
Real Men Use Android: Special Forces Favor Google Phone  - olefoo
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/special-forces-want-android-apps-for-warzone-john-maddens/
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ary
Apparently "real men" can't be pacifists. Good to know.

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sliverstorm
I do not understand. I do not see where the article suggests that all "real
men" are in the armed forces.

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glhaynes
Apparently "real men" can't be iPhone users. Good to know.

:)

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jasonjei
Back in AF, pilots in training would be obsessed with their iPhones playing
X-Plane. It actually is a fantastic simulator considering that many of these
pilots could very possibly be flying your commercial jet someday :) My buddy
who went the cargo AF pilot route is a heavy iPhone user, but I guess the rest
of the military doesn't consider the AF a real branch and call it the "Air
Farce." The AF is going towards the UAV route, so pilots in the service are
less and less.

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spoiledtechie
Pretty good article. For one that works directly with the troops as well as
building tools for the R&D department for my company. We are building and
showing off tools just like what is explained in this article to try and win
contracts just like this.

We are always looking for more things and ways to help the troops out. This
article does a good job of actually telling the public what the private sector
builds for the troops.

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jasonjei
For all the flack vets/servicemen get, it's _not_ their war. Policymakers such
as Bush determined what servicemen would do. Servicemembers can save lives in
Katrina, and they may be ordered to carry out bombing missions--a lot of
people were commissioned/enlisted during 9/11 after being moved by the
collapse of the twin towers: it is a case of bait and switch, when we were
sold the falsehoods of the "War on Terror."

What the military does is not a binary answer. The public chooses the
commander in chief and the policy (Congress). It's a system that has endured
for the last three centuries. You have the power to change it, and if you
don't like it and don't speak up, remember V for Vendetta: "If you're looking
for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror."

I sometimes remember the story of my girlfriend's grandpa: He was a Japanese
soldier drafted in the Second World War. Around the same time, my maternal
grandmother was serving as a provincial administrator of the Republic of China
version of the IRS as one of the first college educated female accountants.
She had to dress up as a man, cut her hair short to avoid being summarily
raped and shot in Nanjing, then-capital of China. So now you know I'm of
Chinese ethnicity dating a Japanese girl. My girlfriend's grandpa on a China
mission was ordered by his commander to shoot one of the prisoners. If he
refused, he would most likely be shot (most militaries allow this; the UCMJ
allows this in combat). It was a choice between his life or somebody else's.
If you watched Dark Knight, you know it's never a black or white answer. It's
always a cruel decision to make. Just ask any Vietnam vet who saw combat. If
my girlfriend's grandpa didn't shoot the man, my girlfriend might not exist.
If he did, he would be a conscientious objector at the expense of his life,
and I would not meet my girlfriend. All the while it's awful 40 million
Chinese people lost their lives to the Japanese. There are your obvious
offenders, the ones that _do_ enjoy raping and killing people, but they are
not normal and are present even in civilian society. A lot of them are likely
decent people, and would secretly free Chinese prisoners if they had the
opportunity.

I wish we could all be pacifists, but should we eliminate the military? I'm
sure that's a resounding no, and I realize my sentiment may not be the most
popular on HN, but we would be looking at anarchy without the men manning the
silos too.

War is awful and thankfully the Internet seems to be eliminating 99.9% of
armed conflicts. There is no point in senseless loss of life. But we still
need a good defense--maybe not as much power as we have now, bur nonetheless
something to protect the border.

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spoiledtechie
Even tho this was a good read, what does it have to do with my above comment?

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abello
They also use Windows...

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face
So does everyone. Now they'll use less of it.

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spot
One problem with releasing your code as open source is it can get used in ways
that you don't approve of, eg weapon systems by the military or crapware by
the carriers.

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forensic
This is why the GPL is better than Apache. The military would have to release
their code.

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DannoHung
Why? They don't distribute it outside of their organization.

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forensic
good point. I didn't think of that.

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stakent
Use AGPL.

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DannoHung
They _still_ wouldn't be distributing the service outside of their
organization.

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stakent
You are right. AGPL is not a solution.

Thank you.

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bhiggins
I still have a problem with using a VM on a phone and having GC on a phone. (I
also have a problem with Objective C's function call overhead.)

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mahmud
Macho. But a phone is exactly where you want a VM. In fact, I would _love_ to
be able to push vm images for my phone from my desktop machine. Wake up, plug
phone, push image. Security upgrades, new GPS data, my downloaded podcasts,
news, emails, etc. I want to be able to come home with a new handset, plug it,
and have my "phone" back.

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regularfry
Totally different use of the term "virtual machine". You're talking about a
virtualised execution environment, or hardware virtual machine (as executed by
virtualbox, xen or whatever); he's talking about a runtime virtual machine
(like the CLR, JVM, or Dalvik).

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mahmud
The distinction is negligible on the mobile phone where the the 'runtime VM'
takes care of memory allocation for even "native" C code.

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erikpukinskis
Today all of my SMS messages disappeared off my HTC Incredible.

Google is just full of wonderful surprises.

