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Mobile porn and Angry Birds at the ready!

Skitzo, we live in a world that has checkrides, and those checkrides have to be guarded by SEFEs with red pens. Who's gonna do it? You? You, BQZip01? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for downgrades, and you curse the FORM 8. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Alarm Red's downgrade, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves useless careers. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at CGO meetings, you want me giving that checkride, you need me giving that checkride. We use words like how many feet off altitude, how many knots off airspeed. We use these words as the backbone of a life being tactically useless. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who steps and starts engines under the blanket of the checkrides I give, and then questions the manner in which I ask general knowledge questions. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a Master Question File, and run as fast as you can from the weapons officer. Either way, I don't give a damn what Q-1 no downgrade you think you are entitled to.

Who'd have thought that the star of the number one sitcom on TV and the long-time dictator / head loony of Libya would both be interviewed on the news last night - and Gaddafi would come off as being more grounded in reality...

The big benefit is the extremely low cost. A new iPad costs about $600 whereas the same capability in a MFD would cost, what, $50,000? I think the kneeboard thing for the Herc costs about $5,000. For that price you could buy plenty of iPads to replace broken ones. Plus, the iPad is actually customizable by the user, unlike everything else ever purchased by the DOD. My base has been working on getting them for about a year. I think they wanted to get them below the radar before too many higher-ups could get their inputs in and slow things down. Maybe too late. I've generally only heard of iPads being considered for the jets on which coffee is consumed. It would be kind of silly in a fighter.

Even if we could start using this stuff in the the plane, we would still be forced to haul around a huge bag of pubs everywhere we go. It would still be nice to just throw that bag behind the seat and not have to dig for that one stupid chart you can never seem to find.

There is infrastructure on the base. The local area network is fairly robust and comparable to any college/company in the U.S. Tapping into the INTERnet is a little more complicated in the 10th poorest country in the world and has nothing to do with the base itself. I'm sure if you've got suggestions on how to deploy a country wide fiber optic backbone connecting all the major U.S. bases to the outside world effectively and cheaply, somebody would listen. Keep in mind your only option is run it north to the former Soviet republics. You'd better open it up to the local populace as well in order to make the consequences of disrupting the network too steep for the enemy to consider, or it'll be knocked offline in hour number one of operation. Yes, WWII veterans all over the world are rolling in their grave. If you've got the option to talk to your family on a daily basis and you take it, I don't have a problem with that, but to complain as if the world owes you something when it doesn't work is weak to say the least. God forbid you have to revert to relying on the mail system. Sorry, it's a pet peeve.