Posts by Mark 85

Re: Bureaucrats and managers

for example, many people in the world know that the USA de facto supports IS nutters, you only need a quick search to see IS morons riding US-supplied tanks,'Humvees', wielding US-supplied anti-tank and anti-aircraft (which can easily fell a civilian airliner somewhere else), US desert camouflage, US body armour.

All those things were captured from the Iraqis. So, when the Iraqis toss down their weapons and run, that probably makes them ACTUAL supporters? What am I missing in your logic? How did this go from an IT rant to a war zone?

@Doctor Syntax

The company may well try to use wording that copyright on anything done during the period of the engagement belongs to the company without limiting it to work done on the company time.

In the States, that is a very common clause. The companies use it because they say that, for an example, a programmer might re-use bits of code on a personal project or for a project for another employer. However, they can be Draconian about it. One place I worked, I had to show them anything I produced for sale (craft sales, shareware, etc. even though these were totally unrelated to any product the company had produced or ever would produce. One lad I worked with was told to shut down his side business because it violated these terms. It was an electronics firm, he was an electrical engineer who did... ready for this.... plumbing work, on the side because he enjoyed it. They felt he might develop some new cooling method for electronic equipment

Very true. This isn't a video game and it's not actually being in a cockpit. My point of view is from the cockpit vs. drone pilots. They do get the short end of the stick. Playing a video game for 12 hours would be hard on anyone, but to know and to watch that every time you drop a munition, someone is getting blown to hell can't be easy on the mind.

I'm not sure why, but the USAF drone pilots are all officers and qualified pilots with flying time beyond training. The Army, Navy uses enlisted types trained specifically for drone duty. I have no idea what the CIA uses for pilots. Given that, part of the USAF's problem is that their pilots have been knocked out the "real" AF and are now basically desk pilots. The pecking order in the AF is hell and they are at the lowest level of it and stuck there. I feel very sorry for them.

Re: Contradiction?

Thanks for the explanation. So basically, the electrons don't penetrate the grapheme but ride along on the surface next to copper? If voltage were applied to the exterior that were they would ride?

Given the speeds most processors, etc. run at, I would have expected to see some RF doing the surface ride also on the copper.

Contradictory or not.. this is fascinating. I hope they can pull this one off and use it commercially.

Re: 2 year payback? Mine was less than a year.

Nice recommendation and result. This might have more value to us if you weren't posting as AC. Otherwise, I'd say you were in the employ of NEXT or Google.

Re: Two sides

I think you have it backwards. They don't want to keep those poor in their place. The more fanatical want the rest of us to join them. Except for themselves of course. Since they know better, they get the cash, cars, luxuries, etc.

Re: Works 4 me

I've got nothing to hide, how about you?

Sorry. That's a BS argument to say the least. You have curtains on your windows and locks on your doors, right?

The problem isn't what their doing.. but how and why. The program isn't classified but yet they can't talk about it even to those responsible for their funding. This is about "oversight" and who's watching the watchers so their power to "be nasty" doesn't go to the "nasty" side. They were/are ignoring the questions of the appropriateness and the level of what they're doing. Checks and balances... ever heard of them?

The cops have the power to drive down your street and keep an eye on things. Do they have the authority or perhaps "right" to come up to your house and look in windows whenever they want?

Re: Blackmail?

Therein is the problem. Which raises other questions.. in the old days (early 70's) you signed a form, listed family, friends, former employers and the FBI took that and investigated. But back then, the form wasn't 127 pages and it sure as hell wasn't in some computer system.

So.. does the FBI still investigate? Do they note additional and relevant info on the form? Or is that info in a separate database that may or may not have been grabbed?

Reading Hayden's comments, if we had the chance, we would have grabbed everything. Is what the Chinese (or whoever it was) did?

If they (or any company actually) did that, the marketing types would soon be jobless. Then again, the definition of truth in marketing seems to have a lot wider latitude than the definition of truth for the rest of us.

Re: Question

What would be the fuel for it if not hydrogen? Things don't normally get more basic than that, as far as I know. I would have thought that if there's something earlier, there would have been a Population IV predicted or theorized.... which as far as web-searching.. none have been..... yet.

Well... admit it. It's better to have all these glorious folks being in a committee instead actually doing something. Since it's the UN, they'll keep themselves busy and feeling important for at least the next 10 to 20 years.

Re: And in America...

I guess I'll just go turn myself into the cops. I regularly clean out my email and browsing history along with old files on my home PC. Will the time be in one of the country-club prisons or something akin to Shawshank?

Re: "save bandwidth and improve security"

Well... a lot of malware comes in (or tries to come in) via ads. There are people who craft evil ads or hijack an ad.

Then there's employee's surfing about and see an ad for some shiny and they're off and running on company time.

Lastly, let's face it.. ads are annoying.

Re: Never let one person hold all the keys

Usually, the keys get tossed on your desk. I'm the one IT person in a branch office of 500. I'm supposed to be 2nd and 3rd level support but I get my share of walk-ins and drive-bys. I've tried documenting things but no one really gives a damn... until I'm on vacation/holiday and something hits the fan. Even when you tell them where the docs are, they get irritated that you don't have all this knowledge in your brain, at the ready for their beck and call.

In some ways, it's great. Management and the main offices with a large IT staff is 300 miles away and leaves me alone. But the downside is, there's no support. The conversation "over the wall" about issues and fixes isn't heard. Once a year, management gets huffy and wants all the documentation you have, you get it to them and they promptly lose it or file it away never to be seen by human eyes again.

I also know that when I'm gone, the staff in this facility will be screwed as no one will know where anything is, even though there's a map on my office wall detailing where files for various things are kept. For example, I have file in SharePoint detailing what's in the server room, connections, those little nagging details like why the green cable isn't plugged into Router X but hangs next to the port. A hard copy hangs on the wall next to the door (inside the room). None of the server/network types ever reads it. They come to me.

Yeah, there is an incentive to this. They won't ever fire me unless I screw up royally. If they do fire me or I quit, the docs are there for whoever replaces me. But chances are, he'll never get a chance to read it since policy here is to seize all files (printed/electronic) and archive them far away. So he'll get the keys and have to learn things on his own with minimal help from anyone else. Meh.....

Re: Imperator

Oh, I'm sure there's enough recordings of her and Minnie Pearl that with some appropriate technology their voices could be ordering us around also.

Personally, if I have to pick a celebrity - living or dead - for the voice, I'll take Harpo Marx.

Nope, not CAPSLOCK. We have an old mainframe where the emulator to access it can only use all caps. One would think this would be coded in, but no.. got to have CAPSLOCK turned on.