>> The other biggest problem with the Navy is the foolish insistence on having private shipyards
>> build warships. The idea of having private shipyards is certainly sound - but ultimately,
>> Naval warships are rather nothing like their civilian counterparts and so its not really right
>> to say that privatization makes any sense. The Navy really does need to operate its own yards,
>> take on its own construction, and just clear out some of the cost overruns and red tape as
>> contractors want projects to overrun, but the Navy wants its ships sooner rather than later.
This might just be the stupidest thing ever posted on Slashdot, and that's saying something. As someone who works on Naval warships while they're being constructed, let me explain the facts of life.
1) The Navy couldn't build warships even if they wanted to. They don't have the yards, and they don't have the trained workforce. You couldn't build ships with uniformed personnel (rotation issues break your workforce), so you'd still have a giant mass of civilians doing all the actual work. In other words, the only change is the name on the paycheck.
2) Moreover, the yards that build Navy ships tend to do that almost exclusively. You're right that building a warship is nothing like building a commercial ship. Warships are vastly more complicated, and require a much higher level of precision. Yards that do Naval construction have trouble doing commercial work, because they're geared up to a higher level of precision (and therefore cost) than the commercial market wants or needs.
3) The red tape is entirely government generated*. Entirely. Moving to Navy shipyards wouldn't clear it out, it would make it worse.
4) From an efficiency standpoint, it's better to let the military concentrate on their primary jobs (winning wars, operating fleets, that kind of thing), and leave the specialist work like building and refitting ships to the experts in those fields.
So your plan is to have the government spend tons of money to buy the yards that are already doing the work, use the exact same workforce, and build ships with ever-increasing specifications. Bravo.
*To be fair, lots of the red tape has a purpose. But it's always the government pushing more red tape, and it's always the contractors trying to thin it out.
You can't go after a judge for anything he does in court, except to impeach him. He could declare you guilty, pull out a gun, and shoot you mid-session and the only remedy would be impeachment. No criminal or civil penalties could apply. In this case, they can hit the judge for taking bribes, but there's no way to hit them for the over-sentencing.
While annoying in cases like this, this is actually an important feature of American jurisprudence. The only real way to guarentee judicial independence is to grant it to them unconditionally. If you leave a loophole to go after abuse, it will quickly be used to squelch unpopular decisions. Unfortunately, that means you occasionally have to live with the side effects.
To make the analogy:
If the police find a credit card number at a crime scene, they're going to ask the credit card company who that number belongs to. And I expect that, once the credit card company verifies that its the police asking, they'll hand over the name and address tied to that number. Exactly as we'd expect.
Note that the police shouldn't get any logs or other details without a warrent. All they get is the name of the person attached to that ip at that time - connecting a name to the evidence they already have. That seems perfectly reasonable.
First guess - Calc was not on the approved software list. Many organizations that have centralized IT departments have a standardized software list. If your program isn't on the list, you can't install it - period. Actually, in most places, it's if the specific version of the program isn't on the list, it's a non-starter.
It's quite annoying, but I do understand the reason behind it. And it's usually not all that hard to get something added, but it takes paperwork and time.
Second guess would be fears that using non-microsoft (or microsoft approved) software in the stack would cause issues with a support contract. They may or may not have been valid fears, depending on how the contract was written.
Most policies like this are there for a reason - something went horribly wrong, and the policy is an attempt to prevent it from happening again. The trick isn't to rail against the stupidity of the policy - it's to figure out the root cause and explain how you can mitigate those risks.
Things to consider:
Licensing costs are a trivial piece of the pie. Supporting the products is the big cost sink. And frankly, that's going to be relatively flat no matter what you pick.
Retraining people to use new software is going to eat up a big chunk of whatever savings you're generating. Probably a couple of years. Budget it in, or someone will notice it and use it spike your project. Preempt them or lose.
And the big one - loss of office automation. This is the real Microsoft Office lock in - they provide easy to use scripting tools, and people use them. In any office that's been around for a while, there's a bunch of little process improvements floating around. Switching your software base will cost you all of this work, and you'll take an immediate, noticable productivity hit. And there's no good way around it - you can either suffer for a couple of years until they grow back, or drop a lot of money on consultants to replace them.
It's all about having different price points. See, some people are willing to pay $50 for Windows 7, some are willing to pay $100, and some are willing to pay $300. If you only have one price, then you're leaving money on the table - either you lose sales because the price is too high, or you let the people who'd be willing to pay more keep their money. So you make a few different versions, with a few extra features for the people with $300, and collect a lot more money.
The counterbalance is that the more versions you have, the more confusing everything gets. So there's a lot of balancing that goes in to deciding how many versions, and where to price them. Notice that the feature sets don't really go into this balancing act - as long as you have some small differences, you can sell premium versions.
It's a Comcast (or whomever your cable provider is) card. It grants access to their network, and decodes the signals you've paid for. You kinda have to get it from them.
There's no extra charge for me, though - just the normal fees for service.
The problem isn't really that you might be responsible for what other people do - it's proving that you didn't do it.
To extend the car analogy, if your car is involved in a hit and run you're going to be the primary suspect until you prove someone else was using it. Once you manage that, you're in the clear. But getting there may be extremely painful.
Slashdot Mirror
>> The other biggest problem with the Navy is the foolish insistence on having private shipyards >> build warships. The idea of having private shipyards is certainly sound - but ultimately, >> Naval warships are rather nothing like their civilian counterparts and so its not really right >> to say that privatization makes any sense. The Navy really does need to operate its own yards, >> take on its own construction, and just clear out some of the cost overruns and red tape as >> contractors want projects to overrun, but the Navy wants its ships sooner rather than later. This might just be the stupidest thing ever posted on Slashdot, and that's saying something. As someone who works on Naval warships while they're being constructed, let me explain the facts of life. 1) The Navy couldn't build warships even if they wanted to. They don't have the yards, and they don't have the trained workforce. You couldn't build ships with uniformed personnel (rotation issues break your workforce), so you'd still have a giant mass of civilians doing all the actual work. In other words, the only change is the name on the paycheck. 2) Moreover, the yards that build Navy ships tend to do that almost exclusively. You're right that building a warship is nothing like building a commercial ship. Warships are vastly more complicated, and require a much higher level of precision. Yards that do Naval construction have trouble doing commercial work, because they're geared up to a higher level of precision (and therefore cost) than the commercial market wants or needs. 3) The red tape is entirely government generated*. Entirely. Moving to Navy shipyards wouldn't clear it out, it would make it worse. 4) From an efficiency standpoint, it's better to let the military concentrate on their primary jobs (winning wars, operating fleets, that kind of thing), and leave the specialist work like building and refitting ships to the experts in those fields. So your plan is to have the government spend tons of money to buy the yards that are already doing the work, use the exact same workforce, and build ships with ever-increasing specifications. Bravo. *To be fair, lots of the red tape has a purpose. But it's always the government pushing more red tape, and it's always the contractors trying to thin it out.
You can't go after a judge for anything he does in court, except to impeach him. He could declare you guilty, pull out a gun, and shoot you mid-session and the only remedy would be impeachment. No criminal or civil penalties could apply. In this case, they can hit the judge for taking bribes, but there's no way to hit them for the over-sentencing.
While annoying in cases like this, this is actually an important feature of American jurisprudence. The only real way to guarentee judicial independence is to grant it to them unconditionally. If you leave a loophole to go after abuse, it will quickly be used to squelch unpopular decisions. Unfortunately, that means you occasionally have to live with the side effects.
To make the analogy: If the police find a credit card number at a crime scene, they're going to ask the credit card company who that number belongs to. And I expect that, once the credit card company verifies that its the police asking, they'll hand over the name and address tied to that number. Exactly as we'd expect. Note that the police shouldn't get any logs or other details without a warrent. All they get is the name of the person attached to that ip at that time - connecting a name to the evidence they already have. That seems perfectly reasonable.
First guess - Calc was not on the approved software list. Many organizations that have centralized IT departments have a standardized software list. If your program isn't on the list, you can't install it - period. Actually, in most places, it's if the specific version of the program isn't on the list, it's a non-starter. It's quite annoying, but I do understand the reason behind it. And it's usually not all that hard to get something added, but it takes paperwork and time. Second guess would be fears that using non-microsoft (or microsoft approved) software in the stack would cause issues with a support contract. They may or may not have been valid fears, depending on how the contract was written. Most policies like this are there for a reason - something went horribly wrong, and the policy is an attempt to prevent it from happening again. The trick isn't to rail against the stupidity of the policy - it's to figure out the root cause and explain how you can mitigate those risks.
Things to consider: Licensing costs are a trivial piece of the pie. Supporting the products is the big cost sink. And frankly, that's going to be relatively flat no matter what you pick. Retraining people to use new software is going to eat up a big chunk of whatever savings you're generating. Probably a couple of years. Budget it in, or someone will notice it and use it spike your project. Preempt them or lose. And the big one - loss of office automation. This is the real Microsoft Office lock in - they provide easy to use scripting tools, and people use them. In any office that's been around for a while, there's a bunch of little process improvements floating around. Switching your software base will cost you all of this work, and you'll take an immediate, noticable productivity hit. And there's no good way around it - you can either suffer for a couple of years until they grow back, or drop a lot of money on consultants to replace them.
It's all about having different price points. See, some people are willing to pay $50 for Windows 7, some are willing to pay $100, and some are willing to pay $300. If you only have one price, then you're leaving money on the table - either you lose sales because the price is too high, or you let the people who'd be willing to pay more keep their money. So you make a few different versions, with a few extra features for the people with $300, and collect a lot more money. The counterbalance is that the more versions you have, the more confusing everything gets. So there's a lot of balancing that goes in to deciding how many versions, and where to price them. Notice that the feature sets don't really go into this balancing act - as long as you have some small differences, you can sell premium versions.
It's a Comcast (or whomever your cable provider is) card. It grants access to their network, and decodes the signals you've paid for. You kinda have to get it from them. There's no extra charge for me, though - just the normal fees for service.
The problem isn't really that you might be responsible for what other people do - it's proving that you didn't do it. To extend the car analogy, if your car is involved in a hit and run you're going to be the primary suspect until you prove someone else was using it. Once you manage that, you're in the clear. But getting there may be extremely painful.