Leader Development and Assessment Course

The Leadership Development and Assessment Course (LDAC) is the centerpiece of the US Army's Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) program. Since the 1950s, the Army has called it "Advanced Camp"; it is currently known as "Warrior Forge". It is conducted during June, July, and August at Fort Knox, Kentucky. LDAC is normally attended by cadets between their junior and senior years of college, although the last rotation consists of soldiers in the Officer Candidate School as well as junior military schools.

Training

The course totals 29 consecutive days of training and testing in common soldier skills.

Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps

The Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC, AROTC, or SROTC) is the United States Army component of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps. It is the largest ROTC program, with 20,000 ROTC cadets in 273 ROTC programs at major universities throughout the United States.

The modern Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps was created by the National Defense Act of 1916. This program commissioned its first class of lieutenants in 1920. The concept behind ROTC, however, had its roots in military training which began taking place in civilian colleges and universities as early as 1819 with the founding of the American Literary, Scientific and Military Academy at Norwich, Vermont, followed by various state chartered military schools, and finally civilian land grant colleges after the Civil War, which required military training.

ROTC progression

For a cadet who takes only the first two years of ROTC (Basic Course), there is no military obligation, unless the student is a 3-4 year scholarship cadet or has other specific scholarships. If a cadet has accepted a scholarship, service commitments may vary. With some exceptions, in order to progress to the last two years of the program (Advanced Course), the cadet must contract with the United States Army. To do so, the student enlists in the United States Army Reserve Control Group (ROTC) as a cadet and elects to serve on either active duty or in a reserve component (Army National Guard or Army Reserve).

Sony Xperia

Xperia is a family of smartphones and tablets from Sony Mobile. The name Xperia is derived from the word "experience", and was first used in the Xperia X1 tagline, "I (Sony Ericsson) Xperia the best".

History

The Xperia X1 was the first phone to be released in the Xperia range. Released 2008, it featured a high resolution display (~311 ppi pixel density) and it was intended to fill the widening gap of smartphones as other competitors were producing high-end smartphone devices such as HTC and Apple. The X2 was released in the following year, which included an 8.1 MP camera and included Wifi and GPS. By this time there was a clear shift towards the smartphone end of the spectrum. An exception was the Xperia Pureness, a translucent phone without camera that was sold by selected retailers in selected cities. The Xperia X5 Pureness is based on Sony Ericsson’s proprietary operating system (OSE).

The X10 was released at the start of 2010. It was the first in the Xperia line to feature the Android operating system, where previous models ran on the Windows Mobile OS. The phone was praised on its design, but its downfall was the outdated version of Android which was 1.6 at a time when competitors were on 2.1. There was a great delay in the update of the firmware, due to the heavily skinned OS, as well as Timescape and Mediascape which needed to be reprogrammed every time an update was made. The phone also lacked pinch to zoom, but this was added later as well as HD video recording. The X10 Mini and the X10 Mini Pro were, as the name suggests, miniature versions of the X10. These were welcomed with good response and proved to be very popular as there were no other smartphones on the market at that time which were as small as the two.