As someone who has been on an AWACS doing parabolics ( I know, it's not as sexy as an F-16, but it is still jet), I would say that even lifting your arms without an additional 40lbs is unusual and not exactly easy. Now admittedly, I was a civilian contractor on the plane but I would say that I was in pretty good shape at the time. I was no where near in shape compared to your average person in the military is, but I wasn't a couch potato either. I would estimate that I was close to 2G of force, but this is a WAG. considering your average F-16 can get to 8G pretty easily, I don't even want to imagine what it would be like in that state to move your body to find this small ring that they are talking about and then have to apply 40 lbs of force to actuate it all while under an oxygen deprived state.

The thing is, you don't need to know what encryption is being used to jam a radio signal. All you would need to do is know what frequencies the drone is receiving its command signals on and blast it with noise such that the noise power of the jammer is greater than their transmitted power.

Now I am sure that the drone is using some sort of frequency hopping, very narrow IF filters, as well as error code corrections to minimize the impact of broadband noise jamming like this, and this is where some intel would be beneficial for the jammer designer but it is not required. If the noise is more powerful than the signal, then none of fixes mentioned above will help. Oh, and all of this should be easily in the grasp of capabilities of anyone who knows anything about RF and radio design.

Sure. I vote we get Germany's government for number one pick. As an outside observer, here is why I would recruit them. They still are a net exporter of goods/services. Their budget appears to be running a surplus. They still have a decent manufacturing sector (ie. they haven't sold them out entirely to China, Mexico, etc.). They have low unemployment when compared to the US. Their GDP is growing > 3%. Their inflation is low at about 1.3%. I guess the downside is that their taxes are a bit higher.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Germany

There's truth to the observation that in the modern Republican party, Reagan would be derided as a tax and spend socialist hippie.

Which is funny considering during one of the first Republican debates, they answered the questions asked of them in such a way that allowed the candidates to compare their policies to Reagan. The irony is laughable.

I agree, but with the amount of money that we are talking about in these contracts makes compliance a less risky proposition. One of the possible side effects of being found guilty of fraudulently billing the government is the denial of bidding on future contracts for some amount of time (usually measured in years). If say over 90% of your business is from the Federal Government contracts, I would say it is in the company's best interest to be compliant.

I spend many unpaid hours improving products, no charge to the government

And this would probably be illegal. Government contracts require [1] that all work done on a job is billed appropriately. If you are not reporting your time properly, then your employer can loose their ability to contract and bill the Government. I too worked for a DOD contractor, and I swear that at least once or twice a week we would get clarification on how to fill in our time card. They were paranoid about this stuff.

Additionally, as a taxpayer, I want DOD contractor to have proof of the actual amount of work required to complete certain projects. That way, when bidding for new work, there is a valid barometer for the government to make valid comparisons between contractors when awarding the contract. For example, suppose that the government has 20 million to develop a new system on an aircraft. Suppose contractor A said it would take 2 years develop, and they would require 16 million to complete the job. Company A has kept an accurate record of their time card practices and has a history of no significant overruns. Now company B says that they can complete the project in one year and do so for 10 million. However company B does not have good time keeping practices, but they still bid the contract based on their actauls from previous programs, so they aren't intentionally underbidding the time required, they are just basing it on bad baseline data. On paper, most people would choose B if the only requirements were cost and time to complete (and all other factors ignored). Realistically though, company B will take as long as company A (assuming similar design process and manpower) and they would probably end up costing the government more that company A. (10 mill * 2years = 20 million > 16 million of company A).

[1] I say probably illegal, because when I first started working for the contractor, it was policy that if you worked between 40 and 45 hours, those were on your time and you were not to fill in those hours on our time card. They changed it since. How this worked with the Government requirements for billing them, I am not sure but this is why we had a staff lawyer on site to figure this stuff out.

In a submarine, your vehicle is under huge pressures and a small leak could turn catastrophic due to high pressure water streams coming through into the ship

My memory is a little hazy on the specifics, but I will share this too. Every now and then, the boat would send some people over to the flooding trainer. they covered the basics on how to apply various flood stoppage techniques. If I recall correctly, they certainly didn't recommend putting your hand/body into any fluid streams. I think the primary concern was so much that you would have a liquid laser in the case of a fine stream, similar to what happens when you put your thumb over a hose, but more that if you had anything in your hand that would then get knocked out and then become a fast moving projectile.

This was particularly true for one technique that was used to stop a rupture from a pipe. If the hole/gash in pipe as the right size, then they had these curved metal pieces with rubber on one side that would match the contour of the pipe. The idea is then to put this piece of metal across the pipe, apply pressure , which then would be sealed by the rubber. It was amazing at how effective it was in stopping the leaks in the simulator. The problem being, if you did this wrong, this would be a lethal projectile. The idea was to then pre-secure this metal patch a few inches away from the pipe with some metal banding and then inch it down the pipe until it covered the hole. Then the final compression was applied to the metal banding. When everything was done, you would hardly know there was a leak there.

All in all, I thought this was the best, funnest, and most practical training that I think I have ever had. Granted, if this was happening while I was on the boat in a real situation I would probably not find it so fun, but I wouldn't be useless either on what to do if needed.

While slightly anecdotal, I was a submariner. If we ever were to have severe flooding, we would be going down to never return in all likelihood. Fortunately there are varying degrees of flooding, However I recognize space is not as forgiving. Now this certainly is a small case of comparing apples to oranges, there are still some similarities. You're locked in a tube and there is no way out, and if you do find a way out, you are probably hosed anyway. People always ask me how did I coped with being on a sub, and didn't it make you claustrophobic . I answer honestly and say that I didn't think about it and that it didn't bother me. It was actually kind of enjoyable and cool. I imagine that there are other people like me who would have a similar attitude about being in a space vessel.

I somewhat agree. One might be able to argue that it could be worse psychologically too. In that I mean that the participants still know that they are on earth, so why do I need to wait 6 minutes (guessing at a time delta here...) to get a response from 'earth' when I know that it shouldn't take that long. It could make a play on the frustration aspect of human psychology. If I were in space, I would just know that it's a limitation of radio waves being limited to the speed of light. On earth, it's just make believe.

Just playing devil's advocate here.

While I'm not the person you were responding to (nor am I hiring anyone or an expert in resumes), but if you are submitting a resume that is scaring potential employers off, you're doing it wrong.

I feel that I have done this. I have put the team player angle in there. I have put what experience I have had doing SW and some embedded SW in there too. I have had a few calls from HR, but I seem to get hung up between the HR and Technical Manager hand off [1]. The question that I am getting most recently is whether I have done any driver development, which I haven't. Or another is, have you had experience with this microcontroller? My thoughts are, who cares. Whatever assembly instruction set I learned is probably not what they are using, but I have programmed in assembly before which to me is what should matter. I think it just might be the location that I am looking for work is that the companies can be rather picky.

[1] My favorite rejection from an HR rep was for a manufacturer of heavy machinery (a competitor to John Deere). They were looking for an embedded SW developer. I pretty much fit everything on their 'requirements' portion and even a good number of the 'would like to haves'. The one required field that I was missing was 'experience with hydraulics'. The HR person could not forward my resume to any of the hiring managers because I didn't have that experience. I just shook my head. Of all the requirements to be lenient on, I would think that would be the one. It's fucking hydraulics! The ancient Greeks learned about this stuff. Give me a book and in a week I will be a hydraulics expert. (I am not afraid of the math either. My masters was in electromagnetics, which is fluid systems for EEs).

...I steer clear of Packt and Wrox.

While I don't have any Packt books, the books that I have received from Wrox have been pretty good. In fact my "go to" book for C++ was by Ivor Horton and was published by Wrox (I think it was published around 2000). He pretty much left no stone unturned, had some pretty good tips & tricks, covered plenty of gotchas, and did a good job of explaining it all. I also picked up a book on Access that was pretty good too. Maybe you have just had some bad books or maybe I just got lucky.

But along similar lines of the original poster, I am looking for a new job, but might be in a similar quandary. I am an EE (about 7 years out of school with an MS) with a background primarily in RF. However, I pretty much program every day at my current job. And the programming that I do is primarily numeric/algorithmic in nature. The tools I use are Matlab, and if that is too slow, then I use either my own Java or C++ libraries. Lately it has been mostly Java if I do this, since it has a mature and easy to use multi-threading API.

The jobs that I am looking for would be along the embedded SW development lines, since it is a good hybrid of SW and HW. However, I think that people are scared of my resume to take me on because of the RF and circuit design background. Since in you previous post you mentioned you hired (or at least was involved in the hiring process) a Mechanical Eng in what appears to be a SW development/requirements position, do you have any pointers for me, or others like me, that are trying to make a change in seemingly orthogonal fields?

THIS x 100

I grew up and lived in Michigan for most of my life until 2005 when I moved to Chicagoland. I was amazed at how many people did not respect the left lane to be reserved for those that want to pass or go faster. I guess I have since gotten used to it. Now the left lane is seldom where you want to be for the reason you just stated. I find myself going slower in that lane than others.

Oh, and I would second that there are seldom people driving the posted speed limits in Chicago when not in rush hour.

Ahh, I see my mistake. What I meant to say was checking ID's and boarding passes while at the gate. I was at work and just writing without proofreading. I hope this clarifies what you might see as my petty indignation. I don't see the point of having my boarding pass and ID checked at security to then again have it checked at gate. It's pointless.

The reason I brought up my service was not to have a big dick contest. It was more to illustrate that there are certain rights given to us as US citizens and as a Vet I swore to defend them. The one most relevant to this type of discussion of course is the 4th. I am a firm believer that the full body scanners and frisking are totally in violation of this amendment. I don't care that Chertoff and others think that they can make airports a Bill of Rights exclusion zone. The Bill of Rights says in plain English that you and I and others should be secure in our persons and not subject to unlawful searches without a warrant and have probable cause to instigate the search. It says nothing about only in certain physical areas are the Bill of Rights valid. This is to protect us from the tyranny of the state, which I see the TSA as baby steps to this end game. (Yes I have dawned my tinfoil hat at this point). Government has a hard time giving up power once they have had a taste of its divine goodness. I certainly would not join the military today, since I have been jaded from the past ten years of disgrace that has happened in the name of security for the people. Namely things like the Patriot Act, Guantanmo Bay, and the TSA come to mind.

Now I agree that some security is required to operate an airline. Only an idiot would think otherwise. Certainly the airlines themselves would have some security if it was not provided by the government since airplanes just cost too much. But there is always some risk that you will die when boarding a plane. It's not natural for humans to be at >30k feet flying at 500 knots. And sure, while someone who is determined could blow it up at any minute because they were crazy. I understand these are the risks you take, but I refuse to be paralyzed by fear otherwise I would never leave the house. If I were to see someone trying to commandeer the plane or something else as malicious then you bet I would do what I could to stop them. I don't think that I would be the only one. Realistically, if this person has his way, then you are likely going to die. So the rational options are do nothing and die, try to stop the guy and while you might still die there is also a good chance you will live since he will likely be outnumbered on the plane and people would gang up on him. Given those choices, I would fight since it is the only option in surviving is a viable outcome.

I am, frankly, quite surprised that the body cavity bomb hasn't been tried yet. Give it time. Your planeload of vigilante passengers won't have time to stop him; he'll walk into the lavatory and detonate and evereyone else will be going "WTF, asshole, come back out here where we can whip your ass before you blow us all up." Except they'll not be saying it out loud, they'll be dead.

You have heard of the underwear bomber, right? He failed miserably,and he even entered onto the plane where there is probably negligible security. Oh yeah, and he failed. Now, I agree that it is possible that something malicious will happen again. (no need to be a troll with quoting my 'like' phrase). However, I am willing to uphold the rights provided to everyone in the US Constitution. I already did it once while I was in the Navy while sacrificing my own freedom. It is what I put my life on the line for. What have you done?

Two weeks ago was the first time that I flew in several 2 years. I fortunately was spared being patted down or going through the whole body scanner. However, this time they did something that I had never seen before, and that was that they randomly checked people's boarding pass as they were getting on the plane. All I could think to myself was 'WTF?'. Was not the circus that I just went through enough for me to get on the plane? I was pissed off.

The TSA just needs to go away. I am a firm believer that it has outlived its usefulness and now is just a money sink for federal taxes. Not to mention the fact that their entire existence is just Washington wiping their ass's with the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

An attack like 9/11 will not occur again, plain and simple. The people on the airplane will do what they can to keep some random jack asses from doing anything stupid that would keep them from landing safely since the passengers now know that death is a possibility for them if they allow the hijacker/terrorist to have control of the airplane or execute their plans.