I know some of you may think that this is an "infringement on free speech" or whatever, but seriously. OPSEC is a major issue. When I was in Iraq (from Dec 2005 to Nov 2006), I blogged as often as I could. Our unit S2 (Intelligence Officer) asked any of us that were blogging, to provide him our urls. This was before we left CONUS (Continental United States). He would check the URL's once a week to make sure that there was nothing that violated OPSEC. I know, because I did something remarkably stupid a few days before we left. I posted the date of departure, which is a big no-no - troop movement information is strictly classified. In my defense, we had just come back from the club on base and I had a little too much to drink. But still, it was retarded. I got my ass chewed for that, and I redacted the info. But because of that I was very careful when blogging from Iraq.
Trust any article on India to have a stupid, bone-headed comment like this. No government in the world spends ALL its money on something like sanitation or solving poverty, before looking into something progressive.
You think there aren't programs to try and solve poverty in India? Think again. Of course poverty is a big problem in India. But that doesn't preclude India from trying to provide a good communication infrastructure to its citizens.
This translates to more revenue for the government, which can be used to alleviate poverty or starvation issues. It's not going to be a silver-bullet, but every little bit help. A statement like yours is truly ignorant.
Earth-like planet only 5-times the Earth's size...
That's like saying "I'm dating this girl who's like Jessica Alba. She's latina, has dark hair, and is only five times Jessica Alba's size! So you see, she is plainly like Jessica Alba!".
Heh.
Disclaimer: I am very excited by this news; I'm just being a smartass!
Sadly, the positive stories never make it to the news.
I served in Iraq for a year. I just got back last November.
So the Stars and Stripes that we got there did tell us about explosions and deaths going on outside. We also got CNN at the chow hall and from that we heard about what's going on outside too.
But let me tell you what people back home never hear of.
The mobile hospitals that the military takes around Iraq, curing Iraqi children and adult Iraqis of diseases. The media probably never showed the stories of the mobile eye-hospital that went around Iraq curing children with eye-ailments that would have made them blind unless they got proper medical attention. I bet the media hasn't even told you guys about the schools, hospitals, and bridges that the military builds.
Nope. You will never hear about these, because "150 Iraqis die in a car-bomb blast" is more sensational than "15 Iraqi children have their sight restored due to help from US military doctors".
Gen. Petraeus was just about to take over as we were leaving.
To be very honest I haven't been keeping up with what's been going on in Iraq that much. Mostly because I really wanted to get away from it for a while. I wish I could tell you what I really think of his handling, but I don't think I am in any position to say. The situation has been getting steadily worse since February of last year. That was about 3 months after we got there, and that was also when the Shia mosque was bombed. That was also when the "sectarian violence" or "civil war" (depending on whom you ask) started. As a Soldier, all I can say really is that we do the best we can, with what we have. As soon as we got there, all we tried to do was our job. Everything else was irrelevant. So I can tell you that Gen. Petraeus is probably trying to do the best he can. Sometimes it's easy for people to criticize (and I don't mean you personally, I just mean the "experts" on TV) from a distance without any idea of what's going on there.
What's happening now is a direct consequence of certain decisions made by Rumsfeld. Gen. Eric Shinseki requested at least 350,000 troops. Rumsfeld said he would provide only 150,000.
I serve in the Arizona Army National Guard. I just got back last November from a one-year stint in Iraq.
We used to get our internet access from an internet trailer that we had. We also had a (barely usable) wireless network set-up from our internet tent. As far as I know, a lot of the internet providers we used were satellite providers. In fact, we got so sick of the really crappy internet, that we shelled out money to buy a satellite dish, a satellite modem, and internet access. Split between the members of one platoon, it was about $60 a month. Our contact was an Iraqi who ran his business from off-base. He had a contact on-base that would help us out if we had any issues. It worked fine most of the time (unless we had severe dust-storms). The contact that the internet guy had on-base was actually an Iraqi electrical engineer. From what I heard, most businesses (and most people on the base) got their internet from satellite internet providers. It was pretty pricey and the only way you could manage it is if you got a huge bunch of people to sign up. In fact, that's what they used at the Internet tent. It was called FUBI Internet (For Us/US By Iraqis Internet).
This is the first time I'm hearing about this guy, or the company. I was stationed on Camp Liberty, which is a huge base in its own right. We were some hours away from Anaconda (I think 12? I don't remember rightly anymore). All the stuff we used there (that I know of, and my scope is just our internet trailer, internet tent, and platoon internet; the division MWR used internet but it was some connection from USAREUR (US Army Europe)) was from gulf (or greek or italian) satellite providers.
The interface did provide functionality, albeit without the burden being placed on the Database. PHP constructed the queries. The app I was writing at the time had a bunch of queries that were similar, only differing based on the parameters. Based on the parameters, slightly different queries would be constructed. This is what is usually done inside an SP (in addition to other stuff). My function would parse the parameter list and then build the appropriate query. So no, of course it's not a "true SP". I only emulated a part, and not the whole deal. I thought I made that clear in my original post.
Although it wasn't efficient, I hacked together a way to call "stored procedures" in MySQL and PHP.
Essentially I had a function callSP. You passed in the name of the SP's and whatever parameters you needed (as a string). Then I'd use PHP to build the necessary query and return $result. It worked for whatever I was doing... although it wasn't a "true SP".
Captain Kirk: Raise Shields! Mr. Spock: Captain, may I remind you that these new shields developed by British scientists rely on Magnetic fields and as a result... Captain Kirk: Not now Spock! Chekov: Shields up, Captain!
Captain Kirk: Spock! What happened? Mr. Spock: It appears that the magnetic shields have erased our hard-drives. Our ship is powerless. Captain Kirk: KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!!!!!!!!
Disclaimer: I have no idea if magnetic shields would really erase hard-drives, but oh well!;)
Four?! Wow - I only have one ZX Sinclair Spectrum. My dad got it in the early 80's and I remember we'd play games on our TV using the tape-recorder attachment. The games came as tapes. It was pretty awesome. It stayed in the closet for years, gathering dust. I took it with me when I left for college because I was sure it would eventually have some "antique value". It's a fun piece of hardware.
The human brain is pretty plastic. It can adapt to a lot of new conditions. In patients who are recently blind, or even in people who have been blindfolded for a while, the sense of touch and sound is amplified. Areas of the brain that were used for vision, are now used to interpret sound and touch. PET shows which parts of the brain are active.
Check out Phantoms in the Brain and .
To the parent: I'd mod you up as insightful if I had the points, buddy.
To the GP: If you're trying to get elected, then why not try and reach all potential voters? It makes sense. No need to bash the man just because he's trying to get votes. I am left of center but I definitely respect McCain because he is moderate in his views and he is a good politician.
I say this as a soldier. I also say this as one who went there and came back.
Not everyone is cut out to learn Arabic (which is why "Assalam alaikum", essentially "How are you doing?" in Arabic, turns into "Licka-me-salami". Admittedly, juvenile soldier humour) That's why we have translators and language specialists in the Army. The Army does have people who are skilled in Arabic, though not enough.
They do teach us basic Arabic phrases before we head out there. In fact, we carry a "language card" with us that has some common phrases.
To be brutally honest, it's not Arabic that will save us when we are there. It's Tactics and Procedures and it's technology. This is what we spent the bulk of our time on before we headed out there. In addition to some basic language and culture classes, to better understand the Iraqis. Who's going to survive longer in a firefight? A soldier who is well-trained on his weapon and whatever gadget he carries? Or a Soldier yelling out "Assalam Alaikum!" while bullets fly around him? Who's going to survive an IED? A soldier who has been trained how to react to such an event, or one who knows really good Arabic?
I honestly hate hearing these armchairs strategists who have absolutely no idea of the ground reality over there.
Do you honestly think that the Army doesn't field test any of these good gadgets? Do you think soldiers just blindly take their gadgets out to the field? If we have a gadget that's a piece of shit, we don't use it. We also have this thing called PMCS (Preventive Maintenance Checks and Services) where we check every piece of equipment before we head out and after we come back to base, for malfunctions and potential malfunctions. Your average Army Gadget is not like your pretty little iPod or Motorola Razr. It's pretty hardy and can take a pounding. Our GPS units are called PLGRS (Pluggers) and you beat the shit out of those and they still work. We have night-vision scopes and goggles that work extremely well in the heat and the sand.
The chilled glove sounds like a really cool idea, and even better if they can extend it to a body suit. Temperatures are insane over there. It's easily 100 to 110+ outside and when you have your body armour and other gear on, your temperature is probably 5-10 degrees more than that.
Modern warfare relies on better equipped soldiers in addition to language skills or cultural knowledge or whatever. So please, before you knock on these new ideas, consider what soldiers actually think.
Sony Suit: Well guys, looks like our DRM scheme tanked. But $1.5 is nothing. Muahaha. That's lunch money for me. What new stuff do you have? Researcher John: Well, we got this thing where we can put in subliminal messages into the music that our customers buy. Stuff like "P2P and Piracy rapes your mom!" or "Buy more sucky and/or mediocre music!" or "Mike is a fag!" Researcher Mike: Shut up John! Sony Suit: Oh that's good stuff! Anything else? Researcher John: Well, Mike has another idea. Researched Mike: (holds up cute puppy) We can threaten to kill this cute puppy if they pirate stuff! Sony Suit: EXCELLENT! (pets cute puppy) Woo's a cute puppy-wuppy! Woo's gonna die to pwotect our intewests!! Oooohh!! Sooo cute! Yesyouare!! Yesyouare!!
In the future (if there is one once we get our act together soon enough), the "solution" has to be a combination of solutions. Wind, Geothermal, Tidal, Nuclear (yes, Nuclear - although it's gotten a bad rap, it's actually a pretty good source), and perhaps Fusion, in addition to Hydrogen. The Earth's Oceans are a huge source of Deuterium, which can be used for Fusion (if we have it figured out), and possibly we could even use it as fuel (burning it). But I'm not sure of the effects of having slightly radioactive water vapor. Maybe it's not a good thing.
I know there's a lot of IFs, but the sooner we start...
Discovery had a good show today, outlining doomsday scenarios because of our overdependence on fossil fuels. It seems the Pentagon is actually seriously considering the implications to National Security from Global Warming and the rising cost of Oil, especially when it can involve droughts, and lots of war.
I had my personal website being spammed by spammers from Italy. The messages were all predictive, just a bunch of url's. Since they were so predictive, I simply filtered them out with a regex. I also added a captcha for good measure.
People want to find a damn scapegoat for everything. First it was "Violence on TV", then there's "Heavy Metal Music"! Oh my god! Will someone please think of the children! Seriously... you can get more violence in some religious texts than on TV, or Music. Computer Games, TV, or Music don't make people want to commit violence. This was used as an excuse for Columbine.
The fact is that we can owe it to either bad parenting, or maybe a more obvious fact. Homo sapiens is a territorial, aggressive, war-like species. For all our intelligence, we still like to beat the crap out of each other. This is obvious perhaps in more individuals than others.
So stop trying to find things to blame. Making laws are not going to make us less violent.
You know, what ever happened to Parenting? I hate all these "Oh will someone think of all the poor children!" laws. I understand that we need these laws to a certain extent, but come on. Seriously, if I was concerned that my children would be exposed to extremely violent games, or overtly sexual games, then I would monitor what I got them. Isn't that also why have ESRB ratings?
Increasingly, people are looking for scapegoats for violent or antisocial behaviour in children. Honestly, you can either chalk it up to bad parenting, or just the innate propensity of our species to violence.
So like I said, it's all bullshit. I'm glad this was struck down.
Slashdot Mirror
To quote billg: That's the dumbest fucking idea I've ever heard!
but the lack of journalistic quality control here at /. is pathetic.
You must be new here...
I know some of you may think that this is an "infringement on free speech" or whatever, but seriously. OPSEC is a major issue. When I was in Iraq (from Dec 2005 to Nov 2006), I blogged as often as I could. Our unit S2 (Intelligence Officer) asked any of us that were blogging, to provide him our urls. This was before we left CONUS (Continental United States). He would check the URL's once a week to make sure that there was nothing that violated OPSEC. I know, because I did something remarkably stupid a few days before we left. I posted the date of departure, which is a big no-no - troop movement information is strictly classified. In my defense, we had just come back from the club on base and I had a little too much to drink. But still, it was retarded. I got my ass chewed for that, and I redacted the info. But because of that I was very careful when blogging from Iraq.
All in all, I think it's worth it.
Shameless plug to my blog.
I may be a bit harsh on this post, so sorry.
Trust any article on India to have a stupid, bone-headed comment like this. No government in the world spends ALL its money on something like sanitation or solving poverty, before looking into something progressive.
You think there aren't programs to try and solve poverty in India? Think again. Of course poverty is a big problem in India. But that doesn't preclude India from trying to provide a good communication infrastructure to its citizens.
This translates to more revenue for the government, which can be used to alleviate poverty or starvation issues. It's not going to be a silver-bullet, but every little bit help. A statement like yours is truly ignorant.
Earth-like planet only 5-times the Earth's size...
That's like saying "I'm dating this girl who's like Jessica Alba. She's latina, has dark hair, and is only five times Jessica Alba's size! So you see, she is plainly like Jessica Alba!".
Heh.
Disclaimer: I am very excited by this news; I'm just being a smartass!
Sadly, the positive stories never make it to the news.
I served in Iraq for a year. I just got back last November.
So the Stars and Stripes that we got there did tell us about explosions and deaths going on outside. We also got CNN at the chow hall and from that we heard about what's going on outside too.
But let me tell you what people back home never hear of.
The mobile hospitals that the military takes around Iraq, curing Iraqi children and adult Iraqis of diseases. The media probably never showed the stories of the mobile eye-hospital that went around Iraq curing children with eye-ailments that would have made them blind unless they got proper medical attention. I bet the media hasn't even told you guys about the schools, hospitals, and bridges that the military builds.
Nope. You will never hear about these, because "150 Iraqis die in a car-bomb blast" is more sensational than "15 Iraqi children have their sight restored due to help from US military doctors".
Gen. Petraeus was just about to take over as we were leaving.
To be very honest I haven't been keeping up with what's been going on in Iraq that much. Mostly because I really wanted to get away from it for a while. I wish I could tell you what I really think of his handling, but I don't think I am in any position to say. The situation has been getting steadily worse since February of last year. That was about 3 months after we got there, and that was also when the Shia mosque was bombed. That was also when the "sectarian violence" or "civil war" (depending on whom you ask) started. As a Soldier, all I can say really is that we do the best we can, with what we have. As soon as we got there, all we tried to do was our job. Everything else was irrelevant. So I can tell you that Gen. Petraeus is probably trying to do the best he can. Sometimes it's easy for people to criticize (and I don't mean you personally, I just mean the "experts" on TV) from a distance without any idea of what's going on there.
What's happening now is a direct consequence of certain decisions made by Rumsfeld. Gen. Eric Shinseki requested at least 350,000 troops. Rumsfeld said he would provide only 150,000.
Thank you for your support. It means a lot to us.
I serve in the Arizona Army National Guard. I just got back last November from a one-year stint in Iraq.
We used to get our internet access from an internet trailer that we had. We also had a (barely usable) wireless network set-up from our internet tent. As far as I know, a lot of the internet providers we used were satellite providers. In fact, we got so sick of the really crappy internet, that we shelled out money to buy a satellite dish, a satellite modem, and internet access. Split between the members of one platoon, it was about $60 a month. Our contact was an Iraqi who ran his business from off-base. He had a contact on-base that would help us out if we had any issues. It worked fine most of the time (unless we had severe dust-storms). The contact that the internet guy had on-base was actually an Iraqi electrical engineer. From what I heard, most businesses (and most people on the base) got their internet from satellite internet providers. It was pretty pricey and the only way you could manage it is if you got a huge bunch of people to sign up. In fact, that's what they used at the Internet tent. It was called FUBI Internet (For Us/US By Iraqis Internet).
This is the first time I'm hearing about this guy, or the company. I was stationed on Camp Liberty, which is a huge base in its own right. We were some hours away from Anaconda (I think 12? I don't remember rightly anymore). All the stuff we used there (that I know of, and my scope is just our internet trailer, internet tent, and platoon internet; the division MWR used internet but it was some connection from USAREUR (US Army Europe)) was from gulf (or greek or italian) satellite providers.
The interface did provide functionality, albeit without the burden being placed on the Database. PHP constructed the queries. The app I was writing at the time had a bunch of queries that were similar, only differing based on the parameters. Based on the parameters, slightly different queries would be constructed. This is what is usually done inside an SP (in addition to other stuff). My function would parse the parameter list and then build the appropriate query. So no, of course it's not a "true SP". I only emulated a part, and not the whole deal. I thought I made that clear in my original post.
Isn't it not true that you do not want to not install Vista on your Dell computer? Cancel or Allow?
Thanks, Captain Obvious :)
My point was that I was only able to emulate the interface. Not the actual part (obviously) of the database doing the job.
Although it wasn't efficient, I hacked together a way to call "stored procedures" in MySQL and PHP. Essentially I had a function callSP. You passed in the name of the SP's and whatever parameters you needed (as a string). Then I'd use PHP to build the necessary query and return $result. It worked for whatever I was doing... although it wasn't a "true SP".
Captain Kirk: Raise Shields!
;)
Mr. Spock: Captain, may I remind you that these new shields developed by British scientists rely on Magnetic fields and as a result...
Captain Kirk: Not now Spock!
Chekov: Shields up, Captain!
Lights flicker, ship powers down. Emergency lights light up**
Captain Kirk: Spock! What happened?
Mr. Spock: It appears that the magnetic shields have erased our hard-drives. Our ship is powerless.
Captain Kirk: KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!!!!!!!!
Disclaimer: I have no idea if magnetic shields would really erase hard-drives, but oh well!
Four?! Wow - I only have one ZX Sinclair Spectrum. My dad got it in the early 80's and I remember we'd play games on our TV using the tape-recorder attachment. The games came as tapes. It was pretty awesome. It stayed in the closet for years, gathering dust. I took it with me when I left for college because I was sure it would eventually have some "antique value". It's a fun piece of hardware.
The human brain is pretty plastic. It can adapt to a lot of new conditions. In patients who are recently blind, or even in people who have been blindfolded for a while, the sense of touch and sound is amplified. Areas of the brain that were used for vision, are now used to interpret sound and touch. PET shows which parts of the brain are active. Check out Phantoms in the Brain and .
To the parent: I'd mod you up as insightful if I had the points, buddy.
To the GP: If you're trying to get elected, then why not try and reach all potential voters? It makes sense. No need to bash the man just because he's trying to get votes. I am left of center but I definitely respect McCain because he is moderate in his views and he is a good politician.
I say this as a soldier. I also say this as one who went there and came back.
Not everyone is cut out to learn Arabic (which is why "Assalam alaikum", essentially "How are you doing?" in Arabic, turns into "Licka-me-salami". Admittedly, juvenile soldier humour) That's why we have translators and language specialists in the Army. The Army does have people who are skilled in Arabic, though not enough.
They do teach us basic Arabic phrases before we head out there. In fact, we carry a "language card" with us that has some common phrases.
To be brutally honest, it's not Arabic that will save us when we are there. It's Tactics and Procedures and it's technology. This is what we spent the bulk of our time on before we headed out there. In addition to some basic language and culture classes, to better understand the Iraqis. Who's going to survive longer in a firefight? A soldier who is well-trained on his weapon and whatever gadget he carries? Or a Soldier yelling out "Assalam Alaikum!" while bullets fly around him? Who's going to survive an IED? A soldier who has been trained how to react to such an event, or one who knows really good Arabic?
I honestly hate hearing these armchairs strategists who have absolutely no idea of the ground reality over there.
Do you honestly think that the Army doesn't field test any of these good gadgets? Do you think soldiers just blindly take their gadgets out to the field? If we have a gadget that's a piece of shit, we don't use it. We also have this thing called PMCS (Preventive Maintenance Checks and Services) where we check every piece of equipment before we head out and after we come back to base, for malfunctions and potential malfunctions. Your average Army Gadget is not like your pretty little iPod or Motorola Razr. It's pretty hardy and can take a pounding. Our GPS units are called PLGRS (Pluggers) and you beat the shit out of those and they still work. We have night-vision scopes and goggles that work extremely well in the heat and the sand.
The chilled glove sounds like a really cool idea, and even better if they can extend it to a body suit. Temperatures are insane over there. It's easily 100 to 110+ outside and when you have your body armour and other gear on, your temperature is probably 5-10 degrees more than that.
Modern warfare relies on better equipped soldiers in addition to language skills or cultural knowledge or whatever. So please, before you knock on these new ideas, consider what soldiers actually think.
Sony Suit: Well guys, looks like our DRM scheme tanked. But $1.5 is nothing. Muahaha. That's lunch money for me. What new stuff do you have?
Researcher John: Well, we got this thing where we can put in subliminal messages into the music that our customers buy. Stuff like "P2P and Piracy rapes your mom!" or "Buy more sucky and/or mediocre music!" or "Mike is a fag!"
Researcher Mike: Shut up John!
Sony Suit: Oh that's good stuff! Anything else?
Researcher John: Well, Mike has another idea.
Researched Mike: (holds up cute puppy) We can threaten to kill this cute puppy if they pirate stuff!
Sony Suit: EXCELLENT! (pets cute puppy) Woo's a cute puppy-wuppy! Woo's gonna die to pwotect our intewests!! Oooohh!! Sooo cute! Yesyouare!! Yesyouare!!
We need to stop relying on one single solution.
In the future (if there is one once we get our act together soon enough), the "solution" has to be a combination of solutions. Wind, Geothermal, Tidal, Nuclear (yes, Nuclear - although it's gotten a bad rap, it's actually a pretty good source), and perhaps Fusion, in addition to Hydrogen. The Earth's Oceans are a huge source of Deuterium, which can be used for Fusion (if we have it figured out), and possibly we could even use it as fuel (burning it). But I'm not sure of the effects of having slightly radioactive water vapor. Maybe it's not a good thing.
I know there's a lot of IFs, but the sooner we start...
Discovery had a good show today, outlining doomsday scenarios because of our overdependence on fossil fuels. It seems the Pentagon is actually seriously considering the implications to National Security from Global Warming and the rising cost of Oil, especially when it can involve droughts, and lots of war.
Now imagine if I have a Beowulf cluster of these... I could instruct them to print out THE PERFECT (NAKED) WOMAN! Bwahahaha!
People say I should go out and meet women but I think this is so much cooler!
No Charge! Shouldn't be too hard to justify the cost of this research! ;)
Anyways, pretty good!
I had my personal website being spammed by spammers from Italy. The messages were all predictive, just a bunch of url's. Since they were so predictive, I simply filtered them out with a regex. I also added a captcha for good measure.
Causative Link? Bullshit!
People want to find a damn scapegoat for everything. First it was "Violence on TV", then there's "Heavy Metal Music"! Oh my god! Will someone please think of the children! Seriously... you can get more violence in some religious texts than on TV, or Music. Computer Games, TV, or Music don't make people want to commit violence. This was used as an excuse for Columbine.
The fact is that we can owe it to either bad parenting, or maybe a more obvious fact. Homo sapiens is a territorial, aggressive, war-like species. For all our intelligence, we still like to beat the crap out of each other. This is obvious perhaps in more individuals than others.
So stop trying to find things to blame. Making laws are not going to make us less violent.
You know, what ever happened to Parenting? I hate all these "Oh will someone think of all the poor children!" laws. I understand that we need these laws to a certain extent, but come on. Seriously, if I was concerned that my children would be exposed to extremely violent games, or overtly sexual games, then I would monitor what I got them. Isn't that also why have ESRB ratings?
Increasingly, people are looking for scapegoats for violent or antisocial behaviour in children. Honestly, you can either chalk it up to bad parenting, or just the innate propensity of our species to violence.
So like I said, it's all bullshit. I'm glad this was struck down.
This sounds like a lot of Hot Air! Pshh...