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US Virtual Border Fence Doesn't Work
lelitsch writes "The Washington Post reports that the initial pilot of the Virtual Border Fence planned by the DHS and subcontracted to Boeing has been a miserable failure. A lot of the points in the report have the hallmark of death-march software development projects. Some choice quotes include 'did not work as planned or meet the needs of the U.S. Border Patrol,' 'DHS officials do not yet know the type of terrain where the fencing is to be constructed,' and 'the design will not be used as the basis for future... development.' The article notes that Boeing was forced to deliver 'something' early as President Bush pushed for immigration reform in Congress in 2006. That reform effort died last year in the Senate."
But how will we stop all those virtual Mexicans now?
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Outsourcing the software development to Mexico was a terrible idea.
If we just annexed Mexico we'd only have to build half as much fence to keep the Guatamalans and Hondurans out. Plus, they have margaritas.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
The Six Million Peso Man
Someone needs to do all those shitty jobs that your average Second Life citizen thinks they're too good for.
Relevant quote: If you're so woefully underinformed, just keep from commenting, ok?
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
When the hell has building a giant wall ever helped anything? Jesus...At least they could have outsourced the work to China...Their wall didn't work, but at least it got finished.
But, I suppose anything is better than coming up with a sensible immigration policy. Gotta keep those high-paying fruit picking, chicken boning, and christmas tree cutting jobs local.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
It amazes me that the Mexican president encourages illegal immigration into this country and calls those of us who want immigration laws to be followed racist or anti-Latino. All the while, they have stringent immigration laws for those coming to Mexico and are trying to build a fence with Guatemala.
The chutzpah is unbelievable.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
They are slowly annexing us by moving here.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
...a wide area surveillance group, I would like to suggest a few reasons why this occurred, especially given what we know of Boeing's attempt to provide a solution.
;). There's a vast amount of 'learning through pain' which (of course) teaches you how to avoid stumbling blocks in the future. WAS is a fusion of architectural planning, mechanical engineering, network engineering, environmental engineering, and software engineering. It is also one of the more difficult management projects due to the fact that very few companies (almost none) have the in-house departments/divisions to handle all aspects of it; ergo, most companies do the more natural 'I am the lead contractor, you all can sub-contract to me for utilities, HVAC, network topology, integration software, camera systems, electromagnetic fences', et cetera.
;)
Wide Area Surveillance is, like any real world 'enterprise' solution, complex. That is not to say it is not achievable, it is just not something you decide to do on a whim
This means that during the bidding process for these jobs, as with any $$$LARGE$$$ government contract, much of the sub-contracting can be political and very rarely results in a proffered solution that is 'best in breed' in all (or even most) areas.
This is all very normal. The real difficulty is in identifying which aspects of a WAS solution will kill your project. For example, the article claims that using off the shelf commercial software for dispatchers was a serious issue. I can tell you from experience, there's no way that this derailed the project. There are several companies (the one I used to work at is one for example) that specialize in integrating their 'command & control' (for lack of a more encompassing term) suites with 3rd party streaming video, network systems, hardware devices, et cetera. The relative cost of these systems varies from very low (with a fair amount of services work being entailed) to moderate (where you get far more C&C stuff than you plan to use but it's there if you need it in the future - but they fully integrate the things you do need off the bat.)
Usually the biggest problems are from poor planning at the start or 'mid course correction' by people who didn't make careful consideration of their options up front regarding the physical infrastructure required. A good example of this is 'pole placement.' One of the easiest, conceptually, methods of watching swathe of territory where there isn't supposed to be much activity is to use a high quality camera mounted (usually mounted on a Pan/Tilt/Zoom gimbal) on a tall pole. How tall? THAT is the question my friends. From a cost point of view you want to put them up as high as is feasible given the terrain and what the local survey should be. This means less poles, less cameras, and less overall costs to cover a wider area; HOWEVER, the higher you put that camera the more difficult the installation of the pole because I assure you that putting a camera 60 feet off the ground results in shaking, deflection, twisting, and all kinds of other frame stabilization nightmares. Usually what happens is that the project denotes the max camera heights, assigns what types of poles/towers will support the cameras, how they will be built in order to overcome problems like these and then 6 months later they change the camera heights (usually because they want to cut out a few poles and the neighboring cameras must take up the slack), bingo you're well thought out and budgeted pole no longer serves your needs.
It is at this point that the reader will think 'ok, then we need to redesign the poles right? No big deal...' Sadly this does not usually happen. The change request costs associated outweight the money saved on the pole changes but that doesn't mean they won't still use the wrong poles and save a hundred thousand on camera costs, they'll just try to hack some solution like putting a frame stabilizer black box on the back of the camera, because that should work, right?
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NASA, the FBI, etc. all seem to follow the same pattern. They get the idea in their head for something big (usually as the result of politicians putting it there or the need to make it look like they're doing something about some big problem). Then they contract the technical stuff out to some contractor who feeds them a line of bullshit (instead of hiring their own people to do it, the way NASA did it in the 60's). Then they hold a big press conference, in which they make grandiose promises about how great this new thing will be (the best ones are accompanied by CGI animation of said great thing). Then they give some contractor a shitload of money. Then the contractor ends up in delays and overruns, forcing government agency to give them even MORE money. Then the contractor either doesn't deliver anything usable at all, delivers a shoddy piece of shit that doesn't even come close to the original promise, or simply delays it until the administration changes or the project gets canceled. Rinse. Wash. Repeat.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I could be that he was responding to demand from the people.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
And this makes the Bush administration different from others how?
Because that's what the government ordered. You may know that it's a piece of crap that will never work properly, but any decisions on modifications, redesign or cancellation are made by the customer. The customer gets what he wants, even if he is an idiot.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Just build the Great Walmart of America. One side is the employee entrance, the other side for customer.
Life is not for the lazy.
some relevant quotes
"Boeing has already been paid $20.6 million for the pilot project, and in December, the DHS gave the firm another $65 million to replace the software with military-style, battle management software. "
"Boeing has said that the initial effort, while flawed, still has helped Homeland Security apprehend 2,000 illegal immigrants since September"
A quick division $85 600 000 / 2 000 gives $42 800 per illegal immigrant. And this is the cost to the taxpayer without personnel salaries and other expenses, just what was payed to Boeing. I strongly doubt that each illegal immigrant, if not apprehended, will cost the US tax payers $42 800.
Shakespeare poems - infinite monkeys with infinite time.Computer tech support - a few trained ones working from 9 to 5.
I work for DHS and a friend of mine runs a small program that's been managing sensors on the border for 25 years.
Boeing was hired as the project's integrator and instead of subcontracting or working with the existing systems tried to do everything themselves. Why? To keep as much money for themselves, of course. They ignored, at first, all the existing systems and tried to replace them with proprietary technology that would anchor them into govermnent contracts in perpetuity.
They failed. Now they have to rely on refined data from a government-developed system to produce any results at all. This is a pattern I've seen in 26 years of working for the government: we hire an outside vendor who comes in and has to rely on our knowledge to make anything work. In a lot of cases they get us to do much of their work for them. The vendor's employees get huge bonuses and we get downsized. Granted there are times where if you don't bring in someone from the outside nothing will change, but the number of times internal staff saves the vendor's ass has been, in my experience, much higher than the other way around.
Sometimes it's better to spend your money on what your own staff can do instead of just assuming that an outside vendor will automatically develop something better. For some reason, too many executives undervalue the abilities of their own people and hire big names like Boeing for many times what it would have cost to develop better systems in house. The Secure Border Initiative is apparently one of them.
TLR
A man no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India Company
It was set up to fail from the very beginning. Its no secret that every power in the American government wants more illegals. The republicans want more cheap labor. The democrats want more poor voters. This fence was never more than distraction. Just a way for government to pretend they are doing something, while actually doing nothing.
It can be go tiem now plees?
Forcing someone to deliver a proof-of-concept or sample product for an arbitrary date is just common business practice. In this case, if Boeing wanted to continue the contract with the US Government they needed to prove they were up to the challenge. The arbitrary date was set by Bush because of his agenda. Just last week our company had to build a demo sandbox for a potential customer to play around in. We had a restrictive timeline in which to build it because the customer sponsor had a deadline to receive funding. We had to deliver something mostly untested and with deprecated hardware. The only difference is we had done it before so was able to deliver quickly. In my mind it's just finger-pointing if a vendor agrees to a certain date and then can't deliver. Just like our company should be willing to accept the consequences if our potential customer comes back with complaints that the system we gave them is too slow or buggy and "doesn't work."
And the Bush administration once again puts politics above effective governance and management.
And a slashdot user once again trots out their favorite villain without actually using their damn head.
So, you're saying that Boeing told DHS that this would not work in its first prototype/deployment? They were under orders to deploy something they knew would not work? Or is it possible that the procurement people said, "We need something that can do X, can you provide that on this timetable?" And the vendor said they could, and that it would work. Is your position that the president looked over their proposal, saw the technical flaws and systems integrations problems with the laptops and software, and said, "no one will notice, do it anyway," or that perhaps it's not the executive branch's leadership job to know when a vendor is lying about the compatibility of the components they're stitching together? Why aren't you complaining about Boeing, for lying about their ability to actually do this, and agreeing to take the contract?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The reason Mexicans come to the US in droves is because their country is broken. Most of the police and half the military are on the take. Even the honest folks have decided to steer clear of the disaster.
Nothing America erects on that border is going to change the fact that Mexicans can make a decent and safe living in Mexico.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
I'd say both sides knew it would never work the way it was intended, but it doesn't really matter. They only have less than a year left anyways. This is another project like Reagan's favorite pet project the STAR WARS DEFENSE INITIATIVE. Good thing we spent shitpiles of money on that. I feel safe knowing that we can knock down all those pesky Soviet missiles. And yes, the Bush administration was responding to what the public wanted - not by coming up with an effective solution, but doing the "feel good" solution that sounds great on paper, but never quite works out in reality. I mean, what company is not going to take a billion dollar contract from the government, even if they think it isn't exactly feasible? They will just end up asking for more money in the end.
"But this one goes to 11!"
No they aren't. It's common knowledge about all the stuff that went on behind closed-doors with our current leaders...repubs aren't better at hiding it, they just don't care that they are doing it. Dems are the ones that try to convince you they aren't lying...Repubs say "hey, here is what I have to say, it's full of shit. You know it, I know it, and we also both know you won't do jack about it."
There is definitely a difference.
Living With a Nerd
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
And you do know that SDI was a pipe dream that tricked the Soviets into a defense spending contest that basically collapsed the Soviet empire and caused the breakup of the USSR? It was never designed to be a working solution. And shooting down one of our own satellites is a far stretch from the "global missile defense blanket" we were promised. From all the test results at trying to take down actual missiles, they had a very poor success rate. And they were talking about using satellite mounted mirrors/laser system to blast down missiles. Where is that? I'd also be willing to wager that advancement in the technology field and computers are more responsible for us being able to hit fast moving targets with our missiles than the SDI research.
Besides, big deal, China can do it too. Have they been spending billions of dollars since the mid-80s to come up with their success?
"But this one goes to 11!"
SDI had two purposes. One: win the cold war. Only we could afford to go into space over and over. Two: produce technology for the weaponization of space.
And they were talking about using satellite mounted mirrors/laser system to blast down missiles. Where is that?Uh, do you know the contents of every US military satellite currently orbiting?
No? I didn't think so.
The technology, however, is on the way. Being able to do these things from the earth is much harder than being able to do them from space (aside from power requirement issues, which can be solved by spending more money to put up more mass.) If you can fly a 747 with a chemical laser in it and shoot down a missile (done) then you can build the laser anti-missile satellites. Especially since our spy program has taught us so much about optics and tracking.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The U.S. for one.
/.'rs...
The NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS, etc all have physically demanding jobs that pay very well, thank you.
And I know what you meant. 'physically demanding jobs' would mean 'manual labor'.
Somehow, oil rigs are a good place to find physically demanding work that pays well. The key is that the product or output is valuable...
We don't want to spend as much on our landscaping as we do on our SAP implementation, because the 'product' of our landscaper is not as valuable. That never will change. And productivity of landscapers is not the issue. The value of the product is.
So answer me this,
In Downeast Maine, blueberries used to be picked by the Mic Mac Indians from Canada and Maine. recently, however, the growers started importing migrant and illegal workers from 'wherever', and most were indeed Mexican. Other workes such as high school kids and a fair amount of regulars used to pick as well. I could make $600 a week back in the 60s, which was a darned good sumemr job save for the literally backbreaking work of raking berries out of bushes a foot high at most. bending over, carrying the boxes to the truck, etc was hard, but damn the money was good for a few weeks. But no more, the growers claimed a labor shortage. Truth is, the illegals are even cheaper than the Mic Macs, which is cheap indeed.
This is not about our 'value' of labor, so much as it is the profit to be gained by reducing cost further.
Remember Sen. John McCain, also known down here in Arizona as "Senator Lettuce"? He spouted off a couple of years ago (2006?) about how we 'couldn't' do the jobs Mexican immigrants did. In particular he made this statement:
"If I offered you a job picking lettuce in Yuma for fifty dollars an hour, you couldn't do it, my friend".
The next day, more than a handful of people showed up with resumes in hand, looking for the $50 an hour lettuce picking job. They were ready. Of course there are no jobs like that. Lettuce isn't worth that much.
One of the lies is that this is about wages. It is about profits.
Nobody has a dog in this immigraiton fight except the ordinary citizen:
- Big Business likes cheaper labor, it equals both profits and lower costs of healthcare and such.
- Federal government doesn't want to rile Business.
- Democrats see Mexican immigrants as future Democrats.
- Republicans dare not offend them, lest they become Democrats.
- Labor unions see them as future members. Sooner or later.
- State governments don't want Business to move to another state or overseas, which they will do anyways.
Don't be surprised that the 'virtual fence' doesn't work. Ineffective measures will be a key component in the federal government's war on immigration. Reagan's '86 (or was it '87?) immigration reform had three main features:
- Amnesty. This worked, mostly.
- Securing the borders. No money, no securing the borders. This worked famously.
- Deportation of undesirables and future illegals. No money. This also worked famously.
The current plans will be more of the same. Amnesty is crucial, as it bring the Democratic Party new members, aids the labor unions, and gives Business the same workers at pretty much the same pay. Failing to secure the borders ensures continuing supplies of cheaper labor. Deportation is of course pointless if the border isn't secured. In fact, deportation is a free trip home to visit family and educate others on how to 'do it' in the U.S.
We need change, alright. Arizona's employer law is a start. But I'm not hopeful. We need to vote out the scoundrels. Sadly, all of our Presidential candidates seem to be drinking the same Kool-aid on this issue.
We also need to stop rewarding moving jobs offshore. We don't need to offer incentives for keeping jobs here, just not incentives for sending them overseas...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.