Slashdot Mirror


User: Amata

Amata's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
51
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 51

  1. Uses for the agents on U.S. Army To Ramp Up Anthrax Purchasing · · Score: 1

    From the blurb: Although the Sterne strain is not thought to be harmful to humans and is used for vaccination....

    Due to FDA concerns, the Army has started and stopped its anthrax vaccination program several times. They're probably just ramping it back up again.

  2. Slashdotted? on BBC Offers Beethoven Symphonies for Download · · Score: 1

    (nt)

  3. Nope, no civilians up there on S. Korea Considers Using Armed Robots Along DMZ · · Score: 1

    Actually, at a point not terribly far north of Seoul, only military (and resident) traffic may pass. There's still people that work the fields and whatnot, (the Koreans are damn good at farming any remotely flat chunk of land) and people that go on tours of the DMZ.

    I actually had to go up there recently, and noted that there was quite the impressive collection of wildlife running around (especially given that I'm stuck in Seoul, where pigeons are about all you see)

    That being said, a real easy way of IDing friend or foe: assuming you can track every humanoid, the ones that started on the other side of the border, are definitely foe. The ones that entered the field of vision on this side, need to be kept under watch.

  4. If you want symbolism.... on U.S. Kids Don't Understand First Amendment · · Score: 1

    Wash the flag.

    Not my quote.

    Also, as stated, respectfully burning the flag is the only proper way to dispose of the flag.

  5. NCOs on Geeks in Management? · · Score: 1

    Not all NCOs are incompetent blockheads, though a good few are.

    Not all soldiers are dedicated. Trust me. I work around plenty of them. The contract they signed only means so much to them. There's ways of saying screw you Army if they really want to. I've seen it happen.

    The good NCOs are the ones who do a lot of the things mentioned above. Take care of their soldiers needs. My CSM is always telling us "if your NCOs aren't taking care of you, make them take care of you." They are a buffer between the angry officer with a jacked up phone because he decided he is smart enough to mess with it, and teh soldier who has to go out there and fix it.

    If you want to know how an NCO should be, look up something called the Creed of the Noncommissioned Officer. One thing that was stated earlier really stuck out as being familiar. The earlier poster said that the manager's job is to make sure the job gets done, and that his people get taken care of. "My two greatest responsibilities will be uppermost in my mind: the accomplishment of my mission and the welfare of my soldiers."

    Some people just get to the higher ranks because all the smarter people got out of the military, and they had to promote *somebody*. You do the math.

  6. Re:The Point? on Overclocking Calculators? · · Score: 1

    Let me just pull out my PC while I'm sitting in Calculus class...

    My high school issued out graphing calculators to the students in classes that needed them. Didn't even have enough for everyone, so some people had to share. Sucks when students live in different cities from each other.

  7. Re:pictures on Opportunity Rover Encounters Its Own Heat Shield · · Score: 3, Funny

    Close.

    C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\My Pictures\Mars Rover Mission

    Cuz all those NASA geeks just *have* to be Admin, you know :p

  8. The difference is... on Arthur C. Clarke Reports From Sri Lanka · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Ok, maybe this is just showing how my brain works, but...

    There is a very great difference between a human's knowing intent to cause pain and suffering, and nature once again reminding us who is really the boss.

    With willful human intent, you have the questions of who did it, why, how, where did the money come from, are we going to go after their bosses, what scale is the conflict going to be on...?

    With a natural disaster, the conversation is more along the lines of "told ya we shoulda had a better warning system" and "told ya we shoulda had a stricter building code" or whatever.

    Don't get me wrong, in both cases there is the question of "is my relative OK?" I'm not quite that machine-minded. Also the "who's going to clean this up?" If they weren't already spread thin as hell, I wouldn't be surprised if the answer to the last one was US Soldiers. Believe me, the government keeps tabs on stuff the public could care less about/doesn't know about.

  9. In Korea... on Build a House Out of Recycled Cardboard · · Score: -1

    A lot of houses are built (re)using the wooden forms.

    Seriously.

  10. Re:korean spam killing korean smtp traffic on In Korea, Email Is Only For Old People · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It is also worth noting that the Korean government knows damn well that they have these issues, including some serious piracy issues. Hell, I can walk 20 feet from a military installation and find a vendor hawking movies that haven't hit theatres yet.

    That being said, it can be interesting trying to get certain internet traffic *into* South Korea. There is a firewall around Korea, and it can suck for an American who is used to not having a whole lot of filters on their stuff. I've noticed this mostly with some games/their associated websites.

    That and getting sent to www.google.co.kr automatically gets kinda annoying after a while.

  11. Re:how is that different from other companies on NYT on EA Games · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Walmart/McDonalds/factory work can consist of entirely OJT. You don't need the skills coming in. You can bounce around all the time and still move up the food chain because of your prior experience.

    In programming, and IT in general, you need some form of experience before you even go in. Chances are, you've already paid a buttload for training, too. College, certs, something.

    That and, as mentioned, because IT work is being considered "white collar" these days, those extra hours you put in mean jack when it comes to your paycheck. I've seen companies bend over backwards to arrange "blue collar" workers' schedules such that they will *not* have to pay overtime.

  12. Re:Good on NYT on EA Games · · Score: 1

    IMO, there's a difference between a crappy entry-level position, and a crappy entry-level position where you are so run into the ground that you want to get out of the industry that you previously loved.

  13. Or there's my experience on What is the Tech Jobs Situation in Late 2004? · · Score: 1

    Army:

    BCT: 9 weeks (13 now I hear) learn about muscles that you never knew existed.

    AIT: Go to Georgia, learn really basic crap about computers by rote memorization, not a whole lot you can actually apply

    1st Duty station: Get placed in a job where I'm the only one who is qualified to do what I do. THE computer person for the company. I am the helpdesk for about 120 personnel, a good dozen of which have horrible English since they hire techs from the local populace, spread out over 5 sites. I'm also responsible for keeping these systems patched, free of spy/adware, keep the users trained, ordering new equipment, requesting IP addresses, circuits, whatever else my guys need to do their jobs from the appropriate people in other companies. And put in trouble calls for the warranty guys to come out and fix hardware issues when an actual part breaks.

    On top of that are the usual details: CQ, duty driver, post police, laundry room cleanup, leaf-picking-up of barracks lawn... sucking up to VIPs that come visit... And some occasionally cool details, like running the computer that controls what is seen during briefings during a field exercise. Video walls are neato.

    The only thing I use a buffer for anymore is getting the ground in grime out of the floor. It doesn't have to get waxed. I make damn sure only the smokers pick up cigarette butts - I aint touching anything anyone stuck in their mouth.

    Mind you, all of the 1st duty station stuff has just been my 1st year. Yay me.

  14. In fact... on Outsourcing To Rural America · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The "media standard" for how American is spoken is based off of the educated midwestern accent.

  15. Re:The real reason it's not a threat on Microsoft Says Firefox Not a Threat to IE · · Score: 1

    Do you absolutely need to know how to change the oil because, these days, you can pay someone to do it for you? No.

    Do you need to know that the oil needs changing? Yes.

    ____________

    Do you need to know what is the "best" antivirus product, how it works, where it gets its updates from... No.

    Do you need to know that you had better have an antivirus, and could probably ask/pay a buddy to set one up for you? Yes.

  16. And you got modded troll again. on Outsourcing Information Security · · Score: 1

    Who'd a thunk it?

  17. Re:Who needs to be contacted 24/7? on France to Allow Cell Phone Jamming · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Which leads me to one, main question .

    My cell phone is always, always set to vibrate. I NEVER set it to ring. When a call does come in, I excuse myself from the theatre, and answer the call in the thatre lobby. Why doesn't everybody else do the same thing? Simple, common sense.

    Because common sense isn't.

  18. Who needs to be contacted 24/7? on France to Allow Cell Phone Jamming · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How about emergency personnel, such as EMTs and Firemen? I'm from a rural area, where these people work on a voluntary basis. They get paid per call, so they have "normal" lives, they just get called in for emergencies. There's noone sitting in an office 24/7 just in case something happens, other than the person to relay the calls to the actual workers.

    A buddy of mine who is a volunteer fireman has a pager at all times. I've seen him have to take off from all sorts of situations to respond to calls. That would be one person that I *hope* would still be able to get his calls in the middle of a movie theatre.

    Other than that I can't think of any other examples, tho.

  19. Re:Requires IE... on GMail Drive Shell Extension · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm thinking that this may have something to do with just how deeply IE has been embedded into the modern Windows OS. Explorer and Internet Explorer are nearly indistinguishable, each being able to do the functions of the other. So I'm thinking that whatever makes Explorer able to do this is a "feature" of Internet Explorer.

    But that's just a guess, with zero basis in actual knowledge of how this crud works.

  20. Only pirates use mods? on Xbox 2 Concept Designs Leaked? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Situation for ya. Not even hypothetical:

    I am an American citizen. Good ol' USA. Or something. I have a job that has me living in South Korea right now. So I either have to own 2 of every hardware that reads region-encoded media to deal with all of my perfectly legally purchased DVDs and games, both here and back in the states, or I can just buy one hardware and force it to read all regions. A nice byproduct being that I can get this one hardware to also read more types of media, but that's neither here nor there.

    In the near future my job could easily have me working in Europe. That's another region. So I'd either have to buy more hardware to deal with that region, or just use my regionless hardware that I already had.

    Doesn't sound plausible? Just ask any US Soldier.

  21. Military knows P2P is a weakness on P2P Leaks Surprises · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In my corner of the military, at least. On a regular basis, all systems connected to the WAN are scanned - for viruses, for messenger programs, for P2P programs, and anything else that shouldn't be on those computers. Finding any of those programs can get a computer kicked off the network, and anyone found actually using those programs can get their right to use government systems revoked. I've already had it happen to one person who was looking at pr0n on a government system.

    Now, were these files coming from government systems, or from people who were taking their work home with them? Its a lot harder to control what people do at home. A lot of things I deal with are SBU - sensitive but unclassified. Meaning that the media the information is on (CPU, floppy disk, file cabinet...) doesn't have to have a little sticker stating its classification, but its still information that needs to be protected, such as listings of SSNs.

    The government has already made Norton and MacAffee's antivirus programs available for home use to qualifying personnel for free, but just how much can they do about what people do at home?

    Also, if a person were using unauthorized software on a government system, the correct action to take would be to contact that person's chain of command. First it would help if you knew who that person was, or at least what unit they were in, but that's just that.

  22. Re:I've wanted to do this with windows... on FourHead: One PC, Four Users · · Score: 1

    Okay, but given that you already have a plain old Windows PC, and you would like to upgrade it to be able to handle 2 monitors/mice/keyboards, how can it be done?

  23. Where does CERT actually say this? on Dept. of Homeland Security Says to Stop Using IE · · Score: 1

    I've been digging around the CERT website, and I can't find a single place where CERT actually says that the recommendation for this vulnerability is to use a browser other than IE.

    Anyone care to remove the blindfold from my eyes?

  24. Re:Finally on Sony Projector Gets Bright Images From Black Screen · · Score: 2, Funny

    That's almost not funny. The amount of PowerPoint involved in a briefing involving several Generals during an exercise is astounding.

    However, now those powerpoints can be shown on a nice "panel" instead of having to buy a bunch of big monitor type things to form a video wall that was used to replace old projectors.

  25. US Army does this on Passwords That Should Never Be Used · · Score: 2, Informative

    The US Army (and the rest of the military) is in fact going to this type of approach. Every soldier, for an ID card, is issued a card with a smart chip. This card, among other uses, is inserted into a smart card reader that is hooked up to every Army AIS (around here at least) to log on. The old user/pass method may also be used to log on, but I'm not sure how long that will last.

    Brief overview may be found here: army.carlisle.mil