the thing with american holidays is that most are relatively new and based on some other culture's ancient celebration. changes were made because when great grandpa got off the boat, he didnt have a herring to gelatinize (or whatever) and had to figure something else out. then through generations the original traditions are further diluted. without centuries-old traditions to adhere to, our holidays tend to evolve. maybe 'evolve' is too positive a verb, how about 'our holidays change'? its a shame if via popular culture the decades-old celebrations are marginalized, though. i havent lived in america for five years now, so ill take your word for it on the cheap plastic crap sale. but that does seem to be the normal trend.
we had apple bobbing in america when i was a kid too. i think the hand sanitizer generation was likely the cause of its decline.
I dont live in america and all of my friends are not americans, yet they celebrated halloween by dressing in silly costumes, going to parties, and having fun. it was HORRIBLE. the sooner people stop making excuses to have fun, the better. goddamn halloween
i dont care about halloween, but i also dont understand the hate. kids dress up in costumes, walk around with their friends and parents, receive treats, and have a fun time. hardly "bewildering".
there is obnoxious shit that teenagers do, but thats true for pretty much anything else as well. and while nearly every holiday is tainted with capitalistic greed, i think halloween is probably fairly low on the list. candy and costumes for the most part. the modern version is a holiday mostly a demonstration of altruism of adults to contribute to someone else's enjoyment.
i agree that a bonfire would be more fun for me, but thats certainly not a good reason to dislike halloween. when i run out of candy i put a large box of raisins on my porch and no one bothers me when they see that. or like you said, just dont answer the door.
after penetrating the webserver, you use that as a staging area to launch attacks on other parts of their internal network that are now visible to you. oftentimes admins use the same credentials across many different assets, so information gathered from penetrating their webserver can be used to gain access to other systems. of course, this is what DMZs, ACLs, and other security measures are meant to mitigate.
a (western airline) stewardess once told me that on long-haul or flights that have interesting destinations, the flight attendants with seniority get the assignment. thats why you see so many oldies on european/asian flights.
as the other reply to your message stated, asians dont play that game. they only hire young cute girls (and the occasional young guy for some reason -maybe to lift things) to staff the aisles and ticket counters, sometimes also the security gate. makes the occasional pat-down far more pleasant, and flying overall much more bearable.
to be fair, the Sitka tarmac is halfway sticking out into Sitka Sound. I could have driven my boat up to it and walked out there any time I wanted (though i never did want to). also sitka has (had? havent been back in years) a national guard building against the other end of the runway, i think there were points of entry around there as well.
look at it this way: alaska has nothing worth terror-attacking, and we're so far away from the lower 48 that few people down there would care for very long, past the fear-mongers grasping for more power. we're different because we're in a position that allows us to be without raising anyone's hackles
many places have dirt/gravel roads and sometimes trail roads that typical road vehicles have carved out over years of regular use. there are also people drive vehicles with >2" clearance that have no problem navigating non-concrete terrain. likely the original poster owns a vehicle that can sustain such terrain and has no qualms driving on it. also, sometimes its just fun to go offroading. 4-wheeling the tank path to your destination beats traffic and dealing with idiots who dont understand traffic circles. little sense in having a vehicle that can do that if youre not going to from time to time.
to be fair, nearly all the PMs and politicians visit yasukuni jinja. its significant news here when it is said or noticed that they dont visit. much of the time, politicians quietly visit and then neither acknowledge or deny having done so. japanese enjoy the cultural pride and passive-aggressive dig at foreigners, and china/korea half-heartedly applaud the poor attempt at diplomacy with their own.
but yeah, PM Abe has mentioned that the constitution could be rewritten to address article 9. it received a short spotlight on the evening news (though most important things receive that treatment if they arent "novel" enough) and was not popular with the public despite the LDP doing well. its mostly just paperwork anyway, the JSDF and its marine and air spin-offs are huge, and might as well be considered a military.
there is that of course, or plugging another hard drive into the SATA and booting from it, or a million other ways. point being, insider threat cannot ever be 100% mitigated. in the end it all boils down to a level of trust.
actually that was a DoD initiative in 2007. now there are host-based security system clients on every computer to keep USB mass storage disabled and attempts to use it logged. doesnt help when you boot into a livecd, though.
i see very little coverage on the evening news. usually a 30sec piece between the other fluff. in talking to people, i think most dont care to think about it. "out of sight, out of mind" is deeply engrained in japanese culture.
higher-ups are not going to use the linux systems, those are for techies and operators to display stuff to higher-ups. theyre going to use Windows workstations, maybe Macs, because thats whats easy, what theyre familiar with, and what they want.
theyre likely on active directory, so if theyre not using PKI tokens, then its as simple as setting a password and logging in. if theyre using PKI, then you go to the account properties, "Disable Smart Card Requirement", reset the password, and go about impersonating.
RBAC and separation of duties go a long way to preventing abuse, however an admin who can create an account and delegate permissions can access it just as easily. insider threat will always be the greatest threat. no way to get around that but monitoring and auditing.
the regional lockout thing is terrible. i was not allowed to buy an Economist subscription in japan on my nook tablet, so what were my options? ended up rooting the thing and installing a custom ROM running vanilla android. i love it, only use it for watching NFL games, reading books (Moon+ Reader), and reading comics (Perfect Viewer). of course, i can now also download Economist epubs and read them that way, despite the fact that they wont accept my money.
they say they cant afford to pay us to come in five days a week while during that time people are sent back and forth to hawaii (airfare, hotel, per diem) for things a video teleconference could accomplish, among other extravagant wastes of money. its painful to see every day, i genuinely miss the time when i was ignorant to gross government waste of tax dollars.
and our paychecks are cut 20% by working only four days a week (albeit this iteration is soon to end) for political theatre. if the hand is beating the shit out of you, smart moves are to either bite it or leave, and neither is easy (though im getting close to the latter)
as a DoD civilian, i manage teams of soldiers and am responsible for their work. this is my problem to deal with when it arrives =\ would prefer to make our network more secure, more sustainable, for less cost (in products and man hours -it is very possible), but from working for the US Govt the past five years and seeing the inner workings, i know that very few people give a shit about saving money or improving processes.
there was a document that went out from DoD about two months ago; a thin-client/zero-disk initiative architectural overview. DoD's (public) plan is to transition to a majority thin client IS (information system) inventory by 2020. the servers will be Enterprise assets (meaning, theatre-level) so those at different installations (on-the-ground administrators) will not have a choice. case in point, there are authorized security baselne configurations for redhat, centOS, and other *nixes. there used to be one for Mac, but it was discontinued (dunno why). even when Mac was legally usable on the DoD network, it and *nixes needed waivers and by-hand security configuration out the ass to be usable for any normal work. you dont have your email classification application (ones ive seen were windows-only outlook plugins), no group policy, no HBSS (at the time), etc. you had your choice of operating systems, but everyone used Windows.
i was very excited to read the DoD overview, we spend way too much money on what are basically the same computers over and over (no functional need to upgrade from the first 64bit core 2 duos we bought years ago aside from product end of life, but that can be worked out with the vendor if the DoD put some effort into it) except for the fact that we keep upgrading to the latest and greatest Windows and then shitting on it with banners, some inane (and some not) security crap, and local clients (HBSS, remote desktop, AV, SCCM, etc...). put a thin client on everyone's desk and instead of a team of soldiers endlessly patching windows vulns that SCCM didnt hit (likely the client shitting itself for no reason), you patch the master image and everyone is GTG. save money, save time (more money).
god i hope this isnt what theyre settling on for their "thin client"
people here are very resource-concious after the quake and tsunami. we also have toilets with built-in bidet that have many settings (water temperature, spray strength, pattern, location, toilet seat temperature, etc). my toilet has a small control panel on the wall, most have them built into the seat (captain picard's captain seat, style). this is likely to program the toilet, but i would imagine it also offers water use stats. i heard that it is approximately 100 yen per flush for most people, but of course that depends on your utility, toilet, regular or big flush, and other factors. i can configure my toilet easily enough, but tracking my flushes (and friends', girlfriend's) would be a pain.
for the record, i and others track our energy/water/gas usage to better understand our habits and be more resource-efficient (though for me, really just to save money).
not sure when that happened, but about seven years ago i was a security guard and we werent paid for the time we werent working our station. approximately thirty minutes both before and after work spent gearing up, signing in/out and unloading our firearm, and driving to/from the site to relieve the previous team was free time to the company. we had a three-week paid training period prior to working, and frequently were let out early. site supervisor kept bringing that up, said that things 'evened out'.
after i had moved onto another job, someone filed a class-action lawsuit against the company (alaska native corporation) and i received nearly $1000 compensation (lawyers got over half of it -but not bad for something i didnt have to go to bat for).
though mind that if it is indeed illegal to file a class action suit if prohibited by your corporate overlord, it is still legal to file a complaint, compile evidence to demonstrate the problem persists, and file your own lawsuit. someone had to go through those steps for the class action suit, its not unreasonable (though admittedly a huge PITA) to do it oneself. for the record, i think its inane to disallow class action suits when individual suits are allowed.
we have earthquake warnings on our phones in japan, but i guess theyre waiting for the next "great" one to use it. i've felt plenty of earthquakes (even a 5 off the kanagawa coast) but havent yet received an alert.
i used to live in phoenix too, and while people like you and i dont care much about it, look at all the people that pull over on the side of I-17 for sand storms, or even (ridiculously) when it rains. of course its easy enough to see when its dusty or rainy, and i cant recall any floods in the city, or sand storms sneaking up on anyone and causing any serious problems...
part of the problem is that a lot of people (very many of which are living very comfortably) see those concessions as substandard because everyone should be equal,or their personal bias leads them to believe that five people in a 900 sq ft home is untenable squalor. its good to want better for everyone, but some people need a dose of reality. most of the world doesnt have what they do, and theyre fine with that.
to save money, i once lived in a 40 sq foot single-room apartment in tokyo. had to sell most of my belongings because they wouldnt fit and i didnt want to pay for storage. by some people's definition, i was poor. yet the reality was that i had a place to sleep, a climate separate from the seasonal elements, clean water, easy access to food of varying quality, and i was saving money while looking for a better job.
How is this a equivalent alternative? Consoles and PC largely have different games between them. For the "serious gamers", consoles and PCs dont replace, but supplement each other.
i use quotes around the word "important" because most (not all) people with a rank above Captain are primadonnas that belive they are far more important in the execution of various things than anyone else. Get ten LTCs in a room together and you'll walk out with ten number one priorities of various actual importance in the grand scheme of things. Their rank is what makes something important, they are trained that way from the beginning of their military career, and most dont differentiate between "random soldier with lesser rank that must obey" and "random civilian of any grade that is allowed to think for themselves".
I should have clarified from the beginning that I am in a strategic (non-combat) environment. The only danger involved is to someone's promotion, which is seen more as a right than something that is earned these days. Tactical (combat or direct support), its quite different yes, but i have no experience there so i cant comment.
Regarding the camera, DISA provides two "profiles" for the security configuration. The more hardened one has the camera, video recording capability, and other settings locked down. That is the profile we are operating under in my area of the theater. If there is a true requirement for it or use of the camera aides in the accomplishment of some mission, i have no problem flipping the switch, however this was a clear case of commander envy. One guy had a good reason and had the capability, the other guy had neither and was jealous. There must be a level of rigidity in order to maintain a baseline, otherwise eventually there are so many exceptions that they become the baseline. Not a problem if there is a good reason for it, but very often there is not.
Dealing with tedious personality and political crap like that takes my time away from real network defense. Posting on slashdot, too...
the point is that money is being wasted to cater to "important" people's fashion sense.
Macs are de-facto no longer authorized for Army use (no current security baseline, even for a "standalone" system) and *nix is relegeted to the server room. Windows is the only game in town for workstations, yet few have a vocal issue with that (usually just Mac people). So why is there a push for three (BB, Android, and Apple) completely different products and the costs imposed by supporting them as opposed to a single standard that enables mobile computing while simplifying the implementation and lowering the cost? How about whatever apps the army develops or contracts out, now we have three versions that need to be developed and supported. Why go through all this? Because it has very little to do with enabling anyone, it is trendy and everyone wants their favorite in their pocket.
Had a LTC last week whining about another Battalion's commander having the camera enabled on their blackberry while his was disabled. He wanted it, but couldnt provide any mission-related justification as to why he should have it. This behavior is everywhere, and it wastes far more money, time, and manpower than it should.
Furthermore, while the GSA vegas scandal put the spotlight on government-funded trips, TDY still happens and it costs a lot of money. People/will/ be shipped back to america (i am overseas) for $3500, paid $92 per diem (approximate hawaii rate, including weekends), and their salary for a one-to-two week class that cost the govt $20k+ (for a training vendor) to learn whichever product is chosen to manage all these devices. Compared to the wars its a drop in the bucket, but that kind of money would eliminate the need to sequester/furlough a few people on the payroll, or whatever you like. The govt loves to waste money, and this is yet another example.
Slashdot Mirror
the thing with american holidays is that most are relatively new and based on some other culture's ancient celebration. changes were made because when great grandpa got off the boat, he didnt have a herring to gelatinize (or whatever) and had to figure something else out. then through generations the original traditions are further diluted. without centuries-old traditions to adhere to, our holidays tend to evolve. maybe 'evolve' is too positive a verb, how about 'our holidays change'? its a shame if via popular culture the decades-old celebrations are marginalized, though. i havent lived in america for five years now, so ill take your word for it on the cheap plastic crap sale. but that does seem to be the normal trend.
we had apple bobbing in america when i was a kid too. i think the hand sanitizer generation was likely the cause of its decline.
I dont live in america and all of my friends are not americans, yet they celebrated halloween by dressing in silly costumes, going to parties, and having fun.
it was HORRIBLE. the sooner people stop making excuses to have fun, the better. goddamn halloween
i dont care about halloween, but i also dont understand the hate. kids dress up in costumes, walk around with their friends and parents, receive treats, and have a fun time. hardly "bewildering".
there is obnoxious shit that teenagers do, but thats true for pretty much anything else as well. and while nearly every holiday is tainted with capitalistic greed, i think halloween is probably fairly low on the list. candy and costumes for the most part. the modern version is a holiday mostly a demonstration of altruism of adults to contribute to someone else's enjoyment.
i agree that a bonfire would be more fun for me, but thats certainly not a good reason to dislike halloween. when i run out of candy i put a large box of raisins on my porch and no one bothers me when they see that. or like you said, just dont answer the door.
after penetrating the webserver, you use that as a staging area to launch attacks on other parts of their internal network that are now visible to you.
oftentimes admins use the same credentials across many different assets, so information gathered from penetrating their webserver can be used to gain access to other systems.
of course, this is what DMZs, ACLs, and other security measures are meant to mitigate.
a (western airline) stewardess once told me that on long-haul or flights that have interesting destinations, the flight attendants with seniority get the assignment. thats why you see so many oldies on european/asian flights.
as the other reply to your message stated, asians dont play that game. they only hire young cute girls (and the occasional young guy for some reason -maybe to lift things) to staff the aisles and ticket counters, sometimes also the security gate. makes the occasional pat-down far more pleasant, and flying overall much more bearable.
to be fair, the Sitka tarmac is halfway sticking out into Sitka Sound. I could have driven my boat up to it and walked out there any time I wanted (though i never did want to). also sitka has (had? havent been back in years) a national guard building against the other end of the runway, i think there were points of entry around there as well.
look at it this way: alaska has nothing worth terror-attacking, and we're so far away from the lower 48 that few people down there would care for very long, past the fear-mongers grasping for more power. we're different because we're in a position that allows us to be without raising anyone's hackles
many places have dirt/gravel roads and sometimes trail roads that typical road vehicles have carved out over years of regular use. there are also people drive vehicles with >2" clearance that have no problem navigating non-concrete terrain. likely the original poster owns a vehicle that can sustain such terrain and has no qualms driving on it.
also, sometimes its just fun to go offroading. 4-wheeling the tank path to your destination beats traffic and dealing with idiots who dont understand traffic circles. little sense in having a vehicle that can do that if youre not going to from time to time.
to be fair, nearly all the PMs and politicians visit yasukuni jinja. its significant news here when it is said or noticed that they dont visit. much of the time, politicians quietly visit and then neither acknowledge or deny having done so. japanese enjoy the cultural pride and passive-aggressive dig at foreigners, and china/korea half-heartedly applaud the poor attempt at diplomacy with their own.
but yeah, PM Abe has mentioned that the constitution could be rewritten to address article 9. it received a short spotlight on the evening news (though most important things receive that treatment if they arent "novel" enough) and was not popular with the public despite the LDP doing well. its mostly just paperwork anyway, the JSDF and its marine and air spin-offs are huge, and might as well be considered a military.
there is that of course, or plugging another hard drive into the SATA and booting from it, or a million other ways. point being, insider threat cannot ever be 100% mitigated. in the end it all boils down to a level of trust.
actually that was a DoD initiative in 2007. now there are host-based security system clients on every computer to keep USB mass storage disabled and attempts to use it logged. doesnt help when you boot into a livecd, though.
i see very little coverage on the evening news. usually a 30sec piece between the other fluff.
in talking to people, i think most dont care to think about it. "out of sight, out of mind" is deeply engrained in japanese culture.
higher-ups are not going to use the linux systems, those are for techies and operators to display stuff to higher-ups. theyre going to use Windows workstations, maybe Macs, because thats whats easy, what theyre familiar with, and what they want.
theyre likely on active directory, so if theyre not using PKI tokens, then its as simple as setting a password and logging in.
if theyre using PKI, then you go to the account properties, "Disable Smart Card Requirement", reset the password, and go about impersonating.
RBAC and separation of duties go a long way to preventing abuse, however an admin who can create an account and delegate permissions can access it just as easily. insider threat will always be the greatest threat. no way to get around that but monitoring and auditing.
the regional lockout thing is terrible. i was not allowed to buy an Economist subscription in japan on my nook tablet, so what were my options? ended up rooting the thing and installing a custom ROM running vanilla android.
i love it, only use it for watching NFL games, reading books (Moon+ Reader), and reading comics (Perfect Viewer). of course, i can now also download Economist epubs and read them that way, despite the fact that they wont accept my money.
PFC is not the same as PVT
wake me when there is a "US, Its Citizens To Enter No-Spying Agreement" story
they say they cant afford to pay us to come in five days a week while during that time people are sent back and forth to hawaii (airfare, hotel, per diem) for things a video teleconference could accomplish, among other extravagant wastes of money. its painful to see every day, i genuinely miss the time when i was ignorant to gross government waste of tax dollars.
and our paychecks are cut 20% by working only four days a week (albeit this iteration is soon to end) for political theatre. if the hand is beating the shit out of you, smart moves are to either bite it or leave, and neither is easy (though im getting close to the latter)
as a DoD civilian, i manage teams of soldiers and am responsible for their work. this is my problem to deal with when it arrives =\ would prefer to make our network more secure, more sustainable, for less cost (in products and man hours -it is very possible), but from working for the US Govt the past five years and seeing the inner workings, i know that very few people give a shit about saving money or improving processes.
there was a document that went out from DoD about two months ago; a thin-client/zero-disk initiative architectural overview. DoD's (public) plan is to transition to a majority thin client IS (information system) inventory by 2020. the servers will be Enterprise assets (meaning, theatre-level) so those at different installations (on-the-ground administrators) will not have a choice. case in point, there are authorized security baselne configurations for redhat, centOS, and other *nixes. there used to be one for Mac, but it was discontinued (dunno why). even when Mac was legally usable on the DoD network, it and *nixes needed waivers and by-hand security configuration out the ass to be usable for any normal work. you dont have your email classification application (ones ive seen were windows-only outlook plugins), no group policy, no HBSS (at the time), etc. you had your choice of operating systems, but everyone used Windows.
i was very excited to read the DoD overview, we spend way too much money on what are basically the same computers over and over (no functional need to upgrade from the first 64bit core 2 duos we bought years ago aside from product end of life, but that can be worked out with the vendor if the DoD put some effort into it) except for the fact that we keep upgrading to the latest and greatest Windows and then shitting on it with banners, some inane (and some not) security crap, and local clients (HBSS, remote desktop, AV, SCCM, etc...). put a thin client on everyone's desk and instead of a team of soldiers endlessly patching windows vulns that SCCM didnt hit (likely the client shitting itself for no reason), you patch the master image and everyone is GTG. save money, save time (more money).
god i hope this isnt what theyre settling on for their "thin client"
people here are very resource-concious after the quake and tsunami. we also have toilets with built-in bidet that have many settings (water temperature, spray strength, pattern, location, toilet seat temperature, etc). my toilet has a small control panel on the wall, most have them built into the seat (captain picard's captain seat, style). this is likely to program the toilet, but i would imagine it also offers water use stats. i heard that it is approximately 100 yen per flush for most people, but of course that depends on your utility, toilet, regular or big flush, and other factors. i can configure my toilet easily enough, but tracking my flushes (and friends', girlfriend's) would be a pain.
for the record, i and others track our energy/water/gas usage to better understand our habits and be more resource-efficient (though for me, really just to save money).
not sure when that happened, but about seven years ago i was a security guard and we werent paid for the time we werent working our station. approximately thirty minutes both before and after work spent gearing up, signing in/out and unloading our firearm, and driving to/from the site to relieve the previous team was free time to the company. we had a three-week paid training period prior to working, and frequently were let out early. site supervisor kept bringing that up, said that things 'evened out'.
after i had moved onto another job, someone filed a class-action lawsuit against the company (alaska native corporation) and i received nearly $1000 compensation (lawyers got over half of it -but not bad for something i didnt have to go to bat for).
though mind that if it is indeed illegal to file a class action suit if prohibited by your corporate overlord, it is still legal to file a complaint, compile evidence to demonstrate the problem persists, and file your own lawsuit. someone had to go through those steps for the class action suit, its not unreasonable (though admittedly a huge PITA) to do it oneself. for the record, i think its inane to disallow class action suits when individual suits are allowed.
we have earthquake warnings on our phones in japan, but i guess theyre waiting for the next "great" one to use it. i've felt plenty of earthquakes (even a 5 off the kanagawa coast) but havent yet received an alert.
i used to live in phoenix too, and while people like you and i dont care much about it, look at all the people that pull over on the side of I-17 for sand storms, or even (ridiculously) when it rains. of course its easy enough to see when its dusty or rainy, and i cant recall any floods in the city, or sand storms sneaking up on anyone and causing any serious problems...
part of the problem is that a lot of people (very many of which are living very comfortably) see those concessions as substandard because everyone should be equal,or their personal bias leads them to believe that five people in a 900 sq ft home is untenable squalor. its good to want better for everyone, but some people need a dose of reality. most of the world doesnt have what they do, and theyre fine with that.
to save money, i once lived in a 40 sq foot single-room apartment in tokyo. had to sell most of my belongings because they wouldnt fit and i didnt want to pay for storage. by some people's definition, i was poor. yet the reality was that i had a place to sleep, a climate separate from the seasonal elements, clean water, easy access to food of varying quality, and i was saving money while looking for a better job.
How is this a equivalent alternative? Consoles and PC largely have different games between them. For the "serious gamers", consoles and PCs dont replace, but supplement each other.
i use quotes around the word "important" because most (not all) people with a rank above Captain are primadonnas that belive they are far more important in the execution of various things than anyone else. Get ten LTCs in a room together and you'll walk out with ten number one priorities of various actual importance in the grand scheme of things. Their rank is what makes something important, they are trained that way from the beginning of their military career, and most dont differentiate between "random soldier with lesser rank that must obey" and "random civilian of any grade that is allowed to think for themselves".
I should have clarified from the beginning that I am in a strategic (non-combat) environment. The only danger involved is to someone's promotion, which is seen more as a right than something that is earned these days.
Tactical (combat or direct support), its quite different yes, but i have no experience there so i cant comment.
Regarding the camera, DISA provides two "profiles" for the security configuration. The more hardened one has the camera, video recording capability, and other settings locked down. That is the profile we are operating under in my area of the theater. If there is a true requirement for it or use of the camera aides in the accomplishment of some mission, i have no problem flipping the switch, however this was a clear case of commander envy. One guy had a good reason and had the capability, the other guy had neither and was jealous. There must be a level of rigidity in order to maintain a baseline, otherwise eventually there are so many exceptions that they become the baseline. Not a problem if there is a good reason for it, but very often there is not.
Dealing with tedious personality and political crap like that takes my time away from real network defense. Posting on slashdot, too...
the point is that money is being wasted to cater to "important" people's fashion sense.
/will/ be shipped back to america (i am overseas) for $3500, paid $92 per diem (approximate hawaii rate, including weekends), and their salary for a one-to-two week class that cost the govt $20k+ (for a training vendor) to learn whichever product is chosen to manage all these devices. Compared to the wars its a drop in the bucket, but that kind of money would eliminate the need to sequester/furlough a few people on the payroll, or whatever you like. The govt loves to waste money, and this is yet another example.
Macs are de-facto no longer authorized for Army use (no current security baseline, even for a "standalone" system) and *nix is relegeted to the server room. Windows is the only game in town for workstations, yet few have a vocal issue with that (usually just Mac people). So why is there a push for three (BB, Android, and Apple) completely different products and the costs imposed by supporting them as opposed to a single standard that enables mobile computing while simplifying the implementation and lowering the cost? How about whatever apps the army develops or contracts out, now we have three versions that need to be developed and supported.
Why go through all this? Because it has very little to do with enabling anyone, it is trendy and everyone wants their favorite in their pocket.
Had a LTC last week whining about another Battalion's commander having the camera enabled on their blackberry while his was disabled. He wanted it, but couldnt provide any mission-related justification as to why he should have it. This behavior is everywhere, and it wastes far more money, time, and manpower than it should.
Furthermore, while the GSA vegas scandal put the spotlight on government-funded trips, TDY still happens and it costs a lot of money. People