bdunbar

Interesting. I'm not sure I could do that: I'd want to talk shop, badly.

I read - years ago - that the most active combat was in the area around London. Not a small area, but it allowed RAF to move squadrons to lower threat areas for reconstitution and rebuilding before rotating them back to a hot area.

- In 1991 4th Brigade was kept afloat in the Gulf, forcing the Iraqi army to devote resources to protecting beaches in and around Kuwait, and away from the border where the actual assault took place. Then they snuck the brigade ashore and added them to the striking power across the border.

Absent the ability to assault across a beach, those Iraqi divisions would have been on the border.

They forget their own history, too.

A battle in 1942 was lost, badly, because the USN crews were zonked from a routine that gave them almost no chance for sleep.

> Everyone knows someone

No they don't.

Could be you are a deaf and mute yak herder in Outer Mongolia and suffer the heartbreak of psoriasis. Your situation is unique and you have my pity.

For those of us in the mart of competitive commerce there is no possible way a person can exist in this economy without knowing people.

join some closed and insular groups

You have no idea what you are talking about.

You have my pity.

Everyone knows someone. Build on that.

You work with people. Those people know people. They know other people. Someone says 'I need a good PHP guy' and a guy in the network replies 'I know a guy, SadWebDeveloper - here is his email address'. Boom: you have made contact with someone who wants to hire you.

Join the Whatever User Group in your area. Go to the meetings - introduce yourself. Be a presence on their mail list. Boom: more networking contacts.

This is a really good example. TJIC and I have talked on the internet for -years- via email and twitter and blog. A customer of mine mentioned she was looking for a local developer (Los Angeles) but couldn't find anyone who met even her minimal standards.

I said 'Hey, I know a guy', he lives 8,000 miles away, he's about a hermit and a half, and he knows his sh*t' and a few weeks later TJIC got some months of work and everyone was happy.

And now, here we are, talking. Maybe I can be converted to a networking contact. You never know, hunh?

Thanks, and thank you for the link.

Emacs.

Waiting for chow, waiting for a range, waiting for the trucks to come back .. and waiting .. and waiting .. but nobody told any _drivers_ they needed to make a second run to pick up twenty marines and a small mountain of gear.

Then it started raining. Too bad the tents were in the first load.

except to the extent that people in 1955 apparently didn't know what a "rerun" was.

I believe they did not: teevee was broadcast live, and mostly not recorded. IIRC.

NB The novel "Arc Light"

Ah! I read that '95, and recently got to wondering what the title was. Could not think of it for the life of me.

He was with a rifle company, in mortar squad. The company was over-run during an attack, at night: Marines in fighting holes, bad guys running around in the open, a very chaotic situation.

To eradicate the enemy, and save his company, he pointed the tube of his mortar straight up, dropped a shit-load of rounds down the tube, one at a time. The rounds went up (pretty far, but I no longer recall how high up they go) and came back down all over the place.

Risky, but Marines, generally, were in their holes, the bad guy were not, and so were more exposed to blast and shrapnel.

"We promise SkyStrider 6 - no short rounds this time."

the USMC didn't buy up all of these things

There was, iirc, an article in the Gazette about this. Guy ran the numbers, and it worked out okay: the Corps could run X squadrons per wing, at cost Y per year, plus buy up the spare parts inventory and keep them running for Z years.

It is certainly the kind of airplane a Marine would love, and would fit the Corp's persona.

the only pilots that ever allowed us to shoot 81mm

Well .. you know. A mortar round would bounce off an A-10. Kinda trash a Harrier.

Phht - just run some extension cords on the outside. Problem solved.

Man, the DoD is just not thinking outside the box.

My company gunny (1988) got a bronze star when, as an 19-year old mortarman in 1969, aimed his tube straight up and dropped rounds all over his company's position, saving the day.

I know this because he grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and made me read it, as part of up-close and personal counseling.

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

shun higher education in favor of strict adherence to the bible.

Which passage in the Bible tells Christians to shun higher education?

Ha. I wasn't thinking of mixing the two. Just ... while I'm at the store picking up a stick of RAM, pick up a new magazine, or a brick of .22 ammunition.

Guns and drones are, however, an interesting subject. Wildly impractical, now, due to safety, payload, and usability issues.

Granted, they've branched off quite a bit and sell firearms and ammo

A RS that sells electronics and guns. I would patronize that store so _hard_.

It does for me.

It ran on my 8.1 Pro 64-bit guest VM without issue.

In my heart, Oracle will forever be a database company that was eaten alive by their sales and service organization.

Cisco isn't just a technology company. They're a giant sales and services organization.

I recall hearing that about Sun, too. Now they're just a minor cog of a database maker.

It's working for me.

While the US people thought, that their Minuteman, other missiles and strategic bombers would give some protection,

Well .. _I_ never thought that.

MAD is great theory, but it's got some some really bad failure modes.

No way to justify that.

Sure there is. Like this ..

We need to be able to destroy a lot of Russian tanks, and logistic tail.

We'd like to be able to do this when they are beyond artillery range.

Rockets are unreliable. Airplanes can be shot down.

Thus, nuclear land mine.

Missiles. Lots and lots of missiles up there.

We feared an accidental launch,

For a while I stood sentry at a post that, I always felt, was a candidate for attack. At least, we had a bomb shelter and drilled on relocating, and living in that thing.

At 03:00 on cold mornings I wondered if, looking up, I'd see the re-entry glow on a warhead.

truly bizarre notions that happened during their youth: duck and cover, public bomb shelter drills, etc.

Duck and cover wasn't bizarre, in context: it's a way to survive a nuclear explosion that isn't in one's lap.

Public shelter drills, also: if one expects one's country to be bombed, then knowing where one's nearest shelter is makes sense.

I've read about Windows SUA (and it's predecessors) but have never been sure what problem it solves for me.

Got a use case or two?