I've had my Roomba for several months now and have to completely disagree with this.
It's extremely useful, and does a fine job of cleaning the floors. It's not as strong as a big upright (which stands to reason, given that it is considerably smaller), but it makes up for the power differential with repetition. When Roomba finishes a room, it's as clean as it would be if I had done it myself. It takes longer, but of course I don't have to expend any effort, which seems a good trade off to me.
Roomba can get stuck like in a lobster trap, but a minimum of effort makes a room Roomba-friendly. Mine doesn't get stuck in the chair legs, but maybe my chairs are bigger than yours. A lot of my furniture has high enough clearance for the robot to get under to clean. Cables are a problem but this is no different from a normal vacuum cleaner.
The only major limitation I see is the battery. It holds about enough charge to do 2 small/ medium size rooms or one large room. Recharging takes about 12 hours. At first this bugged me, because I expected to vacuum the house in one go. But I ended up just shifting tactics; I do a couple of rooms in a night, then the others the next night. Turns out, the floors are a lot cleaner now doing a few Roomba jobs a week than vacuuming the whole house at a time once or twice a month.
Post all your screeds about how the military and wargames are evil and wrong and shouldn't be supported here, so everyone else can have a nice, topical discussion.
Thanks.
Just a slight correction, Blake's 7 does not date from the early 80's, it dates from 1978. I remember watching the first season at age 9, but unfortunately never saw any of the other seasons as we moved back to the States at the end of 1978.
A pity because the big sci-fi show in the States when I got back was Battlestar Galactica, which I thought was much inferior, even if the effects were a lot better.
When they came for the Kazaa users, I said nothing because I wasn't a Kazaa user;
When they came for the Grokster users, I said nothing because I wasn't a Grokster user;
When they came for the Gnutella users, I said nothing because I wasn't a Gnutella user;
When they came for me there was no one left to speak for me.
Yes modern carriers have thick hulls. One Exocet probably wouldn't do it. How about ten? They really aren't that expensive considering you get to sink one of the most expensive ships in history.
Carriers are sitting ducks. The navy knows it. Its just a big target out there waiting to have a few dozen of the latest surface to vessel missiles launched at it.
Where were you when the Navy was planning its ship purchases? You could have set them straight by pointing out how stupid it is to spend billions of dollars on carriers that are, as everyone knows, just big targets easily taken out by a dozen exocets. What were those squiddies thinking?
Or, the Navy actually thought a lot more about this problem than you did, and protects those carriers with layered defenses and a battle group that keep the ASMs away. Could be.
The President carries a significant amount of weight with his party in Congress. So while he may not constitutionally be in charge of spending, he definitely influences it. A case in point is the economic policy of his administration. He convinced congress to increase spending and lower taxes... you can't ignore that it was the President who goaded/inspired them to do it.
Yes, and Reagan's party did not control the Congress while he was in office (the Senate only for part of it, and the Democrats controlled both house for the rest). So perhaps Reagan had evil mind control technology to befuddle the opposition party?
By and large, most programmers are total idiots, especially government contractors. When you're hiring for government jobs , you're not getting Microsoft/Apple/Adobe quality engineers applying, you're getting DeVry grads. If programming was so easy it would be unionized and low-paid. There just aren't enough good programmers running around and lots of layed off can't find a job crappy ones
As others have pointed out, it's more the development process before coding starts that's usually the problem here than the quality of programmers themselves. If you have a broken development process, good coders aren't going to save you if your project is sufficiently complex.
That said, there is a problem with hiring quality people at the moment for government contract jobs. The problem is with security clearances; the system is unbelievably backlogged - I know people who have been waiting since late 2000 to get their clearances renewed. As a result, contractors in many places are hiring only people who have existing clearances, and that translates often into hiring people whose best qualification is their clearance, not their technical skills. Some IT projects, like NMCI, they are really scraping the bottom of the barrel.
But from my experience software often starts spiraling out of control during the requirements process. I have a little theory that bureaucrats are the main people to blame for this as they have a knack for wanting to add software features to simplify their work and complicate the software
Bingo, that's it. I'm involved in a government software project at this very moment, and we are having a hell of a time because the requirements process produced confused, conflicted and inappropriate requirements. IMHO, it's not so much bureaucrats slapping things on (though there's that), but that the process is (a) largely conducted without the input of technical people who could provide early sanity checks; and (b) multiple organizations each with their own agendas get involved and the result becomes this ungainly mutant composite of requirements.
I'm sorry, you don't get to define what blackmail is
And you do?
These guys do.
Honestly, what part of "give in to our demands or we'll do this?" that Free-X said didn't you get? That's the very definition of blackmail.
I have to disagree. The Terminatrix was a pale shadow of Robert Patrick's truly terrifying T1000. He really seemed unstoppable and utterly implacable. He also seemed to be totally inhuman. T-X on the other hand... as you point out, she doesn't make use of half her powers, is easily distracted from her mission, and just lacked that evil je na sais quoi that Patrick had. I was never nervous or anxious during her attempts to kill the good guys.
As far as the movie goes, I had the feeling from the performances that none of the actors really had the hearts in it like in T2 and T1. The performances were without conviction. The movie felt rushed, like it was (as others have pointed out) an extended car chase scene. It seemed like a series of elaborate chases and fights strung together with hardly any plot at all.
I enjoyed the effects, but on the whole, the movie was a disappointment.
I really think they should not have made a sequel. It just seemed so contrived after the way T2 ended (how about the corny Sarah Connor coffin chock full o' guns? please). As a result, I cared much less about what was happening in the movie. I wish the studio had decided to throw that money at an original sci fi production. There are a ton of excellent sci fi novels never put to screen, they could start there.
You must have been out of the service for a while. You are only partly correct about the non-wintel stuff. In the units I have been assigned to (recce) we have used lots of Sun, SGI, and other propritary stuff from Lockheed and some other vendors. But we have plenty of wintel running on warfighting networks all over the place, including sending intel reports, directing remote assets, and *GASP* actually navigating our recce assets. And believe me, it is unsettling knowing that the navigator is up front on a Gateway laptop with Win95 telling him where to fly.
I'll be out 8 years this August. I do work for the military now as a contractor, but far from the pointy end (USJFCOM). Most of the really important stuff we work with is on Unix machines. Even if a lot of stuff gets migrated over to Wintel, I still wouldn't be terribly worried. All the good stuff is on the SIPRNET or JWICS, and those are quite secure.
You know, after reading your comment, it occuries to me that you not only know very little about how US military networks are protected, let alone configured, nor how the US military does business at all. From your comments, you'd think that the entire US Army is on one network, completely unprotected and open to the outside world. I can assure you, the military's network security is very robust.
But really, your comment is alien to reality I don't know where to begin to refuting it. I'll just leave at this - if some foe could pull off an attack like you described, they're so elite that they'd be able take down networks not running on Windows. But I don't see that happening, as your scenario is about as credible as this one: "Well, what would we do if Al-Qaida snuck ninjas into every US command post in the world and the White House, and at precisely the same moment, killed everyone from the President on down to all the generals. What would we do then, HUH?"
Then I started working in Corporate America, and found out that I was dead-wrong. Nobody literally gets on the firing line to blow off ammo before the fiscal year ends, but I've seen so many instances of ass-covering, ego driven "strategies" and just complete incompetence out here in the private sector. In fact, I've come to realize that while the Army's procurement system does suck ass through a straw, in many ways the overall efficiency of the Army (at least at the unit level) is far greater than that of most corporations.
My experience exactly.
I'm in an officer school, the only function for having a database is for keeping track of student information. I already have an access database in place with an oracle database slowly replacing it. I don't need or want SQL and NONE of my users need it, either. we don't need to buy a shit load of liscenses at slightly above prices, what we need is to break that chunk of cash up and give it to the units so that their Sysadmins and IMOs can determine what the unit needs.
Next time you run into a situation like that, thank the US Congress. The reason you can't just go out and get that good deal on exactly the machines you need is because of the arcane purchasing regulations courtesy of the Congress. You see, to you you are just a clerk at some unit trying to get some computers you need to do your job. But to the business community, you are an agent of the US government. And all of those other people who you could have bought computers from but didn't, well, they're mad because an institution they pay for with their taxes didn't even give them a fair look. So, for the government to buy anything, it has to go through very complex purchasing regulations that ensure that purchases (at least those above a certain level) are competed for, competitors know the government's need before hand, etc. This is to keep things "fair." Actually, there is a lot more to it, but thinking about it makes my head hurt so I'm going to stop. I deal with this stuff too much as it is, both when I was in the Army and now as a government contractor.
Here's a story that sheds some light on how absurd it can get. Once upon a time in Germany, I got named the Field Ordering Officer (FOO) on an exercise and I was authorized to make emergency purchases of things we might need that were critical to the exercise, obtainable locally, but couldn't get it in time through the Army supply system. It was very cold and wet and out battalion HQ got set up in an extremely muddy place. So the colonel tells me, go out to a farm and buy a few truckloads of straw, so we can put it down on the ground in the tents.
This was harder than you might think. Most of the farmers in the area didn't have any to spare at that time of year, but finally I found one guy who, as it happens, sold straw to the German army base nearby. So we did the deal, paid him lots of cash, and then drove up 2 5 ton trucks to get all the straw and loaded it up. Well, a week later, the colonel decides he needs more. The only problem is, the regulations forbade me from buying from the same guy twice since it would show government favoritism toward one supplier, something that's forbidden for purchases of this nature. He was the only guy in the area who had any! So the farmer called his brother, he came along, and then we "bought" the straw from the brother. Totally absurd and divorced from reality on the ground, but there it is.
Furthermore, when you use these systems to deploy nukes and other highly damaging weapons, do you want a stable system or do you rely on windows?
Man, the ignorance of/. never ceases to amaze me. Now hear this: the US military DOES NOT USE MS WINDOWS BOXEN TO CONTROL NUCLEAR WEAPONS. Or, any sort of weapon for that matter. The military, like most large institutions, has a need for office automation apps, e-mail, and the like. And for this, they use Windows and Office. Warfighting software on warfighting networks is proprietary and doesn't run on Wintel machines.
Trust me, Mr. Random Slashdot Microsoft Basher, the military is smarter than you when it comes to figuring out its software needs and how to use computers in warfighting. Please adjust your facile and wrongheaded criticisms accordingly.
The Navy already uses Windows almost exclusively for its day-to-day computing, and it seems to be working out alright.
Thanks for pointing that out - in fact, pretty much all the services do, and it's nothing new. Back in 1993 and 1994 we were using MS-DOS and Windows 3.1, and Word/Excel. The only difference then was that we were using Harvard Graphics for presentation software instead of Powerpoint.
A long, running series of sanity smashing and soul crushing encounters with Telekom customer service over a period of about 10 years, in different areas of the country. I've never experienced anything near as bad with any other company I've done business with.
In Virginia, T-Mobile is ok if you stick to Northern Va, Richmond, Hampton Roads and the interstates connecting them. Stray but a little, and the coverage is crap. Verizon has much better coverage, and I get much better signal strength than the folks I know who have T-Mobile.
Unfortunately, T-Mobile seems to be the only provider offering Bluetooth phones and WiFi hotspots. Verizon is total crap in this area; according to the Verizon marketroids I talked to, they have vague plans to eventually offer Bluetooth phones, but probably not for another year. Another year! Cripes, they are behind.
I'm considering getting a new phone with T-mobile and just idling on the Verizon (or my gf could use that phone) since I've got like 18 more months of Verizon commitment. I want a Bluetooth phone so bad I'd spend the extra on T-Mobile, even if they are a US subsidary of my arch-enemy, Deutsche Telekom, the worst telco in the industrialized world.
SOME military vehicles use diesel. Others use gasoline. Still others use Kerosene.
The ONLY piece of (US) military equipment to still use gasoline (this is as of 1991, and US Army at that) is the M2 Burner Unit, used in Mobile Kitchen Trailers (MKTs). No vehicles use gasoline, unless you count civilian US government cars and vans from the TMP motor pool. But those aren't tactical vehicles. When I was in the S&T Troop (Supply and Transport) of the 11th ACR, our basic load to supply the Regiment was 110,000 gallons of JP-8, and 600 gallons of gasoline (we called it "MOGAS") in a wee little pod for the cooks.
EVERYTHING else these days, and I do mean everything, burns JP-8, which is a kerosene-based jet fuel. Humvees use it, 5 ton trucks use it, M1A2 tanks use it, helicopters use it - and all the jet aircraft in the Air Force and Navy/USMC use it.
Still, Mr. Duffbeer is not wrong with his comments as most tactical ground vehicles were originally designed to use diesel. You can use JP-8 in lieu of diesel anywhere. And JP-8 is burned in tactical vehicles for the same reasons diesel was - it is a MUCH safer fuel to handle than gasoline (and JP-8 is many times safer than older jet fuels like the dread JP-4).
JP-8 is a remarkable fuel. IIRC, the Bundeswehr was switching to it too when I was stationed over there (91-95).
No. The fellow who said something unkind on the Internet has the right to post it on his OWN web page. At present, the slandered party must find another web page. They are NOT allowed by the mighty WebMasters to post on the same page that slandered them, so they have less freedom of speech. They have to find another forum. This is rather like using a megaphone at a cocktail party. The mighty WebMasters demand the right to censor other contributions by exclusion. What this law is about is making the Internet public property, not the private domain of the mighty WebMasters, who expect to say what they want, in public and one way (i.e. without allowing the other party to respond in the same forum).
Look man, get your terms straight first. SLANDER is a deliberately false statement made with malicious intent to do harm to another's reputation; it is done VERBALLY. LIBEL is the printed version of SLANDER, and since we're talking about the World Wide Web here, LIBEL is the term you should use, not SLANDER. LIBEL is an actionable crime under the law, whether in the US or in Germany. If someone has been libeled, they take the libelous party to court. Here is a legal definition of libel with some examples. I'm sure Google can help you find more.
So now that we've gotten LIBEL out of the way, that leaves the rest of the objectionable bits, which essentially amount to you not being able to deal with other people's exercise of free speech. Free speech is the right to speak your mind; this right is not abridged by consideration of others. In a free society, you have to deal with the fact that not everyone is going to say things that please you. In no way is free speech constituted so that you can only say what you like if you repeat others' objections to your opinion. Bear in mind that we are not talking about news organizations here, we are talking about people's own web pages and blogs.
And that's just on principle. Then there are the practical nightmares of trying to enforce this law effectively on the general population.
Finally... "the mighty WebMasters?" WTF is that, some kind of comic book villain? Despair, mortals! The WebMaster is come to destroy you! Bwahahaha! Seriously, a web master is just a name for a guy who updates and administers a web page. In the case of someone's blog or personal web page, that's the owner. So do you think people should no longer have rights over their own web pages?
So you say, that a victim of libel should not have the right to fight back, just because *you* think that the victim has lost it's reputation anyway? hmmm...not a really strong argument:-)
Did you bother to read my post? Try again, this time for comprehension. Note that I state that slander and libel are crimes (and are considered such by law), and properly fought back against in the courts. Where it will matter, and damaged reputations can actually be vindicated.
Slashdot Mirror
I've had my Roomba for several months now and have to completely disagree with this.
It's extremely useful, and does a fine job of cleaning the floors. It's not as strong as a big upright (which stands to reason, given that it is considerably smaller), but it makes up for the power differential with repetition. When Roomba finishes a room, it's as clean as it would be if I had done it myself. It takes longer, but of course I don't have to expend any effort, which seems a good trade off to me.
Roomba can get stuck like in a lobster trap, but a minimum of effort makes a room Roomba-friendly. Mine doesn't get stuck in the chair legs, but maybe my chairs are bigger than yours. A lot of my furniture has high enough clearance for the robot to get under to clean. Cables are a problem but this is no different from a normal vacuum cleaner.
The only major limitation I see is the battery. It holds about enough charge to do 2 small/ medium size rooms or one large room. Recharging takes about 12 hours. At first this bugged me, because I expected to vacuum the house in one go. But I ended up just shifting tactics; I do a couple of rooms in a night, then the others the next night. Turns out, the floors are a lot cleaner now doing a few Roomba jobs a week than vacuuming the whole house at a time once or twice a month.
Post all your screeds about how the military and wargames are evil and wrong and shouldn't be supported here, so everyone else can have a nice, topical discussion.
Thanks.
Just a slight correction, Blake's 7 does not date from the early 80's, it dates from 1978. I remember watching the first season at age 9, but unfortunately never saw any of the other seasons as we moved back to the States at the end of 1978.
A pity because the big sci-fi show in the States when I got back was Battlestar Galactica, which I thought was much inferior, even if the effects were a lot better.
Ah, an email address and a phone number connected to actual people.
Have at 'em.
When they came for the Kazaa users, I said nothing because I wasn't a Kazaa user;
When they came for the Grokster users, I said nothing because I wasn't a Grokster user;
When they came for the Gnutella users, I said nothing because I wasn't a Gnutella user;
When they came for me there was no one left to speak for me.
He is, in fact, one of those idiots.
Lest we think that only Republicans engage in this, the third boat of the Seawolf class submarine is the USS Jimmy Carter (SSN 23).
Yes modern carriers have thick hulls. One Exocet probably wouldn't do it. How about ten? They really aren't that expensive considering you get to sink one of the most expensive ships in history.
Carriers are sitting ducks. The navy knows it. Its just a big target out there waiting to have a few dozen of the latest surface to vessel missiles launched at it.
Where were you when the Navy was planning its ship purchases? You could have set them straight by pointing out how stupid it is to spend billions of dollars on carriers that are, as everyone knows, just big targets easily taken out by a dozen exocets. What were those squiddies thinking?
Or, the Navy actually thought a lot more about this problem than you did, and protects those carriers with layered defenses and a battle group that keep the ASMs away. Could be.
The President carries a significant amount of weight with his party in Congress. So while he may not constitutionally be in charge of spending, he definitely influences it. A case in point is the economic policy of his administration. He convinced congress to increase spending and lower taxes... you can't ignore that it was the President who goaded/inspired them to do it.
Yes, and Reagan's party did not control the Congress while he was in office (the Senate only for part of it, and the Democrats controlled both house for the rest). So perhaps Reagan had evil mind control technology to befuddle the opposition party?
By and large, most programmers are total idiots, especially government contractors. When you're hiring for government jobs , you're not getting Microsoft/Apple/Adobe quality engineers applying, you're getting DeVry grads. If programming was so easy it would be unionized and low-paid. There just aren't enough good programmers running around and lots of layed off can't find a job crappy ones
As others have pointed out, it's more the development process before coding starts that's usually the problem here than the quality of programmers themselves. If you have a broken development process, good coders aren't going to save you if your project is sufficiently complex.
That said, there is a problem with hiring quality people at the moment for government contract jobs. The problem is with security clearances; the system is unbelievably backlogged - I know people who have been waiting since late 2000 to get their clearances renewed. As a result, contractors in many places are hiring only people who have existing clearances, and that translates often into hiring people whose best qualification is their clearance, not their technical skills. Some IT projects, like NMCI, they are really scraping the bottom of the barrel.
But from my experience software often starts spiraling out of control during the requirements process. I have a little theory that bureaucrats are the main people to blame for this as they have a knack for wanting to add software features to simplify their work and complicate the software
Bingo, that's it. I'm involved in a government software project at this very moment, and we are having a hell of a time because the requirements process produced confused, conflicted and inappropriate requirements. IMHO, it's not so much bureaucrats slapping things on (though there's that), but that the process is (a) largely conducted without the input of technical people who could provide early sanity checks; and (b) multiple organizations each with their own agendas get involved and the result becomes this ungainly mutant composite of requirements.
I'm sorry, you don't get to define what blackmail is
And you do?
These guys do.
Honestly, what part of "give in to our demands or we'll do this?" that Free-X said didn't you get? That's the very definition of blackmail.
I have to disagree. The Terminatrix was a pale shadow of Robert Patrick's truly terrifying T1000. He really seemed unstoppable and utterly implacable. He also seemed to be totally inhuman. T-X on the other hand... as you point out, she doesn't make use of half her powers, is easily distracted from her mission, and just lacked that evil je na sais quoi that Patrick had. I was never nervous or anxious during her attempts to kill the good guys.
As far as the movie goes, I had the feeling from the performances that none of the actors really had the hearts in it like in T2 and T1. The performances were without conviction. The movie felt rushed, like it was (as others have pointed out) an extended car chase scene. It seemed like a series of elaborate chases and fights strung together with hardly any plot at all.
I enjoyed the effects, but on the whole, the movie was a disappointment.
I really think they should not have made a sequel. It just seemed so contrived after the way T2 ended (how about the corny Sarah Connor coffin chock full o' guns? please). As a result, I cared much less about what was happening in the movie. I wish the studio had decided to throw that money at an original sci fi production. There are a ton of excellent sci fi novels never put to screen, they could start there.
You must have been out of the service for a while. You are only partly correct about the non-wintel stuff. In the units I have been assigned to (recce) we have used lots of Sun, SGI, and other propritary stuff from Lockheed and some other vendors. But we have plenty of wintel running on warfighting networks all over the place, including sending intel reports, directing remote assets, and *GASP* actually navigating our recce assets. And believe me, it is unsettling knowing that the navigator is up front on a Gateway laptop with Win95 telling him where to fly.
I'll be out 8 years this August. I do work for the military now as a contractor, but far from the pointy end (USJFCOM). Most of the really important stuff we work with is on Unix machines. Even if a lot of stuff gets migrated over to Wintel, I still wouldn't be terribly worried. All the good stuff is on the SIPRNET or JWICS, and those are quite secure.
You know, after reading your comment, it occuries to me that you not only know very little about how US military networks are protected, let alone configured, nor how the US military does business at all. From your comments, you'd think that the entire US Army is on one network, completely unprotected and open to the outside world. I can assure you, the military's network security is very robust.
But really, your comment is alien to reality I don't know where to begin to refuting it. I'll just leave at this - if some foe could pull off an attack like you described, they're so elite that they'd be able take down networks not running on Windows. But I don't see that happening, as your scenario is about as credible as this one: "Well, what would we do if Al-Qaida snuck ninjas into every US command post in the world and the White House, and at precisely the same moment, killed everyone from the President on down to all the generals. What would we do then, HUH?"
Then I started working in Corporate America, and found out that I was dead-wrong. Nobody literally gets on the firing line to blow off ammo before the fiscal year ends, but I've seen so many instances of ass-covering, ego driven "strategies" and just complete incompetence out here in the private sector. In fact, I've come to realize that while the Army's procurement system does suck ass through a straw, in many ways the overall efficiency of the Army (at least at the unit level) is far greater than that of most corporations.
My experience exactly.
I'm in an officer school, the only function for having a database is for keeping track of student information. I already have an access database in place with an oracle database slowly replacing it. I don't need or want SQL and NONE of my users need it, either. we don't need to buy a shit load of liscenses at slightly above prices, what we need is to break that chunk of cash up and give it to the units so that their Sysadmins and IMOs can determine what the unit needs.
Next time you run into a situation like that, thank the US Congress. The reason you can't just go out and get that good deal on exactly the machines you need is because of the arcane purchasing regulations courtesy of the Congress. You see, to you you are just a clerk at some unit trying to get some computers you need to do your job. But to the business community, you are an agent of the US government. And all of those other people who you could have bought computers from but didn't, well, they're mad because an institution they pay for with their taxes didn't even give them a fair look. So, for the government to buy anything, it has to go through very complex purchasing regulations that ensure that purchases (at least those above a certain level) are competed for, competitors know the government's need before hand, etc. This is to keep things "fair." Actually, there is a lot more to it, but thinking about it makes my head hurt so I'm going to stop. I deal with this stuff too much as it is, both when I was in the Army and now as a government contractor.
Here's a story that sheds some light on how absurd it can get. Once upon a time in Germany, I got named the Field Ordering Officer (FOO) on an exercise and I was authorized to make emergency purchases of things we might need that were critical to the exercise, obtainable locally, but couldn't get it in time through the Army supply system. It was very cold and wet and out battalion HQ got set up in an extremely muddy place. So the colonel tells me, go out to a farm and buy a few truckloads of straw, so we can put it down on the ground in the tents.
This was harder than you might think. Most of the farmers in the area didn't have any to spare at that time of year, but finally I found one guy who, as it happens, sold straw to the German army base nearby. So we did the deal, paid him lots of cash, and then drove up 2 5 ton trucks to get all the straw and loaded it up. Well, a week later, the colonel decides he needs more. The only problem is, the regulations forbade me from buying from the same guy twice since it would show government favoritism toward one supplier, something that's forbidden for purchases of this nature. He was the only guy in the area who had any! So the farmer called his brother, he came along, and then we "bought" the straw from the brother. Totally absurd and divorced from reality on the ground, but there it is.
Furthermore, when you use these systems to deploy nukes and other highly damaging weapons, do you want a stable system or do you rely on windows? /. never ceases to amaze me. Now hear this: the US military DOES NOT USE MS WINDOWS BOXEN TO CONTROL NUCLEAR WEAPONS. Or, any sort of weapon for that matter. The military, like most large institutions, has a need for office automation apps, e-mail, and the like. And for this, they use Windows and Office. Warfighting software on warfighting networks is proprietary and doesn't run on Wintel machines.
Man, the ignorance of
Trust me, Mr. Random Slashdot Microsoft Basher, the military is smarter than you when it comes to figuring out its software needs and how to use computers in warfighting. Please adjust your facile and wrongheaded criticisms accordingly.
The Navy already uses Windows almost exclusively for its day-to-day computing, and it seems to be working out alright.
Thanks for pointing that out - in fact, pretty much all the services do, and it's nothing new. Back in 1993 and 1994 we were using MS-DOS and Windows 3.1, and Word/Excel. The only difference then was that we were using Harvard Graphics for presentation software instead of Powerpoint.
No, this was when I lived in Germany. I'm hoping T-Mobile doesn't take after Momma ;)
A long, running series of sanity smashing and soul crushing encounters with Telekom customer service over a period of about 10 years, in different areas of the country. I've never experienced anything near as bad with any other company I've done business with.
In Virginia, T-Mobile is ok if you stick to Northern Va, Richmond, Hampton Roads and the interstates connecting them. Stray but a little, and the coverage is crap. Verizon has much better coverage, and I get much better signal strength than the folks I know who have T-Mobile.
Unfortunately, T-Mobile seems to be the only provider offering Bluetooth phones and WiFi hotspots. Verizon is total crap in this area; according to the Verizon marketroids I talked to, they have vague plans to eventually offer Bluetooth phones, but probably not for another year. Another year! Cripes, they are behind.
I'm considering getting a new phone with T-mobile and just idling on the Verizon (or my gf could use that phone) since I've got like 18 more months of Verizon commitment. I want a Bluetooth phone so bad I'd spend the extra on T-Mobile, even if they are a US subsidary of my arch-enemy, Deutsche Telekom, the worst telco in the industrialized world.
SOME military vehicles use diesel. Others use gasoline. Still others use Kerosene.
The ONLY piece of (US) military equipment to still use gasoline (this is as of 1991, and US Army at that) is the M2 Burner Unit, used in Mobile Kitchen Trailers (MKTs). No vehicles use gasoline, unless you count civilian US government cars and vans from the TMP motor pool. But those aren't tactical vehicles. When I was in the S&T Troop (Supply and Transport) of the 11th ACR, our basic load to supply the Regiment was 110,000 gallons of JP-8, and 600 gallons of gasoline (we called it "MOGAS") in a wee little pod for the cooks.
EVERYTHING else these days, and I do mean everything, burns JP-8, which is a kerosene-based jet fuel. Humvees use it, 5 ton trucks use it, M1A2 tanks use it, helicopters use it - and all the jet aircraft in the Air Force and Navy/USMC use it.
Still, Mr. Duffbeer is not wrong with his comments as most tactical ground vehicles were originally designed to use diesel. You can use JP-8 in lieu of diesel anywhere. And JP-8 is burned in tactical vehicles for the same reasons diesel was - it is a MUCH safer fuel to handle than gasoline (and JP-8 is many times safer than older jet fuels like the dread JP-4).
JP-8 is a remarkable fuel. IIRC, the Bundeswehr was switching to it too when I was stationed over there (91-95).
No. The fellow who said something unkind on the Internet has the right to post it on his OWN web page. At present, the slandered party must find another web page. They are NOT allowed by the mighty WebMasters to post on the same page that slandered them, so they have less freedom of speech. They have to find another forum. This is rather like using a megaphone at a cocktail party. The mighty WebMasters demand the right to censor other contributions by exclusion. What this law is about is making the Internet public property, not the private domain of the mighty WebMasters, who expect to say what they want, in public and one way (i.e. without allowing the other party to respond in the same forum).
Look man, get your terms straight first. SLANDER is a deliberately false statement made with malicious intent to do harm to another's reputation; it is done VERBALLY. LIBEL is the printed version of SLANDER, and since we're talking about the World Wide Web here, LIBEL is the term you should use, not SLANDER. LIBEL is an actionable crime under the law, whether in the US or in Germany. If someone has been libeled, they take the libelous party to court. Here is a legal definition of libel with some examples. I'm sure Google can help you find more.
So now that we've gotten LIBEL out of the way, that leaves the rest of the objectionable bits, which essentially amount to you not being able to deal with other people's exercise of free speech. Free speech is the right to speak your mind; this right is not abridged by consideration of others. In a free society, you have to deal with the fact that not everyone is going to say things that please you. In no way is free speech constituted so that you can only say what you like if you repeat others' objections to your opinion. Bear in mind that we are not talking about news organizations here, we are talking about people's own web pages and blogs.
And that's just on principle. Then there are the practical nightmares of trying to enforce this law effectively on the general population.
Finally... "the mighty WebMasters?" WTF is that, some kind of comic book villain? Despair, mortals! The WebMaster is come to destroy you! Bwahahaha! Seriously, a web master is just a name for a guy who updates and administers a web page. In the case of someone's blog or personal web page, that's the owner. So do you think people should no longer have rights over their own web pages?
So you say, that a victim of libel should not have the right to fight back, just because *you* think that the victim has lost it's reputation anyway? hmmm...not a really strong argument :-)
Did you bother to read my post? Try again, this time for comprehension. Note that I state that slander and libel are crimes (and are considered such by law), and properly fought back against in the courts. Where it will matter, and damaged reputations can actually be vindicated.