how this system still manages to put out soo much garbage. Oh, that's right, they claim it's art. (Bullcrap, it's business, and a cutthroat business at that.)
Not entirely true. Note the sheep specified big guns. Perhaps Mr Sheepbo is planning on using an M2.50 cal Machine gun. A sheep should be able to depress the butterfly trigger. I'm not saying he'll be very accurate with it but he should be able to work that trigger with his hoof.
Should the common American be allowed to own an "Assault Rifle"?
What is an "Assault rifle?" A cosmetic designation for a semi-automatic rifle with a large capacity magazine.
My.22 cal plinker morphs into fitting that definition when ever I insert one of my 30 round magazines. But would it be considered a military weapon? No, sure it's still a deadly weapon that must be treated with respect, but it didn't get inherantly more dangerous or militaristic because I can shoot more jackalopes between reloads.
My 30.06 hunting rifle is a bolt action and I'd grab it before I went for the.22 if I wanted to do some serious harm. And for home defense I have a single shot, break action shotgun (I'm quick enough at reloading it I can usuall hit two clay pigeons).
And nobody be they trained or not shoots accurately with a rapid fire rifle. I've fired the old full auto M-16A1's and the current 3 round burst A2's and M4's, all auto or burst is good for is keeping the other guys head down.
That said, I'd love to own an AK-47, or a AR-15 (with the M4 carbine configuration, it's so much more easy to handle.) I'm just too much of a cheapskate to plunk down that much change for something that I would probably only shoot a couple times a year.
It would only be a target practice weapon, but it would be nice to own one, just to be able to shoot it more than once a year (I'm in the guard I get/have to qualify once a year. Except for when deployed, it's the only time I get to put rounds downrange with military weapons. So that would get me shooting such weaps two or three times a year total.
So for your informal poll, count this military man as saying yes it should be legal. And heck, I'm currently in a country where every household is allowed to have AK-47's or similar weapons. And we are fighting a war here. Go figure, we haven't forced the Afghan gov to disarm it's people when we are actively fighting insurgents/terrorists here. We haven't even asked them to consider it.
Having spent the last 15 years in the Army, most of it in the National Guard, I call BS on your claims. I'm not saying someone didn't express such sentiments to him but they are not part of any organized or approved training and or indoctrination.
I dare say you'll find more gun enthusiasts and 2nd Amendment supporters in the Military than in any other significant grouping of American Citizens gathered from across the nation.
Try Motorola, most of their phones use the mini-usb interface for chargin and data. And most of them have bluetooth which again makes getting the images off them a piece of cake.
Come to think of it my last few Nokia's had IR ports and or bluetooth as well. You just have to take a few seconds to verify the features, in order to get a cell that is easy to get images off of.
That said, I think I've shared all of one picture from the crappy camera's built into the phones I've had. And I've never paid to send any of them.
My Nephews grandfather(my wifes sisters hubbys dad), has the greatest nack for finding annoying toys. His best/worst so far is a toy Chainsaw, that does it's best to sound like a real one.
Perfect for training the next generation of Chainsaw Murders.
The security there was for the most part definately NOT theater. It was serious, and it was effective. Events happened and things were found that never made the press. All those people with guns were armed, the weapons were loaded, and they were ready to use them.
Of course their readiness depended on their mission. My favorite statement during those games was when one of the Secret Service agents I was working with, pointed out the Israeli security element. The agent said, "If anything goes down when there are Israelies around just hit the deck. I'll be right down there with you, because their security guys will shoot any and everybody standing, and maybe think about asking a couple questions next week."
As to your ATF guy. It's never a good idea to sit and watch security. The bad guys do it, it's called casing, it's how you determine, if how and when to make a move. If you had stayed much longer you probably would have gotten to chat with the police.
Just change the doors?
We are talking about the DOD here, 2.5 million actual military personnel, at thousands of bases across the globe, not to mention all the Civilian employees also working at all those bases. Many of whom really have no need for such a security measure, except that some genius thought it would be a cool way to have people log into their computers.
Oh and don't forget when somebody updates the CAC specifications and renders many of the card readers unable to read newly issued cards, (This has already happened at least once.)
CAC cards do have their uses and places, but not in an organization this large, where there can be real serious problems if you forget your card, letting someone else get access to what you are working on. Or if because you left your card in the reader in the office, you now can't get back into the building or compound, and you miss a mandatory meeting or formation.
It's not just an annoying write-up from HR you could be facing, but actual legal and financial penalties. The UCMJ is not something to trifle with.
But all that said, at least the CAC pin does not have to be a 10 character password including at least two capitol letters, two numbers, and two special characters, that must be changed every, month 90 days, or 150 days depending on the level of classification you are working on. The CAC pin is set by you when your card is issued and does not change until you get a new card, at which time you can select the exact same pin again.
Even better, For a while the TSA office at the Salt Lake City Airport was considerate enough to save unopened drinks that had been confiscated and donate them to a local shelter.
Until some real-genius at a higher level got wind of the program, and nixed it because of the liability if some poor homeless schmuck drank a bottle of explosive orange juice. Or worse (funnier) What if "THEY" hear about this program and start intentionally taking poisened drinks through the airport security, knowing that the drinks would be confiscated and given to the homeless.
So now all bottled beverages collected at the security check points are destroyed. And the shelter that had come to really appreciate the regular supply of free drinks, and shampoo. Once again has to do without.
Look at your upload speeds during and after the D/l has finished. If you have any desire to not be a leech, you should be trying to maintain at least a 1:1 ul/dl ratio. Comcast lets the dl go fine and allows normal uploading while you are actively dl'ing your file, but as soon as your machine finished dl'ing the file the forged resets start going out to both your machine and any machines trying to dl packets from you thus breaking the connection and prventing you from effectively seeding. This makes it very difficult to upload sufficiently to maintain a proper ratio.
Many torrent sites require a balanced ratio or close to it to be able to participate on their trackers, Comcast makes it difficult (though not impossible) to maintain such a ratio.
What about ROCKS? How expensive will these things be to replace. You can replace a current windshield for about $200, add in a couple dollars a year for Wipers, a few bucks more for fluid and that's it, just a minor set of replacment and maintenance costs. Replacing one or two windshields during the life of a car isn't too big a burden, but what about when they cost $2000 a pop, and a is a single rock chip capable of disrupting the power flow to the entire or even a substantial portion of the windshield, thus requiring a new windshield.
Anyhow, kudos to the OEM's for providing XP as an option
Which ones, or rather for who? It seems this option is mostly only available for big business purchases. I tried to find a Home user model machine with XP as an option. I could get it on a low end machine that really shouldn't try Vista anyway, or in the Business lines that didn't have the graphics capabilities I wanted, but in order to get the Processor, ram and Video capabilities I wanted I could not get XP, not online, not via the phone. And that went for Dell, HP and Toshiba. I gave up looking after that, and just bought the highest power machine I could afford in order to offset the pains of Vista.
Now I've got most everything set up, but I am still tempted from time to time to d/l a crack of XP and give my machine a performance boost.
Yes there are, for Christmas I gave my wife an MP3 player, and I also got her a stereo system from RCA that has a one click button to transfer whatever is playing, the CD's, the Radio, the Aux jacks etc to it's integrated 256 mb mp3 player, which you can then remove and take with you or connect to your computer to transfer the songs to another device.
Oh and the stereo has a seperate USB port to allow you to make such transfers directly to any other compatible player.
That article missed a great time waster. I haven't played any of the others but http://www.puzzlepirates.com// has certainly eaten up a lot of my free time.
That computer never has any classified on it. If it does your friend/roommate is guilty of a serious security breach. Now just because they work on classified information does not mean it happens on that machine. It is not uncommon to find an unclass machine sitting next to a classified machine, it shouldn't happen in a TS environment but it most likely does. The classfied work occurs on the classified machine, the unclass work happens on the unclass machine.
And I guarentee that unclassified laptop never goes into the SCIF (Secure Compartmented Information Facility, which is where the TS will be) with your friend when they are going to work on TS stuff. It just doesn't happen. Every such facility has someone on duty whenever the facility is open who's primary job is to make sure that such events don't happen. They will make sure no cell phones, mp3 players, computers, furby's or other gadgets with recording capabilities enter the facility.
Most likely your roommate was telling fibs to impress you. It's a very common, yet childish occurance among those who have high level clearances, brag about what you do, and what you supposedly are able to get away with.
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The original Hummer had the key feature that makes the HMMWV so good offroad, the up angled axles which raise the vehicles clearance and substantially lower it's center of gravity, allowing a carefully driven HMMWV (non-uparmored version) to pull a U-turn on a 60% slope. Then the brainiacs at GM decide to spread the logo, but just slapped it on a standard Chevy SUV frame with a boxy body to simulate the shape of the original. When they did this they used the Chevy frame and drive train, thus eliminating the primary reason to get an H1, incredible off-roading capabilities.
Anyone who buys an H2 or H3 is just tossing away good money that could be spent on extra features on a standard Chevy Tahoe or what ever.
I think you hit a big reason for the increase in prices. To push more people to packages.
Of course the companies could just start building the packages into the basic service, but then they would get no money. The main reason I see them trying to push people into getting the various texting packages isn't to make more money per se. Rather to reduce their call center service costs for all the calls when Jr.s texting has pushed the bill a couple hundred over the normal monthly cost.
A few years ago I worked as a CS rep for Sprint, texting was just starting to really take off then and I took dozens of calls from very irate parents. Irate at Sprint of course, when it was their child who they were failing to monitor or supervise, but that's beside the point.
The issue is that those calls were seldom short (or pleasant), and thus cost the company a lot of money to keep those customers as happy paying customers. The fix always included pushing the $10 or $15 texting packages $10 for a hundred texts or $15 for unlimited texts, to avoid the problem from reoccurring.
So I can see the companies increasing the per text fee to push more of their texting customers into getting the packages, and thus reducing the likelihood of having to pay for CSR's to handle those future long expensive calls.
Oh and FYI, before that job I had service with another carrier and have never been even slightly tempted to use Sprint.
Shouldn't THEY take Amazon down via the DMCA. Those terrorist tools are a blatant attempt to circumvent technological protections.
The DoD has plenty of Security Nazi's, unfortunately most of them have no clue about real security.
Well before this event, all USB access was turned off by default. But then because the IT section got tired of having to respond to all the trouble tickets when people couldn't use the Printers, scanners external hard drives and similar equipment needed to do their jobs, let alone external keyboards and mice, so the appointed Informations Management Officer for each section and group was given the instructions on how to remove that setting. Add to the fact that USB thumb drives really are the most effective method for transferring large data files (size limits on per email attachements and total mailbox sizes). Add in the need for external HD's as an effective method for storing and maintaining large amounts of mapping and imagery data for which ever mapping tool is to be used and the need gets even greater.
My section lost the ability to use our mapping tools with this mandate. The map data files use most the space on a 500 gig external HD, Our newest machine (they are all laptops) has a 100 gig HD. Could a shared drive be set up with this data? Probably. Would it be effective, with multiple people trying to pull large map or imagery data files simultaneously, often over limited pipelines? Probably not.
Security Nazi's exist already, and are more pain than help.
Baloney: I haven't seen a win2k based production system for quite a while.(I regularly work with a win2k image training system, but that's only still in the training environment because those systems are not on the networks, and all that is really needed for that training is a viable office suite.) The vast majority of systems in the Army are running XP or Server03. In addition, Office 07 is being pushed out quite rapidly right now.
But when you have an infrastructure as vast as the DoD it's not reasonable to expect everything to be on the bleeding edge of up-to-dateness, And would you really want the Military to use Vista?
The real problem in this case is the AV setup, they use Symantec which is fine and dandy, but when you get on the Classified side, the virus definitions rarely get updated, leaving the systems open and vulnerable when someone does get lazy in following the protocols for airgapping information from unclass to classified networks.
The machines on the unclass side don't usually lag too far behind on the patches, but then as is heard very often here, very few netadmins allow M$ patches and upgrades to go live until they have been determined to not break the current setup.
I agree with you with one exception, this concept of crowd sourced funding is how this stuff is paid for in the first place. It's called the stock market, and investors buying the stocks of the media companies they feel are likely to make them a profit, are the crowd who are financing these movies.
The Studios aren't printing the money it costs to make these movies, they are using invested funds and the profits from prior sucesses to fund new movies. The only hard thing to understand is how this system still manages to put out soo much garbage. Oh, that's right, they claim it's art. (Bullcrap, it's business, and a cutthroat business at that.)
Actually I understand Hillary is kicking off her campaign for President tomorrow.
Not entirely true. Note the sheep specified big guns. Perhaps Mr Sheepbo is planning on using an M2 .50 cal Machine gun. A sheep should be able to depress the butterfly trigger. I'm not saying he'll be very accurate with it but he should be able to work that trigger with his hoof.
Should the common American be allowed to own an "Assault Rifle"?
.22 cal plinker morphs into fitting that definition when ever I insert one of my 30 round magazines. But would it be considered a military weapon? No, sure it's still a deadly weapon that must be treated with respect, but it didn't get inherantly more dangerous or militaristic because I can shoot more jackalopes between reloads.
.22 if I wanted to do some serious harm. And for home defense I have a single shot, break action shotgun (I'm quick enough at reloading it I can usuall hit two clay pigeons).
What is an "Assault rifle?" A cosmetic designation for a semi-automatic rifle with a large capacity magazine. My
My 30.06 hunting rifle is a bolt action and I'd grab it before I went for the
And nobody be they trained or not shoots accurately with a rapid fire rifle. I've fired the old full auto M-16A1's and the current 3 round burst A2's and M4's, all auto or burst is good for is keeping the other guys head down.
That said, I'd love to own an AK-47, or a AR-15 (with the M4 carbine configuration, it's so much more easy to handle.) I'm just too much of a cheapskate to plunk down that much change for something that I would probably only shoot a couple times a year.
It would only be a target practice weapon, but it would be nice to own one, just to be able to shoot it more than once a year (I'm in the guard I get/have to qualify once a year. Except for when deployed, it's the only time I get to put rounds downrange with military weapons. So that would get me shooting such weaps two or three times a year total.
So for your informal poll, count this military man as saying yes it should be legal. And heck, I'm currently in a country where every household is allowed to have AK-47's or similar weapons. And we are fighting a war here. Go figure, we haven't forced the Afghan gov to disarm it's people when we are actively fighting insurgents/terrorists here. We haven't even asked them to consider it.
Having spent the last 15 years in the Army, most of it in the National Guard, I call BS on your claims. I'm not saying someone didn't express such sentiments to him but they are not part of any organized or approved training and or indoctrination.
I dare say you'll find more gun enthusiasts and 2nd Amendment supporters in the Military than in any other significant grouping of American Citizens gathered from across the nation.
Opera hasn't had built in adds for a couple years now. Follow the GP link and give it a try.
Try Motorola, most of their phones use the mini-usb interface for chargin and data. And most of them have bluetooth which again makes getting the images off them a piece of cake.
Come to think of it my last few Nokia's had IR ports and or bluetooth as well. You just have to take a few seconds to verify the features, in order to get a cell that is easy to get images off of.
That said, I think I've shared all of one picture from the crappy camera's built into the phones I've had. And I've never paid to send any of them.
My Nephews grandfather(my wifes sisters hubbys dad), has the greatest nack for finding annoying toys. His best/worst so far is a toy Chainsaw, that does it's best to sound like a real one.
Perfect for training the next generation of Chainsaw Murders.
The security there was for the most part definately NOT theater. It was serious, and it was effective. Events happened and things were found that never made the press. All those people with guns were armed, the weapons were loaded, and they were ready to use them.
Of course their readiness depended on their mission. My favorite statement during those games was when one of the Secret Service agents I was working with, pointed out the Israeli security element. The agent said, "If anything goes down when there are Israelies around just hit the deck. I'll be right down there with you, because their security guys will shoot any and everybody standing, and maybe think about asking a couple questions next week."
As to your ATF guy. It's never a good idea to sit and watch security. The bad guys do it, it's called casing, it's how you determine, if how and when to make a move. If you had stayed much longer you probably would have gotten to chat with the police.
Just change the doors? We are talking about the DOD here, 2.5 million actual military personnel, at thousands of bases across the globe, not to mention all the Civilian employees also working at all those bases. Many of whom really have no need for such a security measure, except that some genius thought it would be a cool way to have people log into their computers.
Oh and don't forget when somebody updates the CAC specifications and renders many of the card readers unable to read newly issued cards, (This has already happened at least once.)
CAC cards do have their uses and places, but not in an organization this large, where there can be real serious problems if you forget your card, letting someone else get access to what you are working on. Or if because you left your card in the reader in the office, you now can't get back into the building or compound, and you miss a mandatory meeting or formation.
It's not just an annoying write-up from HR you could be facing, but actual legal and financial penalties. The UCMJ is not something to trifle with.
But all that said, at least the CAC pin does not have to be a 10 character password including at least two capitol letters, two numbers, and two special characters, that must be changed every, month 90 days, or 150 days depending on the level of classification you are working on. The CAC pin is set by you when your card is issued and does not change until you get a new card, at which time you can select the exact same pin again.
Even better, For a while the TSA office at the Salt Lake City Airport was considerate enough to save unopened drinks that had been confiscated and donate them to a local shelter.
Until some real-genius at a higher level got wind of the program, and nixed it because of the liability if some poor homeless schmuck drank a bottle of explosive orange juice. Or worse (funnier) What if "THEY" hear about this program and start intentionally taking poisened drinks through the airport security, knowing that the drinks would be confiscated and given to the homeless.
So now all bottled beverages collected at the security check points are destroyed. And the shelter that had come to really appreciate the regular supply of free drinks, and shampoo. Once again has to do without.
Look at your upload speeds during and after the D/l has finished. If you have any desire to not be a leech, you should be trying to maintain at least a 1:1 ul/dl ratio. Comcast lets the dl go fine and allows normal uploading while you are actively dl'ing your file, but as soon as your machine finished dl'ing the file the forged resets start going out to both your machine and any machines trying to dl packets from you thus breaking the connection and prventing you from effectively seeding. This makes it very difficult to upload sufficiently to maintain a proper ratio.
Many torrent sites require a balanced ratio or close to it to be able to participate on their trackers, Comcast makes it difficult (though not impossible) to maintain such a ratio.
Good point, but forget snow and ice.
What about ROCKS? How expensive will these things be to replace. You can replace a current windshield for about $200, add in a couple dollars a year for Wipers, a few bucks more for fluid and that's it, just a minor set of replacment and maintenance costs. Replacing one or two windshields during the life of a car isn't too big a burden, but what about when they cost $2000 a pop, and a is a single rock chip capable of disrupting the power flow to the entire or even a substantial portion of the windshield, thus requiring a new windshield.
So again I ask what about Rocks?
Not so easy to find it for Laptops.
Or, Snakes in the Brain!
Yes there are, for Christmas I gave my wife an MP3 player, and I also got her a stereo system from RCA that has a one click button to transfer whatever is playing, the CD's, the Radio, the Aux jacks etc to it's integrated 256 mb mp3 player, which you can then remove and take with you or connect to your computer to transfer the songs to another device.
Oh and the stereo has a seperate USB port to allow you to make such transfers directly to any other compatible player.
That article missed a great time waster. I haven't played any of the others but http://www.puzzlepirates.com// has certainly eaten up a lot of my free time.
What does Adobe have to do with Bowling? http://www.amf.com/corporate/index.htm/
That computer never has any classified on it. If it does your friend/roommate is guilty of a serious security breach. Now just because they work on classified information does not mean it happens on that machine. It is not uncommon to find an unclass machine sitting next to a classified machine, it shouldn't happen in a TS environment but it most likely does. The classfied work occurs on the classified machine, the unclass work happens on the unclass machine.
And I guarentee that unclassified laptop never goes into the SCIF (Secure Compartmented Information Facility, which is where the TS will be) with your friend when they are going to work on TS stuff. It just doesn't happen. Every such facility has someone on duty whenever the facility is open who's primary job is to make sure that such events don't happen. They will make sure no cell phones, mp3 players, computers, furby's or other gadgets with recording capabilities enter the facility.
Most likely your roommate was telling fibs to impress you. It's a very common, yet childish occurance among those who have high level clearances, brag about what you do, and what you supposedly are able to get away with.