Know your NeRD: What submariners can expect from their new e-readers

http://www.navytimes.com/article/20140513/NEWS04/305130061

by nkurz • 12 years ago

46 43 12 years ago

rosser• 12 years ago

I'd have expected to see many of those titles on a military-issue e-reader, but The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test?

derefr3• 12 years ago

Better to have a title get lost in the noise of a huge selection, than to be specifically called out (and then passed around) as contraband.

notproductive• 12 years ago

Honestly the fact that at least someone commented on this is the reason I read ycombinator, I first checked the article's comment section but saw no mention of the above.

It's actually a good selection of books and the Navy would be better for it if the soldiers digest them

_wp3r• 12 years ago

This program is linked to a weight/refit time reduction initiative. MWR usually supplies reading material like this(personal), which with a little scale can add up. That being said MWR is a sudo-military-ish thing that is very much suppose to supply the actual wants of service members and not so much mission anything. Somehow in all the red tape of the military they happen to really do well at being current and engaging with their supplies.

Also, Sailors rarely enjoy being referred to as Soldiers. Use service member in all cases where the proper reference is uncertain.

zhte415• 12 years ago

Perhaps it is for the division that stare at goats? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Men_Who_Stare_at_Goats

chrissnell2• 12 years ago

You might be surprised to hear that there are many free-thinkers in the military. It's a little slice of America, with just about every subculture represented.

What I'm surprised to hear is that they're including a bunch of military reading on these. While I love war books and tactics, when I'm off doing military shit 24/7, the last thing I want to do with my rare free time is read a military book. Give me something that gets my mind off it all.

derefr3• 12 years ago

Just like everywhere else, there are also workaholics in the military. But unlike everywhere else (except hospitals), you can't just turn off the submarine and send everyone home each night, to make sure that at least a little leisure time is forced upon them. In this sort of situation, one of the only ways you can get the workaholic to take a break is by justifying the break as a different kind of productivity--"reading up on strategy" for one.

a3n• 12 years ago

You might be surprised to hear that there are many free-thinkers in the military.

Indeed. I was in the Navy six years, and a large portion of "people who opened my eyes" I met in the Navy.

In general, people are not what you see in the movies. Just because people look the same doesn't mean they are the same. Variety is everywhere.

mseebach• 12 years ago

People can and do have a personal interest in their field of work, and that's a good thing.

Let's assume that you're a software engineer and for the sake of argument that your employer has to provide you with your reading: If that reading compendium included SICP and Code Complete (besides a large selection of mainstream fiction and sci-fi etc), would you be "surprised to hear" that, too?

ableal• 12 years ago

but The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test?

It's not like Tom Wolfe is a raging radical. Interesting reporting, yes, colorful prose, yes, burn-it-to-the-ground calls, no.

Check out his book Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. Probably applies better to current practices.

dmckeon• 12 years ago

Note that the cost of each device includes "the rights to all the books loaded on it," so this is more like a civilian e-reader with a lot of content on it than just an empty $3k Kindle or equivalent.

Still, I wonder how many of the titles were free, or nearly so, and what kind of price break one could get on 100's of titles.

For those wondering: why not a Kindle/Android/etc.? - same reason you can't bring a Furby toy into a secured area - it contains a recording device!

PhasmaFelis2• 12 years ago

same reason you can't bring a Furby toy into a secured area - it contains a recording device!

Well, technically speaking, a Furby doesn't contain a recording device at all. But the important thing is that it might. It doesn't, but it might! Can America take that risk?

TeMPOraL• 12 years ago

Your code contains an eval($_GET['foo']);. Technically speaking, your UI is doing nothing bad, but the important thing is that it might. Can your company take that risk?

Seriously, it's not worth calling something a secured area if you ignore the most obvious attack vectors. Banning Furbies is a reasonable action.

DrStalker• 12 years ago

The way they were originally marketing indicated they learned from the people playing with them, which means they had some way of observing things and recording information about what they saw.

I think it was later worked out they did no such thing, but by that time they were already banned from secure installations.

navbaker• 12 years ago

It's pretty much an open secret that most of the crew takes their own devices with them. Not sure how 5 per boat is going to change that, particularly with a fixed reading selection.

derefr3• 12 years ago

Presumably in the same way having a physical library aboard would--if someone wants to read a particular (classic) book, they can, even during a radio-silent mission.

makomk• 12 years ago

Except that this is the equivalent of a library that only 5 crew members can borrow from at once. I'm not sure how useful that is.

bertil• 12 years ago

It would allow the brass to ask that you don't bring your own. My understanding is that they prefer movies anyway; and not often movies with clothes.

rdtsc3• 12 years ago

Fiction: “The Lord of the Rings” (J.R.R. Tolkien); “Game of Thrones” (George R.R. Martin); “Slaughterhouse Five” (Kurt Vonnegut); “Blood Meridian” (Cormac McCarthy); “The Stand” (Stephen King).
Nonfiction: “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” (Tom Wolfe); “Halsey’s Typhoon” (Tom Clavin); “Band of Brothers” (Stephen Ambrose); “Into the Wild” (Jon Krakauer); “Guns of August” (Barbara Tuchman).

about 300 titles (not sure what the proportion of navy specific material, public domain and commercially licensed title are).

Note the high price -- $3k/unit. That is typical in that domain. It is funny because a lot of things they assert to have is actually lack of features -- lack of wifi, lack of cameras. And probably most important -- presumably made in US. In that market there are really ridiculous markups. You just have to know someone who knows someone to get the contract. It (this market) is also mostly immune to being exported overseas -- just due to basic security and trade regulations.

Informally one can say, "a new mac is cheaper than that!". And yeah it is. But this is a mac built to spec, all made in Ohio probably. Interesting what macs would cost in that case if there built to order in smaller batches and made in Ohio, all having strange requirements like FIPS-140-2 compliant crypto libraries enabled and other random red tape restrictions slapped on them....

drivingmenuts• 12 years ago

Without knowing the specs, it's very difficult to say what the actual cost should be, but ...

Given what they did say, $3K per box is a screwjob if there ever was one. Somewhere in the neighborhood of a $2800 per box screwjob.

davidbanham• 12 years ago

You're forgetting to price in the endless hours in consultation with the military brass, traversing all the red tape involved in dealing with devices that must interact with security clearances, etc etc.

marquis• 12 years ago

I read this as $3k including title licenses. 300 titles, with at least 50% being in copyright and possibly more, seems valid?

rdtsc3• 12 years ago

Hard to say, they seem to imply it, but maybe they only have those titles listed as "samples" in the article that they had to pay for, everything else could be public domain and navy doctrine for example.

morituri• 12 years ago

That $3k will get you an entry level, "assembled in the USA", Mac Pro.

steve19• 12 years ago

Made in USA vs. Assembled in USA.

You cannot deploy portable electronic devices on the submarine fleet without being absolutely certain there is nothing in it logging any data (sound, g-forces, pressure etc.).

Interestingly, the opposite is also true. The Navy SEALs (and everyone else) use consumer GPS devices because they cannot risk losing a classified M-code capable GPS device.

samstave• 12 years ago

The whole thing is utter BS. When at Lockheed; we sold POS Panasonic ToughBooks in a Pelican case with foam lining, an overall retail value of $2,500 to the DOD at a nice price of $25,000.

No, don't be fooled in thinking "oh, that must have included software licensing costs for X Y or Z."

NOPE

That was millions in separate fees... literally a $25 charge for $2,500 in equipment costs at their RETAIL value (i.e. not what the actual cost TO Lockheed was, as they were bought in qty)

vishnugupta• 12 years ago

I had commented on a different thread, listing down a bunch of ways money gets transferred from poor/middle class to rich in an institutionalized way.

This is a prime example!

tzs• 12 years ago

Was there a support requirement? One of the things that typically drives up the price in military purchases is requirements that replacement items with identical specs, and replacement parts with identical specs, by available for some long (in civilian tech terms) time like 20 or 30 years.

30 years from now, will anyone make the RAM those systems use? The LCD panel? The motherboard? The processor? The battery? The pointing device? Probably not. Much of that high price might be going to dealing with that.

callesgg• 12 years ago

God to know that American tax dollars are being well spent. Buy some kindles.

WalterBright• 12 years ago

300 paperbacks don't take up that much space and there are no security concerns with them. Heck, each sailor can bring 1 paperback as part of their kit, then they swap as they read them.

And besides, to get a secure device, they could take an ordinary Kindle, load it up, then physically remove the wifi and usb circuitry.

cycojesus• 12 years ago

Fixed selection of titles with no possibility of putting one's own content... Indoctrination much?

alexkiritz• 12 years ago

How many e-readers have cameras?

bane• 12 years ago

I've been listening to the ANTIC 8-bit Atari computer podcast, and one of the hosts is a former submariner. He has a story about bringing his 8-bit Atari computer on a tour once and writing some utility software that helped with sub operations on his downtime.

It seems submariners have a pretty wide berth (pun intended) to bring on all sorts of stuff if they can fit it in their very tiny personal spaces.

If I had to guess, I'd bet most of the folks on board a sub have "solved" their e-reader problem in various ways already. I'm also kind of surprised various manuals and procedure guides haven't found their way onto official e-readers/tablets in each compartment already.

chrisBob• 12 years ago

Partly the math sounds bad because it is bad math. Someone saw that they got a $1M contract and delivered the first 300 custom e-readers. The next 300 probably won't cost that much, and then the numbers won't be so interesting. To me that doesn't sound that bad if they really developed everything from scratch.

Know your NeRD: What submariners can expect from their new e-readers

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