The basic problem with "Dune" today is that it predates the Gulf War. We know what "desert power" looks like now - M1A2 Abrams tanks and A10 Warthogs. There were worries back in 1991 that mechanized armies couldn't operate in the desert. Wrong. You go through more air filters. Some spare parts get used up. The tanks keep rolling. Remember those Iraqi solders in the first Gulf War who were all dug in, armed, and ready to fight? THe US sent in a line of tanks equipped with bulldozer blades, rolled over them, and buried them alive in sand. Being out in the open desert against a modern army is death. I don't care how good your knife fighters are.
And a giant sandworm with a big open mouth looks like a good RPG target.
There are insurgency tactics that work, but they depend on having a friendly population to hide in. They also require an opposition that doesn't consider extermination of the entire population in the area an option.
Actually if you read the books it isn't an issue. The whole shield technology they developed made even a simple shielded human into a portable nuclear bomb. The shields rendered conventional ballistics useless but energy weapons hitting it made the shield go "giga-boom". Unlike desert storm Arrakis is pure sandy nothingness. Not bed-rock or compressed earth. Even an Abrams tank in that situation could litterally bury itself in the sand (Think sahara not the badlands. Dunes and sandbases that are at least as deep as a sand worm is tall.)
The worms themselves are pretty durable apparently and conventional ballistics had been long abandoned due to shield technology. What is left are energy weapons and the skin of the worms might be able to endure quite a bit of heat energy and with all that silica acting as refractory sufraces radiation may not be an issue.
The political aspect wasn't lost on Herbert. The Fremen were in control of Arrakis in reality with leverage against the Spacing Guild. The Emperor or any would-be house would suddenly find it hard to transport a real full army to Arrakis to wipe out the Fremen. Only after Paul rallied the Fremen did it appear that the Spacing Guild would allow a real full contingent of troops to arrive.
The books were more about politics rather then military or traditional SciFi.
Paul is a fictional icon that the BG held in reserve to "whip out" when needed. Paul was an abberation that fit the messiah template. Paul and his mother exploited it and the BG lost control of that cultural element. With access to the inner oracle (genetic memory) Paul with the messiah template was nearly unstoppable from a political standpoint due to the religious leverage he held.
That is the brilliance of the story is the complexity of the political, social, and religious interplay. Something Lynch completely ignored.
The problem is the books are more of a political thriller then a sciFi film.
I would state these: Dune is more "Patriot Games" then "Star Trek" Dune is more "The Manchurian Canidate" then "Blade Runner"
As a Herbert fan Dune has been from my view a political and social narrative about where politics and religion collide under feudalism. The future setting was really incidental to the story. You could have just as easily swapped Spice for Oil and Arrakis for Arabia... The SciFi elements are not the point, they were mearly tools.
The Spice was the perfect drug\commodity just as Soma was for Aldus Huxley's Brave New World, the ecological cost of Spice was the real story in regards to the Spice. The dependencies, politically, religiously, economically were also undercurrents in the plot but the larger story was how, as a result of the Spice, and how it factored into society, left man kind stagnant (The Fremen specifically) and how Paul's kin would "stir the pot" and break the universe out of it's stagnant state (the Golden Path) and get the ball rolling again getting back to the uncertainty of life.
Perhaps being informed of what is really going on is the cause of depression.
I offer this theory: The leading cause of depression is the truth on how the world really works. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer; the criminals have more right sthen the victims, and the corruption just keeps getting worse.
Bullies are responsible for bullying. Thieves are responsible for theft. Rapists are responsible for rape. Murderers are responsible for murder.
The point the grandparent was making was that there is a fine line between acknowledging ways to reduce one's risk and crossing over into victim-blaming. Likewise, it's really easy to leap from "kids can take specific actions to lessen the chance of being bullied" to "any child who was being bullied must have not taken proper action to avoid it!"...
-Trillian
While I largely agree the logic in me must protest to a degree with some extreme examples to frame a reference:
A guy dresses up in a KKK outfit and walks through Harlem. He gets his ass beat. Sure his attackers are to blame, but at what point as a society do we recognize he contributed, antagonized, etc. At some point in life we invite disaster upon ourselves. At what point in a society to we hold people accountable for inviting disaster upon themselves?
A guy is burning 200 candles in a bedroom in his apartment when his door bell rings. He goes to answer the door but the draft from opening the door draws a curtain into the flame, the whole apartment burns down. He didn't intend to burn the apartment down but is charge and convicted of "criminal negligence." Oddly though the person ringing the door bell is not. We do hold people accountable for inviting disaster in a variety of circumstances.
Now to the "I dress like a whore and somehow I am surprised I am treated like a whore" situations. Now while I and no saine person would suggest that people would invite rape, lets take it back a few steps. If a woman is dressed in a slutty fashion (Lets say Halloween time) and she goes to a party. She comes home and complains to her friends that "every pig was just staring at me all night like I was a piece of meat". Now the question is, at what point do we hold ourselves accountable for the reactions of others? The study I think was just trying to find out what issues of the victim's behavior "invites disaster".
We as people do have a responsibility for our own safety which government largely has tried to abolish. Don't defend yourself, just wait for some cops to show up 2 hours later. It's not your fault it is societies fault, etc.
Most can agree that "Personal Responsibility" has been under attack for at least the last 30 years. At some point depending on the circumstances we have to look at the behavior of the victims to understand what "invites disaster". It probably isn't a great idea to dress like a hooker and walk through the worst part of town at 3 am. Common sense says, "your going to get raped" doing that. Obviously it isn't the victims fault they got raped; BUT the victim IS A MORON and a card carrying member of the Idiocracy. The fact they end up the victim I guess is the darwinian punishment for being an idiot as harsh as is it. Now back to bulling.
Thieves are responsible for theft
Yes but you have a lock on your door for a reason. If you leave it unlocked and get robbed you, the victim, made yourself the more desirable target versus someone without a locked door. If you live in a crappy neighborhood you are also more likely to get robbed. People would like to know "What can I do to get robbed less" and that is what I think there were trying to explain in the context of bullies.
Rapists are responsible for rape
Yes but again dressing like a hooker walking down University Ave. alone at 3 AM isn't going to help keep you safe
Bullies are responsible for bullying
Yes but walking your D&D playing, "I enjoy John Tesh", Glee Club member ass into the locker room isn't going to improve your chances either.
Crime or Anti-Social behavior is not a simple Me vs. You concept. The word SOCIAL gets glossed over. The inability to get along is a "We" issue
Out of teams that are 40-60% black you name 3 QBs that aren't white? Statistics state that in a broad sample the % should be normal. If, lets say 40% of the players in football are black, then 40% of the QB should be black. It's not racist to point out the obvious inequalities in life, it racist to ignore them.
Given that description does anything the NFL does make sense? Seriously how can you have so many black guys playing and so few of them quarterbacks?
Because the offensive linemen like it that way. Remember their job is to clobber the quarterback... often a white guy, often whom they generally outmass by more than a few pounds. It's cathartic for them.
Interesting theory... I never pondered that aspect of it. So I wonder in comparing the racial composition of the offensive and defensive line would you see a difference...
... because the lifespan of a cell phone has been around 2 years so far and no developers wants to invest in building apps for a platform that people throw in the trash every time they switch carriers...
I suppose I could drag myself to a friends house to watch an unsually large number of overweight black males and a few healthy black males in an American sporting event which for some reason is 3/4th black but over half of the quarterbacks are white and most of the team owners are white.
With few asians and very few hispanics I just find it hard to sit and start at a screen of fat black men lead by white quarterbacks as they run up and down a 100 yard field for no apparent reason other then the spectators amusement. I might as well watch fat people fight over a donut, it's just as absurd but substantally more entertaining. Especially if it were to the death.
But seriosuly does no one see the parelells here? You might as well call it the cotton bowl with the QB as Taskmaster and the team owners... oh wait....
Given that description does anything the NFL does make sense? Seriously how can you have so many black guys playing and so few of them quarterbacks? It's insulting. The NFL has been ass backwards for decades and I am sure decades to come...
So mod FLAMEBAIT, FUNNY, OFFTOPIC, or just plain sad....?
The reality of wearable computer is context sensitive information. Not comprehensive feature sets.
You put the following into a wearable PiP Boy computer and they'll sell like mad:
SMS\Instant Messaging Current Fuel Prices at bookmarked gas stations RSS Feed (We have ad those on pagers for 3 decades) TO DO Lists Calendar\PIM Digital Rolodex Vitals (heart rate, blood sugar, pill timers) Integrated cell phone to a head set or in-canal ear piece Memory slot for MP3 player Grocery Lists Bank RSS feeds (think Mint.com for mobiles) as well as remote car entry, light timers, etc so as you approach the car or home 2 USB ports with some storage space GPS and Navigation.
Look at the wrist watch vs pocket watch. Look at the cell phone vs the wrist watch.
I actually foresee a primary cpu until (pehaps shoulder mounted backed against the shoulder blade, see Macross Plus for a report with s similar looking deal) with context sensetive nodes (the main cpu links to various accessories like a watch, shoes, camera, etc.)
Yeah If I could get get a VATS until to go with that..
Not always, cost cutting measure and those meetings are, "We need to let 30 people go. Which department do we tell to let 8 people go?"
(incoming hypothetical base on real meetings)
Then I come in with the stats team and say, "Well based on bulk RSS feeds from we score the following department based on video game activity, "Programmers as 3200 entries. DB Group at 1200 entries. Marketing at 4100 entries. This are not a measure of performance but mearly a comparison of activity accumulated by department. The company median for activity is 800 entries. Based on social networking scores the Java team's activity score is 400 while the marketing department is over 60,000. Of which 40,000 can be attributed to LinkedIn activity. The DB group is 150 for social networking with the company median around 390."
Same goes for web reporting (where I got my start) looking as Squid proxy reports.
"The average user here at XYZ has 4100 HTTP hits across 9 web sites. The majority of web traffic is to CNN and ESPN. The following 10 people are the top of all HTTP traffic excluding CNN and ESPN related traffic.
From statistical analysis the following 100 users are over 2 standard devations in internet usage over the norm.
The following 10 users are 2 standard deviations lower then normal internet usage.
The following web sites have exclusive 1:1 relationships with users\ip address...."
I also did this for disk storage:
"Median home drive space: 1.45 GBs. The following users have disk usage greater then the median by 2 standard deviations." (Automagic weekly report)
We even did it by file type
"Average user per 100 files: 3.4 Word 4.1 Excel... The following users deviate for the norm by an order of magnatude in any one or more catagories..."
This reporting is then used by management, admins, etc to make decisions. How they use\abuse data is up to them. What got me out of doing it was managers would start asking for data on specific people... looking for something bad. The quote that ended my career in that was, "No no just tell me the bad stuff in his report."
I don't do good or bad, what is... is.
But given 3 departments one with say 1200 hours worth of MMO playing, 1300, and 2600 it's easy to see which department might have a higher risk profile. Now given the mandate to reduce staff by 8% across the board which department is going to get "the lean" more?
Information has been weaponized since the bronze age and the Internet is a gold mine of data. Until there is some real privacy legistation don't be suprised to go into an HR department and see MMO and online game software on the shelves so they can log in and do some data mining.
Race, creed, religion, sexual preference is all protected classes of information but exceeding a 5% MMO time threshold for employment isn't (or any arbitrary threshold). Playing for more then 2.12 hours a week (5%) is just another possible red flag...
Fact: the fastest you can complete a WoW instance is going average out to about 10 minutes.
2.12 hours = 127.2 minutes.
Doing more then 13 instances a week is going to pop that flag. Even given the dates all I have to do is check and see if you've done more then 13 instances in a week. Red flag.
Given the average time of 1 hour for a raid, better not clear Naxx 10 AND EOE 10 in a week, that's 2 hours right there...
You can't beat into these people that correlation doesn't imply causation any more then you can explain that there is no direct evidence that the employee himself\herself is actually playing\surfing\etc. The abuse of data is the norm and the more data, the more abuse.
I do and each entry is going to be processed at an infraction, I've been in several conference calls already and I can personally attest to 8 people being let go for this already. Abusing sick time and telecommuting policies aren't "mediated" or "salvaged" or "given warnings". Your fired. The End. They call WiPro for offshore or Robert Half or Volt or another contracting house and you are replaced within 4 days. The end. (The costs as you point out though vary depending on the nature of work). Any idiot with a high school degree can answer a support center and drill down in databases.
1) At Will states could fire you for anything, I've seen the old Andersen Consulting fire a guy for "Unacceptable Attire" a.k.a he had a soup stain on his tie from lunch (Down town Mpls. We ate at a burger joint next door in the skyway across from the 5th st. Towers. His boss was screaming at the kid calling him a slob, it was sad really. The actual quote as best I remember was, "What kind of fucking slob are you. We bill you out to a client as $104 and they expect someone who can use a fucking napkin!" Glad they aren't around anymore (Thank you Enron...))
As far as for states that do not have at-will this is plenty of ammo and hard to dispute. You can dispute performance, you are hard pressed to dispute time stamped activities. As far as the STOP issue is concerned I've in 13 years never seen someone get a warning, first offense = last offense. In a business environment that is looking for any reason to hire cheaper labor there is little incentive to hold onto people.
2) You apparently have never had to sit on conference calls where employees are contesting for unemployment benefits. Getting fire for wrong-doing is a considerably different argument then "poor performance." One is termination the other is effectively getting laid off.
3) Which all end up getting argued in front of (metaphorically speaking) and arbitator at the local unemployment office or even internally in an HR meeting. Regardless of "At Will" employment there is still the issue of unemployment benfits and this is a gold mine for blocking benefits. So far as of 12/21/9 it's Gamers= 0, Employers= 3 (so far, 2 more calls next Tues. concerning the last 5).
Listen this is the type of arguments I am hearing:
You are provided paid sick time for health reasons. It is clear from the time stamps you were video gaming STARTING at 11 PM the night before (monday) and from the activities you were still playing at the least as of 3 AM the following day (tuesday). Your next game activity was at 6:08 AM. You emailed into work you were sick at 7:44 AM and the log indicates you continued to play until at least 7:07 PM CST. (A list of 30 achievements) This pattern also occurs on 4 other occasions. First question: If you were too sick to come into work Tuesday why were you up the entire night before gaming?
(usual excuse is "I was sick and couldn't sleep")
Why does't this pattern repeat itself on X,Y, and Z dates?
The next record in their file come up with: "Due to bad weather you worked from home on XXX date. According to the time stamps while, on company time, you were gaming."
Now there are dozens of those entries listed.
"We terminated Y's employment due to frequent repeated abuse of company time and sick policy for the purposes of playing an MMO while on company time which was a clear violation of corporate policy."
I don't get into the pissing contests, I just handled the data aquisition and explain crap like what a Raid is and how long it takes to do a full clear of Naxx-25 (I frequently am brought into translate geekanese to corpspeak in exchange for a free lunch to former coworkers and employers, the iPhone as a telecommuting conversation was shall we say, entertaining but that is another story).
One manager said this: "It's like a speeding ticket. An employee who gets one occasionally... not a big deal. An employee who gets one every week shows a problem with following basic rules and policies. I do
Since this went live I have gotten over 700 requests from employers wanting to contract me to compare those time stamps to select employees known to play WoW to ensure that they are not playing during work hours.
I wrote a perl script years ago that scans and dumps Lotus Notes email containing select keywords and back then it was targeted towards Everquest players but I'm sure they have since updated it for other games. It's trivial to correlate email to character info if you, for instance, raid with coworkers. (I also wrote a juggle-bot script for DAOC at the time that auto-juggled 3 instruments for bard-bots at the same time on contract...)
That is the reason for the time stamps plain and simple for I can see no reason to provide anything beyond the date (really does it matter you cleared Naxx at 1:00 PM or 10:00 PM last Thursday... only an employer would care) and I for one regret retiring since I could clear $75 and hour for cross-checking that kind of info.(Which is what I used to charge to check... well... slashdot and other popular forums against employee info. Litigating a wrongful termination is expensive but slapping 4 pages of online posts that show deteriment to the company solves most of those claims and challenges.)
Keep this in mind: If your employer knows you play WoW and you have EVER played during the work week start checking the job boards my friend. They won't bother to check if you were on vacation, they'll simply red flag you none the less. There is a frenzy brewing and anyone looking for an excuse to show you the door this is a great little tool for that.
They walk on egg shells because China is the largest nuclear threat since the USSR was around and from a measure of hostility communism has killed more then 100 million people since it's incept. Between Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, Castro, and countless others they are giving religion a run for it's money for "killing in the name of"
Keeping the dragon fat and sleepy so it doesn't wake up sounds more a likely scenario...
Since (INSERT YOUR LEAST FAVORITE PRESIDENT) has\had the power to fix this; since the President of course runs everything and it to blame for everything and is responsible to fix everything. During (INSERT LEAST FAVORITE PRESIDENT) term(s) he's did nothing to fix this!
IMPEACH (INSERT LEAST FAVORITE PRESIDENT)!!!
3 things kill a discussion quicker then:
A: Comparing anything to Nazis. They are over used and there were plenty of other groups in centuries past that made them look tame. More importantly, unlike some groups in history... they lost so comparing anything to them implies eventual failure so the argument falls apart all the quicker. B: Blaming a President for problems that take decades to fester and manifest. Same for giving credit. C: Blaming every other congressman\woman\it but your own.
Now that we have that out of the way....
We know that nuclear power has been suppressed for the last 30 years for better or worse. Does this really come as a surprise?
We know that funding towards the expansion of the nuclear energy program has been frozen, cut, and reduced at varying degrees for over 30 years. No new plants to handle existing demand means no ability to decommission older ones.
There is some irony at a group that hated nuclear energy complains after decades of condemning nuclear energy find time to complain that it isn't getting enough support and maintenance... I won't even get into the green debate that has driven Greenpeace into a morass of identity crisis.
Lastly the reality and fantasy of nuclear energy are so disparate that the media tends to run with fantasy and science tends to side on over confidence leaving the public conflicted. Nuclear isn't free energy. You still have to mine, enrich, store, process, protect, and manage the fuel. How much energy does it take measured at the end of a fuel's life-cycle from start to finish is the real efficiency. It's like those crappy CFLs. Same carbon footprint as a conventional bulb once you factor in shipping from overseas for most of them, the mining and processing for Mercury and the manufacturing of the ballasts, etc.
Special interest groups on both sides are so intent on propaganda that reason, compromise, and sanity are not allowed. Digital Mind Think in an Analog world...
We need to develop nuclear energy solutions that are safe. Beaming energy down from space is not an option as it is too vulnerable to attack and we already have so much shit up there it's nearing the point that would make the Rift's scenario likely (the orbit was intentionally filled with micro-debris to shred everything coming in and going out...)
We need a comprehensive solution that stitches ALL the sources together allowing basic economics to dictate the most cost effective solutions over time.
In a corporate press release you state that your new product will launch on time and will be 15% cheaper then originally planned. Stocks go up.
In a corporate press release you state that your new product will launch late and will be 15% more expensive then originally planned. Stocks go down.
Information by a corporation, and information release by corporate officers is supposed to be accurate. By using leaks they are by passing basic accountability standards. Now:
In a leak you state that your new product will launch on time and will be 15% cheaper then originally planned. Stocks go up.
In a leak you state that your new product will launch late and will be 15% more expensive then originally planned. Stocks go down.
Lets assume, for the sake of argument that regardless of which leak you use it turns out that is was fabricated intentionally. Who is accountable? What audit applies to "official leaks?" Who is held accountable for the fabricated leak? As a shareholder I expect information that could be positive or detrimental to be vetted.
More importantly whomever gets the 'leak' initially has insider information on the company's activities. Imagine getting a leak that the i Tablet is getting canceled. That kind of behavior is getting very close to disclosing insider information to specific people (the leak's recipient) that the general public would not get. There are no checks or balances, the recipient could sit on the leak for 48 hours and broker insider information to others before publishing. An officer of the company requesting a leak is bad, real bad, and disclosing company confidential information to a select few is too close to insider trading that I as a shareholder am comfortable with.
Wheh you are low on gas it starts an automated decent.
The problem is what is below you may not be convienent to land on like, other cars, people, houses, lakes, small churches, zoos, methodists, and forests. A road tends to physically constrain a vechicles options to the road, a shoulder, and occasionally a ditch...
Flying has too many issues for it to ever become a reality. There is a reason we train pilots to such a degree compared to a driver's license.
Ethics (n): The 'optional' set of rules companies occasionally engage when it is a benefit to the company but publically declaire they use at all times.
They aren't going to sit down, do 8 straight hours of work, then go home. You'll burn out even trying. People work better with short, frequent breaks taken at their own rate. So long as they get the work done, there's no problem. The only issue I see here is you- first off, grow some balls and refuse to work the extra hours. Trust me, you won't be rewarded for them. Secondly, unless someone isn't making their individual units of work, mind your own business. Or maybe even join in the next time they talk football, you might make a friend or two.
You are the reason we outsource. If I pay someone to work for 8 hours, they better work for 8 hours. So sit back and talk about football and waste company time. When you get laid off and can't find work, you can hang out at the unemployment office and chat about football some more.
My guess though is that if you're spending $80k per year on coffee, then it's for a hell of a lot of people, and that $80k expense (and a single job) IS tiny on that scale. If an $80k expenditure costs a job but improves morale of a few thousand employees enough to make up for it in productivity gains, then it's the right thing to do.
Wait, average cost for a cup of coffee is about $0.05 (Cheap coffee) so they are trying to say that annually they dole out 1,600,000 cups of coffee:
Adjusting for work week we get: 250 Working Days we get 6400 cups per day.
Lets look at the national average of 3.2 cups of coffee per person\per day:
That is about 2000 people they were buying coffee for. I'd be curious what the % of the budget is in contrast to leasing. Might be cheaper to have them all telecommute and buy their own coffee. Win Win
The larger the corporation the more per\user per\server to admin. Theseare my observation sover the last 12 years in my career:
For small corporations (less then 1 million) I usually see about 1/800 ratio for support\end user and 1/50 for servers.
For medium corporations (greater then 1 million but less then 80 million in revenue) I usually seea bour 1/2000 ratio and 1/150 for servers.
For large corporations (greater then 80 million) I see about 1/3800 and 1/250.
Support metrics are usually driven by "Call Times" including resolve times and hold times so depending on the scale of the businesses and nature it isn't so much support/staff ratio but rather hold time\support ratio. ITIL was crafted specifically to facilitate outsourcing Incident Management (password resets and all that less then 15 minutes crap) to lower cost, drill down labor and maintaining low hold times versus Problem Management which is the higher skill set.
Server ratio is largely due to "bucketing" of servers\apps to an admin resource (Think along the lines of an Account Rep). A.k.a Bob handles Apps A,B, and C along with Servers X, Y, and Z. So depending on the corporation you can have anywhere from 2-8 apps assigned to a single admin. Each application may maintain upwards of 5-12 servers depending on the size of the application. Smaller enterprises tend to have smaller "buckets". A typical LAMP stack may have 1-4 app servers, 1 NAS, 1 batch server, and possibly it's own database server. As you get larger those buckets share other buckets so you may have a team that handles just apache and another that handles just MYSQL\POSTGRES\etc. Those buckets can be huge. I have a team of 8 DBAs managing right now 2307 database instances. That is roughly 289 server instances per DBA. A simple table update may take 12 minutes for a structure update to process so median process time may factor into staffing requirements when concurrency isn't an option based on outage windows. Databases are virtual servers usually with a SAN hosted on hardware that is managed by another team but you can get the picture. By specializing administrative roles you can increase the nubmer of server or services supported by a person (power of scale) so the ratio of servers per tech tends to rise the bigger the corporation. In addition more expensive, comprehensive tools, become accessable to larger corporations (TIVOLI framework for instance.)
Based on your description you should need:
2 Call Center Incident Management crew 2 Problem Management crew 1 Senior Network Adminsitrator\Network Architect 3 Junior Network Administrators
1 of which is responsible for security\auditing
1 of which is responsible for maintenance
1 of which is special projects
All three should rotate these roles quarterly or annually as well as rotate 1 as a Problem Management staffer (the non-special project members)
So your total support crew should be about 8 people. You may also for off hours support want to outsource to a location 12 or 6 hours offset based on your location. (6 hours makes meetings more practical as you can usually get a meeting when one group is just getting in and the other is just getting ready to leave.)
A degree in engineering has one of the highest degrees of mobility in the world. Engineers are frequently dispatch across the globe for special projects from mining, bridge building, design, and implementation.
Much like churches and schools, predators go where there is prey. Churches and schools provide the perfect "fish in a barrel" environment, access to prey, authority, and oportunity. The same hold true for the preditor that preys on fear. They need to have an occupation that provides them the tools necessary. Not only would engineers have the skills to develop weapons and "Mac Guyver" solutions but ideally, the job environment endows the ability to travel without drawing attention. Engineers can travel all over for projects and confrences vs. say an automechanic. It would be suspicious for an average automechanic to have to travel to Prague for a conference but an engineer travelling abroad for their career sounds plausable.
I would suspect that fields that require or at the very least imply travel are prime targets for recruitment.
Slashdot Mirror
The basic problem with "Dune" today is that it predates the Gulf War. We know what "desert power" looks like now - M1A2 Abrams tanks and A10 Warthogs. There were worries back in 1991 that mechanized armies couldn't operate in the desert.
Wrong. You go through more air filters. Some spare parts get used up. The tanks keep rolling.
Remember those Iraqi solders in the first Gulf War who were all dug in, armed, and ready to fight? THe US sent in a line of tanks equipped with bulldozer blades, rolled over them, and buried them alive in sand. Being out in the open desert against a modern army is death. I don't care how good your knife fighters are.
And a giant sandworm with a big open mouth looks like a good RPG target.
There are insurgency tactics that work, but they depend on having a friendly population to hide in. They also require an opposition that doesn't consider extermination of the entire population in the area an option.
Actually if you read the books it isn't an issue. The whole shield technology they developed made even a simple shielded human into a portable nuclear bomb. The shields rendered conventional ballistics useless but energy weapons hitting it made the shield go "giga-boom". Unlike desert storm Arrakis is pure sandy nothingness. Not bed-rock or compressed earth. Even an Abrams tank in that situation could litterally bury itself in the sand (Think sahara not the badlands. Dunes and sandbases that are at least as deep as a sand worm is tall.)
The worms themselves are pretty durable apparently and conventional ballistics had been long abandoned due to shield technology. What is left are energy weapons and the skin of the worms might be able to endure quite a bit of heat energy and with all that silica acting as refractory sufraces radiation may not be an issue.
The political aspect wasn't lost on Herbert. The Fremen were in control of Arrakis in reality with leverage against the Spacing Guild. The Emperor or any would-be house would suddenly find it hard to transport a real full army to Arrakis to wipe out the Fremen. Only after Paul rallied the Fremen did it appear that the Spacing Guild would allow a real full contingent of troops to arrive.
The books were more about politics rather then military or traditional SciFi.
Paul is a fictional icon that the BG held in reserve to "whip out" when needed. Paul was an abberation that fit the messiah template. Paul and his mother exploited it and the BG lost control of that cultural element. With access to the inner oracle (genetic memory) Paul with the messiah template was nearly unstoppable from a political standpoint due to the religious leverage he held.
That is the brilliance of the story is the complexity of the political, social, and religious interplay. Something Lynch completely ignored.
The problem is the books are more of a political thriller then a sciFi film.
I would state these:
Dune is more "Patriot Games" then "Star Trek"
Dune is more "The Manchurian Canidate" then "Blade Runner"
As a Herbert fan Dune has been from my view a political and social narrative about where politics and religion collide under feudalism. The future setting was really incidental to the story. You could have just as easily swapped Spice for Oil and Arrakis for Arabia... The SciFi elements are not the point, they were mearly tools.
The Spice was the perfect drug\commodity just as Soma was for Aldus Huxley's Brave New World, the ecological cost of Spice was the real story in regards to the Spice. The dependencies, politically, religiously, economically were also undercurrents in the plot but the larger story was how, as a result of the Spice, and how it factored into society, left man kind stagnant (The Fremen specifically) and how Paul's kin would "stir the pot" and break the universe out of it's stagnant state (the Golden Path) and get the ball rolling again getting back to the uncertainty of life.
Perhaps being informed of what is really going on is the cause of depression.
I offer this theory: The leading cause of depression is the truth on how the world really works. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer; the criminals have more right sthen the victims, and the corruption just keeps getting worse.
...
Bullies are responsible for bullying. Thieves are responsible for theft. Rapists are responsible for rape. Murderers are responsible for murder.
The point the grandparent was making was that there is a fine line between acknowledging ways to reduce one's risk and crossing over into victim-blaming. Likewise, it's really easy to leap from "kids can take specific actions to lessen the chance of being bullied" to "any child who was being bullied must have not taken proper action to avoid it!" ...
-Trillian
While I largely agree the logic in me must protest to a degree with some extreme examples to frame a reference:
A guy dresses up in a KKK outfit and walks through Harlem. He gets his ass beat. Sure his attackers are to blame, but at what point as a society do we recognize he contributed, antagonized, etc. At some point in life we invite disaster upon ourselves. At what point in a society to we hold people accountable for inviting disaster upon themselves?
A guy is burning 200 candles in a bedroom in his apartment when his door bell rings. He goes to answer the door but the draft from opening the door draws a curtain into the flame, the whole apartment burns down. He didn't intend to burn the apartment down but is charge and convicted of "criminal negligence." Oddly though the person ringing the door bell is not. We do hold people accountable for inviting disaster in a variety of circumstances.
Now to the "I dress like a whore and somehow I am surprised I am treated like a whore" situations. Now while I and no saine person would suggest that people would invite rape, lets take it back a few steps. If a woman is dressed in a slutty fashion (Lets say Halloween time) and she goes to a party. She comes home and complains to her friends that "every pig was just staring at me all night like I was a piece of meat". Now the question is, at what point do we hold ourselves accountable for the reactions of others? The study I think was just trying to find out what issues of the victim's behavior "invites disaster".
We as people do have a responsibility for our own safety which government largely has tried to abolish. Don't defend yourself, just wait for some cops to show up 2 hours later. It's not your fault it is societies fault, etc.
Most can agree that "Personal Responsibility" has been under attack for at least the last 30 years. At some point depending on the circumstances we have to look at the behavior of the victims to understand what "invites disaster". It probably isn't a great idea to dress like a hooker and walk through the worst part of town at 3 am. Common sense says, "your going to get raped" doing that. Obviously it isn't the victims fault they got raped; BUT the victim IS A MORON and a card carrying member of the Idiocracy. The fact they end up the victim I guess is the darwinian punishment for being an idiot as harsh as is it. Now back to bulling.
Thieves are responsible for theft
Yes but you have a lock on your door for a reason. If you leave it unlocked and get robbed you, the victim, made yourself the more desirable target versus someone without a locked door. If you live in a crappy neighborhood you are also more likely to get robbed. People would like to know "What can I do to get robbed less" and that is what I think there were trying to explain in the context of bullies.
Rapists are responsible for rape
Yes but again dressing like a hooker walking down University Ave. alone at 3 AM isn't going to help keep you safe
Bullies are responsible for bullying
Yes but walking your D&D playing, "I enjoy John Tesh", Glee Club member ass into the locker room isn't going to improve your chances either.
Crime or Anti-Social behavior is not a simple Me vs. You concept. The word SOCIAL gets glossed over. The inability to get along is a "We" issue
Out of teams that are 40-60% black you name 3 QBs that aren't white? Statistics state that in a broad sample the % should be normal. If, lets say 40% of the players in football are black, then 40% of the QB should be black. It's not racist to point out the obvious inequalities in life, it racist to ignore them.
Because the offensive linemen like it that way. Remember their job is to clobber the quarterback... often a white guy, often whom they generally outmass by more than a few pounds. It's cathartic for them.
Interesting theory... I never pondered that aspect of it. So I wonder in comparing the racial composition of the offensive and defensive line would you see a difference...
... because the lifespan of a cell phone has been around 2 years so far and no developers wants to invest in building apps for a platform that people throw in the trash every time they switch carriers...
I suppose I could drag myself to a friends house to watch an unsually large number of overweight black males and a few healthy black males in an American sporting event which for some reason is 3/4th black but over half of the quarterbacks are white and most of the team owners are white.
With few asians and very few hispanics I just find it hard to sit and start at a screen of fat black men lead by white quarterbacks as they run up and down a 100 yard field for no apparent reason other then the spectators amusement. I might as well watch fat people fight over a donut, it's just as absurd but substantally more entertaining. Especially if it were to the death.
But seriosuly does no one see the parelells here? You might as well call it the cotton bowl with the QB as Taskmaster and the team owners... oh wait....
Given that description does anything the NFL does make sense? Seriously how can you have so many black guys playing and so few of them quarterbacks? It's insulting. The NFL has been ass backwards for decades and I am sure decades to come...
So mod FLAMEBAIT, FUNNY, OFFTOPIC, or just plain sad....?
PIP Boy
The reality of wearable computer is context sensitive information. Not comprehensive feature sets.
You put the following into a wearable PiP Boy computer and they'll sell like mad:
SMS\Instant Messaging
Current Fuel Prices at bookmarked gas stations
RSS Feed (We have ad those on pagers for 3 decades)
TO DO Lists
Calendar\PIM
Digital Rolodex
Vitals (heart rate, blood sugar, pill timers)
Integrated cell phone to a head set or in-canal ear piece
Memory slot for MP3 player
Grocery Lists
Bank RSS feeds (think Mint.com for mobiles)
as well as remote car entry, light timers, etc so as you approach the car or home
2 USB ports with some storage space
GPS and Navigation.
Look at the wrist watch vs pocket watch.
Look at the cell phone vs the wrist watch.
I actually foresee a primary cpu until (pehaps shoulder mounted backed against the shoulder blade, see Macross Plus for a report with s similar looking deal) with context sensetive nodes (the main cpu links to various accessories like a watch, shoes, camera, etc.)
Yeah If I could get get a VATS until to go with that..
Not always, cost cutting measure and those meetings are, "We need to let 30 people go. Which department do we tell to let 8 people go?"
(incoming hypothetical base on real meetings)
Then I come in with the stats team and say, "Well based on bulk RSS feeds from we score the following department based on video game activity, "Programmers as 3200 entries. DB Group at 1200 entries. Marketing at 4100 entries. This are not a measure of performance but mearly a comparison of activity accumulated by department. The company median for activity is 800 entries. Based on social networking scores the Java team's activity score is 400 while the marketing department is over 60,000. Of which 40,000 can be attributed to LinkedIn activity. The DB group is 150 for social networking with the company median around 390."
Same goes for web reporting (where I got my start) looking as Squid proxy reports.
"The average user here at XYZ has 4100 HTTP hits across 9 web sites. The majority of web traffic is to CNN and ESPN. The following 10 people are the top of all HTTP traffic excluding CNN and ESPN related traffic.
From statistical analysis the following 100 users are over 2 standard devations in internet usage over the norm.
The following 10 users are 2 standard deviations lower then normal internet usage.
The following web sites have exclusive 1:1 relationships with users\ip address...."
I also did this for disk storage:
"Median home drive space: 1.45 GBs. The following users have disk usage greater then the median by 2 standard deviations." (Automagic weekly report)
We even did it by file type
"Average user per 100 files: 3.4 Word 4.1 Excel ... The following users deviate for the norm by an order of magnatude in any one or more catagories..."
This reporting is then used by management, admins, etc to make decisions. How they use\abuse data is up to them. What got me out of doing it was managers would start asking for data on specific people... looking for something bad. The quote that ended my career in that was, "No no just tell me the bad stuff in his report."
I don't do good or bad, what is... is.
But given 3 departments one with say 1200 hours worth of MMO playing, 1300, and 2600 it's easy to see which department might have a higher risk profile. Now given the mandate to reduce staff by 8% across the board which department is going to get "the lean" more?
Information has been weaponized since the bronze age and the Internet is a gold mine of data. Until there is some real privacy legistation don't be suprised to go into an HR department and see MMO and online game software on the shelves so they can log in and do some data mining.
Race, creed, religion, sexual preference is all protected classes of information but exceeding a 5% MMO time threshold for employment isn't (or any arbitrary threshold). Playing for more then 2.12 hours a week (5%) is just another possible red flag...
Fact: the fastest you can complete a WoW instance is going average out to about 10 minutes.
2.12 hours = 127.2 minutes.
Doing more then 13 instances a week is going to pop that flag. Even given the dates all I have to do is check and see if you've done more then 13 instances in a week. Red flag.
Given the average time of 1 hour for a raid, better not clear Naxx 10 AND EOE 10 in a week, that's 2 hours right there...
You can't beat into these people that correlation doesn't imply causation any more then you can explain that there is no direct evidence that the employee himself\herself is actually playing\surfing\etc. The abuse of data is the norm and the more data, the more abuse.
I do and each entry is going to be processed at an infraction, I've been in several conference calls already and I can personally attest to 8 people being let go for this already. Abusing sick time and telecommuting policies aren't "mediated" or "salvaged" or "given warnings". Your fired. The End. They call WiPro for offshore or Robert Half or Volt or another contracting house and you are replaced within 4 days. The end. (The costs as you point out though vary depending on the nature of work). Any idiot with a high school degree can answer a support center and drill down in databases.
1) At Will states could fire you for anything, I've seen the old Andersen Consulting fire a guy for "Unacceptable Attire" a.k.a he had a soup stain on his tie from lunch (Down town Mpls. We ate at a burger joint next door in the skyway across from the 5th st. Towers. His boss was screaming at the kid calling him a slob, it was sad really. The actual quote as best I remember was, "What kind of fucking slob are you. We bill you out to a client as $104 and they expect someone who can use a fucking napkin!" Glad they aren't around anymore (Thank you Enron...))
As far as for states that do not have at-will this is plenty of ammo and hard to dispute. You can dispute performance, you are hard pressed to dispute time stamped activities. As far as the STOP issue is concerned I've in 13 years never seen someone get a warning, first offense = last offense. In a business environment that is looking for any reason to hire cheaper labor there is little incentive to hold onto people.
2) You apparently have never had to sit on conference calls where employees are contesting for unemployment benefits. Getting fire for wrong-doing is a considerably different argument then "poor performance." One is termination the other is effectively getting laid off.
3) Which all end up getting argued in front of (metaphorically speaking) and arbitator at the local unemployment office or even internally in an HR meeting. Regardless of "At Will" employment there is still the issue of unemployment benfits and this is a gold mine for blocking benefits. So far as of 12/21/9 it's Gamers= 0, Employers= 3 (so far, 2 more calls next Tues. concerning the last 5).
Listen this is the type of arguments I am hearing:
You are provided paid sick time for health reasons. It is clear from the time stamps you were video gaming STARTING at 11 PM the night before (monday) and from the activities you were still playing at the least as of 3 AM the following day (tuesday). Your next game activity was at 6:08 AM. You emailed into work you were sick at 7:44 AM and the log indicates you continued to play until at least 7:07 PM CST. (A list of 30 achievements) This pattern also occurs on 4 other occasions. First question: If you were too sick to come into work Tuesday why were you up the entire night before gaming?
(usual excuse is "I was sick and couldn't sleep")
Why does't this pattern repeat itself on X,Y, and Z dates?
The next record in their file come up with:
"Due to bad weather you worked from home on XXX date. According to the time stamps while, on company time, you were gaming."
Now there are dozens of those entries listed.
"We terminated Y's employment due to frequent repeated abuse of company time and sick policy for the purposes of playing an MMO while on company time which was a clear violation of corporate policy."
I don't get into the pissing contests, I just handled the data aquisition and explain crap like what a Raid is and how long it takes to do a full clear of Naxx-25 (I frequently am brought into translate geekanese to corpspeak in exchange for a free lunch to former coworkers and employers, the iPhone as a telecommuting conversation was shall we say, entertaining but that is another story).
One manager said this: "It's like a speeding ticket. An employee who gets one occasionally... not a big deal. An employee who gets one every week shows a problem with following basic rules and policies. I do
IF you seriously want to fix copyright law why not start with this simple oath:
"I will not vote for a lawyer."
"I Will not vote for a Democrat"
"I will not vote for a Republican"
"I will not vote for a millionaire"
There problem solved, of course it requires the majority of people to take the oath... until then you get the government you deserve.
Since this went live I have gotten over 700 requests from employers wanting to contract me to compare those time stamps to select employees known to play WoW to ensure that they are not playing during work hours.
I wrote a perl script years ago that scans and dumps Lotus Notes email containing select keywords and back then it was targeted towards Everquest players but I'm sure they have since updated it for other games. It's trivial to correlate email to character info if you, for instance, raid with coworkers. (I also wrote a juggle-bot script for DAOC at the time that auto-juggled 3 instruments for bard-bots at the same time on contract...)
That is the reason for the time stamps plain and simple for I can see no reason to provide anything beyond the date (really does it matter you cleared Naxx at 1:00 PM or 10:00 PM last Thursday... only an employer would care) and I for one regret retiring since I could clear $75 and hour for cross-checking that kind of info.(Which is what I used to charge to check ... well... slashdot and other popular forums against employee info. Litigating a wrongful termination is expensive but slapping 4 pages of online posts that show deteriment to the company solves most of those claims and challenges.)
Keep this in mind: If your employer knows you play WoW and you have EVER played during the work week start checking the job boards my friend. They won't bother to check if you were on vacation, they'll simply red flag you none the less. There is a frenzy brewing and anyone looking for an excuse to show you the door this is a great little tool for that.
They walk on egg shells because China is the largest nuclear threat since the USSR was around and from a measure of hostility communism has killed more then 100 million people since it's incept. Between Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, Castro, and countless others they are giving religion a run for it's money for "killing in the name of"
Keeping the dragon fat and sleepy so it doesn't wake up sounds more a likely scenario...
p>another detrimental result of unbridled capitalism ....
Because Soviet Russian under communism did so much better in cinima....
I blame (INSERT YOUR LEAST FAVORITE PRESIDENT) !
Since (INSERT YOUR LEAST FAVORITE PRESIDENT) has\had the power to fix this; since the President of course runs everything and it to blame for everything and is responsible to fix everything. During (INSERT LEAST FAVORITE PRESIDENT) term(s) he's did nothing to fix this!
IMPEACH (INSERT LEAST FAVORITE PRESIDENT)!!!
3 things kill a discussion quicker then:
A: Comparing anything to Nazis. They are over used and there were plenty of other groups in centuries past that made them look tame. More importantly, unlike some groups in history... they lost so comparing anything to them implies eventual failure so the argument falls apart all the quicker.
B: Blaming a President for problems that take decades to fester and manifest. Same for giving credit.
C: Blaming every other congressman\woman\it but your own.
Now that we have that out of the way....
We know that nuclear power has been suppressed for the last 30 years for better or worse. Does this really come as a surprise?
We know that funding towards the expansion of the nuclear energy program has been frozen, cut, and reduced at varying degrees for over 30 years. No new plants to handle existing demand means no ability to decommission older ones.
There is some irony at a group that hated nuclear energy complains after decades of condemning nuclear energy find time to complain that it isn't getting enough support and maintenance... I won't even get into the green debate that has driven Greenpeace into a morass of identity crisis.
Lastly the reality and fantasy of nuclear energy are so disparate that the media tends to run with fantasy and science tends to side on over confidence leaving the public conflicted. Nuclear isn't free energy. You still have to mine, enrich, store, process, protect, and manage the fuel. How much energy does it take measured at the end of a fuel's life-cycle from start to finish is the real efficiency. It's like those crappy CFLs. Same carbon footprint as a conventional bulb once you factor in shipping from overseas for most of them, the mining and processing for Mercury and the manufacturing of the ballasts, etc.
Special interest groups on both sides are so intent on propaganda that reason, compromise, and sanity are not allowed. Digital Mind Think in an Analog world...
We need to develop nuclear energy solutions that are safe. Beaming energy down from space is not an option as it is too vulnerable to attack and we already have so much shit up there it's nearing the point that would make the Rift's scenario likely (the orbit was intentionally filled with micro-debris to shred everything coming in and going out...)
We need a comprehensive solution that stitches ALL the sources together allowing basic economics to dictate the most cost effective solutions over time.
I offer this:
In a corporate press release you state that your new product will launch on time and will be 15% cheaper then originally planned. Stocks go up.
In a corporate press release you state that your new product will launch late and will be 15% more expensive then originally planned. Stocks go down.
Information by a corporation, and information release by corporate officers is supposed to be accurate. By using leaks they are by passing basic accountability standards. Now:
In a leak you state that your new product will launch on time and will be 15% cheaper then originally planned. Stocks go up.
In a leak you state that your new product will launch late and will be 15% more expensive then originally planned. Stocks go down.
Lets assume, for the sake of argument that regardless of which leak you use it turns out that is was fabricated intentionally. Who is accountable? What audit applies to "official leaks?" Who is held accountable for the fabricated leak? As a shareholder I expect information that could be positive or detrimental to be vetted.
More importantly whomever gets the 'leak' initially has insider information on the company's activities. Imagine getting a leak that the i Tablet is getting canceled. That kind of behavior is getting very close to disclosing insider information to specific people (the leak's recipient) that the general public would not get. There are no checks or balances, the recipient could sit on the leak for 48 hours and broker insider information to others before publishing. An officer of the company requesting a leak is bad, real bad, and disclosing company confidential information to a select few is too close to insider trading that I as a shareholder am comfortable with.
s/companies/humans/g
s/ethics/morals/g
Wheh you are low on gas it starts an automated decent.
The problem is what is below you may not be convienent to land on like, other cars, people, houses, lakes, small churches, zoos, methodists, and forests. A road tends to physically constrain a vechicles options to the road, a shoulder, and occasionally a ditch...
Flying has too many issues for it to ever become a reality. There is a reason we train pilots to such a degree compared to a driver's license.
Ethics (n): The 'optional' set of rules companies occasionally engage when it is a benefit to the company but publically declaire they use at all times.
They aren't going to sit down, do 8 straight hours of work, then go home. You'll burn out even trying. People work better with short, frequent breaks taken at their own rate. So long as they get the work done, there's no problem. The only issue I see here is you- first off, grow some balls and refuse to work the extra hours. Trust me, you won't be rewarded for them. Secondly, unless someone isn't making their individual units of work, mind your own business. Or maybe even join in the next time they talk football, you might make a friend or two.
You are the reason we outsource. If I pay someone to work for 8 hours, they better work for 8 hours. So sit back and talk about football and waste company time. When you get laid off and can't find work, you can hang out at the unemployment office and chat about football some more.
My guess though is that if you're spending $80k per year on coffee, then it's for a hell of a lot of people, and that $80k expense (and a single job) IS tiny on that scale. If an $80k expenditure costs a job but improves morale of a few thousand employees enough to make up for it in productivity gains, then it's the right thing to do.
Wait, average cost for a cup of coffee is about $0.05 (Cheap coffee) so they are trying to say that annually they dole out 1,600,000 cups of coffee:
Adjusting for work week we get:
250 Working Days we get 6400 cups per day.
Lets look at the national average of 3.2 cups of coffee per person\per day:
That is about 2000 people they were buying coffee for. I'd be curious what the % of the budget is in contrast to leasing. Might be cheaper to have them all telecommute and buy their own coffee. Win Win
If I run out of gas in my car, it stalls and slows down to a stop which I can pull off to the side of the road.
When I run out of gas in my sky car and it stalls... err wait...
The larger the corporation the more per\user per\server to admin. Theseare my observation sover the last 12 years in my career:
For small corporations (less then 1 million) I usually see about 1/800 ratio for support\end user and 1/50 for servers.
For medium corporations (greater then 1 million but less then 80 million in revenue) I usually seea bour 1/2000 ratio and 1/150 for servers.
For large corporations (greater then 80 million) I see about 1/3800 and 1/250.
Support metrics are usually driven by "Call Times" including resolve times and hold times so depending on the scale of the businesses and nature it isn't so much support/staff ratio but rather hold time\support ratio. ITIL was crafted specifically to facilitate outsourcing Incident Management (password resets and all that less then 15 minutes crap) to lower cost, drill down labor and maintaining low hold times versus Problem Management which is the higher skill set.
Server ratio is largely due to "bucketing" of servers\apps to an admin resource (Think along the lines of an Account Rep). A.k.a Bob handles Apps A,B, and C along with Servers X, Y, and Z. So depending on the corporation you can have anywhere from 2-8 apps assigned to a single admin. Each application may maintain upwards of 5-12 servers depending on the size of the application. Smaller enterprises tend to have smaller "buckets". A typical LAMP stack may have 1-4 app servers, 1 NAS, 1 batch server, and possibly it's own database server. As you get larger those buckets share other buckets so you may have a team that handles just apache and another that handles just MYSQL\POSTGRES\etc. Those buckets can be huge. I have a team of 8 DBAs managing right now 2307 database instances. That is roughly 289 server instances per DBA. A simple table update may take 12 minutes for a structure update to process so median process time may factor into staffing requirements when concurrency isn't an option based on outage windows. Databases are virtual servers usually with a SAN hosted on hardware that is managed by another team but you can get the picture. By specializing administrative roles you can increase the nubmer of server or services supported by a person (power of scale) so the ratio of servers per tech tends to rise the bigger the corporation. In addition more expensive, comprehensive tools, become accessable to larger corporations (TIVOLI framework for instance.)
Based on your description you should need:
2 Call Center Incident Management crew
2 Problem Management crew
1 Senior Network Adminsitrator\Network Architect
3 Junior Network Administrators
1 of which is responsible for security\auditing
1 of which is responsible for maintenance
1 of which is special projects
All three should rotate these roles quarterly or annually as well as rotate 1 as a Problem Management staffer (the non-special project members)
So your total support crew should be about 8 people. You may also for off hours support want to outsource to a location 12 or 6 hours offset based on your location. (6 hours makes meetings more practical as you can usually get a meeting when one group is just getting in and the other is just getting ready to leave.)
A degree in engineering has one of the highest degrees of mobility in the world. Engineers are frequently dispatch across the globe for special projects from mining, bridge building, design, and implementation.
Much like churches and schools, predators go where there is prey. Churches and schools provide the perfect "fish in a barrel" environment, access to prey, authority, and oportunity. The same hold true for the preditor that preys on fear. They need to have an occupation that provides them the tools necessary. Not only would engineers have the skills to develop weapons and "Mac Guyver" solutions but ideally, the job environment endows the ability to travel without drawing attention. Engineers can travel all over for projects and confrences vs. say an automechanic. It would be suspicious for an average automechanic to have to travel to Prague for a conference but an engineer travelling abroad for their career sounds plausable.
I would suspect that fields that require or at the very least imply travel are prime targets for recruitment.