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FEMA Demands Use of IE To File Online Katrina Claims
WebHostingGuy writes "As reported by MSNBC, if you survived the hurricane and are a Mac, Linux or Firefox user you cannot file a claim online. Further, you must have javascript enabled or face rejection. From the site: 'We are sorry for not being able to proceed your requests because you have failed our tests.' Opera and Netscape don't work either." Also reported at InformationWeek. From that story: "To file a claim online at FEMA's Individual Assistance Center, where citizens can apply for government help, the browser must be IE 6.0 or later with JavaScript enabled. That cuts out everyone running Linux or the Mac operating systems, as well as Windows users running alternate browsers such as Firefox or Opera. When TechWeb tested the site using Windows XP and Firefox 1.0.6, the message 'In order to use this site, you must have JavaScript Enabled and Internet Explorer version 6. Download it from Microsoft or call 1-800-621-FEMA (3362) to register' popped up on the screen." Update: 09/08 13:48 GMT by Z : Added word 'Online' to title to clarify story.
I can feel it coming already
That's quite okay. I'd rather FEMA spend resources getting their arses to help the people instead of designing a better web portal.
If you think thats even in the top hundred things FEMA has gotten wrong on this, you haven't been watching the news.
Its a non-issue. A tiny percentage of real users have heard of anything other than IE, and an even tinier percentage of people who need FEMA support have electricity, internet access or a computer anymore.
If you all are going to get bent about something FEMA is doing, get bent about the fact that phone and internet is the only way to register and most refugees have neither. Or get bent about the fact that 90% of calls don't go through to the FEMA number.
This is just rediculous to get worked up about. Who cares? If 1% of thet people affected have internet access, and 1% of those use Firefox (and happen to be using someones computer that has Firefox and not IE), then out of the million people affected, what? 100 might have a problem? 100 people tech aware enough to use firefox? They probably can find a damn cell phone.
Likewise M$ stated that they will no longer support the Mac period because basically they have Safari.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
They should not put anything up until the site is 100% cross-browser compatible.
Obviously.
I'm surprised this is even an issue for anyone. There is a huge disaster recovery effort going on and they need to have things working as soon as possible. If it requires IE, then that's just how it's going to be for the time being. There are other methods to file your claim (and let's face it, if you're online, you've got it better than 99% of the refugees who are stuck in a shelter).
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Agree. I'm also pretty sure they have other things to do right now other than make cross-platform code. The author seems to have forgotten that.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
IE on the Mac stopped at 5.5. There is no IE 6 for the Mac.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
It's amazing, just a quick online form and they get a huge chunk of money I earned. I'm so glad the federal government decided to branch off into the free insurance business at my expense.
and suprise, the website was made by a codemonkey that cant code his/her way out of a bag.
typical for government jobs. given to the lowest bidder which means some moron in his basement with a copy of frontpage. and these people dare to call themselves "developers"
they are not. and never will be.
If you've ever tried programming javascript for client side error checking of complex forms, you know that standards are very non-existant in the internet world.
You shouldn't use clientsided checking, as the golden rule in web developing is that you can't trust the client, EVER. Clientsided checking should only be used as a convenience for the user (save the user a trip to the server and back because he forgot to fill in something), not for anything serious. You have to check input at the server script anyway, so why not allow non-javascript browsers?
9 times out of 10 when sites demand that you use IE, it works fine with other browsers as well and the check is completely unneccessary. Just damn lazy site creators who assume it will take a lot of resources and time to verify that the site works with other browers.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
I'm sorry, but that's not just true anymore. It's what I do, every day - and where JS/Client side scripting was hellish in the late 90's there are plenty of examples of complex and mature javascript driven apps. Claiming that it's all too hard is the easy way out, there are standards, they are supported, widely amongst modern clients and it's just lazy to say, "screw it, we'll make it work in IE and nothing else".
You should also never be mandating error checking of complex forms on the client side because you can't control the client-side. If it's complex enough that you can't reliably deploy it in JS, you should be writing that logic into the server side code.
<? include ('signature.inc'); ?>
This is an example of what happens when you remove the public from participation in routine activites. One reason the gov't especially on public information systems should invite citizens to give them feedback is to prevent this kind of problem: people with older computers can't file. (this is a much bigger problem than Mac/Linux)
Back in the day, FEMA was drilled and had a civilian function though the Civil Defense program. FEMA was well drilled and practiced at large scale disasters because it was busy preparing to deal with what happens after a massive nuclear strike. In the 80s much of FEMAs prepositioned assets were sold off (as opposed to updated) - handy stuff like surgical kits, sealed ready for action truck-in hospitals, pre-built emergency clinics, ready to go tent towns and prepositioned ration reserves. I bought some stuff at a local government auction when it happened, too (nice tents, cots, surgical kits make nice fly tying tools).
The cold war era FEMA would have easily handled this disaster. The military commad structure would not have been nearly so worried about waiting for approval from a clueless governor or a mayor who was stuck in a location with limited communication capacity. Sometimes it is better to ask forgiveness from the politicians than the public.
-- $G
"FEMA Demands Use of IE"
Is this FEMA demanding? Or an ignorant IT services supplier supplying a solution which only works on the IE6 platform? Or (horror of horrors) is this system an in-house job?
Maybe FEMA need to revist their IT procurement strategy - if they have one.
In a situation like this, I would have thought that every effort would be made to make the application process accessible to everybody.
Having endured very similar circumstances, last year with hurricane Ivan, I can tell you that cell phones worked a month before any land lines or internet.
I can also tell you that the people waist deep in this disaster really appreciate the media and Slashdot slashdotting the FEMA site right when they need it the most. But, at least you worthless bastards are doing your part by whining about their choice of browser, stuff that really matters! The browser debate was really important to me when I had no water or electricity for a month!
That isn't the issue. The issue is that FEMA created a website for people to file claims and because if it's poor, incompetent and idiotic design (according to reports, the page works great with the IE user agent), people are barred from accessing that functionality. That's the problem. No one is advocating that the FEMA people stop all operations so that they can focus on fixing the site.
When a public institution sets up a service with the tax payer's money for the tax payers to use and in the end there are clients which *UNNECESSARILY* can't access the service, that is just plain incompetence.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Now the question... Why should I have to do ANYTHING special to access a website that was created by a government agency that used moey that was supplied by your and my tax dollars?
They are building services for american Citizens, not Windows or Mac or *nix users. There are industy standards out there so that websites can be created that all browsers that any citizen uses should be able to access.
Hey your house was just destroyed and you lost everything, and they let you stay in this nice school gymnasium. Sorry, but you can't file with FEMA using the computers in the library because they decided to use Linux with Opera as the default install. Maybe you can use on of the systems in the administrative offices? They have Windows 98. Oh, sorry. You'll have to download IE6 since they were still using IE 5.x. Maybe you can go use the computers at the big company down the road you lazy git, or just mail in the paper forms. It's not my fault you don't use windows.
They're offering a telephone number..... so who gives a rat's ass ... fill in the form on someones PC... it's an emergency!!!! DUH!!!!
Non-MS users quite probably have access to printers, faxes, postboxes and probably telephones as well.... maybe they even have pens too (shock, horror).
The way things are going Americans are soon gonna be complaining because their government didn't wipe their asses properly (or in time). What happened to individual responsibilty? Get a grip!
In Sudan women have been gang-raped and seen thier entire families cut to death. Do you think they would give a flying F$#% if they couldn't fill in their "Compensation for having my entire life fucked up" form in Opera, Firefox, Netscape, Lynx or any other dumb-ass browser???
Get some perspective people.
Because a lot of users will be at libraries trying to file their claim on public computers which are probably not running IE6 and will probably be running Win98
Yes, I'm sure that they have their web developer out in a helicopter right now scanning for survivors. Give me a break. Someone is paid to maintain and support this website, and he or she is not doing his job well.
one that could be fixed by editing one lne of code
I think the problem and solution may not be related. Hang with me on this one. We are asking the browser to the website what brand of browser it is and then the website determines what you can and cannot see simply based on that one piece of information. It should be a little different, the web site asks, can you handle JavaScript and a reply of yes from the browser. The website will now send you JavaScript info. Can you handle frames, DHTML, CSS and the list goes on as new technologies are added. So your browser would have an XML sheet of the response it should give to questions. Don't like JavaScript edit it to NO and the website should handle the request properly anyway.
I really think that the User Agent string should be abandoned to prevent poor coupling and cohesion of website and browsers. This User Agent string should be replaced with a list of browser capabilities.
If your code is REMOTELY standards compliant then it'll pretty much work on every browser. You have to really lock yourself into Active X and .Net before you run into true incompatibility, which means you have to decide from the start to use a platform that you know is imprefectly supported.
If this was a business, fine, who cares. But this is a disaster relief agency funded by taxpayer dollars, and they goddamn well better have a site that can be viewed by all citizens who need to view it.
Just part and parcel with the rest of their collossal incompetence during the current distaster.
And don't tell me they have better things to do; I haven't seen 'em do hardly anything yet. They could have used the week after the hurricane, when they were sitting around with their thumbs up their asses while everyone else was doing their job for them to at least make a webpage that could at least be viewed by the people who're still using older versions of IE!
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
What the hell? There are people struggling to survive, who have lost almost everything in their lives, and somehow we're supposed to be up in arms over the fact that you have to use Internet Explorer to access the FEMA site. Never mind the fact that most people who would be filing don't even have computers right now! I despise how people take advantage of disasters so they can further their own petty agendas and point fingers elsewhere.
Really, there is more to life than your choice in an operating system, and events such as this one should be more than a sufficient reminder.
OMG! Only 90% of the people are going to be able to file a claim online! Assuming those people didn't have their computers destroyed in the flood.
What if you're running virtual PC on a mac?
That whooshing sound was you missing the point entirely.
More
The web page doesn't provide any service that can't be obtained via phone. Technically, nobody is forcing people to use the web page at all. It's an added service, and it's not unreasonable to think that in order to use it, you have to have certain things.
Like if you want to go to McDonalds drive-thru you need to have a car. That's not discriminating against non-drivers, it's just saying that if you want to get food you have to wait in line inside.
having said that, I agree, all webpages should work in mozilla, too. But they chose to develop for the most popular browser.
If not, why are they wasting resources doing it at all?
If so, why are they reducing the number of people they help by doing a half baked job of it?
They've put resources into the web portal, so it must be important and important to do it properly.
Not only that, but I frankly find it deplorable that FEMA is treating its website from a business perspective.
In a company, somone can find it most beneficial and cost effective (sometimes, wrongly so) to support the browser that has 80-90% market share (I'm probably off on that stat, but that's not the point). However, when it comes to providing aid to hurricane victims, the government is simply not allowed to only provide to 80-90% of the people.
There should not be any development costs even considered. Make the website work for everyone because EVERYONE needs the help. This is aid, not sales.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
Try and explain to someone's grandmother how to do that. Try and explain to any clueless user.
If it doesn't work by default then it is broken by most clueless user's standards.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
You imply that making the form perform well for non-IE6 web browsers would have required more resources than making it perform well for only IE6.
A multi-browser interface requires a different design, not necessarily a more expensive one.
It was likely more a case of FEMA doing a poor job of anticipating the needs of their customers.
If it was important enough for FEMA to spend resources to create an online form, it should have been important enough to take into account how people would likely access the form.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For Pete's sake - let's cut the propaganda for once. I've been helping out at the Dallas convention center for the past five days and I can tell you first and that, for the people I've encountered anyway, they have very, very limited computer skills. Most of them were very poor prior to Katrina and owning a computer was never truly an option. It's not like they're sitting there, pulling out their self-built box, and saying "Ah shit - Damn FEMA for forcing me to install IE". I'd be shocked if more than a handful have even heard of Linux or Firefox, nevermind using it. The people that are affected by FEMA's choice certainly have the skills, knowledge, and ability to handle this very, very minor situation. The rest of us, quite frankly, don't really care.
actually when asked DIRECTLY by the press, Bush's Press Secretary wouldn't saw what, if anything, Bush suggested/asked related to the coming Hurricane. Link
Also buried in there is the fact that Bush never even gave the order to *use* the military. He ordered them to be ready to go, but never bothered to send them in until days later.
Is Bush responsible for the 'unacceptable' response to this disaster? No, he's not. But is he ultimately 'accountable'? You damn well bet he is. These are his federal appointees that are macking a mockery of relief, and so he's accountable for putting unqualified people in place.
And since he's obviously put unqualified people in before...you can bet any new Bush appointees will be seriously questioned in the future.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
There are no towers. Central Offices are down. Emergency power generation is flooded. How can you say that cell phones work? Please note the massive demand for sat phones right now precisely because of this. But thank you for applying annecdotal evidence that isn't applicable.
This comment is guaranteed*
*not guaranteed
There ought to be a law that says that all government web pages are standards-compliant and do not call for users to use a specific company's product to use them.
Why people like the FSF aren't out there pursuing this instead of trying to ram political stuff into GPLV3, is what I want to know.
In the middle of the largest disaster ever to befall the country, Slashdot goes and performs the Slashdot effect upon the website that takes claims.
Good work and foresight, there, editors.
And, you don't HAVE to Have IE 6 with JS enabled to file a claim. You could just use a TELEPHONE.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
If this is true, it proves that:
The FEMA website specifically checks only for the user agent string - and repels non-IE browsers. Proving they've taken EXTRA efforts to repel the rest.
Highly mischevous.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
But, to continue the pedantic trend, the systems in question aren't truly Turing-complete.
;)
They've got finite memory, don't they?
Your logic is seriously flawed. First of all, FEMA is a COORDINATOR of emergency services. This includes coordination at all levels from first aid and plucking from roof tops to getting people the information and help they need to get longer term assistance and aid across different agencies. FEMA is not providing helicopters, money or food directly. Again, they are cordinating emergency responders. Not every one of the million or so people effected by the storm in the area is at the same point or condition. You can not wait and devote every resource (including your contracted web developer like you suggest) until every single person is out of the city before you start working with the people that are already out. The emergency response is a parallel effort, not serial. Many people are at the next level and need to apply for assistance now. There is an artifical barrier in place that may make the application harder or more difficult for some people. I agree that FEMA is all jacked right now though.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
In particular, a lot of people use client-side error checking instead of server side, for which they should be taken outside and shot. Client side error checking is a nice thing so the user doesn't waste a form submission, but is not a replacement for properly validating user input.
Sorry, just fed up with everyone who knows Visual Basic and/or what the <script> tag does calling themselves a web application developer.
Not only can Mac users vote for Bush, but often understand the issues as well. Mac users and other non-M$ OS users have a tendency to be a more informed than the M$ lemmings, therefore will make political choices that is based upon personal competence and responsibility rather than what the talking heads thrust on them. To make a choice of an "alternate" OS is a resultant of a person who researches and learns that facts BEFORE making a decision.
I appreciate your "annoyed but not fully angry" attitude on this matter. In many respects, it's commendable.
While I'm not fully angry, I think this example situation speaks very loudly of how important adherance to standards really is. Microsoft has used its edge on the operating systems market to encourage and create a state where people do not have choice and must surrender their security, their individuality and personal sense of style if they want to accomplish day-to-day business. And worse to be completely denied convenient access in cases of extreme emergency.
Of course the web site planners need to be severely criticised for their decision to select a technology that disallows access to people who need it.
Consider that many people are still using Windows98. Consider that there are a lot of people who bought those Lindows machines from Fry's and Walmart and that's pretty much all they could afford. What we have now is a situation where those that "have not" or "choose not" are excluded from services that are critical to survival. Is this an exaggeration? It's a knee-jerk reaction to be sure, but just because 99% of the users can gain access is no reason to consider the other users to be "an acceptable casualty."
Perhaps it is not my place to write this here, since I am not a citizen of this country. Hence I will remain just an anonymous voice of a coward, but, somebody got to say this.
It is your own damn fault that things like this happen. It is you who need to stand up, write to your congressmen, and demand that laws would be passed where public information as well as public government websites be made available indiscriminant of the tools the citizens have to access them. And if the citizens do not have the tools to access them, the government should provide those for free (how expensive is it to provide an iso image of a bootable CD that has a browser - pick a choise of quite a number these days).
All of the government websites should be required by law to be written for the lowest common denominator between all the browsers adhering to the most widely supported HTML standard among them all.
I think this kind of follows in the same tracks as serving the blind and the deaf, they are a minority, yet they are just as important members of this society. Perhaps lynx users are also a minority, yet I do not find any reason to think why they would be any less valuable members of it.
Yes, most of the blind and the deaf became not of their own choosing, and yes, not all of the lynx users are using it because they just love it. There are times when circumstances limit you to using a particular browser, say IE no matter how much you hate it, however I would expect to be able to access my government's site no matter what browser I have at hand at the moment.
So get off your behinds, and do something about it, because I cannot do that for you, your government does not allow me to.
That exactly reflects my current thought - what with incompetetence having advanced all the way to the White House.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I appreciate and agree with the parent post that this is not nearly the biggest concern right now, but it IS just one more slap in the face for everyone trying to file claims with anything other than Windows/IE6.
I work in this industry and can assure readers with no uncertainty that such users comprise well more than 1% of the computing population. Recent numbers put non-IE6 use for a number of popular sites anywhere between 12-26%. My read is that US government sites will currently attract a number at the low end of that range.
Whether or not site compatibility is a priority right now IS debatable so long as people have other means of contact but this should NEVER have happened in the first place.
Actually, when the incompetence is deliberate (as in the loading of all of the top jobs with starkly unqualified political cronies) it is malice.
In a company, somone can find it most beneficial and cost effective (sometimes, wrongly so) to support the browser that has 80-90% market share (I'm probably off on that stat, but that's not the point). However, when it comes to providing aid to hurricane victims, the government is simply not allowed to only provide to 80-90% of the people.
Sure it is.
Do you see anyone brave enough to stand up to the Bush family, or congress, or the state and local governments, for having provided aid to only 80-90% of the people during and after the mandatory evacation, much less during and after the storm itself?
Bush sat on his ass, on vacation, while people died and his incompetent, nepotistic administration did nothing, then too little too late, and turned around and blamed state and local officials who were reduced to using the media to get their pleas for help to the president because, as democrats, they weren't allowed by the president's handlers to talk to the man personally (for a number of days).
The fact is, they probably will get away with this, just as they have gotten away with a growing list of appallingly atrocious behavior that would have resulted in the impeachment of any other president, Democrat or Republican.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Bush controls this aspect of the FEMA website? Now that's something I didn't know...
Your ad here.
None of you are posting this from the Astrodome. And I dont think many people who have access to PCs at this point are getting to the FEMA website from anything other than a public terminal (library, internet cafe, etc).
Like it or not IE is the majority market browser. That means that FEMA (which, dont get me wrong, has mishandled everything) doesnt CARE about CBC.
Perhaps its because they want to get claims handled quickly (although I'm probably giving them too much credit).
How many people in the Astrodome are testing this in Firefox? No one here's filing a FEMA claim, I'd be willing to bet my house on that.
This became news because it has IE all over it. No other reason than to throw another piece of meat to the /. first post campers.
Who cares what browser theyre using? Isnt there anything else more important to report on? Something that needs duping?
...both interiorlly, and exteriorlly.
What if you can't afford an XP license?
Acquiescence leads to obliteration
I have gone through this with a number of organizations.
I have found that writing emails about the situation, the existence of the World Wide Web Consortium standards body, and the existence as well as compliance of "other browsers" with the w3.org standards.... politely, usually results in the site getting updated when the organization gets a chance.
Nobody wants to have their organization as being seen as backwards technically or with regards to standards.
Please do no just complain about this issue on slashdot. Send a polite not to FEMA.
We are all familiar with the parallels of spoken languages and programming languages and so I think it prudent to apply those parallels in this scenario.
The USA has no National Language, which then dictates that (IIRC, IANAL) the government must provide/accept documents in any language requested. This is in part due to our ideals of democracy, equality and so on, which makes sense: any citizen (we are assuming an ability to read some language) should be able to read (or respond to) documents generated by the government.
That said, it seems to me that the government is doing precisely the opposite in this case. They have chose (whether actively or passively) a specific 'language' and then stated directly that if you don't speak that 'language' you are simply not allowed to file this request.
Now, there is the obvious argument that requests can be filed offline, so they are not absolutely excluding people, yet I fail to see why the government could restrict online when it is not legally allowed to offline.
In all honesty, this probably does go back to incompetence. Unfortunately for them, incompetence may be a reason, but it is not an excuse. Especially when there are so many techies out there who could easily fix such a thing (and also need jobs, but that is another issue for another time).
C'mon US of A, hold yourself at least to your own standards.
the website only allows to request a claim filing document, which will be (nsail) mailed to the requestor's adress (somewhere under the water...)
You mean Medal of Freedom, right?
Not that being this stupid in any way is any more tolerable than if they had done it deliberately, but still...
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Collecting people data and filing claims is basically same for any disaster. So FEMA should have made a portal that supports popular browsers long *before* Katrina hit.
I might agree that this is not the biggest fuckup of FEMA but it's just one more proof that lots of people there are not doing their job.
BTW, many people were writing that refugees don't have computers and Internet access to use this portal anyhow. Most of the refugees by now are located outside of the disater area and any (or most) town libraries have Internet access. So Internet may be the best way for them to file claims and look for relatives.
As the man at the top, Bush is most certainly responsible for the abysmal federal response. Once it became obvious that the city and state needed help, it should have been there on the ground IMMEDIATELY.
This is the leader of the free world we're talking about. He leads the world's remaining superpower. He is the commander and chief.
He could have gotten things done quicker if he had the interest or will. He could have slapped around some beaurocrats. He could have used military resouces or personnel.
He simply neglected the situation.
At the very least, the shelters of last resort and the hospitals should have been immediately secured and supplied with MREs. Some part of the federal disaster apparatus should have been sticking it out with the civilians on the ground.
This could have been Rangers, Seals, boots from the Marine Corps school of Infantry at Camp Gieger or just a bunch of Amry/Marine cooks. The situation demanded inspired leadership and just plain leadership rather than disinterest and mediocrity.
Once it was clear that we had an event capable of creating 1 million US refugees, Bush should have put himself at the disposal of the Mayor, the Governor and the commander of the LA Engineers garrison.
If someone in FEMA needed a kick in the ass, they should have gotten it. If private sector resources would have been useful, Bush should have leaned on the relevant CEOs.
The federal response is a manifestation of the CYA mentality. That just doesn't cut it when shit is hitting the fan.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Mac user since '84, and Republican since I first voted in '76. I'm a Firefox using, MS-bashing, gun-toting, pro-choice, anti-church, SUV-driving, meat-eating geek (with that list, I'm sure I'll piss off everybody). And, if you're into political correctness, just add me to your foes list now. There are many of us that can't all be painted into the same extreme circle that you'd like to put us in. Just as you're not all Ted Kennedy liberals, we're not all Pat Robertson conservatives. Believe it or not, there are people on both sides that are actually *boggle* reasonable. I've got a couple of friends who are (by my definition) extremely liberal, and we're able to enjoy each others company because we can debate the issues without holding the other in contempt...unlike many of the folks here that can't resist the urge to karma-whore by turning every issue into a conservative bash-fest.
Just another day in Paradise
This is not news. The least of these people's concerns is whether or not they can use something other than IE to make thier claims with. I thought this site was "stuff that matters"? The first time Katrina is even mentioned on the site is for this garbage? While you are complaining about FEMA's site not working with alternative browsers I will be out there helping repair local housing for survivors that are being relocated next week. Get a clue.
Similar to one by Heinlein: "Never attribute to malice that which could be adequately explained by incompetence."
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
It's more likely the intent of the appointments was to pay back political supporters rather than to cripple the organizations involved. Thus, no malice.
However, appointing incompetants is a sign of incompetence.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Guys, given we are Slashdot, we should try not to all go to the offending site, and test it in Lynx with a changed user-agent and send millionsof emails to their support department. We need to keep this site up so ppl can submit submit their Hurricane claims.
I seem to recall a phrase from a President...
Something about a buck stopping somewhere...
Especially since the bucks responsible for upgrading the levee system were PERSONALLY slashed from the budget and diverted to Iraq - which in itself was a fucking moronic operation.
Not to mention the moronic folding of FEMA into DHS,as has been pointed out by every commentator in the last week. Which was no surprise to me, since FEMA's primary mandate is to secure the state, not the citizenry, in an emergency. In fact, the only "emergency" FEMA is mandated to "manage" is a threat against the state. It's no accident they're the ones with the authority to do all the things the conspiracy buffs like to cite.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
"Mike Quealy, a FEMA spokesperson, explained to me that they are aware of the issue, and are currently working on a application that supports all of the most popular browsers. Quealy said that the application in question was originally an in-house tool, meant to be used by call center people. Internet Explorer was the official in-house browser, so the application was coded with IE in mind."
What a lame ass excuse.
So what the hell are they waiting for now? Simply cut out the offending line of code that checks the user-agent string, and oh yeah, try testing the damn thing. No need to create a new application.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
Wrong.
When your concept of "statesmanship" is paying off your political cronies regardless of competence, that IS malice.
The hallmark of the state is ALWAYS malice AND incompetence. Heinlein was wrong as it applies to the state.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
So what are we going to do now? Rewrite the site for cross-browser compatibility? And have it crash miserably when it goes live? Better to keep those 87% of IE users, no?
I don't think anyone is really disagreeing with you (and I don't really see that you're disagreeing with others, either). Certainly if this is the site, then this is the site. Nobody wants them to take it down if they don't have an alternative in place (although, really, how long would it take to build an alternative that is compatible? a week? This is an online form that interfaces with an existing database, most web devs could build a low-tech HTML 3.0 version on a gray page background in 4 hours and leave the rest of the week for making sure the database spits out usable error messages when field validation fails)
The main point is we SHOULD complain and say that it isn't good enough, it isn't satisfactory, and it needs to be improved ASAP. It is unacceptable for an organization that specifically targets those with the least amount of choice in resources. Truthfully, I think it's unacceptable for ANY government organization, but this one in particular -- the evacuees don't get to pick and choose whether they have access to a phone, a Windows PC, a Mac, or a Linspire from Wal*Mart.
But we have to make noise about the issue so that it is fixed and people in power pay attention to it for the few moments they are forced to look at these normally invisible technical matters.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
But what I fear is malice sufficiently advanced enough to disguise itself as incompetence.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Most of the population evacuated. FEMA claim forms are very important to people who left, are safe, but are running out of hotel money, spending money, gas money.
So, you're in a strange city, and your Dell Celeron box is sitting under a foot of mud. Doesn't really matter, as it's two hundred miles away, behind police roadblocks and without power, phone or broadband.
You can't reach FEMA on the phone - they keep hanging up on you because they're swamped.
You're looking for a computer with an internet connection. Not just any computer. No macs, no 'NIX, no webtv, no cellphone browsers, no older PCs. Windows XP doesn't even assure you success. It has to have IE 6, which was a large download and was unavailable at the launch time of any Windows desktop operating system.
You're looking for a computer that has either been updated, or is fairly new and runs windows. Heck, I've never seen IE 6 in a library! Around here, they run IE 5 or Navigator!
I don't get this "leader of the free world", I live in a free country (Brasil) and Bush is not my leader. There a many people in Europe for witch bush is not a leader also. I never voted for him, I don't like him, I am happy that my country goverment question his polices frequently. He is not the leader of the free world, unless free means something else I didn't learn while studing english.
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
For the sake of the people who NEED to register, please do NOT Slashdot their site!!!
It's statements like that which suggest you probably do.
r able solutions almost always come back to bite you in the arse, which is a Bad Thing.
And (unless you're some kind of super-genius at every task they do) will be utterly despised by the poor fuckers who work under you.
Say it with me:
Unecessarily restricting your options is a Bad Thing.
Vendor lock-in is a Bad Thing.
Proprietary/nonstandard/deliberately-non-interope
Assuming you'll know the every single requirement placed on your system for the entire future of its lifetime is impossible, hubristic and stupid. This is a Bad Thing.
Designing to open standards, avoiding unnecessary vendor lock-in and maximising interoperability are Good Things.
Any questions?
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
No, it probably means that they didn't take the time to test in other browsers... It's still annoying, but very unlikely that it was malicious.
"Never disobey your boss on technical matters, even when he has no fucking clue what he's babbling about. That's how you get fired."
No, disobey.
1) How will he tell?
2) If it works, why will he bother?
3) You'll give yourself an ulcer if you keep bending over like that
4) If you let the insane define reality, then your reality will be insane
5) NEVER get into a position where you *need* the job. Build up, save a little, keep within your means and you can kiss a stupid job goodbye (note: if you get sacked because you didn't apply the required solution, but still got the result, you will get severance and dole).
Life is too short to fight ALL the time, but it is too long to give in to any pissant napoleon. You have a backbone. Use it.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Bush appoints the (completely unqualified, but old-boy friend of Bush) head of FEMA.
The head of FEMA is responsible for his organisation.
FEMA fucks up royally, in everything from its response to the New Orleans disaster to stupid piddling stuff like unnecessarily rejecting non IE-browsers on its website (which, nevertheless, can cause additional hassle and stress for people already destitute, financially ruined and recently-bereaved).
Damn straight Bush should carry the can for the whole fuck-up. He should resign, step down or be impeached for fucking the country until it can't respond to a simple natural disaster that everyone saw coming hours or days (weeks?) away. Not to start a right vs. left flamewar, but frankly I wouldn't be averse to seeing him do jail-time for the damage he's caused to your country.
The director of FEMA should resign immediately, since he's proven himself unable to do his job. He should emphatically not just be "golden parachuted" or shifted to another sinecure. He fucked up, let him find a new bloody job.
The guy responsible for the retarded website policy should have his knuckles rapped. He should have known better, and he's likely caused a lot of extra hassle for the last people in the country who need extra shit right now.
See, if you can't hold bosses responsible for the actions of their subordinates, what the fuck kind of restraints are there on them?
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
You know given the flux that FEMA has been in the past few years, it's not suprising and, in fact, perhaps even understandable, that some tech hasn't yet got to the "Redesign online application form" on his ToDo list yet. I mean lets be honest people: How many of us have projects that have been sitting on our desk for 6 months, 12 months, hell 5 years, that we "just never get around to starting". The difference is that most of us don't work with FEMA and get our prioritizing mistakes posted to the front page of Slashdot when the shit hits the fan.
And just as a side note, if I'm ever in a disaster the size and scope of which requires me to contact FEMA, my first thought is not going to be "Oh gee I better check their website". I know it's 2005 and all but in that situation I'm still going to want to talk to a live person.
I'll grant you that - sometimes expediency does win out over "ideal" designs.
However, this doens't mean that there's no value in doing the job right as opposed to botching it/cutting down your options and having to redo it again later.
Re: your example, many people (myself included) find it faster and easier to hand-code HTML and write perl than to learn and use proprietary tools.
For example, from sufficient practice I'd be happy to bet I could knock up a web form in Perl/XHTML/CSS in about the same time you could do one in Visual Studio. The thing is, by the time I'd finished, the code would be leaner, download faster, be ranked higher by search engines (a very real consideration when doing marketing websites), and would work on any browser right down to smartphones.
If there's then an unforeseen requirement (like opening your interface to the world), who's in the bettr position? The guy who took some extra time but who can now go live without any changes, or the guy who now has to re-implement his entire solution (your estimated time: weeks), in addition to the time he spent hacking it together in the first place?
Obviously it's a trade-off, but I still firmly believe the judgement call should be made by the guy who's trained and qualified to make such a call, not someone who is neither, but is nevertheless in a position of authority over them.
You're familiar with the saying: "Faster, Better, Cheaper: Choose any two"?
Bosses (in my experience) invariably choose Faster and Cheaper, because it delivers short-term gains and requires no knowledge of the problem.
Engineers prioritise Better, because while you don't get Faster up-front, ultimately you get Better, Cheaper and Faster, if the requirements change even a little bit during the entire usage-lifetime of the code.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
Hollan's Law: the likelihood of something happening is directly proportional to the degree of insistence that it won't.
We've also had one "it'll never happen" situation where I did actually give in...
Look, your job is to make it work, the way you were told. If it doesn't, it is your fault. That's why he's the boss and you aren't: if you are in a "right to work" state, you can be fired for any reason, including the boss's stupidity. It is best to try to find a better job and quit before this happens. Been there, done that.
Never disobey your boss on technical matters, even when he has no fucking clue what he's babbling about. That's how you get fired.
No, you will get fired if it doesn't work. With a moron for a boss, you are in a no-win situation. Leave, or at least plan to leave. It is better to leave on your terms than his.
You could've hired me.
... to slashdot the FEMA website.
/. the site further I did not try to find out how much complexity the form has... but even a simple form that posts to a servlet to store in a temporary database table. Something....
That being said, I don't understand how it is that a simple form could not have been quickly created using generic technology just to capture the information required. A day or two? I call strawman to their excuse that it was an internal application that fails them; clearly it was a choice that fails them. A choice made under duress, admittedly. But duress due -again- to being *unprepared*.
I would think that the scenario is obvious since 9/11, so having had several years to prepare, this situation is most egregious. Unfathomable. Unconscionable.
Not wanting to
It might have even been an outpouring of knowledgeable tech folks that could offer some assistance in fixing some of these problems.
It's nice to imagine the OSS community swooping in to save the day at a time like this, because the OSS community is people, citizens, aka the basis of our country and the (supposed) true holders of the power.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
You and the other several hundred thousand people like you, in this case. Problem is there aren't 6-7 digits of FEMA employees to talk back to you.
That's what websites are for, isn't it? Hey what if I took my laptop and portable hotspot down to reunion center and volunteered a few hours to get people registered, etc.
Oh. can't. 'Cause I use fedora and firefox. Can't submit html forms.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Look, FEMA fucked up and was sloppy. I have no idea how much was the politically appointee at the top, and how much is institutional stupidity that goes back years. Some blame belongs to Bush and his appointee, on the "buck stops here" logic, but let's be realistic on some of what happened.
The Levee maintenance program has been "underfunded" for THREE decades. Every federal program is "underfunded," because people ask for the world, get something, and can now claim to have been underfunded.
It is NOT clear that if that $250m was restored to the Federal budget that the levees would have held. We have NO IDEA. But when the levees and a system designed for Category 3 Hurricanes gets hit with a slow moving Category 4, better maintenance PROBABLY WOULD NOT have mattered.
Louisiana/New Orleans have a Levee Maintenance Board that is supposed to maintain and improve the Levees. They can issue municipal bonds to pay for it (those lovely options that cities and states have that pay a lower interest rate than treasuries, because the interest is federal tax free, so the government picks up a third of the interest tab in terms of your rate being lower by a third). However, in typical Louisiana corruption, it was filled with political friends with NO INTEREST in Levees, and focused on casinos.
Further, FEMA is EXTREMELY powerful, which makes civil libertarians nervous. Here you have an executive branch department that can single-handedly declare martial law, basically suspend the constitution, etc., powers normally only available to Congress in wartime. The CHECK on government abuse is that a city or state MUST request that help. Now, in an ideal world, FEMA would ONLY be called in REAL emergencies (but when you declare an emergency, FEMA picks up 80% of the tab, so anytime you can you declare an emergency), but federal programs only work when they expand, not only act 1-4 times a decade.
The evacuation of New Orleans was the city's responsibility and the city's PLAN called for using school buses to evacuate people... why didn't this happen?
Notifying FEMA of where shelter's are is a LOCAL responsibility, because FEMA doesn't come in until AFTER there is an emergency. The Superdome is a lovely batch of embarrassment. FEMA learned through official channels 2 or 3 days in that there were people there with no food and water. The news-media was floored "don't you have a television." But as sad as this is, it kinda makes sense... You have some level of lower down FEMA officials going over their checklist, and the Superdome isn't on it, so it is ignored. The higher ups are watching the Superdome footage on TV thinking "those poor people, at least help is on the way." But a disconnect there completely makes sense, and is extremely tragic. Whoever is on the ground sees that it isn't on their list and assumes that it is someone else's. Those above that see it isn't getting help assume that it is on someone's list... More people die... I place the bame 70%-30%, 70% on local officials who didn't notify FEMA properly, and 30% Fed's, because when you see the media talking about people there being without food or medicine for 2-3 days, you call down the pipe until you find out who is responsible for it. The media attention could have made it possible to save lives, if someone thought outside the box.
Decades of mismanagement and corruption in Louisiana caused a catastrophe... Bush is apparently a COMPLETELY incompetent leader who can't get anyone good in the government... This situation sucks. But I'm sick of the partisanship on this... Plenty of stupidity goes around.
BTW: more has been spent on Levee's by the Feds in the 5 years that Bush has been in office than the 8 years that Clinton was in office. That doesn't mean anything, but this "Bush wanted to levees to break so he cut funding" doesn't match reality. I'm pretty sure that the leader of the free world wasn't personally overseeing levee maintenance... unfortunately, neither was the levee maintenance board...
Alex
In other words, get good techies, then get the fuck out of the way and let them do their job.
Not only that; be proactive about keeping the other idiots out of their way so they can do their job. You will be considered a god by the techies you manage.
-- Moderation in all things, exceptions to all rules --
"Look, your job is to make it work, the way you were told. If it doesn't, it is your fault. That's why he's the boss and you aren't:"
Try again. Your job is to obey the guy signing your pay-cheques. If that's what the guy signing the pay-cheques thinks, any disagreement on your part (even for the greater good) will quickly result in no pay-cheques any more.
"No, you will get fired if it doesn't work. With a moron for a boss, you are in a no-win situation. Leave, or at least plan to leave. It is better to leave on your terms than his."
I dunno - in my experience it's better to argue firmly and sensibly with the stupid decision then abide by it - if the worst comes to the worst you can always cite your objections and claim you were "only obeying orders".
If you go off and do your own thing, even if it succeeds, you haven't proven that the boss's approach wouldn't have. Therefore you have definitely disobeyed an order for a possible better outcome. This leaves you no excuse and no way of demonstrating (to non-techncal people who really don't want to listen) that it would have gone wrong in the first place.
Plus, y'know, there's a certain evil sense of satisfaction in sitting back, doing what you're told and watching it all go to shit... <:-)
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
I've been thinking about exactly this recently.
"Workers" (programmers, sweat-shop labourers, etc) produce actual products for the company. Selling (/renting/leasing) these products makes the company rich.
I think everyone can agree that Managers don't directly produce anything - instead they're there to manage the people who do, hence the name "manager".
Surely, therefore, the job of a manager is to do everything he can to allow his workers to work (including procuring the resources they need from upper management, and taking decisions the employee needs answered), and otherwise to stay the hell out of their way.
So how do we end up in the situation where most managers I've met seem to take it as read that:
1) They know better than their employees
2) They can (and should) tell their employees how to do a job the manager has never done, or even understands
3) They should interfere in a project that's already going well, and expect their instructions to be heeded and followed, even when the employee knows better
Surely the role of "manager" should be like a good butler - there when you need them, and invisible when you don't. How have we ended up with so many wannabe-Napoleons that the very expectations of the role are now so warped?
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
But thing that will never enter the typical persons mind, you will never hear on TV, and will most certainly never be considered by the government is that maybe the whole idea of having one monsterous FEDERAL emergency management agency would be far less effective that have a plurality of highly adapted and streamlined local emergency management agencies.
But mainly because it isn't necessarily true. If there is a fixed budget for "government" (being all governments, local, state and federal), then one agency will have a smaller set of resources, but better developed (and since there are rarely multiple disasters at the same time, this is the most efficient setup). The many little agencies will have to have massive amounts of duplication. All the budget for the nation's emergency response will be eaten up by thousands of command vehicles and generators that are spread around the country and all too small to handle something as large as an entire city being flooded for weeks. So, you'll spend the same to get much less. Also, a city can't call up the Guard, demand other nearby areas send help (though the help would be more of the same and not specialized gear). FEMA is supposed to have the capability to mobilize greater resources than the city and state could muster. FEMA is supposed to be able to coordinate local, state, regional and national response. FEMA is supposed to be able to prepare and respond to disasters like New Orleans. The local responses are not capable of responding, even with twice the budget of FEMA being given back to the states for that purpose. That FEMA failed in its task isn't indicative of them not being capable of acting. It is indicative of politics and image being more important than action. FEMA had the capability, the resources, and the authority to save thousands of lives that were lost. FEMA is a good idea that was implemented poorly.
Learn to love Alaska
You know, I find comments like yours kinda funny, and a little hypocritical. Here's one man out of some 280 million, and he has singlehandedly blown any credibility that hundreds of millions of us have with the rest of you? Boy, he truly must be the leader of the free world, if he can do that all by himself. And if an American, such as myself, had the temerity to say something like, "You know, that Saddam Hussein guy has just about blown any credibility Iraqi's used to have with the rest of the world, whether it's torturing people, raping women, gassing the Kurds, making war on his neighbors, and stockpiling VX gas and all that" you'd be slamming me for judging ALL Iraqis by the actions of a few. So if YOU want to maintain whatever respect the American people have for the rest of the world, regardless of the actions of our current President ... understand that gross generalizations like that are just as irritating to us as they are to you. And honestly, if you're willing to judge all Americans in such a shallow manner then so far as I'm concerned you have no call upon me. Certainly, if I could vote to have my government rescind any foreign aid being sent to your government I'd do it in a heartbeat, if I were to judge everyone in your country the same way you are judging us.
And for that matter, you seem to have no problem speaking for the entire planet. Who died and left you in charge of global diplomacy?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Well, if you put it that way, I judge the American people by what they let their leaders get away with. In Canada, when the UN was intervening in Somalia, 4 of our paratroopers tortured and killed a Somali captive. The public outcry and sense of shame were so great that not only were the individuals and their superior officers punished, but their regiment, one of the most respected in our armed forces, was permanently disbanded for having disgraced our nation. Heads rolled well up the chain of command.
In America, however, events which should make decent people blush with shame get ignored as "fratboy pranks" and covered up.
Now I know there are decent Americans. I have good friends who are Americans. But the American people on the whole are not ashamed of the disgraceful actions of their government. Before the reelection we could say "The government might be bad, but the American people aren't like that". But apparently they are, or they wouldn't have reelected Bush.
Now not everything Bush has done has been idiotic. The decision to overthrow the Taliban was right, and your allies backed you up on it. There are French and Canadian troops in Afghanistan right now. But Iraq? If you had waited for the UN inspection to complete, you probably would still have had your allies with you. Saddam is an evil man. But you rushed to war for stupid reasons (WMD? Al Qeada? All bogus.) and what's more, it's looking like you've done the whole thing to benefit the ayatollahs. The whole Iraq war has been bungled from soup to nuts. And you (collectively) won't demand an accounting for it. To question the President is to give comfort to terrorists. Until the people act to repudiate the foolish actions of their government, you will continue to lose the respect and goodwill of the international community.
This is, of course, my own opinion. If I spoke for the world, I wouldn't be wasting my time arguing on Slashdot. And when I speak of the actions of Americans, I speak of the actions of the elected government of the United States. All clear?
-aiabx
Just this guy, you know?
> ..if I'm ever in a disaster the size and scope of which requires me to
> contact FEMA, my first thought is not going to be "Oh gee I better check
> their website".
Tell that to the folks filling our public labs the last week. All I have to say is "Thank God for Crossover Office" or I'd be up to my behind in demands to load up Windows XP on our machines. Which would be exactly what Microsoft intended with this stunt. Call me paranoid, but I don't think this was an accident for a millisecond. These are the guys who throw chairs and scream "I'm goinna &$#*ing kill Google." This is exactly how they 'compete.'
Democrat delenda est
They got that bridge in Alaska that goes to nowhere... and then we got the stuff in New Orleans.... hmmm which is more important, major city with lots of people, or small island in alaska that has 50 people on it.
Decisions, decisions... would be better to run the government on the flip of a coin....
If what you are reading sounds funny, or sarcastic, lame, or stupid
it is because it is supposed to be. just laugh
> New York Times criticizing the earlier form of his budget
So? Since when did the NYT have any control over the budget of the federal government?
The buck stops where the control rests; bringing in irrelevant parties---whether they're the NYT or Santa Claus---doesn't change who is responsible for cutting New Orleans levee funding.
I only care who suffers. I'm not in the delta basin... I'm in southern Ontario. I don't care who gets e. coli or not... I'm in southern Ontario. I don't care who sniffs raw sewage or tends to get the bends from having to get back up from 12 feet of water overlaying their house.
I'm from southern Ontario.
I do care about some things, though.
I care about people. This is something I've not read about much on here. Like it or not, Slashdot readers/posters seem to be a bit of a-lacking when it comes to communal feelings. Assholes, I'd call it.
I'd like to take the time to thank the poeple that are saving the animals. I'm not a Noah, but I respect the task that they're doing, and recognize the risk that's involved. Kudos to them, and most gracious thanks to their work.
I'd also like to send out thanks to everyone else who isn't in the disaster zone, who is helping out with arms-outstretched, to help those in need of some caring, some basic human comfort. If you're a person, we need you to survive, and I've been there, arms wide open. It's a generous thing, to have gone through such a struggle, and emerge intact. We need your stories, not for the root cause of survival, but for the sustaining that your stories give us. Tell us about it, and make our meagre lives better.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. ~~ Hunter S. Thompson
I live in Jackson, MS and have been helping my friend and his parents, we maintain a small cybercafe we set up at the Jackson Coliseum (which is being used as a Red Cross Shelter) to help people file their FEMA application, look for lost relatives, and get news on the relief situation.
What really strikes me about FEMA is their total lack of consideration for people that are most likely to need their help, i.e. poor people. Forget this whole IE-only/web-standards thing. The real issue is FEMA being lazy about making assistance available to poor people.
1. First of all there are no paper applications. In a disaster that knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people and primarily affected the poorest people in the country, THE ONLY way to apply for federal aid is through the FEMA website. FEMA MUST realize that most of the people in the most need of aid either can't access a computer or have never used one before. We've been helping people fill out their FEMA applications because 90% of the people are computer illiterate and would not have been able to apply for aid if we had not been there to help them.
2. About 15-25% of the time, the FEMA website's servers are overloaded. 100% of the time the FEMA phone line is unavailable. (They don't even put you on hold; they just hang up after a recorded message.) Buy some more fucking server time. Train some more fucking phone operators.
3. So a guy from FEMA--only ONE guy came for ONE day to serve 2000 people--actually came to the Coliseum and all he did was scatter some orange fliers with the address of the FEMA website and the FEMA phone number. When we asked him about some problems we've been having with the application, he was equally clueless. For instance, the FEMA application requires a current phone number, but obviously most people at the Coliseum don't have one. So the FEMA dude said they should enter their cell phone number. Most of these people don't have any form of insurance or even a bank account. How the hell do they expect them to have a cell phone?
For me, this whole hurricane thing has made it more obvious how racism and classism in American is sustatined through this kind of indifference and ignorance. Equality isn't treating everybody the same way; it's putting an equal amount of effort in recognizing and addressing everybody's unique needs.
~John Y.