* Posts by NS Clerk

6 publicly visible posts • joined 13 May 2008

Snipers - Cowardly assassins, or surgical soldiers?

NS Clerk
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Snipers make find coworkers, too

Regarding snipers as cold-hearted killing bastards: I've worked on IT projects with several retired commandos/special forces and snipers. I liked working with them all, but got along personally with the snipers best. While certainly very controlled individuals, they never struck me as psychopaths and generally exhibited real human emotion. From what they have told me, the United States and British armed forces are intent on preventing some of the problems created by previous generations of snipers who came to enjoy their jobs too well, continuing professionally after release from service. A sense of remorse, at least for unintended kills of non-combatants, was required. However, remorse at achieving the objective (killing a particular person) was not. You should not feel guilty about killing the enemy leader but should if a stray shot kills his six year old daughter.

Interestingly, I found the snipers to be extremely intelligent.

Great article and some excellent corrections in the comments. El Reg has quality readers.

Engineer accidentally deletes cloud

NS Clerk
Pirate

good time to get into clouds

Because Quality Problems are 90% Management.

I'm naming my new cloud co. "BeSpin". Or "Besp in the Clouds".

Overstock CEO offers $75,000 for Wall Street's soul

NS Clerk

Radio Free UK

In the guise of telling us what a whacko he is, you successfully advertise his name and ideas to a large audience. Valis thanks you.

Devil dog laughs in the face of Taser

NS Clerk
Go

Don't tell Chloe Ashman the breed is safe

Didn't anyone see the Sun article? "A Staffordshire bull terrier ripped away half of the six-year-old’s throat." Poor lass. Besides her, there have been a spate of incidents recently with the breed. Can't shoot them fast enough, especially since as so many have observed tasering don't work on canines.

Plus. I'd love to pop a cap into the dogs fouling my lawns. Perhaps a citizens' brigade with delegated rights.

Of course, I did just admit to reading the Sun, which probably gets me blackballed.

1,076 developers, 15 years, one open-source Wine

NS Clerk
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Whining about Wine?!

What's with the dissing of the Wine project contributing programmers? Wine moved the Linux desktop forward as a viable option to those with old Windows apps, even if it didn't always work as easily as Linuxheads promised. It even added to the ability of people to move to Intel Macs. Even Windows users got benefits, since it helped the movement that put the heat on the MonSter. Diversity in the marketplace is a good thing.

All hail Wine, from this long time user. Congratulations to all the developers for being a key part of the revolution

I Was A Teenage Bot Master

NS Clerk
Black Helicopters

.mil and .gov got them the sentences

It was only a small mention, but it's clear that the .mil and .gov incursions is what got them the sentences. The US currently calls its military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan "war", so compromising military facilities can be seen as a wartime crime by the government. At least they weren't labeled as "enemy combatants" and deported to the Bush administration's "perfectly legal" facility at gitmo.

The way that .mil was mentioned does make me wonder. Like when you read about a cop who "just happened" to stop a vehicle for a broken light, which "just happened" to be carrying millions in cocaine/heroine/other. Or maybe the .mil stuff got the federales thinking it was Al-Qaeda or the Belgians trying to steal secrets, and once they discovered it was just a couple of idiots making click money, had to get a big sentence.

The take-away: if you are going to black-hat, you should follow the other black hats' advice and stay away from .mil and the top-secret nuclear National Laboratories.