Erosion of civil liberties? You mean the Patriot Act that Obama DIDN'T renounce once he was the one in the hot seat and would be responsible if something went FOOM!, is that what you are on about? The Patriot Act that DIDN'T actually do most of the things the crazies say it does?
I have not said a word in defense of the Democrats or Obama. They are as complicit as the Republicans, IMO.
The only solution is to push hard for a return to normal as soon as the Islamic threat is beat back.
Islamic threat!?!? We are not at war with the Muslim religion, we are at war with extremists who use religion as a tool. The number of violent Muslims is insignificant compared to the number of socially respectable and respectful Muslims in the world. Claiming that the entire Islamic nation is terrorist is nothing short of bigoted drivel.
As someone who leans Libertarian I find it distasteful but can't see a way around the problem.
Here's a thought, how about not getting into unncesary foreign wars?!?!
Are you insane or do you just believe if you repeat a lie enough it will become the Truth? Name one dissident who has been silenced.
Joseph C. Wilson would be the obvious choice, since his story actually did make it public. There were many more smaller stories that did not gather the same level of press over the last 8 years, and with all likelihood many more that had been successfully supressed such that you nor I would never hear of them.
many AMERICAN CITIZENS did BushHitler put in to gulags?
I have never compared Bush to Hitler. Although oddly enough I have heard a few right wing talk show hosts make that comparison to Obama. And the answer is at least one, John Walker Lindh. On the other hand, he did make some huge investments in new prison and internment camps our west, there deffinately appeared to be a concern expressed by the Federal government that a significant number of people would need to be locked up in very short order.
Try it in a real dictatorship and you can earn some actual Karma.
When did I say anything about a dictatorship? I said Fascist. Two entirely different arangements. While they can overlap significantly, the two are not mutually inclusive. Not only that, but where they hell does this arguement come from? I'm specifically stating that I think President Bush did more to move the country in the direction of Fascism than any other President that I am aware of. I dislike the idea of Fascism AND dictatorship, so I will do all that is in my power to prevent the slide of the government in that direction. What Chaves and Castrol due is immaterial to my concern of the US government. Just because social norms in their country are even more unacceptable to me doesn't mean I should compromise my views of social norms here in the US.
And I really don't think you even know what a phrase like habeous corpus even means if you think we have been violating it.
Habeous Corpus is a legal action through which a person can seek relief from the unlawful detention of him or herself.
How is that not an exacting contradiction to what we are doing through GITMO detentions and black site holdings? Hell, some of the GITMO prisoners have been legally cleared of wrong doing, yet we are STILL detaining them. Even US citizens like José Padilla have been denieghed the right to Habeous Corpus.
I don't know what rock yuo have been living under, but come on out in to the light.
I won't concede that waterboarding is torture
So then you would be in favor of the US making reperations to the families of the Japanesse whom we executed after WWII for using waterboarding as a form of torture on US troops? You are also stating that it is there for acceptable to have any person any where, be it a member of our military, a citizen
No, I think Bush was a Fascist. Luckily public opinion and the Congress swung against him before the Unitarian Executive theory could get any further. But we still need to take a weed whacker to Presidential power and prune the crap out of that tree.
I'm glad to see a proud America loving patriot like yourself is so keen on see to it that the best possible outcome is achieved for our country.
Oh wait, you're just acting like a spoiled prat.
There are true Patriots that will always be concerned about the country first and politics second. I am not claiming that Spector is such a person. But anyone like you who wishes ill to this country just to gain political power is a douche bag that can choke on a dick for all I care.
Feel free to "wait and see". Sit back and enjoy your freedom that so many have fought and died for. Enjoy your life style that generations have strived to make a norm. Enjoy the fruits of others labor. By all means, sit there like a turd on a stump and do nothing as good men and women work dauntlessly on what they each believe to be a way to improve our great nation.
Conservative, Liberal, Moderates, left, right, who cares, at least they are trying to make life better. Unlike whiny douches like you who would happily sit back and watch the country tear itself apart so you can pat yourself on the back.
Although, it could be debated that a group of Pragmatists would see the danger a party would present to the stability of Democracy, and decide against forming one.
Maybe a 'Pragmatists Debate League' would be more apt.
okay, if we're going to play the "your side" game, you have to look at the other side as well.
The side you refer to 'thinking the Founding Fathers' were on to something also believes in the erosion of civil liberties, consolidation of executive power, silencing those who dissent, torture, revoking habeous corpus, forced religion, racial profiling and exclusion, warmongering, etc...
Read some of President Washington's work and tell me how ANYTHING from the last 8 years even remotely comes close to the Framer's vision!?!?
Face it, both sides are out of touch with the Founding Fathers. Both "sides" are corrupted abominations that offer little in the way of serious social stability with in the original frame work of our Constitution.
The Democrats have long understood and I think important elements of the Conservative movement (not the Republicans as of yet) now realize that we are fast approaching a 'there can be only one' point in history, where one side must finally confront and defeat the other.
Mean while I think the general population of the US is finally coming to the inevitable "there can not be only two" point in history.
There are way more issues than there are sides. Some of those issues the Democrats are more liberal, some of them Republicans are more liberal, hell some of them the Libertarians are more liberal on. Stop thinking of politics as a black and white game, all that type of thinking is doing is shrinking and isolating the once proud Republican movement. Learn to deal with nuance. Work to reform the party based on intellectual debate rather than 5 second sound bites of FUD and maybe we can see a healthy return of the Republican party.
I used OsiriX to convert them from DICOM to JPEG so my wife could see them.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I would think that a lossy compression like JPEG might not be the best option for pictures that you are trying to find hairline fractures in.
To be fair, the MC's 4067 MOS training was a 9 week course of 10 hour days. Basically, imagine a vocational CS degree program, strip out all of the non-CS programs (other than phys-ed) and make it a full day class schedule, and you'll have a pretty good idea of the training.
Were we the best coders in the world? Hell no. If I knew half the things I've learned in the decade since I would have been ten times the coder I was then. But at the time, most of our consultants were pretty similar. Remember, in the late 90's we were in the spin up to the.Com bubble, and everyone and their brother was getting IT consulting gigs, even people who had no business working on anything more complex than Geo-cities web sites.
We dealt with gross incompetence and fraud from our civilian contractors almost constantly. We had a civilian network administrator who managed to keep a high visibility network running only because he refused to patch and reboot things, then as the whole system started crumbling he cashed out his vacation and took off. We had another developer who walked off with PCs and developed a training course during working hours that he had copy and pasted significant sections out of the MC training courses. After he had his course set up he ran off with our gear and guides to start up a training class for a defense contractor to get more of their consultants into military contracts.
Not all consultants were incompetent or scumbags, and not all Marines were great programmers and good people. But when a Marine f's up, there are repercussions. When a consultant f's up, they take the money and walk.
Flight systems back in the 90's were almost entirely done outside of the military. For the whole time I was in the corps, I never met anyone who could admit to working on a current flight system. For the most part any embedded programming was done by the manufacturer. Although it is IMO invaluable to have people in side the military with a sworn oath to uphold, ensuring that some 'cheapest bidder' system doesn't get treated like a black box.
Which is one reason that I'm glad to see the military pushing for more open source options.
A lot of projects from the late 90's were VB6, at least in the Marine Corps. We had 3 options:
ADA - great for guidance systems, horrendous for UIs. VB5/6 - great for UI and business apps, sucks for pretty much everything though. Lotus Notes - sucks himilaian goat shit through a straw.
I knew one person I considered evil while I was in the Marine Corps.
He got the big chicken dinner.
Turns out, he's from my home town and I've managed to bump into him entirely too many times over the last 8 years.
I knew a fair number of dicks, epen flexers, power trippers, hazers, and douche bags. But every one of them was absolutely dedicated to country and corps and would put it all on the line for a Marine in trouble.
Do you think we need programmers that take an oath to support and defend the Constitution?
Next time someone runs into a critical fault in a COM shack in the south Pacific, see what the response time is getting a civilian in Virginia out of bed, into the office, and working on the problem as opposed to having a trained and proficient Marine on site to fix the issue.
Do you think programmers need to maintain the high standards of fitness required by the Marines? I guarantee you that wearing a uniform makes it harder to code (it's much easier in flip flops and shorts).
There are benefits and detractors. On the benefit side, coding standards are non-optional. There is room for variety, but if there is one thing you get used to in the Marine Corps, it is standards. Also, as a coder in the MC you get to know your co-workers exceptionally well. Not only do you work on the same projects, but in the event of attack, every Marine is a riffleman first, so you may well be laying supression fire for eachother. And finally, with 1-3 year tours, you are garunteed to have to go through project handoffs, so project plans are kept small, requirements are documented, and life, as far as programming is concerned, is damn good.
Also, while you might find the rigorous PT off putting, man was it nice to be in great shape. A 3 mile jog in 20 minutes flat, 26 pull ups and 100 crunches in 2 mintues... man do I miss those days. I'm growing a damn dunlap here! Luckily, I'm moving to a new office building on Friday and I'll have an on-site Gym again:)
On the down side, the Enlisted Marine Corps is largely consisting of people who either couldn't or didn't want to go to college. So you are quite often surrounded by people with little experience and/or education. To get into the 4067 field you needed a GT score of 110 or higher. People who made it into the 4067 field who had troubles coding were often refered to as "110ers".
It sure wasn't peaches and cream, but it was a pretty kick ass experience for a guy like me who had no dreams of college.
It's unlikely that those civilians are actually paid $120k, but you're right that they make more than $14k.
Correct. They are contractors, their BILL rate was $120,000/year.
I think that (in many cases) it's an awful shame to have folks working in an office who are willing and able to run out into a field in the middle of nowhere and setup comms.
Ahh, you're thinking of the 4066 and IIRC 0366 MOSes. 4066 is network tech, and the 0366 is what we called the "Battery Opperated Grunt". They were deployed with the grunts to do field wire works, field radio maintenance, etc. If you're in a pitched battle, and the radio is crapping out on you, these would be the guys you hope to have in your fire team.
The 4066 MOS I believe was stripped down to bare minimums and changed into the 25xx or 26xx MOS, that was right when I was getting out though, so I can't say for sure. But I believe they were replacing all billets except for a handful of key and politicol positions. The 0366 MOS I believe is still intact, at least it was when I got out. Seems most civilians don't like taking jobs where they get shot at. Go figure.
No Joke. In 2001 the US Marine Corps disbanded the 4067 MOS. While we used to have Marines, in uniform, writing code for a wide assortment of tasks (from menial office apps to classified COM vaults and even some flight system work in ADA), we moved to consultants.
Replacing a $14,400/year Corporal with a $120,000 civilian. One who doesn't have to take an oath to support and defend the Constitution.
I suppose I should have qualified my response as being related only to the non-discretionary, but the point still stands.
It would be harder to prove, but I would also suspect that the reinvestment of money distributed for SS/MC/etc has a slightly better impact on the US economy than the military spending does. In either case, both are better for the US economy than tax cuts for the wealthy, and neither is as good as education. But the social demand for SS/MC ensures that it will always have priority over education. Military/Security spending though, now that's something we can work on!
Step 1: Fire anyone with the title "czar" Step 2: Dismantle the DHS Step 3: Greatly reduce the TSA to an inspector core and (re)privatize the industry Step 4: Stop pushing for a continued significant Middle-East military presence and instead invest in technology allowing for more rapid deployments and diplomatic missions to pursue the maintenance of stability with out military action. Step 5: Start firing lawyers.
Government spending does not "remove money from the economy".
For every dollar the US Government spends, that dollar is on average re-spent inside the US economy 3 times. Having the government spend to build a new bridge is waaaaaaay more beneficial to the US economy than to have Joe 6-pack buy a new 'Made in Hong Kong' big screen TV.
Not only that, but I would venture to say that excessive idle wealth was a significant factor to the housing bubble. We had a whole lot of financially well off people get tax breaks and wind up with idle money. Anyone who is looking to amass or maintain a fortune knows that you don't leave money sitting idle. Doing so not only causes it to lose value (due to inflation) but it also hurts the economy (which is dependent on the movement of money). So they invested. And in 2002-2006, the big ticket sure thing to be investing in was housing. So we saw billions of dollars getting invested into the housing market. Mortgage backed securities, CDOs, all sorts of debt vehicles that allowed investors to put their idle money to work turning huge profits with highly rated options.
And almost all that money, instead of being used to produce goods and services, was being used to push paper. And when the paper went up in smoke, so did the money. That was when money was removed from the economy.
If we were to have taken a different path over the last 8 years. And instead of increasing tax cuts, maintained or even increased taxes, we would have had investors that would likely have been more critical of their investments since they have less idle cash, perhaps the fraud of the boom wouldn't have been so bad. We also wouldn't have been operating at a deficit, nor borrowing billions from over seas investors.
I am a fan of 3 things: 1) Government programs that aide in the stability and consistency of our society. 2) Funding those programs through taxation. 3) Paying less in taxes.
Paying for those programs through taxes causes the tax base to be much more interested in where their money is being spent. No one questions the war in Iraq when they don't have to pay for it. Never mind the 1+ Trillion dollar price tag attached to it. As long as it isn't being paid through taxes, no one cares.
Uhh, if you look at the combined war, military, intelligence, and 'anti-terror' budget spending in the US, you should see that it makes up well over half of our annual budget. Just shy of $800 Billion a year on Military and National Security, compared to $383 Billion on everything else.
For every $1 we spend on a child's education, the DoD spends $10. For every $1 we spend on protecting the environment (EPA) we spend $12 on the "War on Terror". Heck, the DoD's Operations and Maintenance budget is over $90 Billion. That's almost double the total spent by NASA ($17B), DoE ($25B), National Science Foundation ($6B) combined!
Today at lunch I had to run some errands, so I turned on the radio, still tuned to an AM channel I catch a show on in my morning commutes.
On the radio is one Mike Gallagher, I've never heard him before, so I figured I'd give it a listen.
He played the first maybe 15 seconds of Obama's speech from this morning's conference. The part about "we must not allow the US to fall behind". But instead of playing the rest of the speech, which I had heard in full earlier in the morning, he stopped there. He didn't complete the context nor even mention the investment in education and research. He played that first sound bite, then stated repeatedly that Obama was going to use the Swine Flu to push Universal Health Care through. He then went on to cite "a blog" that had post about how we need to close off the boarders, because it is due to our open boarders that the illegal immigrants have brought the swine flu to the US and events like 9/11 happen.
I was dumb struck. I could understand the half quote and missing context to attempt to rile the base up in opposition to universal health care. Not that it will do much good, the Dems are looking to have enough votes to ram through damn near anything they want at this point. But to blame the swine flu on illegal immigrants?
Most of what I've read on the migration of the flu has been primarily due to College and High-school kids who went to Mexico over spring break. Unless Gallagher is suggesting that rogue illegal Mexican immigrants are jumping from Mexico to the mid west and up to New Your with out infecting anyone on the way. And once they are in those locations, they are not seeking medical assistance.
But to go even further as to blame 9/11 on lax boarder security, when all of the 9/11 hijackers were in the US on legal VISAs...
It is insulting and immoral to spread such lies. I am continuously amazed at the lack of factual information on syndicated radio broadcasts.
My statement about the P standing for portability is due to the majority of US consumers thinking that the P stands for privacy or protection. They believe that HIPAA is designed to prevent their medical information from being shared with organizations/groups other than their own doctor. Which is not true. HIPAA is designed to make is easier for doctors to share your private data and to protect them from lawsuits for doing so. Yes, the bill also puts a lot of requirements on how the sharing is done, but HIPAA was designed, IMO with insurance companies interests over consumer interests.
I do not currently work in the industry, but I have previously done work for insurance agencies and clinical medical research organizations that dealt with HIPAA. My understanding of HIPAA's rules and regulations is not at what I would consider sufficient for significant legal debate, but my experiences with how it is being used in the medical industry have lead me to having almomst no faith in its ability to protect my medical records according to my interests.
So you're saying that MaBell has no corruption fees, has always worked in the best interest of their customers and is the pinnacle of social success?
Obviously, that isn't the case. Imagine everyone in your neighborhood had equal parts of the controlling majority of shares of the local ISP. You each had to buy those shares, but they are yours and they can never be revoked. Having shares gives you a seat (along with all of your neighbors) at the board meeting where you can argue for faster speeds, buried cables, cheaper prices, etc... Even the neighbors who don't purchase services from the ISP have an interest in keeping costs down to make their stocks more valuable, or in preventing unsightly cabling close to their homes, or keeping the price low to improve the competitive nature of their own provider.
Now replace "local ISP" with "local government" and you have the situation. Yeah, you pay taxes, but you get a controlling stake (ie: your vote and lobbying access) in the process for doing so.
Try going down to your "local" AT&T branch and argue for faster speeds, cheaper rates, less cabling, or anything else. You have literally no say in the matter.
So long as the stake holders are different people than the customers, the company will never act in the customer's best interest (unless the customer's interest happens to align with the stake holders' interests).
There are other reasons to oppose government provided/controlled ISP services, but contrasting it to the private sector is not a strong argument. As we've seen through out the history of the industrial and technical revolutions, the private market does not handle utility services well.
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Erosion of civil liberties? You mean the Patriot Act that Obama DIDN'T renounce once he was the one in the hot seat and would be responsible if something went FOOM!, is that what you are on about? The Patriot Act that DIDN'T actually do most of the things the crazies say it does?
I have not said a word in defense of the Democrats or Obama. They are as complicit as the Republicans, IMO.
The only solution is to push hard for a return to normal as soon as the Islamic threat is beat back.
Islamic threat!?!? We are not at war with the Muslim religion, we are at war with extremists who use religion as a tool. The number of violent Muslims is insignificant compared to the number of socially respectable and respectful Muslims in the world. Claiming that the entire Islamic nation is terrorist is nothing short of bigoted drivel.
As someone who leans Libertarian I find it distasteful but can't see a way around the problem.
Here's a thought, how about not getting into unncesary foreign wars?!?!
Are you insane or do you just believe if you repeat a lie enough it will become the Truth? Name one dissident who has been silenced.
Joseph C. Wilson would be the obvious choice, since his story actually did make it public. There were many more smaller stories that did not gather the same level of press over the last 8 years, and with all likelihood many more that had been successfully supressed such that you nor I would never hear of them.
many AMERICAN CITIZENS did BushHitler put in to gulags?
I have never compared Bush to Hitler. Although oddly enough I have heard a few right wing talk show hosts make that comparison to Obama. And the answer is at least one, John Walker Lindh. On the other hand, he did make some huge investments in new prison and internment camps our west, there deffinately appeared to be a concern expressed by the Federal government that a significant number of people would need to be locked up in very short order.
Try it in a real dictatorship and you can earn some actual Karma.
When did I say anything about a dictatorship? I said Fascist. Two entirely different arangements. While they can overlap significantly, the two are not mutually inclusive. Not only that, but where they hell does this arguement come from? I'm specifically stating that I think President Bush did more to move the country in the direction of Fascism than any other President that I am aware of. I dislike the idea of Fascism AND dictatorship, so I will do all that is in my power to prevent the slide of the government in that direction. What Chaves and Castrol due is immaterial to my concern of the US government. Just because social norms in their country are even more unacceptable to me doesn't mean I should compromise my views of social norms here in the US.
And I really don't think you even know what a phrase like habeous corpus even means if you think we have been violating it.
Habeous Corpus is a legal action through which a person can seek relief from the unlawful detention of him or herself.
How is that not an exacting contradiction to what we are doing through GITMO detentions and black site holdings? Hell, some of the GITMO prisoners have been legally cleared of wrong doing, yet we are STILL detaining them. Even US citizens like José Padilla have been denieghed the right to Habeous Corpus.
I don't know what rock yuo have been living under, but come on out in to the light.
I won't concede that waterboarding is torture
So then you would be in favor of the US making reperations to the families of the Japanesse whom we executed after WWII for using waterboarding as a form of torture on US troops? You are also stating that it is there for acceptable to have any person any where, be it a member of our military, a citizen
LOL, nice catch. Thanks,
-Rick
No, I think Bush was a Fascist. Luckily public opinion and the Congress swung against him before the Unitarian Executive theory could get any further. But we still need to take a weed whacker to Presidential power and prune the crap out of that tree.
-Rick
I'm glad to see a proud America loving patriot like yourself is so keen on see to it that the best possible outcome is achieved for our country.
Oh wait, you're just acting like a spoiled prat.
There are true Patriots that will always be concerned about the country first and politics second. I am not claiming that Spector is such a person. But anyone like you who wishes ill to this country just to gain political power is a douche bag that can choke on a dick for all I care.
Feel free to "wait and see". Sit back and enjoy your freedom that so many have fought and died for. Enjoy your life style that generations have strived to make a norm. Enjoy the fruits of others labor. By all means, sit there like a turd on a stump and do nothing as good men and women work dauntlessly on what they each believe to be a way to improve our great nation.
Conservative, Liberal, Moderates, left, right, who cares, at least they are trying to make life better. Unlike whiny douches like you who would happily sit back and watch the country tear itself apart so you can pat yourself on the back.
Way to be a patriot, douche bag.
-Rick
That's the ballsiest, most hypocritical statement I've ever read in my life.
I agree! I think the original author made a mistake in his post, let me fix it for him:
This will force the Republican party (the property of ignorance and corruption) to be more considerate and thoughtful of their positions.
There we go.
Of course, you could put Democrat in place of the word "Republican" and that validity of the statement would not change.
-Rick
Pragmatists in 2010!
Now we just need a Pragmatists party...
Although, it could be debated that a group of Pragmatists would see the danger a party would present to the stability of Democracy, and decide against forming one.
Maybe a 'Pragmatists Debate League' would be more apt.
-Rick
okay, if we're going to play the "your side" game, you have to look at the other side as well.
The side you refer to 'thinking the Founding Fathers' were on to something also believes in the erosion of civil liberties, consolidation of executive power, silencing those who dissent, torture, revoking habeous corpus, forced religion, racial profiling and exclusion, warmongering, etc...
Read some of President Washington's work and tell me how ANYTHING from the last 8 years even remotely comes close to the Framer's vision!?!?
Face it, both sides are out of touch with the Founding Fathers. Both "sides" are corrupted abominations that offer little in the way of serious social stability with in the original frame work of our Constitution.
The Democrats have long understood and I think important elements of the Conservative movement (not the Republicans as of yet) now realize that we are fast approaching a 'there can be only one' point in history, where one side must finally confront and defeat the other.
Mean while I think the general population of the US is finally coming to the inevitable "there can not be only two" point in history.
There are way more issues than there are sides. Some of those issues the Democrats are more liberal, some of them Republicans are more liberal, hell some of them the Libertarians are more liberal on. Stop thinking of politics as a black and white game, all that type of thinking is doing is shrinking and isolating the once proud Republican movement. Learn to deal with nuance. Work to reform the party based on intellectual debate rather than 5 second sound bites of FUD and maybe we can see a healthy return of the Republican party.
-Rick
Uhh, the party "in power" of Somalia has been ruling from the US until just a few weeks ago.
I'm pretty sure we have been doing at least some amount of meddling there.
-Rick
I used OsiriX to convert them from DICOM to JPEG so my wife could see them.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I would think that a lossy compression like JPEG might not be the best option for pictures that you are trying to find hairline fractures in.
-Rick
To be fair, the MC's 4067 MOS training was a 9 week course of 10 hour days. Basically, imagine a vocational CS degree program, strip out all of the non-CS programs (other than phys-ed) and make it a full day class schedule, and you'll have a pretty good idea of the training.
Were we the best coders in the world? Hell no. If I knew half the things I've learned in the decade since I would have been ten times the coder I was then. But at the time, most of our consultants were pretty similar. Remember, in the late 90's we were in the spin up to the .Com bubble, and everyone and their brother was getting IT consulting gigs, even people who had no business working on anything more complex than Geo-cities web sites.
We dealt with gross incompetence and fraud from our civilian contractors almost constantly. We had a civilian network administrator who managed to keep a high visibility network running only because he refused to patch and reboot things, then as the whole system started crumbling he cashed out his vacation and took off. We had another developer who walked off with PCs and developed a training course during working hours that he had copy and pasted significant sections out of the MC training courses. After he had his course set up he ran off with our gear and guides to start up a training class for a defense contractor to get more of their consultants into military contracts.
Not all consultants were incompetent or scumbags, and not all Marines were great programmers and good people. But when a Marine f's up, there are repercussions. When a consultant f's up, they take the money and walk.
Flight systems back in the 90's were almost entirely done outside of the military. For the whole time I was in the corps, I never met anyone who could admit to working on a current flight system. For the most part any embedded programming was done by the manufacturer. Although it is IMO invaluable to have people in side the military with a sworn oath to uphold, ensuring that some 'cheapest bidder' system doesn't get treated like a black box.
Which is one reason that I'm glad to see the military pushing for more open source options.
-Rick
A lot of projects from the late 90's were VB6, at least in the Marine Corps. We had 3 options:
ADA - great for guidance systems, horrendous for UIs.
VB5/6 - great for UI and business apps, sucks for pretty much everything though.
Lotus Notes - sucks himilaian goat shit through a straw.
-Rick
I knew one person I considered evil while I was in the Marine Corps.
He got the big chicken dinner.
Turns out, he's from my home town and I've managed to bump into him entirely too many times over the last 8 years.
I knew a fair number of dicks, epen flexers, power trippers, hazers, and douche bags. But every one of them was absolutely dedicated to country and corps and would put it all on the line for a Marine in trouble.
-Rick
Do you think we need programmers that take an oath to support and defend the Constitution?
Next time someone runs into a critical fault in a COM shack in the south Pacific, see what the response time is getting a civilian in Virginia out of bed, into the office, and working on the problem as opposed to having a trained and proficient Marine on site to fix the issue.
Do you think programmers need to maintain the high standards of fitness required by the Marines? I guarantee you that wearing a uniform makes it harder to code (it's much easier in flip flops and shorts).
There are benefits and detractors. On the benefit side, coding standards are non-optional. There is room for variety, but if there is one thing you get used to in the Marine Corps, it is standards. Also, as a coder in the MC you get to know your co-workers exceptionally well. Not only do you work on the same projects, but in the event of attack, every Marine is a riffleman first, so you may well be laying supression fire for eachother. And finally, with 1-3 year tours, you are garunteed to have to go through project handoffs, so project plans are kept small, requirements are documented, and life, as far as programming is concerned, is damn good.
Also, while you might find the rigorous PT off putting, man was it nice to be in great shape. A 3 mile jog in 20 minutes flat, 26 pull ups and 100 crunches in 2 mintues... man do I miss those days. I'm growing a damn dunlap here! Luckily, I'm moving to a new office building on Friday and I'll have an on-site Gym again :)
On the down side, the Enlisted Marine Corps is largely consisting of people who either couldn't or didn't want to go to college. So you are quite often surrounded by people with little experience and/or education. To get into the 4067 field you needed a GT score of 110 or higher. People who made it into the 4067 field who had troubles coding were often refered to as "110ers".
It sure wasn't peaches and cream, but it was a pretty kick ass experience for a guy like me who had no dreams of college.
It's unlikely that those civilians are actually paid $120k, but you're right that they make more than $14k.
Correct. They are contractors, their BILL rate was $120,000/year.
I think that (in many cases) it's an awful shame to have folks working in an office who are willing and able to run out into a field in the middle of nowhere and setup comms.
Ahh, you're thinking of the 4066 and IIRC 0366 MOSes. 4066 is network tech, and the 0366 is what we called the "Battery Opperated Grunt". They were deployed with the grunts to do field wire works, field radio maintenance, etc. If you're in a pitched battle, and the radio is crapping out on you, these would be the guys you hope to have in your fire team.
The 4066 MOS I believe was stripped down to bare minimums and changed into the 25xx or 26xx MOS, that was right when I was getting out though, so I can't say for sure. But I believe they were replacing all billets except for a handful of key and politicol positions. The 0366 MOS I believe is still intact, at least it was when I got out. Seems most civilians don't like taking jobs where they get shot at. Go figure.
-Rick
No Joke. In 2001 the US Marine Corps disbanded the 4067 MOS. While we used to have Marines, in uniform, writing code for a wide assortment of tasks (from menial office apps to classified COM vaults and even some flight system work in ADA), we moved to consultants.
Replacing a $14,400/year Corporal with a $120,000 civilian. One who doesn't have to take an oath to support and defend the Constitution.
-Rick
I suppose I should have qualified my response as being related only to the non-discretionary, but the point still stands.
It would be harder to prove, but I would also suspect that the reinvestment of money distributed for SS/MC/etc has a slightly better impact on the US economy than the military spending does. In either case, both are better for the US economy than tax cuts for the wealthy, and neither is as good as education. But the social demand for SS/MC ensures that it will always have priority over education. Military/Security spending though, now that's something we can work on!
Step 1: Fire anyone with the title "czar"
Step 2: Dismantle the DHS
Step 3: Greatly reduce the TSA to an inspector core and (re)privatize the industry
Step 4: Stop pushing for a continued significant Middle-East military presence and instead invest in technology allowing for more rapid deployments and diplomatic missions to pursue the maintenance of stability with out military action.
Step 5: Start firing lawyers.
-Rick
Government spending does not "remove money from the economy".
For every dollar the US Government spends, that dollar is on average re-spent inside the US economy 3 times. Having the government spend to build a new bridge is waaaaaaay more beneficial to the US economy than to have Joe 6-pack buy a new 'Made in Hong Kong' big screen TV.
Not only that, but I would venture to say that excessive idle wealth was a significant factor to the housing bubble. We had a whole lot of financially well off people get tax breaks and wind up with idle money. Anyone who is looking to amass or maintain a fortune knows that you don't leave money sitting idle. Doing so not only causes it to lose value (due to inflation) but it also hurts the economy (which is dependent on the movement of money). So they invested. And in 2002-2006, the big ticket sure thing to be investing in was housing. So we saw billions of dollars getting invested into the housing market. Mortgage backed securities, CDOs, all sorts of debt vehicles that allowed investors to put their idle money to work turning huge profits with highly rated options.
And almost all that money, instead of being used to produce goods and services, was being used to push paper. And when the paper went up in smoke, so did the money. That was when money was removed from the economy.
If we were to have taken a different path over the last 8 years. And instead of increasing tax cuts, maintained or even increased taxes, we would have had investors that would likely have been more critical of their investments since they have less idle cash, perhaps the fraud of the boom wouldn't have been so bad. We also wouldn't have been operating at a deficit, nor borrowing billions from over seas investors.
I am a fan of 3 things:
1) Government programs that aide in the stability and consistency of our society.
2) Funding those programs through taxation.
3) Paying less in taxes.
Paying for those programs through taxes causes the tax base to be much more interested in where their money is being spent. No one questions the war in Iraq when they don't have to pay for it. Never mind the 1+ Trillion dollar price tag attached to it. As long as it isn't being paid through taxes, no one cares.
-Rick
Uhh, if you look at the combined war, military, intelligence, and 'anti-terror' budget spending in the US, you should see that it makes up well over half of our annual budget. Just shy of $800 Billion a year on Military and National Security, compared to $383 Billion on everything else.
For every $1 we spend on a child's education, the DoD spends $10. For every $1 we spend on protecting the environment (EPA) we spend $12 on the "War on Terror". Heck, the DoD's Operations and Maintenance budget is over $90 Billion. That's almost double the total spent by NASA ($17B), DoE ($25B), National Science Foundation ($6B) combined!
-Rick
Today at lunch I had to run some errands, so I turned on the radio, still tuned to an AM channel I catch a show on in my morning commutes.
On the radio is one Mike Gallagher, I've never heard him before, so I figured I'd give it a listen.
He played the first maybe 15 seconds of Obama's speech from this morning's conference. The part about "we must not allow the US to fall behind". But instead of playing the rest of the speech, which I had heard in full earlier in the morning, he stopped there. He didn't complete the context nor even mention the investment in education and research. He played that first sound bite, then stated repeatedly that Obama was going to use the Swine Flu to push Universal Health Care through. He then went on to cite "a blog" that had post about how we need to close off the boarders, because it is due to our open boarders that the illegal immigrants have brought the swine flu to the US and events like 9/11 happen.
I was dumb struck. I could understand the half quote and missing context to attempt to rile the base up in opposition to universal health care. Not that it will do much good, the Dems are looking to have enough votes to ram through damn near anything they want at this point. But to blame the swine flu on illegal immigrants?
Most of what I've read on the migration of the flu has been primarily due to College and High-school kids who went to Mexico over spring break. Unless Gallagher is suggesting that rogue illegal Mexican immigrants are jumping from Mexico to the mid west and up to New Your with out infecting anyone on the way. And once they are in those locations, they are not seeking medical assistance.
But to go even further as to blame 9/11 on lax boarder security, when all of the 9/11 hijackers were in the US on legal VISAs...
It is insulting and immoral to spread such lies. I am continuously amazed at the lack of factual information on syndicated radio broadcasts.
-Rick
My statement about the P standing for portability is due to the majority of US consumers thinking that the P stands for privacy or protection. They believe that HIPAA is designed to prevent their medical information from being shared with organizations/groups other than their own doctor. Which is not true. HIPAA is designed to make is easier for doctors to share your private data and to protect them from lawsuits for doing so. Yes, the bill also puts a lot of requirements on how the sharing is done, but HIPAA was designed, IMO with insurance companies interests over consumer interests.
I do not currently work in the industry, but I have previously done work for insurance agencies and clinical medical research organizations that dealt with HIPAA. My understanding of HIPAA's rules and regulations is not at what I would consider sufficient for significant legal debate, but my experiences with how it is being used in the medical industry have lead me to having almomst no faith in its ability to protect my medical records according to my interests.
-Rick
Yeah, so they just have to record when they sell or lose your medical records, or if they are stolen.
-Rick
Seriously, how could a patient be better served by giving their insurance company a censored view of their medical history?
Fixed.
-Rick
If you force open source, you'll quickly bring to the forefront every security issue in the code, which will be a HIPAA nightmare.
PSSSST. The "P" in HIPAA stands for "Portability", not "Protection" or "Private"
-Rick
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot
-Rick
So you're saying that MaBell has no corruption fees, has always worked in the best interest of their customers and is the pinnacle of social success?
Obviously, that isn't the case. Imagine everyone in your neighborhood had equal parts of the controlling majority of shares of the local ISP. You each had to buy those shares, but they are yours and they can never be revoked. Having shares gives you a seat (along with all of your neighbors) at the board meeting where you can argue for faster speeds, buried cables, cheaper prices, etc... Even the neighbors who don't purchase services from the ISP have an interest in keeping costs down to make their stocks more valuable, or in preventing unsightly cabling close to their homes, or keeping the price low to improve the competitive nature of their own provider.
Now replace "local ISP" with "local government" and you have the situation. Yeah, you pay taxes, but you get a controlling stake (ie: your vote and lobbying access) in the process for doing so.
Try going down to your "local" AT&T branch and argue for faster speeds, cheaper rates, less cabling, or anything else. You have literally no say in the matter.
So long as the stake holders are different people than the customers, the company will never act in the customer's best interest (unless the customer's interest happens to align with the stake holders' interests).
There are other reasons to oppose government provided/controlled ISP services, but contrasting it to the private sector is not a strong argument. As we've seen through out the history of the industrial and technical revolutions, the private market does not handle utility services well.
-Rick
I'm still at 1.5Mb you insensitive clod!
-Rick