Oh I hear ya. CFB Cornwallis (known as Wally-world at the time by its inmates) was exactly that. 3-4 hours sleep was the norm, and the days were brutal.
Fun Times!

We are not exactly Socialist (with a capital S) up here in Canada - we have some government controlled elements to our system (the health care system in part, some Crown Corporations etc) but we are primarily capitalist in nature.
I know that in the US the general opinion seems to be that a society is either completely Capitalist (with a capital C), OR it is "Godless Communism"(tm) and threatening the existence of Democracy) but that's utter bullshit. There are plenty of countries where some elements are socialist and others are not that are proving quite successful (look to most of the northern European countries like Norway, Sweden or Denmark for instance).
It works up here in Canada, although our current Conservative government (read very radical right-wing), are doing their best to ruin things as much as possible before they lose control.

When I did basic training in the Canadian Military we heard rumours that they were putting saltpeter in our food to discourage sexual desires. I don't know if its true but it was pretty popularly accepted as such.

You know, I am always surprised at how often those who dismiss OWS choose to do so by pointing out that the people that showed up at the camps were unemployed.
Who the fuck else can show up there? The employed supporters of OWS had jobs to go to. I would love to have participated in my local OWS protest but it didn't jibe with my work hours at all.
Nonetheless I support the need for change in our system (here in Canada as well as down in the US and over in Europe). The concentration of wealth in the hands of a select few based on their historic control of the political system to leverage things to their own advantage has not and is not working out well for our society. The money the extremely wealth folks earn doesn not trickle down worth a shit, bailing out companies that failed due to massive mismanagement/greed does not work to the public advantage (oh sure, some jobs are preserved, but since the bulk of the money comes from the middle and lower classes taxes its stealing from Peter to pay Paul).
Unfortunately, I think its too late. The Rich (tm) control things and nothing is going to change that.
The only thing that baffles me is the number of folks who flock to support the Republicans down in the US (or the Conservatives up here in Canada) and in effect are saying with their support "Ok, so the rich are trampling on the bulk of the population and fucking the economy up severely so they can keep their position, oh and they are removing our rights to privacy, destroying health care, ruining the environment and all for their own personal gain - but you know? I am okay with that". Blows my mind every time I read a sincere post from some fucking idiot that just doesn't see whats going on around them.

Because /. has a huge population of Right-wing extremist thinkers. Anything remotely sensible or even vaguely liberal in expression gets shot all to shit by an endless stream of dismissive posts, usually without any real content. Some o of those same individuals get Moderation points every once in a while and use them extensively to reflect their views.
Its very difficult to be a sensible person here in my opinion (yes, that means I think the vast majority of gun-toting right-wing crackpots are not sensible). If you get into anything remotely political, you had better be the next thing to fascist to be left alone, if you talk about technology you had better hate Apple (and now seemingly *like* Microsoft for some reason, despite years of vitriol directed at Redmond in the past on this site) etc. Dissent is punished
I will thus be moderated down to oblivion for my opinion. Wait for the endless stream of comments first...

I read a story recently (from a respected source) but can't recall the details. It involved a long series of experiments on the effects of radioactivity on humans. They were conducted by the US Army on American civilians without their consent. The article mentioned trucks rolling up to a children's playground in a particularly poor black neighborhood and spraying the kids and adults who were present with a radioactive liquid of some kind, then driving away. Other forms of testing were conducted all around the US, usually on very poor people.
When we look at foreign countries we revile, we point out their inhuman abuses as justification for our hatred or dislike of them. When we ourselves here in the west (I am Canadian, not American) carry out similar abuses of people, we just cover them up and refuse to believe *our* government could do that sort of thing.
Western Democracy is often just a more civilized face painted over the same barbaric and inhuman practices we revile in others.

The best series of its kind IMHO.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_(TV_series)

It was awesome, particularly the Moon girls in their miniskirts (I was a young teen after all)

Au Contraire. I found watching it was more tiring than watching a regular version of the movie, the plastic glasses were not bad but still irritating when worn over my regular glasses, and I got a minor headache from the whole process although thankfully it emerged mostly by the end of the film and stopped once I stopped watching. Admittedly my eyes are not perfectly aligned so any "impact" of the 3D was minimized somewhat.

I only went because my wife and a friend of mine wanted to see it right away and the 3D version was what was available. I have no desire to see any 3D films again ever.

If I see it again its without the fucking 3D effect which in my opinion offered ZERO improvements to the movie. I am already quite capable of suspending my belief when I watch a movie and losing my sense of self and surroundings if its at all engaging. 3D effects like rocks falling towards me or a butterfly flying at me only serve as irritating distractions. I think the film will be immensely better on blu-ray on my non-3D TV.

I hope the 3D hype fails. Hollywood would do better to concentrate on making better movies rather than hoping a new technology will give them easy money without having to focus on storylines, characters etc.

Well the Death Star would have its own facebook page with millions of people "liking" it for sure.

Ooh, just imagine Facebook as it would be run by the Imperials - oh, I guess not a lot of change after all. nm

When copyright is up for debate there will be no shortage of money from Big Media, I am sure they can cough up billions if required to ensure they maintain perpetual control over Mikey Mouse or other key properties.
Imagine when the copyright on Star Wars runs out - you think it won't get extended forever?

This also bears on inheritance. Someone with a music collection dies and their heirs cannot inherit that music collection because when Big Media gets ahold of the laws like this, their heirs have no legal right to the media

At one place I worked, I was in the IT department. One of the guys there managed the company servers (all running Redhat wherever possible), his name was Rob.
Rob needed to check something to do with the software the company was producing so he cobbled together a rough tool (programmed in perl I *think*) that let him do the stuff he needed to do. He was not a developer as I said, he wrote it to do what he needed and didn't worry about anything other than that. I think he essentially learned to program in perl (or whatever it was) on this little program.

One day someone was down from Sales to ask Rob about something, and he opened up this tool to check something for the Sales guy.

Three days later the Sales guy phoned down to Rob and asked him about that little tool he had seen him use. Was it easy to use, was the documentation any good (there was none) and what was it called exactly (it had no name). Rob asked why he needed to know those things, and the Sales guy said "Oh well we just got a big contract signed for the company software but I had to promise we would include that tool you showed me a few days ago to cinch the deal, so I just wanted more details so I could provide the customers with them".

The result: several folks in development had to drop everything and then after grilling Rob on what his tool was used for, code up a whole new version of it in a more polished manner so it would be ready for the customer's use. The Art department had to do emergency design work, a half dozen people worked overtime etc, rewriting the tool in C++, we had to write a short but complete user's guide etc. In short it cost the company a lot of man hours and money to create this new management tool and only because the Sales guy would say yes to anything that clinched the deal - and without checking on anything first, like say, does the product in fact exist.

Many non-developers do not get it and will never get it with regards to programming/development.

Oh and while I think of it, I recall sitting talking to the Boss of a local small development company/ISP in my home town. He got a call from a potential customer asking if they had software that did X. He said sure we do and can the guy hold for a sec. he put him on hold for a minute, while he and the head developer thought up a good name for the product, then got back on the line and told the guy the name and proceeded to answer questions from the customer on the features. Amazingly it had all of the customer's required features. He took notes for the requirements as he talked to the guy, then took his CC info and processed the sale (I think $1800 but I can't recall exactly). Then he hung up.
Then they discussed writing it. All the while I was sitting as witness to this process and I said to him "Isn't the guy gonna want his software right away?" and he said oh we can whip something up in a few days and ship it out, it should work well enough for us to produce the "upgrade version" that really works properly. He then started working on the label art.

There are some shoddy people out there in the computer world I can tell ya. I decided not to see if I could work there.

I recall reading about someone being brought in to replace the (sole) developer for a key piece of business software because the previous one had been fired. (Caveat: I have no idea if this is true and can't recall where I encountered it).

They opened up the source code to give it a check and discovered that the previous developer had used variable names that varied mostly in the number of letters used. So you had variables named like:
$m, $mm, $mmm, $mmmm, $mmmmm, $mmmmmm,
$sa, $saa, $saaa, $saaaa

and so on. Not a single variable that appeared in the software had an even vaguely informative name. There were no apparent notes to help translate it at all (the previous developer likely left with them).

Massive job security I suppose but I think I would want to hunt them down and murder them myself.

That implies that all of those people care to spend the time meeting - and they often don't - and also know or are willing to listen to a detailed explanation of what is involved - and they aren't or are not capable of it. Everyone knows the problems, no one admits to their part of the problem.
Also management tends towards Seagull management - arrive suddenly, shit all over everything until everyone is worked up, then leave. Rinse, repeat until the project is done or cancelled.
Honestly I have been through this sort of cycle a few times, and despite the best efforts of the developer side to get management to agree to the design document as defined, the end result is featuritis, people sticking their nose in who shouldn't be able to but who are higher up in the food chain than you (or anyone else in development) is etc.
Half of the art of software design is dealing with people who don't understand it, or care to learn.

Then in school they should be recreating the actual real world experience, you know:
* a representative from the "Business" comes to you with a vague concept of what they want, mostly consisting of "Something like X" but more like "Y" with some of the features of "Z" (3 completely different things that have no apparent relationship to each other). After a few days of meetings you determine that what the person wants is based more on the colors used and the layout being pretty to them and not at all on the features or functionality.
* You then seek out a group of various people who actually know what might be required, and grill them to try to get an idea of the features and functionality required. From this you create an initial design document.
* You run the design document that describes what you think are the features and functionality past the people above who all agree you are on the right track. You add more details and they all agree its perfect. Mostly they don't actually understand what you are talking about but they nod their heads sagely and agree because they don't want to look incompetent.
* You begin coding (or possibly get together with a team and fight over things for a few days/weeks/months) and get a prototype built. You show it to those you have spoken with and again its on the right track.
* You code up the first version. You reveal it to people and its "great".
* Then the people start filtering in with design "suggestions" that mean massive changes to what has been written and done, possibly shifting the entire project in a different direction. These conflict with each other and trying to find the middle ground occupies as much of your time as actually trying to write anything.
* The marketing people come into the picture and it turns out that *they* are the ones that really have the authority to make the design decisions, not the people who you originally talked to, but as an added bonus the marketing people don't have the slightest clue about the required features or functionality - just what they think they can sell to customers. Getting their salable features shoe-horned into the program becomes your top priority now.
* The program also has to look "pretty" so the art department enters the picture and they demand massive changes so that the layout is much nicer and easier for them to do, minimizing their workload as much as possible because they are completely overworked and under-budgeted. You meet with artists in rooms that are completely dark and stare at photoshop images that are renderings of what they see the program looking like. It bears no resemblance to what you have been working on and they have made massive changes to everything renaming all the menu entries etc. It is however pretty, or rather the 3 different versions of it are pretty, and you have to wait until marketing determines which one is the best.
* now you are way off schedule because of all the monkeys who are making changes based on whats the most important thing from their perspective.
* Eventually its all nailed down and you hurriedly code the new first version up as fast as possible because of pressure from above to be "done this thing already".
* At the last moment when its done, it gets cancelled to be replaced by some other project which is higher priority, or they announce it must be entirely recoded in a different language/script.

Shove that student into this environment. Get people to play the various roles that are about as knowledgeable as people you will encounter in the corporate environment - which is to say find the most qualified idiots you can and put them in the roles.