Interestingly, America would do a lot better if the leaders really did stop trying to please everyone and started to really LEAD. Most administrations literally read the polls of the popular opinion and direct policy and speaches to maximize their popular effect: trying to please the people.
That's what Clinton did. He was popular here and around the world, and we got attacked on 911 anyway. Bush, on the other hand, doesn't pay attention to opinion polls and, not surprisingly, he is hated. Whether his policies are good or bad over the long-term remain to be seen, but in the short-term there hasn't been another terrorist attack so far.
Perhaps if our economy returned to Clinton Era (mid 90's) levels, then these gadgets will switch from eye candy to actual goods.
You mean late 90's, and it wasn't the Clinton Era economy, it was the Y2K/dot-com bubble. And we pretty much ended up paying for that when the bubble burst, the Clinton tax hikes caught up with us, and we were given the Clinton recession just about the time he was leaving office. Good effort on the subtle revisionm, though, you slid it in there real slick-like.
You would have to buy 80 T1's at $500 each, per month. Then your customers are only paying $20 per month. So do the math.
Then they should stop advertising "unlimited monthly bandwidth" and charging me a $10/month premium to get up to 6MBit when, in fact, my speakeasy tests are coming down at 2MB or less--which is less than their non-premium service supposedly is.
And, no, I don't even use BitTorrent. But I have a fundamental problem with the services advertising the service as 6MBit (never seen it even though I'm paying an extra $10/month for it) and only providing 2MB, and I have a problem with ISPs trying to limit what I want to do with my connection. If they have a problem with the traffic some people are using, they need to just publish a new TOS that limits users to, say, 10GB a month or whatever it is they come up with. If people want to spend that on downloading email, downloading pr0n, or BitTorrenting, that's up to them. And if the 10GB cap is unacceptable to some customers, they can make a decision to take their business elsewhere. But intentionally trying to destroy the service the customer is paying for is not an acceptable solution.
"Buy our service, and pay us, but if you use it too much we're going to stop providing it but, oh, pay us anyway." Screw that.
You know it's time to sell stock in a company when you see the company in a technical arms raise against the customer to deny the customer service. Great thinking, ISPs!
I'm with Comcast and I did a bunch of tests at Speakeasy. I couldn't get past 2300 kbps from any of the sources. Far short of the 6MB I'm supposedly paying for. That doesn't bother me too much, it's fast enough; but I probably need to either get them to do something about the speed or stop paying the extra $10/month for the 'extra' speed that isn't matching their "low-end" speed rating.
I have Comcast and it works fine for me. No complaints. Of course I don't use their email service. Why would anyone use the email service provided by their ISP regardess of what ISP that may be? To me, an ISP just gives me access to the Internet. I don't depend on them for anything else, especially email.
The idea that your not even worth a face to face firing, would be devasating to most people.
Why? Are people's emotions that fragile these days? Has PC made them so flimsy that a grown adult can't handle these things? Granted, getting an email out of the blue firing you would be a shock, but so would being called into an office and fired out of the blue. If there was any hint these cuts were coming, I don't see the problem. It's no different than a "pink slip."
If you don't know PHP, you need to learn PHP first and buy a book on that topic. If you know PHP, all you need is the Google API and maybe a [i]little[/i] Googling. Again, I just don't see 358 pages of material there [i]on the topic that the book purports to be about[/i].
My thoughts exactly. The Google Maps API documentation and a little Googling is about all you need. 358 pages? How in the hell did they fill up that many pages on this topic???
Well, yeah, but that's because the Canadian Customs people know that nobody really wants to go to Canada, so if they're jerks, people just won't come! (Just kidding).
I used to live in Mexico and crossed the border, both by land and by air, more times than I want to count. They (U.S. Customs/Immigration) were always polite and, quite frankly, their lack of interest in me when I spoke and had an American accent (or lack of a foreign one) often bothered me. Sure, I was no threat, but how did they know that? Especially when driving into the U.S. I would've expected a little more scrutiny, but other than 1 or 2 times, never was subject to anything more than a few sentences asking where I lived, where I was going, etc. Even when I moved back to the U.S., with my SUV literally FULL of boxes and stuff, they just looked at a list I had made that documented what was in each box. They didn't even have me open the rear door of the SUV, let alone open one of the boxes. For me, it sure was convenient and let me get to my destination faster than I expected, but I was quite surprised. I figured they'd want to peek inside one of the boxes that was hardest to get to--and while it would've been a hassle, I would've considered it completely understandable.
My wife (Mexican) once had an incident with a total jerk on the U.S. side entering by land. The guy was just being a jerk because, for some reason, American citizens of Mexican descent (i.e. they LOOK like Mexicans) that live on the border are completely jerks to Mexicans; kind of an "I'm an American and you're not, so I'm going to pretend I don't speak Spanish and act like a total jerk, too" type of attitude. So that was trying. But then I intervened, refused to budge because he was being a jerk, and finally an AMERICAN-looking border agent came over, asked what the problem was, and basically told his jerk-of-a-coworker to let us in.
As my wife has mentioned, every AMERICAN-looking customs agent she's had to deal with has been 100% pleasant and friendly.
I don't know. I agree the topics searched for in the example are self-promotion, but I did some Google Trending on some other terms and they, too, were decreasing; some competing terms that'd I'd expect to see opposite trends for (one would go down while another went up) seem to both be going down.
I don't know what it means and I disagree with the article's conclusion, but I would agree that something unexplained is going on; unless the trend lines represent a percentage of total searches? I can imagine that if the total number of searches is going up then it's very possible that some of these terms would go down as a percentage when staying constant or even going up in absolute volume. But if the trend lines represent absolute values then I agree I see some weirdness.
Population density isn't the issue. It's distances. Sure, clusters of population density will result in there being an incentive to cross those distances, but simply comparing nationwide population density between two countries is pointless.
Sweden (410,000 km2) is approximately the size of California and has a population (9 million) about the same as New York City. Virtually no-one in Sweden is further away than about 200 miles from the closest major city, and the vast majority live within about 350 miles of each other in the southern portion of the country. Any attempts to compare that to the United States which is 9,100,00 km2 (22 times larger) with a population of nearly 300 million (33 times larger) that is not clumped into a small area of 350 miles miles but well distributed along two coasts with a significant number of major cities throughout its mid-section and where distances between major cities is usually greater than the entire width of Sweden is absolutely absurd.
Small countries will always have better connectivity. That's just obvious and common sense.
I would never specify in a contract what my prior art is. My contracts always specify that anything belonging to the client prior to the contract remains theirs and anything belonging to me prior to the contract--or that I come up with during the contract but not materially related to the contract--remains mine. No lists are necessary. If there's a dispute over who owned what when, that's what courts are for. I'm not going to enumerate my property because it then implies nothing else was mine. No way. Let the contract stipulate the spirit of the contract (that no-one is trying to rob anyone else's idea) and if someone believes that spirit was violate, take it to court and let it get worked out there.
Sure they can. Granted, you over-simplified. Science doesn't claim there isn't a soul, it just has no proof to demonstrate that there is a soul. Science can address that which we can see, touch, and feel in the physical world--but the concept of a "soul" is inherently non-physical so science will never be able to prove it exists. But lack of that proof doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Science can be right about the physical aspects of our world and religion can be right about the spiritual aspects. They most definitely are not in conflict even though some people try to portray them as being in conflict. People that take that position are usually as radical as Creationists, but in the other direction.
But science, if anyone's noticed, doesn't try to intrude on religion. As far as I know, there hasn't been a single court case in the U.S. where a group of scientists have tried to dictate what can be taught in any church.
You'd probably see that, though, if there were a "seperation of science and state" in the constitution.
And as for science not intruding on religion, someone would be forgiven for believing otherwise when you see a bunch of science-nuts on Slashdot basically acting all arrogant regarding their "science" trumping religion. Granted, most of the science-nuts on Slashdot aren't scientists. They just give scientists a bad name.
In fact, I'd say that anyone that says that science somehow trumps or invalidates religion most likely isn't a scientist and probably doesn't know much about religion, either. But in pefect Slashdot tradition, they don't let their ignorance get in the way of voicing an opinion very loudly.
When you realize that your child wants their freedom, and you have tried many technique...I suggest you just back off. Unless, that is, you want to poison the relationship and die alone in a nursing home or something.
Thanks, I'll do what's in my child's best interest, not my best interest. You aren't really saying that you'd let your kid do whatever he wants so that he'll take care of you when you're old, are you?
It also helps if you have logical reasons for forbidding certain behavior.
If there's no logical reason to forbid it, don't forbid it.
Definately don't use religious excuses...kids these days aren't buying that supersticion anymore.
Not if they're brought up in Godless families, no.
If I say "Be responsible, don't have sex, but if you have sex, use protection" and then I let him take his gf upstairs and give them complete privacy, what message is that REALLY sending?
Jeez, I'm in my thirties and I can't figure out what message that is really sending! And you want a teenager to figure it out? I guess there's a possibility he could think "Wow, they really trust me, isn't that swell" and then behave like a mature adult or like "The Beaver". Or maybe, "Hmmm, they said don't have sex, but they armed me with a box of condoms and sent me upstairs with my girlfriend behind closed doors." Add a few hormones to the equation and you do the math what kind of "beaver" that kid is going to be following after. After all, the kid apparently didn't have to do anything to earn that trust so there's no sense of what it means to lose it (until they do, at which point it's too late).
You ignore the fact that you are instilling a sense of distrust in your kid. You don't really trust them, and thus they will not trust you.
Oh, B.S. What kind of new-age shrink talk is that?
Children shouldn't be trusted to make the right decisions all the time because they're inexperienced. You can trust them as children and as good people, but that doesn't mean you let them do everything they want. Trust should be earned by children. As they demonstrate they can be trusted with more responsibility, you give them more trust in their ability to handle that responsibility.
When I got my license at 16, my parents let me start borrowing the car. Initially I had to be in by 10pm--and I'd be home each time at literally 9:59pm. Soon the curfue was extended to 11pm, then midnight (and I always was home on time), and soon I had no curfue at all. I got no tickets and was always at home on time. I demonstrated that I could handle the responsibility, and my parents acted accordingly. I never distrusted my parents--their rules, though limiting for a youngster, seemed fair. They explicitly told me at the beginning that if I demonstrated responsibility, my curfews would get later and later. And that's exactly what happened. I acted responsibly and my parents kept their word and extended (and eventually eliminated) my curfew.
This nonsense that you should automatically trust your 16-year-old child with over a ton of steel going down the road at 50mph is nonsense. It's also nonsense that if you slowly trust your children with more and more responsibility that they aren't going to trust you. Only a child that has been brought up wrong will react that way. Gaining more and more trust and responsibility is just a part of growing up, and they should learn that from an early age. At first they don't get to cross the street without holding your hand, but eventually they are allowed to cross the street as long as they look both ways. Everything in life is about learning and demonstrating what you have learned. If you, as a parent, are fair and rational with your children--both when they screw up and when they do right--your children will respect you.
As for knowing where your children go, that's just a no-brainer. Heck, even when I was 22 and still living with my parents, when I'd leave and no-one was home, I'd leave a note to tell them where I had went and about when I'd be back. My parents did the same thing. And now my wife and I always call each other to let the other know where the other is going, etc. It's not because we're "tracking" the other person, but it's so the other person doesn't worry, or does worry and have some clue as to our general whereabouts if we don't show up at the expected time. It's just common sense and there's absolutely nothing wrong with a parent knowing exactly where there child is 24/7. That doesn't mean you're listening in on their conversations, but even that is justified if you have reason to believe that your kid is getting himself into trouble.
It's silly anyway. If something else in Geology were to be called a Pluton I can understand why there could be confusion. But if a Geologist says, "Take a look at that pluton over there", there's a very low probability that people will think he's talking about an astronomical object with an orbital period of more than 200 years. Likewise, if an astronomer references a pluton, there's a small probability he's talking about a rock formation.
So why in the world are geologists upset? Just been awhile since they had a rumble with astronomers, or...?
You pay off your TV after a couple years and you can hang onto it for a while.
That idea has merit on a lot of things, but not high-technology where most of the time (in my experience), by the time something breaks, it's about time to look at the newest technology anyway. Heck I have an old laptop from 1999 that's still alive and kicking. I've bought two new laptops for myself since then and I'd never use that old laptop as my primary laptop, but it still serves a purpose since it has a serial port. The point being, if that were still my primary laptop and it died today, it'd be more than past time for me to get a new laptop anyway. I find that the case with all electronics I own.
the company produces fewer TVs reducing their overhead but charges more for them.
How do you reduce overhead by producing fewer TVs? That's the opposite of the concept of "economies of scale."
Fact is, while there is a segment of the market that would probably agree with you, the vast majority of the consumers will see the exact same product at half the price and they're going to buy that even if it's lower quality. That's why Wal-Mart is so successful. The cynic will say that companies are intentionally producing crap so they can sell more crap next year; the realist will realize the companies are producing crap because that's all consumers are willing to pay for. Everyone wants quality but few are actually willing to pay for it.
The way to have prevented this would have been to get somebody like that on board from the very beginning, who could have kicked ass and taken names and kept things under control.
Obviously! How any developer (or contractor) even considers developing a system like this without getting the VIPs involved from the very beginning is beyond me. It's like writing a million lines of code and then debugging it rather than making sure each function you write is solid before you move on. Immediate contact with the VIPs is necessary. Then you let underlings make their proposals, then you run it by the VIPs, and then you have a spec and move forward with coding. You also get in there and work with the client as if you were an employee so you can actually see how each section is used; you ask them how they (the users) would improve the section they use and, if they have no input, you (as a user) make some suggestions and run it by them.
Having a $170 million development project fail because of this kind of thing is understandable if you outshored the whole damn thing to India and there was no communication. But there's no excuse for it in a properly managed development project--and, no, I don't care what little feifdoms exist in the FBI. This is inherently a failure of the contractor to manage the project and recognize and deal with the power structure on the client side.
Slashdot Mirror
That's what Clinton did. He was popular here and around the world, and we got attacked on 911 anyway. Bush, on the other hand, doesn't pay attention to opinion polls and, not surprisingly, he is hated. Whether his policies are good or bad over the long-term remain to be seen, but in the short-term there hasn't been another terrorist attack so far.
Except the part about a "strong commitment to a free-market economy." Other than that, yeah, sounds like Democrats in the US.
Mammoth tax hikes does tend to contribute to the weakness of an economy.
You mean late 90's, and it wasn't the Clinton Era economy, it was the Y2K/dot-com bubble. And we pretty much ended up paying for that when the bubble burst, the Clinton tax hikes caught up with us, and we were given the Clinton recession just about the time he was leaving office. Good effort on the subtle revisionm, though, you slid it in there real slick-like.
Then they should stop advertising "unlimited monthly bandwidth" and charging me a $10/month premium to get up to 6MBit when, in fact, my speakeasy tests are coming down at 2MB or less--which is less than their non-premium service supposedly is.
And, no, I don't even use BitTorrent. But I have a fundamental problem with the services advertising the service as 6MBit (never seen it even though I'm paying an extra $10/month for it) and only providing 2MB, and I have a problem with ISPs trying to limit what I want to do with my connection. If they have a problem with the traffic some people are using, they need to just publish a new TOS that limits users to, say, 10GB a month or whatever it is they come up with. If people want to spend that on downloading email, downloading pr0n, or BitTorrenting, that's up to them. And if the 10GB cap is unacceptable to some customers, they can make a decision to take their business elsewhere. But intentionally trying to destroy the service the customer is paying for is not an acceptable solution.
"Buy our service, and pay us, but if you use it too much we're going to stop providing it but, oh, pay us anyway." Screw that.
You know it's time to sell stock in a company when you see the company in a technical arms raise against the customer to deny the customer service. Great thinking, ISPs!
I'm with Comcast and I did a bunch of tests at Speakeasy. I couldn't get past 2300 kbps from any of the sources. Far short of the 6MB I'm supposedly paying for. That doesn't bother me too much, it's fast enough; but I probably need to either get them to do something about the speed or stop paying the extra $10/month for the 'extra' speed that isn't matching their "low-end" speed rating.
Why? Are people's emotions that fragile these days? Has PC made them so flimsy that a grown adult can't handle these things? Granted, getting an email out of the blue firing you would be a shock, but so would being called into an office and fired out of the blue. If there was any hint these cuts were coming, I don't see the problem. It's no different than a "pink slip."
If you don't know PHP, you need to learn PHP first and buy a book on that topic. If you know PHP, all you need is the Google API and maybe a [i]little[/i] Googling. Again, I just don't see 358 pages of material there [i]on the topic that the book purports to be about[/i].
My thoughts exactly. The Google Maps API documentation and a little Googling is about all you need. 358 pages? How in the hell did they fill up that many pages on this topic???
I used to live in Mexico and crossed the border, both by land and by air, more times than I want to count. They (U.S. Customs/Immigration) were always polite and, quite frankly, their lack of interest in me when I spoke and had an American accent (or lack of a foreign one) often bothered me. Sure, I was no threat, but how did they know that? Especially when driving into the U.S. I would've expected a little more scrutiny, but other than 1 or 2 times, never was subject to anything more than a few sentences asking where I lived, where I was going, etc. Even when I moved back to the U.S., with my SUV literally FULL of boxes and stuff, they just looked at a list I had made that documented what was in each box. They didn't even have me open the rear door of the SUV, let alone open one of the boxes. For me, it sure was convenient and let me get to my destination faster than I expected, but I was quite surprised. I figured they'd want to peek inside one of the boxes that was hardest to get to--and while it would've been a hassle, I would've considered it completely understandable.
My wife (Mexican) once had an incident with a total jerk on the U.S. side entering by land. The guy was just being a jerk because, for some reason, American citizens of Mexican descent (i.e. they LOOK like Mexicans) that live on the border are completely jerks to Mexicans; kind of an "I'm an American and you're not, so I'm going to pretend I don't speak Spanish and act like a total jerk, too" type of attitude. So that was trying. But then I intervened, refused to budge because he was being a jerk, and finally an AMERICAN-looking border agent came over, asked what the problem was, and basically told his jerk-of-a-coworker to let us in.
As my wife has mentioned, every AMERICAN-looking customs agent she's had to deal with has been 100% pleasant and friendly.
I don't know what it means and I disagree with the article's conclusion, but I would agree that something unexplained is going on; unless the trend lines represent a percentage of total searches? I can imagine that if the total number of searches is going up then it's very possible that some of these terms would go down as a percentage when staying constant or even going up in absolute volume. But if the trend lines represent absolute values then I agree I see some weirdness.
Sweden (410,000 km2) is approximately the size of California and has a population (9 million) about the same as New York City. Virtually no-one in Sweden is further away than about 200 miles from the closest major city, and the vast majority live within about 350 miles of each other in the southern portion of the country. Any attempts to compare that to the United States which is 9,100,00 km2 (22 times larger) with a population of nearly 300 million (33 times larger) that is not clumped into a small area of 350 miles miles but well distributed along two coasts with a significant number of major cities throughout its mid-section and where distances between major cities is usually greater than the entire width of Sweden is absolutely absurd.
Small countries will always have better connectivity. That's just obvious and common sense.
I would never specify in a contract what my prior art is. My contracts always specify that anything belonging to the client prior to the contract remains theirs and anything belonging to me prior to the contract--or that I come up with during the contract but not materially related to the contract--remains mine. No lists are necessary. If there's a dispute over who owned what when, that's what courts are for. I'm not going to enumerate my property because it then implies nothing else was mine. No way. Let the contract stipulate the spirit of the contract (that no-one is trying to rob anyone else's idea) and if someone believes that spirit was violate, take it to court and let it get worked out there.
Science can be right about the physical aspects of our world and religion can be right about the spiritual aspects. They most definitely are not in conflict even though some people try to portray them as being in conflict. People that take that position are usually as radical as Creationists, but in the other direction.
You'd probably see that, though, if there were a "seperation of science and state" in the constitution.
And as for science not intruding on religion, someone would be forgiven for believing otherwise when you see a bunch of science-nuts on Slashdot basically acting all arrogant regarding their "science" trumping religion. Granted, most of the science-nuts on Slashdot aren't scientists. They just give scientists a bad name.
In fact, I'd say that anyone that says that science somehow trumps or invalidates religion most likely isn't a scientist and probably doesn't know much about religion, either. But in pefect Slashdot tradition, they don't let their ignorance get in the way of voicing an opinion very loudly.
Thanks, I'll do what's in my child's best interest, not my best interest. You aren't really saying that you'd let your kid do whatever he wants so that he'll take care of you when you're old, are you?
It also helps if you have logical reasons for forbidding certain behavior.
If there's no logical reason to forbid it, don't forbid it.
Definately don't use religious excuses...kids these days aren't buying that supersticion anymore.
Not if they're brought up in Godless families, no.
Jeez, I'm in my thirties and I can't figure out what message that is really sending! And you want a teenager to figure it out? I guess there's a possibility he could think "Wow, they really trust me, isn't that swell" and then behave like a mature adult or like "The Beaver". Or maybe, "Hmmm, they said don't have sex, but they armed me with a box of condoms and sent me upstairs with my girlfriend behind closed doors." Add a few hormones to the equation and you do the math what kind of "beaver" that kid is going to be following after. After all, the kid apparently didn't have to do anything to earn that trust so there's no sense of what it means to lose it (until they do, at which point it's too late).
Your parenting attitude, my friend, is exactly why America is turning out so many screwed up kids. Thanks a lot!
Oh, B.S. What kind of new-age shrink talk is that?
Children shouldn't be trusted to make the right decisions all the time because they're inexperienced. You can trust them as children and as good people, but that doesn't mean you let them do everything they want. Trust should be earned by children. As they demonstrate they can be trusted with more responsibility, you give them more trust in their ability to handle that responsibility.
When I got my license at 16, my parents let me start borrowing the car. Initially I had to be in by 10pm--and I'd be home each time at literally 9:59pm. Soon the curfue was extended to 11pm, then midnight (and I always was home on time), and soon I had no curfue at all. I got no tickets and was always at home on time. I demonstrated that I could handle the responsibility, and my parents acted accordingly. I never distrusted my parents--their rules, though limiting for a youngster, seemed fair. They explicitly told me at the beginning that if I demonstrated responsibility, my curfews would get later and later. And that's exactly what happened. I acted responsibly and my parents kept their word and extended (and eventually eliminated) my curfew.
This nonsense that you should automatically trust your 16-year-old child with over a ton of steel going down the road at 50mph is nonsense. It's also nonsense that if you slowly trust your children with more and more responsibility that they aren't going to trust you. Only a child that has been brought up wrong will react that way. Gaining more and more trust and responsibility is just a part of growing up, and they should learn that from an early age. At first they don't get to cross the street without holding your hand, but eventually they are allowed to cross the street as long as they look both ways. Everything in life is about learning and demonstrating what you have learned. If you, as a parent, are fair and rational with your children--both when they screw up and when they do right--your children will respect you.
As for knowing where your children go, that's just a no-brainer. Heck, even when I was 22 and still living with my parents, when I'd leave and no-one was home, I'd leave a note to tell them where I had went and about when I'd be back. My parents did the same thing. And now my wife and I always call each other to let the other know where the other is going, etc. It's not because we're "tracking" the other person, but it's so the other person doesn't worry, or does worry and have some clue as to our general whereabouts if we don't show up at the expected time. It's just common sense and there's absolutely nothing wrong with a parent knowing exactly where there child is 24/7. That doesn't mean you're listening in on their conversations, but even that is justified if you have reason to believe that your kid is getting himself into trouble.
So why in the world are geologists upset? Just been awhile since they had a rumble with astronomers, or...?
That idea has merit on a lot of things, but not high-technology where most of the time (in my experience), by the time something breaks, it's about time to look at the newest technology anyway. Heck I have an old laptop from 1999 that's still alive and kicking. I've bought two new laptops for myself since then and I'd never use that old laptop as my primary laptop, but it still serves a purpose since it has a serial port. The point being, if that were still my primary laptop and it died today, it'd be more than past time for me to get a new laptop anyway. I find that the case with all electronics I own.
the company produces fewer TVs reducing their overhead but charges more for them.
How do you reduce overhead by producing fewer TVs? That's the opposite of the concept of "economies of scale."
Fact is, while there is a segment of the market that would probably agree with you, the vast majority of the consumers will see the exact same product at half the price and they're going to buy that even if it's lower quality. That's why Wal-Mart is so successful. The cynic will say that companies are intentionally producing crap so they can sell more crap next year; the realist will realize the companies are producing crap because that's all consumers are willing to pay for. Everyone wants quality but few are actually willing to pay for it.
Obviously! How any developer (or contractor) even considers developing a system like this without getting the VIPs involved from the very beginning is beyond me. It's like writing a million lines of code and then debugging it rather than making sure each function you write is solid before you move on. Immediate contact with the VIPs is necessary. Then you let underlings make their proposals, then you run it by the VIPs, and then you have a spec and move forward with coding. You also get in there and work with the client as if you were an employee so you can actually see how each section is used; you ask them how they (the users) would improve the section they use and, if they have no input, you (as a user) make some suggestions and run it by them.
Having a $170 million development project fail because of this kind of thing is understandable if you outshored the whole damn thing to India and there was no communication. But there's no excuse for it in a properly managed development project--and, no, I don't care what little feifdoms exist in the FBI. This is inherently a failure of the contractor to manage the project and recognize and deal with the power structure on the client side.