Awww damn, now you upset them. They're going to take down slashdot...

I was an infantry machinegunner.

That doesn't mean that I don't know anything. I've been building computers since before I was in high school. Taught myself C and C++. Went to Digipen Institute of Technology, worked for my school district as a network admin while still a student...that was all before the military.

We did have technical staff (MOS code 06xx) to do such things, but every one I met knew less about computers and networks than I did. They guy that taught my UAV course knew less about flying the aircraft than I did (due in part to experience flying R/C airplanes, and an understanding of the fundamentals of aerodynamics). The guy that taught me the GBOSS system knew less about the system by the time he got there than I did (I took the time to investigate and figured the entire system out, there were some things I taught him).

Is my case unique? Most definitely. But the point is, the military's technical aptitude falls short. I group them all because I've used some Army systems as well and found them to be lacking obvious features.

I haven't laughed that hard in a long time!

Do you realize the technical ineptitude in the military?

Our Network guys didn't even know what a routing loop was, or how I could take down the network in this one relatively unguarded room (that happened to house the routers).

We were lining up a satellite for our network access and it had to point x degrees; my lieutenant (college grad, because all officers are required to have Bachelor's degree in {INSERT RANDOM FIELD HERE}) requested I ask the guy if this azimuth had to be shot from the base, and if so if it was along the side or from the center.

I was the only non-officer in my company that could keep a generator running; if it died, no one knew how to start it, despite the instructions being written fairly clearly.

A sergeant fulled said generator with oil until it was full (full being to the top of the fill-tube). Then we had a geyser of oil coming out of the exhaust. A Marine was moving our front end loader and rounded a left hand corner that had a bank sloping down to the right...with the bucket up. Of course it tipped over.

These are but a few examples I've seen. The Army's SOP (standard operating procedure) for the Raven B UAV system is to stall it at 100-150 feet (I think) and let it fall to the ground to land. We were taught that $1000 in damages for 5 flights was acceptable/expected. The Marine's SOP was to do the same but at 50-75 feet to minimize damage.

I was a Marine. I'm proud of my service, but I'm not proud of the Marine Corps. It's full of a bunch of coddled stupid pussies. But the military should NOT be in charge of their own control systems for technical devices, not without a lot more technical education for those serving in the technical fields, which isn't going to happen with 4 years of service then treating everyone like shit so the majority leave.

Not more industry shills, not business leaders. Leaders of people, leaders that know the industries. Let's put Richard Stallman in the FCC. He's certainly not an industry shrill.

Voting MAKES the difference. The electoral system is broken, certainly, but it isn't handled the way it was intended to. A simple majority popular vote in a state gets ALL the states electoral votes, that's not right.

I've talked to several people about net neutrality. Afterward, they all understand it well enough to decide for themselves (some even do opt against it, which I take to mean I keep bias out of the explanation). You must be doing something wrong when explaining it to them and here it is: "common carrier." Keep the technical terms to a minimum. Sure, "common carrier" isn't REALLY a technical term, but it sounds technical to them. You have to explain it in common terms.

Here's basically how I do it. Take the internet right now, that's all we want to keep (usually this is enough, don't change it AT ALL). Say you have Comcast as your provider. No what they want to push is a tiered system, where, say, Microsoft pays Comcast more than Google does, so your Google traffic is slowed down, but Bing is super fast, so you might switch to that; and since youTube is owned by Google, their traffic gets slowed down because Microsoft paid for the priority.

You have to use simple terms, and relate it to stuff they care about (youtube).

I view your post as you being defeated before you even try. Money controls politics, that's great, but voting controls who even gets into office, and who is into office determines whether money controls their politics.

I think about 7 pounds. To me, weight of a laptop has never been an issue, so I don't even consider it, and often forget that most people care about this a lot.

It was a good time, but I kept hard drive activity down, I had firefox open usually with several tabs, some documentation, my IDE of course (Visual Studio), winamp streaming from my home computer, all over wifi. If I turned my monitor brightness back up, I'd still get over 3 hours.

I like it. I wrote this for a college assignment. Probably inaccurate, but I wanted to see what I could get away with in the course:

Assignment: 1. The death of the web http://www.onthemedia.org/2010/aug/20/the-death-of-the-web/ Summarize the directions that commercial use of technology is moving to provide content, away from the open, free web.

I followed the link to http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/

The article focuses on users' widespread use of specific and specialized apps to retrieve internet content and dramatizes the difference between “web” and “internet.” This latter distinction is, in my opinion, entirely incorrect, as the world wide web, though often now not being used by a browser, is still a world wide web in that it is a web of networks that covers the world; much like the internet is a larger network connecting smaller networks. There is no difference between “web” and “internet.”

The article makes a big deal out of the fact that most data transmitted over the internet is no longer “the web” which it declares as HTML and data seen in web browsers, but, typical of Wired, it takes a naive point of view and understanding of root concepts and technology (Example: first paragraph; almost all of those are NOT necessarily apps, but can in fact be checked from a web browser, and it does not indicate any sort of decline of the web). In my opinion, people don't generally understand technology and try to dramatize what is new in order to impress others with their cutting edge knowledge; Wired epitomizes this.

Commercial use of technology, in the scope of this article/assignment, is moving content to dedicated apps/services whereas in the past it used to be up to the user to find such things via a web browser. Services such as Netflix, games such as World of Warcraft, specific apps to check specific services such as Facebook and WSJ, media streaming via Flash or otherwise embedded formats are taking away from what the author considers to be the open web, and bringing specialized data to specialized apps that are specifically requested by users. This is in comparison to the “open web” where a user used a non-specific app (web browser) to find the content they sought. The only real difference is ease of use; if a user wants to only check Facebook (on a mobile device, the article often leaves this subtle yet significant distinction out), they need only to launch the Facebook app, which has much less overhead than a full web browser which allows it to launch quicker, saving them the time of the full web browser launch, and navigating to Facebok; Bam! It's already up. It's like having a different browser shortcut, each with it's own homepage to whichever service the user is seeking.

But it is still an open and free web. There are options that simplify the enormity of the web, and the largest example of this is Apple and the Walled Garden analogy: their iPhone/iPad model is that you have THEIR hardware using THEIR software or software THEY approve for YOUR web-browsing experience, limiting the openness and liberty of the world wide web in return for simplicity for the user. Will this trend continue? Yes. Is it the death of the internet, or web? Absolutely not. People still go home and check E-mail and research on the web using old-fashioned web browsers, not their iPhones or iPads. The web is not dead, it is simply more widespread and used in more and different ways than in years past.

We do. Voting.We got ourselves into this mess and we perpetuate it by voting for the same sort of morons over and over again. Purge the system. Vote every incumbent out. Never vote for politicians again, we don't need politicians in government, we need true leaders who understand industry.

You're part of the problem with that attitude, that helpless, infantile view of not being able to do anything about it. Unfortunately, most of America shares that point of view, which is only a problem because most of America shares that point of view, which is only a problem because most of America shares that point of view...

Do something. Write letters to your senators. To your congressman (and to be politically correct, to your congresswomen). Call them. Don't vote for the status quo. Let people know you are standing up for what is right. They just need to see someone doing something, because most of America is a flock of sheep. They don't know, nor care, about the issues plaguing their life because, like a poster said below, they can't be bothered, 'Dancing with the Stars' is on.

Do something, and be public about it. Perhaps I have a naive point of view of it, but it's better than rolling over and giving up. At THAT point, you have lost everything. When you've given up, then all hope is lost. America hasn't given up, not quite yet.