I am HUMINT, not SIGINT, but we are warned about not collecting on US persons. Military Intelligence personnel also have to watch a yearly video about it and "intel oversight", a related, if not the same, issue. That video also talks about the dangers of government or administration decrees about collecting on US persons, such as in the era of McCarthy-ism, when "un-American" activities were a valid reason to illegally collect on people.
You haven't seen infrared printers, infrared keyboards, mice, webcams? Your TV remote works by shining an infrared LED. Gameboy systems used to have infrared emitters/sensors so that they could communicate with each other.
I'd hate to be the terrorist assigned to hang onto the wing until the plane reaches cruising altitude, just so you could pour corrosive whatever onto the wings (before the corrosive substance blows off completely).
Liquid bombs are possible, but very difficult to pull of, involving a number of steps that must be completed while in the air. You can't just board a plane and push a button. But then again, difficult as that is, it's also not a walk in the park to coordinate four planes crashing into prominent US landmarks within minutes of each other. They managed to at least make three out of four.
Are you serious? A key point of the classification system is that the system itself is not classified.
As for "Ultra", perhaps you are referring to the British code name for all documents and intelligence related to the broken Enigma machines:
There are also compartments, or "code words", which pertain to specific projects, and are used to more easily manage which individuals require certain information. Code words are not levels of classification themselves, but a person working on a project may have the code word for that project added to his file, and then will be given access to the relevant documents. Code words may also label the sources of various documents; for example, there are code words used to indicate that a document may break the cover of intelligence operatives if its content becomes known. The WWII code word ULTRA identified information found by decrypting German ciphers, such as the Enigma machine, and which â" regardless of its own significance â" might inform the Germans that Enigma was broken if they became aware that it was known.
It is a form of the modern "compartmentalization". The information is still classified Top Secret, but only the members of certain intelligence communities may have access to that information. Look around on the comments, there are plenty of good posts on this already. There is no "above top secret" or similar classification.
Five candidates were invited to the FOX Republican Primary Debates, and Ron Paul was not one of them. Yeah, I was a crazy Ron Paul-ite, but it really convinced me that Ron Paul was being kept hidden away like GP was suggesting. I didn't follow Obama's primaries, so I don't know about that.
Parent is entirely correct. More generally, it's classified "top secret" with "caveats" that limit it further. It's essentially top secret, but with extra rules. For example, "Top Secret//NOFORN" means "This is classified 'top secret' and it is not to be released to foreign nations."
As for the parent, I don't know what "talent" is, but "keyhole" is a kind of imagery spy satellite. I'll bet "talent" is a SIGINT spy satellite, but I'm not going to look it up right now.;)
... the Air Force, and other branches of the military, tend to treat people as interchangeable, identical cogs, rather than individuals with aptitudes, skills, and backgrounds that vary widely.
How do you build a system that tracks intangible qualities such as "backgrounds" and "skills"? Then, how do you match every person up with their perfect job, or at least with a better job than randomness would have given them? I'm pretty sure this is an NP-hard problem, akin to the "optimal seating arrangement" P!=NP example.
In the military, there are xxx number of different jobs, depending on which service you go into. When you enlist, you choose a job and it is part of your enlistment contract. Everybody who chose that job goes through the exact same job training with the exact same course tasks and requirements. Personnel are designed to be cogs, because when you are dealing with an organization with 800,000 members, and thousands of units that each have a specific requirement for the type and number of people assigned to them, you cannot do much better than this.
Anyway, there are many different jobs in the military services, and not all of them deal with "grunt work" or physical laber. Check out military intelligence in any of the services. If you're dead set on the Air Force, then check out the "Cryptolinguist". They send you to Monterrey, CA for a year and a half to learn a foreign language. Right now, however, the Air Force is in the process of down-sizing by a crazy amount, so it is harder than normal to get into the Air Force and get the job you want. It is far easier to get the high-proficiency job you want in another service right now.
Have you tried talking to the other service's recruiters? They're mostly all the same. But all said, you should look at your non-military options first and evaluate what you really want to do. The military is a good organization with great benefits, but depending on what you want to accomplish in life it may not be the right choice.
Sadly, they totally ignored requests to make its pockets/collar/etc similar to the much improved Army ACU, and subsequently...
You do NOT want pockets similar to the ACUs. The ACUs are not improved by any stretch of the imagination. The velcro is annoying to deal with, and wears out very quickly with heavy use. The BDUs that the Army and Air Force used to wear were perfect in material and design. The only thing that is worth changing is the camouflage pattern.
You really, really do not want to wear ACUs. It's not the end of the world that we have to wear them, but they simply are not up to par as far as worthwhile military uniforms go.
the whole "we need to spy on other countries because they're spying on us" mentality is very similar to the saying, people who steal always assume that everyone else steals. in the end this attitude simply creates a more hostile world, damaging international relations.
Try to look at it from a game theory perspective, such as that of the Prisoner's dilemma.
That doesn't mean I'm happy with it, but you're completely ignoring the reality of the world. Some people won't get along for other people for many reasons, sometimes for stupid reasons like nationalism or crazy ideas about racial identity. Then every once in a while one of these people get chosen/elected to the head of a nation and are able to use millions of people's power to follow through with their ideas and thoughts on how the world should look to them.
Once you are in the door, it is about two years of schooling (not by the military) to teach you what the hell to do.
Which job is this that takes two years of schooling? My Army AIT took six months of training, which is already out of the norm, and then a further year and a half of language training.
That depends on the strength of tidal gravity on the sun as caused by the earth, although I would imagine that Jupiter and other planets would have a large effect than the earth on the sun's rotation.
You are actually converting between: "the earth's ACTUAL magnetic north pole", and "the non-magnetic, man-defined north pole of the globe"
It has to do with the north on your map not actually corresponding with the true, magnetic north pole. That is to say, exactly "up" on your map is not exactly "north", due to how the cartographer set it up. There are different magnetic deviations depending on where you are in the world and how your map system is set up, but I assure you that none of the magnetic deviation written on your map sheet is from giant stores of iron ore in the Earth's crust. That's not to say that there aren't magnetic anomalies caused by underground metal deposits, but that's not marked on maps and that's not why they have magnetic deviations between the compass and the map.
These phones CAN work on all those networks. So this restriction is completely artificial.
There are SO many things in the cell phone industry that are arbitrary restrictions (like $0.50 text messages after you max your limit). Many other industries have this as well, like purposefully underclocked processors, and so forth. None of these are illegal, so I don't see why artificially tying the iPhone to AT&T would be considered illegal under current legal definitions.
I think the iPhone/AT&T locking is terrible. However, how does releasing a phone that is only licensed to work with a single cell carrier who is subsidizing part of the cost have to do with being a monopoly? Even if they weren't subsidizing the cost, why is this against the law?
Note that I'm not saying it SHOULDN'T be against the law. Rather, I'm asking how it can be considered illegal under the laws we have today. I'm curious about the legal standpoint on this issue.
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I am HUMINT, not SIGINT, but we are warned about not collecting on US persons. Military Intelligence personnel also have to watch a yearly video about it and "intel oversight", a related, if not the same, issue. That video also talks about the dangers of government or administration decrees about collecting on US persons, such as in the era of McCarthy-ism, when "un-American" activities were a valid reason to illegally collect on people.
You haven't seen infrared printers, infrared keyboards, mice, webcams? Your TV remote works by shining an infrared LED. Gameboy systems used to have infrared emitters/sensors so that they could communicate with each other.
I'd hate to be the terrorist assigned to hang onto the wing until the plane reaches cruising altitude, just so you could pour corrosive whatever onto the wings (before the corrosive substance blows off completely).
Liquid bombs are possible, but very difficult to pull of, involving a number of steps that must be completed while in the air. You can't just board a plane and push a button. But then again, difficult as that is, it's also not a walk in the park to coordinate four planes crashing into prominent US landmarks within minutes of each other. They managed to at least make three out of four.
I can't complain about idle being on the front page if I do that.
XKCD is good to go, but this story has no business on the default home page.
Oops, I was wrong on this point, and it is an important distinction to be made.
As for "Ultra", perhaps you are referring to the British code name for all documents and intelligence related to the broken Enigma machines:
There are also compartments, or "code words", which pertain to specific projects, and are used to more easily manage which individuals require certain information. Code words are not levels of classification themselves, but a person working on a project may have the code word for that project added to his file, and then will be given access to the relevant documents. Code words may also label the sources of various documents; for example, there are code words used to indicate that a document may break the cover of intelligence operatives if its content becomes known. The WWII code word ULTRA identified information found by decrypting German ciphers, such as the Enigma machine, and which â" regardless of its own significance â" might inform the Germans that Enigma was broken if they became aware that it was known.
It is a form of the modern "compartmentalization". The information is still classified Top Secret, but only the members of certain intelligence communities may have access to that information. Look around on the comments, there are plenty of good posts on this already. There is no "above top secret" or similar classification.
Five candidates were invited to the FOX Republican Primary Debates, and Ron Paul was not one of them. Yeah, I was a crazy Ron Paul-ite, but it really convinced me that Ron Paul was being kept hidden away like GP was suggesting. I didn't follow Obama's primaries, so I don't know about that.
Parent is entirely correct. More generally, it's classified "top secret" with "caveats" that limit it further. It's essentially top secret, but with extra rules. For example, "Top Secret//NOFORN" means "This is classified 'top secret' and it is not to be released to foreign nations."
;)
Check out this wikipedia page on caveats relating to classified information. That heading and the next three mini-headings pertain to caveats.
As for the parent, I don't know what "talent" is, but "keyhole" is a kind of imagery spy satellite. I'll bet "talent" is a SIGINT spy satellite, but I'm not going to look it up right now.
That's pretty interesting, thanks for the response. Sounds like they might be doing good things.
... the Air Force, and other branches of the military, tend to treat people as interchangeable, identical cogs, rather than individuals with aptitudes, skills, and backgrounds that vary widely.
How do you build a system that tracks intangible qualities such as "backgrounds" and "skills"? Then, how do you match every person up with their perfect job, or at least with a better job than randomness would have given them? I'm pretty sure this is an NP-hard problem, akin to the "optimal seating arrangement" P!=NP example.
In the military, there are xxx number of different jobs, depending on which service you go into. When you enlist, you choose a job and it is part of your enlistment contract. Everybody who chose that job goes through the exact same job training with the exact same course tasks and requirements. Personnel are designed to be cogs, because when you are dealing with an organization with 800,000 members, and thousands of units that each have a specific requirement for the type and number of people assigned to them, you cannot do much better than this.
Anyway, there are many different jobs in the military services, and not all of them deal with "grunt work" or physical laber. Check out military intelligence in any of the services. If you're dead set on the Air Force, then check out the "Cryptolinguist". They send you to Monterrey, CA for a year and a half to learn a foreign language. Right now, however, the Air Force is in the process of down-sizing by a crazy amount, so it is harder than normal to get into the Air Force and get the job you want. It is far easier to get the high-proficiency job you want in another service right now.
Have you tried talking to the other service's recruiters? They're mostly all the same. But all said, you should look at your non-military options first and evaluate what you really want to do. The military is a good organization with great benefits, but depending on what you want to accomplish in life it may not be the right choice.
Sadly, they totally ignored requests to make its pockets/collar/etc similar to the much improved Army ACU, and subsequently ...
You do NOT want pockets similar to the ACUs. The ACUs are not improved by any stretch of the imagination. The velcro is annoying to deal with, and wears out very quickly with heavy use. The BDUs that the Army and Air Force used to wear were perfect in material and design. The only thing that is worth changing is the camouflage pattern.
You really, really do not want to wear ACUs. It's not the end of the world that we have to wear them, but they simply are not up to par as far as worthwhile military uniforms go.
the whole "we need to spy on other countries because they're spying on us" mentality is very similar to the saying, people who steal always assume that everyone else steals. in the end this attitude simply creates a more hostile world, damaging international relations.
Try to look at it from a game theory perspective, such as that of the Prisoner's dilemma.
That doesn't mean I'm happy with it, but you're completely ignoring the reality of the world. Some people won't get along for other people for many reasons, sometimes for stupid reasons like nationalism or crazy ideas about racial identity. Then every once in a while one of these people get chosen/elected to the head of a nation and are able to use millions of people's power to follow through with their ideas and thoughts on how the world should look to them.
Once you are in the door, it is about two years of schooling (not by the military) to teach you what the hell to do.
Which job is this that takes two years of schooling? My Army AIT took six months of training, which is already out of the norm, and then a further year and a half of language training.
It was a million-to-one chance, Doc. A million to one. ;)
That depends on the strength of tidal gravity on the sun as caused by the earth, although I would imagine that Jupiter and other planets would have a large effect than the earth on the sun's rotation.
Allow me to point you towards xkcd's "What's the third word that ends in 'gry'?"
That's heavy, Doc.
You are actually converting between:
"the earth's ACTUAL magnetic north pole", and
"the non-magnetic, man-defined north pole of the globe"
It has to do with the north on your map not actually corresponding with the true, magnetic north pole. That is to say, exactly "up" on your map is not exactly "north", due to how the cartographer set it up. There are different magnetic deviations depending on where you are in the world and how your map system is set up, but I assure you that none of the magnetic deviation written on your map sheet is from giant stores of iron ore in the Earth's crust. That's not to say that there aren't magnetic anomalies caused by underground metal deposits, but that's not marked on maps and that's not why they have magnetic deviations between the compass and the map.
Is this like powering the Matrix with human bodies? The fuel (food) is not as efficient as a purely chemical and non-biological approach.
This was extremely helpful and was exactly the sort of response I was looking for. Thanks!
That's a very interesting response. Thanks for the insight.
These phones CAN work on all those networks. So this restriction is completely artificial.
There are SO many things in the cell phone industry that are arbitrary restrictions (like $0.50 text messages after you max your limit). Many other industries have this as well, like purposefully underclocked processors, and so forth. None of these are illegal, so I don't see why artificially tying the iPhone to AT&T would be considered illegal under current legal definitions.
I think the iPhone/AT&T locking is terrible. However, how does releasing a phone that is only licensed to work with a single cell carrier who is subsidizing part of the cost have to do with being a monopoly? Even if they weren't subsidizing the cost, why is this against the law?
Note that I'm not saying it SHOULDN'T be against the law. Rather, I'm asking how it can be considered illegal under the laws we have today. I'm curious about the legal standpoint on this issue.
Have you heard of the mapping hardware that military divers can use by placing a special plate on their tongue to feel the map?
But that makes our position sound bad! ;)