
Know your NeRD: What submariners can expect from their new e-readers - nkurz
http://www.navytimes.com/article/20140513/NEWS04/305130061
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rdtsc
> 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....

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samstave
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)

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vishnugupta
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!

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jcromartie
_Grumble grumble_ job creators! _something something_

~~~
leaveyou
"job creator" is the new "slave owner" but hey, somebody has to do it...
employ or be employed, no better alternative at horizon I'm afraid.

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navbaker
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.

~~~
derefr
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
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.

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dmckeon
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!

~~~
PhasmaFelis
> _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
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.

~~~
DanBC
Banning furbies because they "learn and repeat words" is a stupid reason,
because they had an inbuilt list of about 100 English words that they could
"learn".

Thus, you could talk state secrets to it all day every day for a year and all
it would learn would be its internal list of words.

Having said that banning furbies is probably a good way to remind people about
recording devices and banning furbies was probably a sensible thing to do.

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/254094.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/254094.stm)

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

~~~
chrissnell
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.

~~~
mseebach
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?

~~~
chrissnell
The software engineer parallel isn't totally the same. It's hard to understand
unless you've been there but military exercises/war are an all-encompassing
thing. You're eating and breathing this stuff 24/7 whether you like it or not.
During these things, it can be difficult to feel like you're a civilian,
especially when you can't even wear civilian clothes.

But yeah, you are right, there are some people who can do it all day and night
and still not get enough. War movies and books are very popular with Soldiers.

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bane
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.

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WalterBright
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.

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chrisBob
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.

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alexkiritz
How many e-readers have cameras?

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

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

