"Competitive bidding" in government is not what you think it is with regards to IT.
For example, say you have a large computer company. Management at a government agency wants to purchase a bunch of servers from that company. So the large computer company submits a bid, and then two resellers (or "business partners", "system builders", etc) also submit bids (for the same hardware.
The result is that management gets to buy from whomever they want.
Another example would be to rig the requirements. Lets say that company XYZ exclusivly offers a specific model of tape drive or video card with a computer. The purchasing manager simply makes the exclusive component a key requirement of the bid.
In other words, if you are concerned about fair competition that delivers value to the government & the people... you are far too late.
If the Geneva conventions or any other international agreement afforded those people in Guantamano Bay any rights -- the Europeans would be actively campaigning against the Americans instead of holding America in holier-than-thou disgust.
It's particularly ironic that France, Belgium and Germany have been the biggest opponents of american efforts. After all, France spent a century brutalizing Indochina and Belgium raped & pillaged their way through the Congo for decades.
"Then where are all these huge amounts of ready to use WMD ? How come the reasons politicians are giving today for the war are totally different to the reasons stated before we went to war ? "
Link me to a where Bush blamed Saddam for 9/11. The media insinuated that Saddam was involved, the gov't did not.
"Why are prisoners being held in Guantanamo Bay where they are outside any legal system of justice?"
They were mercenaries in the employ of a terrorist organization. They have no rights -- usually people in their position are summarily shot.
Regarding Kyoto "That's just rubbish."
Kyoto required that Western countries and Japan slash greenhouse emissions while "developing" nations like China get to increase emissions. Great idea.
"No European countries have supported Saddam - at least not recently, no doubt we were all selling him weaponary the same time the US was. You are basically saying that any country or people who disagree with the US are wrong - no reasons, just plain wrong"
French companies sold Iraq radar systems as late as 1997 and provided technical support for weapons systems.
Did your high school history teacher also tell you about Masonic plots to dominate the world and the Rothchild's secret 5th column?
The great powers signed a treaty regarding naval strength that allocated each country specific numbers of various classes of fighting ships. The US and Britain were allocated the largest naval forces. That is the only tenuous tie between your assertions and reality.
In reality, the US abandoned the military until around 1934, when Roosevelt started building warships again. US Army strength hovered around 35,000 men, and the Marines were dropped to 5-6 regiments of soldiers.
The only US commitments abroard in the 20's and 30's were the "Bananna Republic" wars in Central America, the Phillipenes and China. In China, US and British troops functioned together and were occasionally even quarted together.
An ASAT missile prototype was tested, but the program was cancelled and only 3-4 missiles were produced.
China operates surveillance stations in Cuba which monitor and sometimes disrupt US communications satellites.
There was an incident a few months ago where one of those stations in Cuba fired a laser at a US coms satellite, which crashed a computer and caused a disruption in some radio networks as military traffic was rerouted.
There are plenty of resources to exploit in space. As technology improves, it will become cost effective to do so.
Keep whining about how you need "free" drugs, education, etc. While you seek to leech off of society, the chinese are busy becoming the pre-eminent industrial power on earth.
I'd assure you that places hiring contractors to do classified contract work for the military or police or planning the implementation project relating to offshore outsourcing projects are quite justified in keeping the relationship between the employer and contractor in confidence.
Why? Security and insider trading issues. You can figure out alot of things about a company in transition by interviewing ex-employees and contract staff.
If you're on an internal network, setup an anonymous FTP server...
I've seen setups where anyone can upload a file to a certain directory, then some script routine runs every so often and moves the file to the actual place where you want the file to go.
You have to pay, but you can dial a code to trace the phone numbers that the calls are coming from... the code is *57 for Verizon in NY.
Then you can call the police and have them take care of it. Spam Faxing is a crime... and you might end up making a few thousand dollars out of the deal!
When you pay someone who risks deportation for quitting $35,000 for a job that typically pays $65-85k plus benefits, you can afford to expend more time training the employee.
Maybe my experience doesn't meet yours, but I have found that outsourced engineers have less experience and qualifications and much more difficulty communicating than the veteran employees that they replaced.
That's a sentiment that many people here share and is not Xenophobia or racism.
Who gives a shit about free software. The guy has a project to get done.
There is nothing wrong with paying $60 for a very well designed and useful piece of software. Visio is a stellar product, which is why MS bought the company.
Since Japan's economy hit the shitter a few years ago, China has replaced it as the key creditor of the United States.
China maintains a fixed and unrealistic exchange rate with the United States to maintain a favorable trading relationship. This policy will end someday, which makes investing in anything but factories in China a dangerous proposition. So Chinese industrialists buy US Treasury securities.
When you pass heavy trade tariffs and start a trade war that convinces foreign investors to sell US securities, the Feds will have to print money to cover it's obligations and you'd probaly see your insurance company nationalized or out of business.
They need to build expertise over there in MS product.
In the US, Microsoft has been incredibly successful in developing a sales channel of large & small consulting firms and VARs that pimp MS product and MS product only. They are trying to bring that strategy to India as well.
Ever wonder why all the sudden third-world shitholes are becoming technological power houses?
One of the big reasons is the proliferation of "Free" software.
Twenty years ago, a university in India or Pakistan would have a tough time gathering the cash to have IBM or Sun come in and deliver computer systems & software.
Today, anybody can run Linux and use gcc, vi, emacs, etc on new & cheap or secondhand & cheaper hardware. So now every smart kid with the resources to attend a university in India is in that university studying an IT-related field.
Richard Stallman and other "Free" software advocates like to talk about how freedom allows any software developer to do whatever he wants. When you are a US programmer making US$80,000/year to twiddle bits, you should be afraid of allowing "any" programmer learning how to do what you do.
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What exactly has Eric Raymond done besides write that Cathederal book or attempt to invent his own "jargon"?
A book as high and mighty sounding as "The Art of XXX" should be written by an acknowledged luminary in the art...
Funny... I there was an OSS groupware program that required OpenLDAP, you'd be jumping up and down with joy.
A large organization without an AD or LDAP-like infrastructure would certainly benefit from it.
What if a user cannot decode an email address or solve a riddle? What about the intelligence-disabled amoung us? They have rights too!
"Competitive bidding" in government is not what you think it is with regards to IT.
For example, say you have a large computer company. Management at a government agency wants to purchase a bunch of servers from that company. So the large computer company submits a bid, and then two resellers (or "business partners", "system builders", etc) also submit bids (for the same hardware.
The result is that management gets to buy from whomever they want.
Another example would be to rig the requirements. Lets say that company XYZ exclusivly offers a specific model of tape drive or video card with a computer. The purchasing manager simply makes the exclusive component a key requirement of the bid.
In other words, if you are concerned about fair competition that delivers value to the government & the people... you are far too late.
There is no law protecting terrorists.
If the Geneva conventions or any other international agreement afforded those people in Guantamano Bay any rights -- the Europeans would be actively campaigning against the Americans instead of holding America in holier-than-thou disgust.
It's particularly ironic that France, Belgium and Germany have been the biggest opponents of american efforts. After all, France spent a century brutalizing Indochina and Belgium raped & pillaged their way through the Congo for decades.
Real enterprise environments code web apps in Assembler. C is just a stupid hack and I can implement an operating system better anyway.
Is going to appreciate having her cell phone number linked to the first page of Slashdot.
/. editors continues to amaze and astound.
The complete irresponsibility of
Please enlighten me. How does a platform that basically neutralizes long and medium range ballistic missiles make the world more dangerous?
I am not the anon coward btw but...
"Then where are all these huge amounts of ready to use WMD ? How come the reasons politicians are giving today for the war are totally different to the reasons stated before we went to war ? "
Link me to a where Bush blamed Saddam for 9/11. The media insinuated that Saddam was involved, the gov't did not.
"Why are prisoners being held in Guantanamo Bay where they are outside any legal system of justice?"
They were mercenaries in the employ of a terrorist organization. They have no rights -- usually people in their position are summarily shot.
Regarding Kyoto "That's just rubbish."
Kyoto required that Western countries and Japan slash greenhouse emissions while "developing" nations like China get to increase emissions. Great idea.
"No European countries have supported Saddam - at least not recently, no doubt we were all selling him weaponary the same time the US was. You are basically saying that any country or people who disagree with the US are wrong - no reasons, just plain wrong"
French companies sold Iraq radar systems as late as 1997 and provided technical support for weapons systems.
Did your high school history teacher also tell you about Masonic plots to dominate the world and the Rothchild's secret 5th column?
The great powers signed a treaty regarding naval strength that allocated each country specific numbers of various classes of fighting ships. The US and Britain were allocated the largest naval forces. That is the only tenuous tie between your assertions and reality.
In reality, the US abandoned the military until around 1934, when Roosevelt started building warships again. US Army strength hovered around 35,000 men, and the Marines were dropped to 5-6 regiments of soldiers.
The only US commitments abroard in the 20's and 30's were the "Bananna Republic" wars in Central America, the Phillipenes and China. In China, US and British troops functioned together and were occasionally even quarted together.
Wait! Mrs. Brady said that only policeman should be allowed to have guns!
I guess Switzerland must a real violent place, with all of those assault weapons!
Ever hear of places like England, Japan, Prussia or Sparta?
Guess not.
An ASAT missile prototype was tested, but the program was cancelled and only 3-4 missiles were produced.
China operates surveillance stations in Cuba which monitor and sometimes disrupt US communications satellites.
There was an incident a few months ago where one of those stations in Cuba fired a laser at a US coms satellite, which crashed a computer and caused a disruption in some radio networks as military traffic was rerouted.
There are plenty of resources to exploit in space. As technology improves, it will become cost effective to do so.
Keep whining about how you need "free" drugs, education, etc. While you seek to leech off of society, the chinese are busy becoming the pre-eminent industrial power on earth.
That is incredibly poor advice.
I'd assure you that places hiring contractors to do classified contract work for the military or police or planning the implementation project relating to offshore outsourcing projects are quite justified in keeping the relationship between the employer and contractor in confidence.
Why? Security and insider trading issues. You can figure out alot of things about a company in transition by interviewing ex-employees and contract staff.
Enter the new space race.
Instead of wasting resources on social program moneysinks, China is opening the door to the next step in human space exploration.
If you're on an internal network, setup an anonymous FTP server...
I've seen setups where anyone can upload a file to a certain directory, then some script routine runs every so often and moves the file to the actual place where you want the file to go.
That's security by obscurity!
What if some aging hacker who has been in a coma since 1986 applies the latest UUCP vulnerability?
You have to pay, but you can dial a code to trace the phone numbers that the calls are coming from... the code is *57 for Verizon in NY.
Then you can call the police and have them take care of it. Spam Faxing is a crime... and you might end up making a few thousand dollars out of the deal!
When you pay someone who risks deportation for quitting $35,000 for a job that typically pays $65-85k plus benefits, you can afford to expend more time training the employee.
Maybe my experience doesn't meet yours, but I have found that outsourced engineers have less experience and qualifications and much more difficulty communicating than the veteran employees that they replaced.
That's a sentiment that many people here share and is not Xenophobia or racism.
Who gives a shit about free software. The guy has a project to get done.
There is nothing wrong with paying $60 for a very well designed and useful piece of software. Visio is a stellar product, which is why MS bought the company.
Unfortunately, this just isn't true.
Since Japan's economy hit the shitter a few years ago, China has replaced it as the key creditor of the United States.
China maintains a fixed and unrealistic exchange rate with the United States to maintain a favorable trading relationship. This policy will end someday, which makes investing in anything but factories in China a dangerous proposition. So Chinese industrialists buy US Treasury securities.
When you pass heavy trade tariffs and start a trade war that convinces foreign investors to sell US securities, the Feds will have to print money to cover it's obligations and you'd probaly see your insurance company nationalized or out of business.
But the el-cheapo educational version or get it from Kazaa.
Yeah, it does.
They need to build expertise over there in MS product.
In the US, Microsoft has been incredibly successful in developing a sales channel of large & small consulting firms and VARs that pimp MS product and MS product only. They are trying to bring that strategy to India as well.
Ever wonder why all the sudden third-world shitholes are becoming technological power houses?
One of the big reasons is the proliferation of "Free" software.
Twenty years ago, a university in India or Pakistan would have a tough time gathering the cash to have IBM or Sun come in and deliver computer systems & software.
Today, anybody can run Linux and use gcc, vi, emacs, etc on new & cheap or secondhand & cheaper hardware. So now every smart kid with the resources to attend a university in India is in that university studying an IT-related field.
Richard Stallman and other "Free" software advocates like to talk about how freedom allows any software developer to do whatever he wants. When you are a US programmer making US$80,000/year to twiddle bits, you should be afraid of allowing "any" programmer learning how to do what you do.