Come to Norway! You're already well above the average for officers in the Norwegian Royal Guard. To quote one of my brighter commanding officers: "The time is now 4 o'clock, we meet back here in 3 hours. That means ... <counts on fingers> ... 6 o'clock. Get moving!"
Seems like the perfect screening test for the military. The objective is apparently to see who is willing to submit to an order to perform an endless series of seemingly pointless tasks using cool looking but over-engineered and awkward technology.
The Swedish Army has not actually fought a war since 1809, so they've had two hundred years to hone their Flash design skills to perfection...
A very solid game-like web experience. Despite all the talk, it's going to be a while until HTML 5's <video> and <canvas> can deliver something like this.
Sweden unwittingly executed a great strategic manoeuvre by surrendering all of Finland to Russia in that last war of theirs. That reduced Sweden's land border with Russia to a fraction of what it used to be. Later Finland became independent, which eliminated Sweden's Russian exposure completely. It's easier to maintain peace when you don't share a border with a chronically unstable aggressive empire.
No, it didn't. It still had a considarable length of common border with the russian province Finland in Lappland. (To be honest, that was my first reaction too, but as the GP wrote, Sweden stopped to have a border with russia only after Finland became independent in WW1).
The present Swedish government recently did a review of the military. The criticism was, more or less, that it was like the British navy before WW I, where officers were promoted based on how clean they kept their ships.
(Lots of money go into the army and lots of equipment is bought -- and these days have almost no units ready. There is talk about changing this a bit.)
I'm not going to claim that Swedish politicians are supernaturally prescient or anything, but... the last time the Swedish military was closed down since it obviously would never be needed, was in the 1920s. I'd better move west. :-)
Not necessarily. I doubt we need a military in modern day Germany to defend us against our neighbours. Just make sure to have enough cash on hand to hire mercenaries in case of attack.
Looking up Wikipedia is the opposite of education. Also this entry just confirms what I said. Costa Rica has only security forces with very basic fire arms.
Style versus substance. Slick but crap. To echo psyklic, I felt the production was great, but the instructions, implementation and interaction were shockingly poor.
I've read that the ability to discriminate between "vivid red" and "vivid green" is actually very important for parts of the US military... I'm not really sure why though. Maybe for airborne jump signals?
I've taken the online US Military test and got 99/100 percentile on the English/verbal section and 100/100 on the math/logic portion. Output: Primary assignment: intelligence operative/analyst Secondary assignment: Combat engineer. I've also been scouted by my home country's intelligence forces (which I rejected).
Things that bug me about this test:
Q 10 - not enough time to evaluate each group so you auto fail, but upon redoing it and only choosing one without checking every group out I'm told I failed because I didn't check out every group. Autofail, unless you have reflexes like a cat.
Q 8 I purposely got 2/3 both times I took the test. Once the test was over, I rated the first time as under average and the second time as over average. Both times I was told that I misjudged my abilities. Which is it?
Q 4 The first time I did this test I thought she asked to look at the tape, as in the background color, so I got 0 out of 16 which put me in the bottom 10 percent (I'm not alone!) The second time I did it I got 16 / 16 with little time elapsed and only received top 22 percent. Ya right. Something fishy is going on here.
Q 2 the physics were ridiculous (too much energy lost to wind resistance, not enough energy lost due to elastic deformation) and the aligning of the paddles was annoying.
Q 1 stupid question. "save two people, also here is some useless information" ... "HAHA, you only saved 2, you could have saved 4"
After redoing the test and getting every question except for the ball one, the telephone one, and the group one right I still get "below average" Hahahahaha. Right. I'd like to hire a Swedish PhD to sit down and do this test, he would get 1 or 2 out of 9 (the racial ethnicity question doesn't count). The accent of the woman giving the test is unbearable and the little clues like "Memorize" written on the wall are no help at all due to all the visual noise.
So I'm a Swedish PhD (who did actually do their pre-computerized tests 19 years ago), and I got a "below average" with I think 3 out of the 9. I would probably have gotten one or two more if I'd actually paid attention but since the load times were so long I sometimes missed the instructions (notably the colors where I also got 0/16).
The test I did 19 years ago also did have some of these "psychological" aspects to see how you reacted to impossible tasks, etc.
Am I the only one that's really confused by the beginning, where it's just an exclamation point in a triangle, and some dimly-lit wires/pipes? Previously, I got to where the triangle was replaced by a few numbers, but got stuck there. I refreshed, and am still not sure what's going on.
This test is cinematic, but badly implemented: couldn't understand the instructions clearly (accent, echo, background noise - even on 2nd pass through the game, I didn't understand the voice), the flow of interaction was awkward, didn't understand what the hell was going on.
One thought occurred to me: maybe gamers used to dark video game environments do better here (I don't play video games).
Usually I'm o.k. in testing environments (not a total loser). Here I didn't get anything right, or at least that was my impression. I didn't agree with the evaluation, the points pressed seemed contrived and artificial. I don't understand this test at all.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 88.1 ms ] threadA very solid game-like web experience. Despite all the talk, it's going to be a while until HTML 5's <video> and <canvas> can deliver something like this.
Well, they're doing something right, then.
(Lots of money go into the army and lots of equipment is bought -- and these days have almost no units ready. There is talk about changing this a bit.)
I'm not going to claim that Swedish politicians are supernaturally prescient or anything, but... the last time the Swedish military was closed down since it obviously would never be needed, was in the 1920s. I'd better move west. :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundeswehr
Call it a defense force, or a militia, or whatever you will, it's still the German military.
I just doubt the Bundeswehr is necessary. (Disclaimer: I was drafted, but refused to serve.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_Costa_Rica
So, yep, they've still got a military, it's just also their police force (and national guard), which is pretty smart, in my opinion.
It's only in Swedish but most of it is self-explanatory. It's much more fun. Found this on their miltary website.
Hope it was because so many people do the test many times, not because I<am stupid.
Things that bug me about this test: Q 10 - not enough time to evaluate each group so you auto fail, but upon redoing it and only choosing one without checking every group out I'm told I failed because I didn't check out every group. Autofail, unless you have reflexes like a cat.
Q 8 I purposely got 2/3 both times I took the test. Once the test was over, I rated the first time as under average and the second time as over average. Both times I was told that I misjudged my abilities. Which is it?
Q 4 The first time I did this test I thought she asked to look at the tape, as in the background color, so I got 0 out of 16 which put me in the bottom 10 percent (I'm not alone!) The second time I did it I got 16 / 16 with little time elapsed and only received top 22 percent. Ya right. Something fishy is going on here.
Q 2 the physics were ridiculous (too much energy lost to wind resistance, not enough energy lost due to elastic deformation) and the aligning of the paddles was annoying.
Q 1 stupid question. "save two people, also here is some useless information" ... "HAHA, you only saved 2, you could have saved 4"
After redoing the test and getting every question except for the ball one, the telephone one, and the group one right I still get "below average" Hahahahaha. Right. I'd like to hire a Swedish PhD to sit down and do this test, he would get 1 or 2 out of 9 (the racial ethnicity question doesn't count). The accent of the woman giving the test is unbearable and the little clues like "Memorize" written on the wall are no help at all due to all the visual noise.
Wouldn't that be the expected result? A PhD is probably not the best suited person for a career in military.
The test I did 19 years ago also did have some of these "psychological" aspects to see how you reacted to impossible tasks, etc.
One thought occurred to me: maybe gamers used to dark video game environments do better here (I don't play video games).
Usually I'm o.k. in testing environments (not a total loser). Here I didn't get anything right, or at least that was my impression. I didn't agree with the evaluation, the points pressed seemed contrived and artificial. I don't understand this test at all.