China wasn't really that interested in saving Kim Il Sung's hiney back in the '50's. China got involved in the Korean war because 1) they felt they needed a buffer zone between a US-sponsored South Korea and their borders, and, perhaps more to the point, 2) Mao Zedong didn't just hold grudges. He cherished them, and he was still nine kinds of annoyed at the US for backing Chiang Kai-shek during the Chinese Civil War. Yeah, Koreans fought during the Chinese Civil War, but Mao was never one to be grateful enough for someone to do something against his interest in thanks.

The irony of this post, along with your signature about DRM, is absolutely staggering.

As you state, we can't come with a technology that effectively prevents unlawful use of a frigging MP3 while not overburdening the lawful licensor thereof, and yet you turn right around and think you can do the EXACT SAME THING with a firearm?

No thanks. I'll keep my 110 year old design.

That comes with caveats as well. The service member CANNOT do so in an official capacity or in uniform (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatch_Act_of_1939 for more information). Political speech is even more restricted by tradition. Technically, as long as the service member is on his own time, in civvies, and not attempting to attach his/her political work to his/her office or station in the military, everything is okay.

For enlisted service members, that's what generally occurs.

For officers, there's an unwritten code (and, like most unwritten codes, fairly rigorously - if unofficially - enforced) that the officers' corp should be apolitical, to the extent that there's a pretty strict inverse correlation between the grade of officer and the likelihood that they even vote. Civillian control of the military is drummed in from the first to the last, and, for an officer, voting comes uncomfortably close to having the military take control of itself.

All of which is beside the point, of course. PFC Manning's right to free speech stopped when he publicly leaked classified information. If he had problems with the morality of what he was doing, he should have addressed them through the chain of command. If that failed, he should have addressed them through his local congresscritter. If that failed, then maybe he should have realized that he was a PFC in a war zone, and maybe not privy to all of the information required to make an intelligent disposition of the classified data of which he was a custodian.

You are both correct and incorrect. Service members do relinquish SOME constitutional rights. Most notably the right to free speech. In some circumstances the right against double jeopardy does not apply either (you can be tried in a civilian court (or foreign court), and then be tried under the UCMJ for the same offense if the military chain of command feels it is warranted). Granted, USUALLY the chain of command will not press charges against a service member if that service member is already charged with the crime in another jurisdiction.

In this case though, you are correct. PFC Manning has a right under Article 10 to "... inform him of the specific wrong of which he is accused and to try him or to dismiss the charges and release him.", along with an Article 13 right against "... be[ing] subjected to punishment or penalty other than arrest or confinement upon the charges pending against him, nor shall the arrest or confinement imposed upon him be any more rigorous than the circumstances required to insure his presence, but he may be subjected to minor punishment during that period for infractions of discipline."

I do not know PFC Manning, and am unfamiliar with his case other than what I've read and seen in the news. I do not know if the Army is guilty of the allegations PFC Manning has brought or not (unfortunately, a good chunk of the media is demonstrably anti-Military in that they love soldiers, but hate the institution), so expecting evenhanded coverage here is, in my opinion, expecting too much. I hope that the Army is not guilty, as I'd like every 'i' to be dotted and 't' to be crossed when they lock him up for the rest of his life for what he's done.

I actually work (both then and now) with the guy that wrote the first iteration of VA's BCMA system in Topeka back in the mid-'90s. The original was a VA class 3 product that used handheld laser scanners with built-in VT220 LCD screens.

Second System Effect took over, and we ended out going from a handheld laser to a pushcart with a permanently mounted laptop with a laser scanner (as the next version was a Win 3.1/Delphi client that used the Broker). At that point, Central Office got a whiff of it and the rest, as they say, is history.

VA's stuff has always been public domain (since taxpayers pay for the development), and anyone can file a FOIA request for the software. It will be interesting to see how well the current push to truly Open-Source VistA actually works, though.

Um...

I typically don't respond to AC's, but someone may read this and actually decide you know what you're talking about. Apache pilots do NOT use image intensifier night vision devices. They use the TADS (Target Acquisition and Designation System) and PNVS (Pilot's Night Vision System), which are both mounted in turrets in the front of the aircraft. These turrets contain true IR sensors, which display the image in a mini-Heads Up Display known as the monocle, which clips to the right side of the pilot's/CPG's helmet.

Other helicopters in the army's inventory use image intensification, but the Apache doesn't (NB: I'm not sure about the Super Cobras, but IIRC, those are all used by the USMC at this point).

Actually, if you look at a tank in thermals, the hottest thing you're gonna see is the roadwheels. The engine isn't nearly as hot. Those roadwheels get a metric buttload of friction from the tracks (which is the main reason that tank tracks have such a limited life expectancy: you'll get something like 5-10 TIMES the wear out of your car tires than an M1 does with its tracks).

However, tankers prefer to operate head-on with their enemy. All of the armor on a tank is thickest/most protective on the head-on aspect. And, with that aspect, cloaking the heat wouldn't be that bad a problem (and yes, I know the TFA showed it on a Challenger's skirts).

FYI: there ain't no such animal. The searchlight that you were seeing on the M60 was IR based, and was used by the light-amplification night vision sight used then. As an aside, the M60A3 was far enough behind the times that it had to use "frog eyes" to get the range to an enemy tank before shooting: the "frog eyes" were visible immediately above the smoke grenade launchers on the turret of the second picture on the first page of the link you sent. They actually had to use trig and parallax to determine the range before the M1 brought out the laser range finder (the M60A5 incorporated the laser range finder as well as a few of the other goodies that came out on the M1).

The first flight M1 included a true thermal night vision system for the gunner, which allowed them to shoot at night without lighting off a big "Shoot Me, Please" sign on top of the tank. The driver and loader both had light amplification viewers that could be swapped into one of the periscope mounts at night. These LA viewers worked on ambient light only (they came with IR filters for the tanks' headlights, but I think we only used 'em once or twice).

I changed my MOS from 19K to 67R before we got M1A1's (much less M1A2's, if that tells you how old I am), but IIRC, the M1A2 has a second thermal viewer that allows the TC (tank/track commander) to operate independently of the GPS, allowing hunter/killer ops between the TC and gunner. There were rumors that they were going to include true thermal systems for the driver and loader, too, but I don't personally know if that came to pass.

Sorry: forgot to log in and posted this anonymously a few minutes ago.

And I've been reasonably happy with it. As you can probably guess, all of these bags are compromises. You can carry your laptop, and your DSLR, but you aren't going to carry much more. I've got my Canon 350D (with my "go-to" lens, the standard Canon 27-135 IS lens) mounted on it in the top spot in the camera area, then another 5 lenses (ranging from a Sigma 75-300 to a Canon 50 mm prime), along with a Sigma shoe flash stashed in camera area. I still have enough room for my 17" MacBook Pro and power adapter (the laptop has a dedicated, zippered pouch that fits like it was made for it). That's ALL you have room for, though.

You won't have room for much more than a thin paperback (I had JUST enough room to stick my Nook in the front pocket where the wall wart/mouse/extra stuff goes).

So the verdict: it does what you need it to do, and does it well (it even has a pretty nice system for carrying a tripod along). Just don't expect to carry much more than the camera and laptop.

I can tell you that, until 1993 (at least), TADS video was not encrypted.

I got out in 1993 as a 67R, and cannot speak for what they did to the video recorders in the Apache after that (particularly in the Longbow upgrade, which was just a wet dream in Boeing's eye when I left).

are true. We'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide which.

He just has to ask himself whether or not he feels lucky. I work with ePHI every day, and would NOT want to be the first person targeted with prosecution over that. Remember, HIPAA is a criminal statue, not just civil. Lawsuits would be the least of your worries if you ended out disclosing patient information.