What is Digg?91 Comments
- screampants, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20The gov should fund the $100 laptop project. Then it would be really cheap to have all of those little guys running around. And then more people would get used to a non-windows OS too!
- joelito, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16Hey Geeks, why don't you join hajinet.com and see if there's any advise on network management you can provide to these soldiers?
- nugge7, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16IHAQ!
HAHAHA. See, what I did there? LMAO psh. :-/ - pseudojd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13from article: “to get this running, a lot of things fell of the back of a truck.”
- brandizzle, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13OB
I think they deserve it. Would you die for something you believed in? I doubt it. But they're willing to. I don't care if you don't like Bush, I don't care if you don't think they should be there, support them. If ever needed these are the people that will fight to protect your ass from a foreign threat.
I vote they deserve a computer. - crawfishsoul, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9It's a bit ironic that this article hit the front page at the same time as an article about the Internet negatively affecting worker productivity.
http://digg.com/programming/Meet_the_Arch-Nemesis_of_Productivity_The_Internet
But if anyone deserves some time in front of a computer, it's them. - joshfraz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9thanks for what you're doing over there and for sharing a first-hand perspective
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10it's not like they're on a vacation over there to take a laptop and carry it around with them. probably one PC for 10 people is more appropriate but meh...
- tjg66, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Interesting what they can come up with just for porn! LOL
- spectre, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9I agree with the Scream and Macota. $100 laptops would be a great investment if for no other reason than a morale boost for troops.
But in response to Macota (though I see it getting buried), I think there may be more than a grain of truth in that statement. As we all know, contractors in Iraq aren't known for frugality with government money. - fintheman, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8By the way guys, you have a big misconception of everyone out in Iraq.
Alot of people have it decent there, especially the USAF at Ballad. Some people never leave the greenzone, have plenty of space to keep their equipment in and personal items. Its a smaller percentage of people that deploy over there that actually go out guns in hand and fighting. There is a HUGE amount of supply/comm/med, etc., that never even leave the green zones except to fly in and or out. - securecomm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6OB
I'd have to disagree with you. Not every location has all the amenities you've listed. Many camps are bare bones and do not have a lot of the "finer" things in life such as real food. Some of our guys are living at locations that still serve MREs as the primary meals. - japanlover, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6this is the kind of story that should be posted on digg
good stuff - kdehead, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5anyone else see the ironic comedy in calling it a "Hajj Net"?
- kdehead, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5the reason why you are limited on web chat, and such like, is because the jihadists are also skilled hackers. i cant blame the military for being so paranoid about this. i dont blame them.
- chickenselects, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6the last thing they want is more weight on their back.
- teh_toaster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Geeks? Geeks?!!? Oh, right...geeks. At least thats what my keychain says.
- finke67, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Well the article was a little off on that part. It is a violation of General Order #1;
"Introduction, possession, transfer, sale, creation or display of any pornographic or sexually explicit photograph, videotapes, movie, drawing, book, magazine, or similar representations." Is prohibited.
I'm at Liberty and my company bought some satellite service from the unit we replaced. It works decent when there isn't much traffic or Skype going on. At least once a week the power goes out for an hour... but considering it is Iraq it isn't too bad. Also the MWR tent has about 20 PCs with 30 minute limits. Now a third party company "Magic Island" offers internet for $60/month to all the trailers in my pad. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6why not just wifi iraq , that would be nice, since we are taking it over, we might as well do it right this time. no RIAA or MPAA allowed under the new iraq government!
- BritOverseas, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Excellent idea
- allhard, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7This has nothing to do with capitalism.. This is about troops who get paid very little who risk their life daily being given a simple pleasure. I know somebody who came off their tour of duty a while ago. He says it was hell. Is there anything wrong with trying to make somebody happy?
Get a life you ungrateful little sleazeball. If you ever left you little shell you would realize there is more to life than your personal gain and pleasure. - DS513, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Damn, our troops are 1337. And the sad part is, they can probably make a better ISP than the ones we get here in the states. Yet another reason why the US military is the best in the world. :)
- nukethewhales, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I'm not entirely sure why the capitalism comment was offensive to some people. Wierd that the use of the word capitalism seems to translate to "I hate the troops."
- artman, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5This is great. I may not agree with the reasons we are in Iraq, but it's good to read that they can work on something like this to keep in touch with their loved ones and even their blogs. It was never easy in previous wars to stay in touch with family and friends. The 21st century can offer the technology and savy to cross that divide.
@joelito
Sounds like a capitol idea. I know there are a lot of people who say they know their stuff here and have the balls to brag about it here. Why not do something with it? Prove your worth. That's what these soldiers are doing for you and I. Might as well see if you can contribute. I wish I could, but I know there are more knowledgeable people here than me. - AdamskiAirsoft, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4He's right.
- BritOverseas, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Good for them.
I work in a lot of places where there is No/Little/***** internet and have had to errr, make stuff fall off the back of a truck for our bods to have service, so be it.
What would you do without the internet, it's not ALL porn you know.
[crickets]
yep, thought so - hobophobe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Better link would be directly to http://hajjinet.com/ which also has a great video of a presentation the admin did some time back at notacon. In fact, it was covered on slashdot about 60 days ago and at that time someone submitted an article to digg linking to the slashdot post. http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/24/144244
- finke67, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3MPAA... good one. Every Saturday at the local Hadji-mart (on the base) you can pick up new releases for 3 bucks, if you don't mind hearing the guy beside the camera coughing, or pick up a the first 4 seasons of Scrubs for $25 in a box set...
- kdehead, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3well, i suppose your comrades might stay alive if their morale is up. if their morale is down, then they'll make mistakes and soldiers will die.
one should never underestimate the importance of morale in a military force. - ItsAllVerbatim, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3MILITARY PEOPLE THAT CAN'T ACCESS CERTAIN SITES FROM WORK/BALAD:
Use Google cache :)
- A Member Of The Military Who Works In IT But Can't Endorse This Method Even Though He Utilizes It - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I wish we had something like this at my base (Tallil). Actually, from what I heard, the Air Force guys have all kinds of cool stuff like this on their section of base. The MWR lines, time limits and blocked sites made things tough. Even Blogger was blocked! A few of us were considering ordering a satellite dish, and setting up our own internet cafe between our trailers. But the cost, large size (too big for mail), and security warnings prevented us. You'd have to have some decent connections, like these guys did, aka, falling off a truck!
Quite a few people over there have laptops. I'd say half the NCO's have them, so they can type counselings and such on FormFlow. I took mine. The PX sells them as well. I picked up a couple signals that seemed to be set up by KBR, but couldn't get it working. I couldn't get any sites to load, but I was able to do trace routes. Not sure what that means! - kdehead, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2sounds odd man - but i guess the restrictions are in place for security reasons.
- kdehead, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3macaubuser -> its easier to hack a computer than it is to hack a phonecall. thats why.
- ACalcutt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I like his organized setup :-D
- lilfroger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2All I can say is 74 B (ok they are known as 25B's now but hey I'm old) ROCK!!! The best way to take care of soldiers is to just take care of them. Moral is a big thing. If guys are worrying their heads off trying to figure out if their wife has been able to pay the bills or if their kid is still sick with the flu their are not going to be checking the roads for IED's. But when they can communicate home and catch up with the local news they feel better about being there and doing their job.
If you want to read up on some good stuff from these soldiers take a look at http://www.milblogging.com/ - joelito, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@MacAbuser
They're probably using the firewall to block everything but the http port(80) Some chat(IM) programs can be set up to use that instead of the standard, preconfigured port, but of course, I'm not there, so I don't now how that system is laid out. - Wahttehhog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The Hajj is the Pilgrimage to Mecca in Islam.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajj - lilfroger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm sure you will not come back and catch this but if you do. Please thank your husband for doing the job that he does. I pray that this year passes quickly for you and that your husband and his troops are safe.
- AnArmyWife, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1My husband tries his best to call or email when he can. He has to wait in a line for about 30 minutes.....AND THEN has a limit of five minutes. Thats five minutes for EITHER the phone OR the computer.....if you want to use both, you have to go get back in line the second time. I came upon this post while searching for a laptop for my husband. This is what he has requested. For those who say, "they should spend more time keeping eachother alive".......They are human beings....they may be in a war zone but something that gives them a sense of normalcy is welcomed. My husband just lost a friend on Dec. 7th to a mortar bombing. Nobody was sitting around "playing" on a laptop at the time. They use the ever so large block of time at the end of their 15 hour shifts. Usually most folks call it "sleeping" time, but these guys have to find it where they can. Standing in line after you have been shot at all day just to call home or chat online for five minutes with your kids using yahoo is not an easy task. Laptops give them something they can use in private and have instant access to.....SO.....Try not to picture a bunch of soldiers sitting around a laptop checking out nude pictures or playing a video game. Picture them having at least a moment in their down time where they can go freely to contact home and have solitude and quiet while they do it.
The one computer that my husband currently has access to is always broken, has not got current software installed and gets disconnected every three minutes. His time is ate up just trying to check his email.
The phones are never working, if someone is killed or injured, the lines are shut down for three days so there is no communication at that time.
They NEED these laptops. Moral, sanity.....whatever you want to call it. The setup over in Iraq is not the same from one place to another. One group may have a decked out facility....*probably the ones you see the bigwigs from Washington visiting* but others are just metal train cars with holes cut in the side for a broke down air conditioner (if they are lucky) and MAYBE an electic socket to plug something into if they are lucky.
Army Wife of a deployed soldier - Damhna, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@Bioshocker
Bit confused about what Hajj is, are you kid ?
Have a link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajj - kdehead, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2just sent a message, telling the trooper who runs the site to register with qunu.com
hopefully, we can help out those newbie soldier sysadmins out there. - kdehead, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1it might be happening already. Salam Pax did a docu a few months ago mentioning how mobile phone networks are expanding like crazy in Iraq.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Internet usage is pretty common over here. I met a guy the other day who said that when he arrived at his camp that he had Wi-fi, but had no running water.
Fourtunatly, I've got pretty good internet here, but my ethernet cable is running about 250+ feet, so it drops packets all the time.
The person running our satalite dish knows nothing about networking and has four switches running straight to the dish. No router, so there's no port forwarding or anything. Shes got 50+ soldiers running off a single dish.
My download speeds are usually measured in b/sec not kb/sec. - signal15, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1They spent $250k on their network? That's insane. My buddy is serving close to 100 users right outside of Baghdad, and he's got only about $6k into equipment. It's all wireless, and many of the soldiers either brought laptops with them, or ended up ordering them and having them sent over.
The article mentioned that some people are worried that the DoD will come in and shut the networks down, but I doubt that will happen. On some bases, the DoD is actually talking about buying these networks from the soldiers that run them, taking them over, and still providing access for soldiers. - ItsAllVerbatim, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Dahama -
Self regulation, budster. In today's NSA enviroment, we don't say random or careless ***** without subconsiously looking over our shoulder, ANYWAYS. - kdehead, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1sounds whatever you have is blocking by domain name, "www.blah.com", but not by ip address, maybe.
- LunchMoney, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The problem is if you don't already have remote access to you home pc from Iraq then you'll need someone back home to do it for you.
- LunchMoney, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@macabuser: I am former army and was station in Balad over a year ago. I ran an Internet cafe just north of the PX in a building with a red roof border which aso held a chapel. I don't know if its still up and running but I do know that if it's still up and running that it probably hasn't changed much which means unfiltered web access over a commercial satellite connection and cisco voip phones 24/7. I know that it's pretty much on the far side of the base from you but next time your at the PX you should hunt it down.
- sleepless, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I ran a private squid proxy over ssh for a few ships in the 7th Fleet a few years back so that they could view all the porn they wanted. No more banned sites.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Wi-fi is unsecure and could be a violation of AR 25-2, so it's generally avoided, but being over here in Iraq, I've seen that kind of setup. Although, it does suck to have my ethernet cable run 250+ feet to my room from the nearest switch.
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