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US CTO Choice Down To a Two-Horse Race
theodp writes "Barack Obama apparently didn't return CmdrTaco's call. BusinessWeek reports that the choices for the first US CTO have narrowed, and it's now a two-horse race between Padmasree Warrior, Cisco's CTO, and Vivek Kundra, who holds the same title for the Government of the District of Columbia. Two very different resumes — which would you advise Obama to pick?" I just know I was #3 on the list.
seriously? I worked at Motorola when Padmasree was there and I have seen more tech success in that period watching my lawn grow.
Is a big advocate of Google -- he transitioned the entire city government to Google Apps.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
the dude from cisco is a woman.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Padmasree Warrior is a woman.
Still, I don't trust most people from Cisco any further than I can throw a 6509. A few exceptions aside, their best people seem to leave to form other, more interesting (and ethical) companies. I know that sales people in general are not to be trusted, but Cisco reps seem to have carved their own special niche on that point.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
On the basis that Cisco functions and makes money, while DC is a disaster, Cisco_guy++.
Have you ever worked with Cisco? I have and it was a nightmare. They are a horribly inefficient bureaucracy that makes money by leveraging their existing client base and giving purchasers all the hookers and blow they need to get them to sign. They owned 10% of a company I worked for, then decided to buy one of our failed competitors and try to compete against us. Said competitor failed for a reason, so when that flopped they tried to strong arm us into canceling our product in that market. When that failed they spent millions more to buy two more firms we had driven out of business because their products were so much worse than ours.
Their main problem is that they can make okay hardware, but they suck at software and they really, really, really suck at user interfaces and integration of products. Their corporate ethics are in the toilet with their standing layoffs policy and they're more than happy to push crappy solutions on all their "partners" and big customers while forgetting to mention that they won't touch the same solution with a ten foot pole for use on their own network.
So yeah they're terrible, which is still probably not as bad as Washington DC.
Well, Cisco sucks. And the government of D.C. sucks.
Right, the government sucks, so by no means should you consider working for the government
I won't defend the guy's attitude, but if you RTFS (S = summary), one of the candidates worked for the Government of DC. So he wasn't saying "All governments suck so I wouldn't work for one," he was saying "the DC government sucks so I wouldn't promote one of their C?Os."
I think the phrase "close enough for government work" predates Ronnie "50 megatons hurts bad" Raygun. Which suggests to me that he didn't inspire the feeling.
an interesting aside to this aside...I googled that phrase to see when it first started to be used. There seems to be some sentiment that it used to mean 'work of the highest quality' but got changed to mean shoddy work somewhere along the way. Either way, it's had the negative connotation since at least the '60's.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates who helped create Al-Qaeda while under Zbigniew Brzezinski in Carter's Administration. He was very much involved in the Iran-Contra affair. This was enough to stop him from being DCI in 1991, but now it's perfectly fine.
Attorney General Eric holder wrote a brief to the SCOTUS on the DC gun ban and said that there is no individual right to own gun. He was apart of the Clinton Administrations Justice Department when Clinton pardoned all of his cocaine trafficking buddies.
Rahm Emanuel is crazy, a duel citizen of Israel and the U.S. and while in charge of who to give money to in the 2006 election cycle decided to acitvely shun anti-war candidates.
That's just a start.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
"Blame Ronnie Raygun"
Oh lol, how original...
"He popularized the idea that "government is the problem"
Actually that idea was popularized by the founding fathers who knew that Government sucked so bad that it needed a leash (B.O.R) and that the 10th was needed to keep the federal government in its place. Having lived in two very Different states (NY and Minnesota) I can tell you tat some government suck less (Minnesota) than others (NY) but given the fact the states are to be laboratories of democracy the federal government almost always sucks.
"militarization, possibly in hopes of bankrupting the federal government."
Horse manure, link or not its still horse manure. RR was trying to bankrupt the Soviet government not the US government something he successfully did.
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
Uh-huh. You do realize that one of the first actions of our founding fathers was to buy up state debt to establish national credit, right?
It took a Bush to bankrupt the USA[1].
[1] In fact, the USA declared bankruptcy on 15th August 1971, and it was Nixon wot did it.
Deleted
Mod parent up. Never understood this particular American obsession with tearing down the government and then proudly claiming it sucks. Sounds insane to me.
It's a tradition that dates back to 1776.
"That's true, the founding fathers fought a revolution against bad governments and once they ousted the British they invented the monarchy and named George Washington the ruler of the land and all our presidents since then have been his descendants."
Actually they revolted against a powerful government which was active in peoples every day lives and created a weak one which should seldom be seen..
"Also true, the soviets were doing so well under communism it seemed no one could stop them. Only the keen intellect of Ronald Reagan was able to find a way to undermine that fundamentally sound Marxist economy."
In the late 70's people believed the US would be crushed and the Soviets were not doing as badly as one might think. They did have a huge amount of oil and natural gas, the attitude among many were that they were a healthier economy than us..
"The founding fathers fought against unchecked hereditary power and created the government you hate so much. Communism defeated itself. Take some of those trickle down dollars and buy a clue."
Unchecked... Umm House of commons/lords means anything to you? The monarchy in England was under check for nearly a half millennium before the revolution.
The founders fought against a lack of representation *not* against hereditary rule. Many, *MANY*, people wanted George Washing to be a king in a constitutional monarchy not much different than the English monarchy and anyone who has studied Franklin knows that until he was humiliated in England by his enemies he was quite content to stay a part of great Brittan on the condition of representation and equality with English citizens.
Before you chastise others by telling them to 'buy a clue' maybe you should read a book..
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
Most posts here seem to be generalizations based on little to no facts, and I can't see how that's helping the discussion.
Can't speak for the Cisco lady, but Kundra has been kicking serious butt in DC. He's run tech start-ups and runs his agency the same way: aggressive, frugal, and with little tolerance for those that don't performance. Here's a Washington Post article on him from a few weeks ago: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/04/AR2009010401235.html
He created hundreds of data feeds in his first few months in office to make DC one of the most open governments around. Then a few months ago, he hosted an open competition with $20k of prizes for anyone to create innovative applications using these data feeds.
Cripes. I never said "the government sucks."
At best, I said "the government of D.C. sucks". Is this like No Reading Comprehension Day on Slashdot? Do people not realize that the city of Washington D.C. has a government which is distinct from that of the Federal Government? WTF.
Some idiot puts words into my mouth and suddenly I'm Anti-Citizen Number 1.
Comment of the year
A popular Malayali surname; it's often transliterated as 'Warrier' or 'Variar' as well. In fact, there was an Indian minister with the exact same surname, just transliterated differently in English.
More than mere navel gazing.
You are either exaggerating or are mistaken.
USA (Brzezinski or whoever) did not create Al Qaeda. It is true that many Al Qaeda members fought Russia in Afghanistan and that the Afghan Mujahedeens were funded by USA through Pakistan -- But Al Qaeda is a much later group formed in Saudi Arabia (according to Bin Laden against US presence in Holy Land). Very different times, different places.
Rahm Emanual Dual-Citizenship allegation is baseless according to Wikipedia.
http://slashdot.org/submission/1062723/Cheap-mobile-data-plan?art_pos=2