You and I have different definitions of 'efficient'. If you want to get a widget at lowest cost, that's how I'd define "efficient." I understand there are indirect benefits from the social policies, but those are exactly the kinds of restraints that government levies on itself that make government projects generally more expensive than the equivalent commercial products that are not burdened with similar indirect costs (or produce indirect benefits.) Part of the problem is that there is no clear definition/method to value those benefits.
If you remember the stories about the $600 hammers, and you actually read the details, what you find out is that the hammer cost $10, and the contracting overhead cost about $500. That includes all the rules for government procurement, Federal Acquisition Regulation compliance, EEOE, small and woman/minority owned business requirements, limits on subcontracting, requirements for exhaustive financial/time accounting, etc, etc, etc.
Most of those overhead requirements are placed for good reasons, either for social policies (e.g. small business/minority business) or for fiscal or technical accountability (e.g. time accounting, facility security, etc.) But when you add them all up, you have a lot of overhead for doing government contracting that you don't have in business. It's part of the reason why government is inherently inefficient.
I remember the '60s, they sucked the first time. And the anti-war protests of the '60s tended to be much more focused than this crap.
My view is that it's a lot of naive people, influenced by left-wing hypocrites and by those who will use these well-intentioned protests for their own ends (e.g. the radical anti-war people that got gassed trying to enter the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum on Saturday). But that's just like the '60s, too! I have generally no patience with the far-left agenda that has been so disproven throughout history (i.e. why communism, which sounds at face value reasonable, doesn't work in the large as a "violation" of human nature.)
Now if someone wants to protest with a clear agenda (like, for example many of the gay rights issues such as same-sex marriage), I respect that (even when I don't agree with it.) But I can assure you that (a) I'm not in the 1% of top income, and (b) those protestors DO NOT represent me!
I run Facebook in a totally separate browser than I use for -everything else-. So why is it I still get Facebook cookies in a browser that has never logged onto Facebook? I remove those cookies about 2-3 times/week. I haven't figured out where they're coming from (i.e. what site puts them there) yet. This is not new behavior, I've seen this for months.
Well, it seems that a lot of corporate managers have bought into the notion that software inherently sucks. But it doesn't have to be that way. What if the US were to establish itself as the place to go for -quality software-, software that worked and that US companies stood behind? There are probably many comparisons with other industries; the auto industry comes to mind with German and Swedish cars recognized for higher quality engineering at a higher price. (That's not to denigrate the substantial quality that comes from either Japanese or Korean automakers!)
i suspect the same set of concerns applies to a lot of outsourced commercial IT.
But there's a lot of contracting overhead between the agency and the actual guy/gal doing the work. Add to that the substantial overhead costs for compliance to all the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FARs). Within the Government, there are major problems attracting -and retaining- talent; the Government trains them and if they're good, they go get much better paying/much better working conditions jobs in industry. The truly bad employees do get weeded out. So what you're left with in the Government IT ranks is generally a lot of mediocre people for whom the job security of a Civil Service job is their primary benefit. And the Government fails to invest in training, etc. So their primary job skill is supervising contractors. I don't envy Govt IT workers, but I'm not sure under the current system they would be able to execute without substantial contractor support.
... -USMC infantry (aka grunt, if this person had any more useful aptitudes, the USMC would have placed him in a more specialized role)...
Very unlikely the above poster has any actual military experience. My (Army) branch of choice was Field Artillery, and I emphasize -my choice-. Why join the Army or the Marine Corps to do a job you can do in the civilian world for more money and less hassle? People in the military are very often motivated by other reasons THANKFULLY!!!
Instead of a double major, take a strong math minor, and consider a MS in mathematics concentrating on applied math/operations research.
The other thing to consider is a Computer Engineering or EE Masters degree that focuses on control systems. Just about everything these days involves automated control.
The problem with the CS degree is that I don't have that much faith you'll actually get a solid -engineering- education from a CS department. You'll either get research/theory, or you'll get trained for the popular topics of the day.
For the record, I was a Math major in college, only because my school didn't offer a CS degree. Otherwise I would have ended up majoring in CS. I was lucky enough to have 2 undergrad courses in Operations Research and I enjoyed them a lot. Not only was the math itself interesting, but the focus was on applications rather than proof, A Good Thing in my view for an engineer (including a Software Engineer.)
But I have zero confidence in Microsoft's ability to really innovate, and I predict Nokia gets bought by Microsoft after their move to Win Mobile 7 drives Nokia's stock price down because of Microsoft's failures. Frankly, Ballmer is not smart enough to know when he's been beaten to market.
I think HP is being stupidly near-sighted by not continuing to invest in this. Even if HP wants to move towards the idea of 'enterprise integration', they could do what RIM is trying to do (belatedly) with the Playbook, and come up with a tablet for enterprise/industrial/OEM integration. I thought WebOS (and the Palm legacy) had the best basis to provide innovation/alternatives to the iPad; so far most of what we're seeing from Android has not been very inspiring.
Now I fully admit to being an Apple FanBoy, but I think real competition in designs, applications, hardware, etc, is good for everyone. Apple does not have the monopoly on good ideas, but HP's actions sure seem to imply that HP is unwilling to compete with Apple. See the arguments here, particularly the (timely) discussion of the venerable HP-35 calculator as a risk that paid off: http://www.macworld.com/article/161775/2011/08/why_cant_windows_pcs_catch_up_to_the_macbook_air_.html
Actually, that's already happened, kinda. I was given an Apple "Magic Mouse" ( http://www.apple.com/magicmouse/ ) which is both a mouse and a touchpad device. For someone with 25+ years using mice, it's taking some getting used to and I'm still not quite convinced by the touch metaphor for what I view as primarily a keyboard oriented device (laptop/computer) as opposed to smartphone/tablet. But if you actually spend some time with a Magic Mouse or use a MacBook Pro trackpad (or the Apple external trackpad), it'll be clear that Apple has already delivered 'touch' on personal computers. (And of course iOS and MacOS X share a lot of the OS core and internal structure.)
If you have any interest in user interface design and/or hardware, regardless of what you think of Apple the company or Mac computers, you should probably spend some time playing with a Magic Mouse. It might not be revolutionary, but I think it's a quantum jump over conventional mice as an input device.
Hasn't Microsoft already announced that Windows 8 will be doing essentially the same thing (Universal OS across desktop and mobile processors)?
But now Microsoft has to actually (a) deliver and then (b) be successful in both markets. It's a risk for Microsoft, what happens if Win 8 tanks on smartphones/tablets, or Win 8 turns out to be Another Vista?
... OS X and actual desktop computers aren't going anywhere.
Apple's growing market share on the high end of personal computers, particularly laptops, shows that, while the industry as a whole may not be going anywhere, Apple's part of that industry is showing substantial growth in all of (a) absolute sales; (b) proportion of the market; (c) profitability. (And I personally contributed to that growth last quarter and am very happy with my new machine...)
The consistently better results from the bloggers show "the data is out there," you just have to understand the company well enough to understand it.
I guess my perspective on the Wall Street analysts is the emphasis on the Anal part; that seems to be where their heads have been on Apple for at least the last several years...
I think a lot of our problems come from these 3rd party packages that have grown WAY too complex and provide too many vulnerabilities. Why, for example, should the PDF format permit -anything executable or coded-, whether it's JavaScript or ZIP files? It's time in my view for the developer and system integrator community to simplify; let's get back to the idea of tools and programs that have well-defined scope and do a few things well, rather than turning into Yet Another Vendor Platform that can be used to distribute viruses/trojans/malware/crapware/etc.
I posit that anyone using a server version of an Apple product is not an IT professional to begin with.
I posit you're either an idiot or a bigot, or both. But it's clear you are uninformed. There are many installations, profit and non-profit, using OS X Server.
OK, I 'get it' for servers (and I think that's in part due to the problems that Windows servers at least used to have in doing more than one class of application at a time.) But I don't see the pressing need for virtualized desktops/end user computers. Why would anyone need to have 2 copies of any OS running on their desktop? I guess one possible answer could be 'each OS instance is a security firewall', but are we really at that stage? (And how do you handle getting a file from a Sharepoint server via a web browser, editing it, and then mailing it to someone?)
Starting with the original article, it's clear that a lot of the people talking about how bad the military is have no experience in the military. Similarly, most of those talking from military experience have little or no knowledge of commercial practices.
It's really easy to produce a system that meets the easy 80% of requirements. It's A LOT harder to complete the job. The 'lives lost' statement is a consequence of 'missed operational opportunities', where the computer is only an enabler. It still takes a human to decide to act on information (in a timely fashion.) I've met very few people who are both trained intel analysts and experienced/competent programmers or system engineers and therefore competent to pass judgement on the implementation of a large complex distributed (and hopefully fault-tolerant) system that must deal with incomplete/inconsistent information and communications problems. (But I've met a lot of military/government people writing requirements who are happy to specify things that are theoretically impossible...)
This reads like someone trying to do 'procurement via public relations,' something that was particularly blatant during the USAF Tanker recompete.
And of course the Slashdot postings are full of posturing based on political persuasion and no knowledge of the actual system or its requirements or implementation.
I'm not defending DCGS-A, I'm just pointing out observations from a career spent doing these kinds of systems in both military and non-military government contexts. I do not have any knowledge of DGCS-A requirements or implementation nor do I speak for anyone besides myself. If caught or captured, my secretary will disavow any knowledge of my actions.
Because their IT departments actually use the word "NO" when the managers want to do something stupid and retarded...
And because their IT departments actually use the word "NO" when the managers want to do something useful, productive, user-friendly, too. Too many CIOs think that the company exists to support their policies and staffs, rather than they exist to support business objectives and make the average employee more productive. I still think every CIO should be required to provide a charge number to all employees, to charge when that employee can't get his/her job done due to IT problems.
A friend recommended this to me: http://www.mekentosj.com/ I've played with it a bit, and it's very academic-focused.
There's probably a need for a more general metadata-integrated information management tool, that makes use of Mac OS X facilities for metadata definition and management. Do Linux and Windows 7 have similar OS level facilities to support metadata creation and management?
A key consideration is the ability to store metadata in the file, rather alongside. Some EXIF tools support this for photographs and I think the various Office formats (Microsoft and otherwise) support metadata within the file.
Slashdot Mirror
You and I have different definitions of 'efficient'. If you want to get a widget at lowest cost, that's how I'd define "efficient." I understand there are indirect benefits from the social policies, but those are exactly the kinds of restraints that government levies on itself that make government projects generally more expensive than the equivalent commercial products that are not burdened with similar indirect costs (or produce indirect benefits.) Part of the problem is that there is no clear definition/method to value those benefits.
If you remember the stories about the $600 hammers, and you actually read the details, what you find out is that the hammer cost $10, and the contracting overhead cost about $500. That includes all the rules for government procurement, Federal Acquisition Regulation compliance, EEOE, small and woman/minority owned business requirements, limits on subcontracting, requirements for exhaustive financial/time accounting, etc, etc, etc.
Most of those overhead requirements are placed for good reasons, either for social policies (e.g. small business/minority business) or for fiscal or technical accountability (e.g. time accounting, facility security, etc.) But when you add them all up, you have a lot of overhead for doing government contracting that you don't have in business. It's part of the reason why government is inherently inefficient.
I remember the '60s, they sucked the first time. And the anti-war protests of the '60s tended to be much more focused than this crap.
My view is that it's a lot of naive people, influenced by left-wing hypocrites and by those who will use these well-intentioned protests for their own ends (e.g. the radical anti-war people that got gassed trying to enter the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum on Saturday). But that's just like the '60s, too! I have generally no patience with the far-left agenda that has been so disproven throughout history (i.e. why communism, which sounds at face value reasonable, doesn't work in the large as a "violation" of human nature.)
Now if someone wants to protest with a clear agenda (like, for example many of the gay rights issues such as same-sex marriage), I respect that (even when I don't agree with it.) But I can assure you that (a) I'm not in the 1% of top income, and (b) those protestors DO NOT represent me!
I run Facebook in a totally separate browser than I use for -everything else-. So why is it I still get Facebook cookies in a browser that has never logged onto Facebook? I remove those cookies about 2-3 times/week. I haven't figured out where they're coming from (i.e. what site puts them there) yet. This is not new behavior, I've seen this for months.
Well, it seems that a lot of corporate managers have bought into the notion that software inherently sucks. But it doesn't have to be that way. What if the US were to establish itself as the place to go for -quality software-, software that worked and that US companies stood behind? There are probably many comparisons with other industries; the auto industry comes to mind with German and Swedish cars recognized for higher quality engineering at a higher price. (That's not to denigrate the substantial quality that comes from either Japanese or Korean automakers!)
How many people have ever delivered a software product with a genuine warranty, "Find a bug and it will be fixed for free." (see http://212.113.201.96/services/software/approach.asp for an example.)
i suspect the same set of concerns applies to a lot of outsourced commercial IT.
But there's a lot of contracting overhead between the agency and the actual guy/gal doing the work. Add to that the substantial overhead costs for compliance to all the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FARs). Within the Government, there are major problems attracting -and retaining- talent; the Government trains them and if they're good, they go get much better paying/much better working conditions jobs in industry. The truly bad employees do get weeded out. So what you're left with in the Government IT ranks is generally a lot of mediocre people for whom the job security of a Civil Service job is their primary benefit. And the Government fails to invest in training, etc. So their primary job skill is supervising contractors. I don't envy Govt IT workers, but I'm not sure under the current system they would be able to execute without substantial contractor support.
... ...
-USMC infantry (aka grunt, if this person had any more useful aptitudes, the USMC would have placed him in a more specialized role)
Very unlikely the above poster has any actual military experience. My (Army) branch of choice was Field Artillery, and I emphasize -my choice-. Why join the Army or the Marine Corps to do a job you can do in the civilian world for more money and less hassle? People in the military are very often motivated by other reasons THANKFULLY!!!
Thanks for asking.
Instead of a double major, take a strong math minor, and consider a MS in mathematics concentrating on applied math/operations research.
The other thing to consider is a Computer Engineering or EE Masters degree that focuses on control systems. Just about everything these days involves automated control.
The problem with the CS degree is that I don't have that much faith you'll actually get a solid -engineering- education from a CS department. You'll either get research/theory, or you'll get trained for the popular topics of the day.
For the record, I was a Math major in college, only because my school didn't offer a CS degree. Otherwise I would have ended up majoring in CS. I was lucky enough to have 2 undergrad courses in Operations Research and I enjoyed them a lot. Not only was the math itself interesting, but the focus was on applications rather than proof, A Good Thing in my view for an engineer (including a Software Engineer.)
But I have zero confidence in Microsoft's ability to really innovate, and I predict Nokia gets bought by Microsoft after their move to Win Mobile 7 drives Nokia's stock price down because of Microsoft's failures. Frankly, Ballmer is not smart enough to know when he's been beaten to market.
I think HP is being stupidly near-sighted by not continuing to invest in this. Even if HP wants to move towards the idea of 'enterprise integration', they could do what RIM is trying to do (belatedly) with the Playbook, and come up with a tablet for enterprise/industrial/OEM integration. I thought WebOS (and the Palm legacy) had the best basis to provide innovation/alternatives to the iPad; so far most of what we're seeing from Android has not been very inspiring.
Now I fully admit to being an Apple FanBoy, but I think real competition in designs, applications, hardware, etc, is good for everyone. Apple does not have the monopoly on good ideas, but HP's actions sure seem to imply that HP is unwilling to compete with Apple. See the arguments here, particularly the (timely) discussion of the venerable HP-35 calculator as a risk that paid off: http://www.macworld.com/article/161775/2011/08/why_cant_windows_pcs_catch_up_to_the_macbook_air_.html
When the iMac gets its touch screen.
Actually, that's already happened, kinda. I was given an Apple "Magic Mouse" ( http://www.apple.com/magicmouse/ ) which is both a mouse and a touchpad device. For someone with 25+ years using mice, it's taking some getting used to and I'm still not quite convinced by the touch metaphor for what I view as primarily a keyboard oriented device (laptop/computer) as opposed to smartphone/tablet. But if you actually spend some time with a Magic Mouse or use a MacBook Pro trackpad (or the Apple external trackpad), it'll be clear that Apple has already delivered 'touch' on personal computers. (And of course iOS and MacOS X share a lot of the OS core and internal structure.)
If you have any interest in user interface design and/or hardware, regardless of what you think of Apple the company or Mac computers, you should probably spend some time playing with a Magic Mouse. It might not be revolutionary, but I think it's a quantum jump over conventional mice as an input device.
Hasn't Microsoft already announced that Windows 8 will be doing essentially the same thing (Universal OS across desktop and mobile processors)?
But now Microsoft has to actually (a) deliver and then (b) be successful in both markets. It's a risk for Microsoft, what happens if Win 8 tanks on smartphones/tablets, or Win 8 turns out to be Another Vista?
... OS X and actual desktop computers aren't going anywhere.
Apple's growing market share on the high end of personal computers, particularly laptops, shows that, while the industry as a whole may not be going anywhere, Apple's part of that industry is showing substantial growth in all of (a) absolute sales; (b) proportion of the market; (c) profitability. (And I personally contributed to that growth last quarter and am very happy with my new machine...)
Nobody ever said Wall Street understood the technology involved in the tech companies they are trading.
What's worse is they don't understand the business end of the tech companies they are trading. Look at how poorly the "professional analysts" do predicting earnings, sales, etc, when compared to the independent bloggers: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/07/20/another-apple-blowout-quarter-once-again-the-street-blew-it/
The consistently better results from the bloggers show "the data is out there," you just have to understand the company well enough to understand it.
I guess my perspective on the Wall Street analysts is the emphasis on the Anal part; that seems to be where their heads have been on Apple for at least the last several years...
I think a lot of our problems come from these 3rd party packages that have grown WAY too complex and provide too many vulnerabilities. Why, for example, should the PDF format permit -anything executable or coded-, whether it's JavaScript or ZIP files? It's time in my view for the developer and system integrator community to simplify; let's get back to the idea of tools and programs that have well-defined scope and do a few things well, rather than turning into Yet Another Vendor Platform that can be used to distribute viruses/trojans/malware/crapware/etc.
I posit that anyone using a server version of an Apple product is not an IT professional to begin with.
I posit you're either an idiot or a bigot, or both. But it's clear you are uninformed. There are many installations, profit and non-profit, using OS X Server.
OK, I 'get it' for servers (and I think that's in part due to the problems that Windows servers at least used to have in doing more than one class of application at a time.) But I don't see the pressing need for virtualized desktops/end user computers. Why would anyone need to have 2 copies of any OS running on their desktop? I guess one possible answer could be 'each OS instance is a security firewall', but are we really at that stage? (And how do you handle getting a file from a Sharepoint server via a web browser, editing it, and then mailing it to someone?)
Starting with the original article, it's clear that a lot of the people talking about how bad the military is have no experience in the military. Similarly, most of those talking from military experience have little or no knowledge of commercial practices.
Agree, crashing is unacceptable. But consider this before you put "never crash" into your 'easy 80%': http://www.ima.umn.edu/~arnold/disasters/patriot.html
dave
It's really easy to produce a system that meets the easy 80% of requirements. It's A LOT harder to complete the job. The 'lives lost' statement is a consequence of 'missed operational opportunities', where the computer is only an enabler. It still takes a human to decide to act on information (in a timely fashion.) I've met very few people who are both trained intel analysts and experienced/competent programmers or system engineers and therefore competent to pass judgement on the implementation of a large complex distributed (and hopefully fault-tolerant) system that must deal with incomplete/inconsistent information and communications problems. (But I've met a lot of military/government people writing requirements who are happy to specify things that are theoretically impossible...)
This reads like someone trying to do 'procurement via public relations,' something that was particularly blatant during the USAF Tanker recompete.
And of course the Slashdot postings are full of posturing based on political persuasion and no knowledge of the actual system or its requirements or implementation.
I'm not defending DCGS-A, I'm just pointing out observations from a career spent doing these kinds of systems in both military and non-military government contexts. I do not have any knowledge of DGCS-A requirements or implementation nor do I speak for anyone besides myself. If caught or captured, my secretary will disavow any knowledge of my actions.
I'm VERY SKEPTICAL of those computer modelers who claim to have sufficient climate data to validate their models!!!
dave
Because their IT departments actually use the word "NO" when the managers want to do something stupid and retarded...
And because their IT departments actually use the word "NO" when the managers want to do something useful, productive, user-friendly, too. Too many CIOs think that the company exists to support their policies and staffs, rather than they exist to support business objectives and make the average employee more productive. I still think every CIO should be required to provide a charge number to all employees, to charge when that employee can't get his/her job done due to IT problems.
Just a tool....
A friend recommended this to me: http://www.mekentosj.com/ I've played with it a bit, and it's very academic-focused.
There's probably a need for a more general metadata-integrated information management tool, that makes use of Mac OS X facilities for metadata definition and management. Do Linux and Windows 7 have similar OS level facilities to support metadata creation and management?
A key consideration is the ability to store metadata in the file, rather alongside. Some EXIF tools support this for photographs and I think the various Office formats (Microsoft and otherwise) support metadata within the file.