I was talking to one of the personal trainers and we got talking about consoles and handhelds and he said, unsolicited, that he was now boycotting Sony because of their piss-poor customer service. Apparently he had one of their walkmans and it'd failed after only 4 months so he sent it back for replacement - Sony returned it to him 4 month later claiming the failure was due to "water damage" and said that they wouldn't replace it. He'd heard about the CD rootkit, but he was pretty surprised when I told him of it's implications and some of the other strokes that Sony had pulled recently and he definitely wasn't impressed hearing about Lik-Sang. So he's tried Nintendo's goodies and he's a fan now.
The point is: it's not just pasty-faced geeks on websites bitching about Sony any more - anti-Sony sentiment has gone mainstream. Sony are in meltdown and they're betting the farm on a console that ordinary, non-techie people are displaying a visceral aversion to. The general perception of Sony producing quality products is gone. And the beauty of it is they've given pretty much everyone in every one of their markets reason to suspect and reject their goods.
Sony's unlikely to fail in the long-term due to Japanese business practises - shareholders holding onto stock well past the point westerners would cut their losses and corporations shoring each other up - but in the short- and medium-term they're looking pretty damned screwed.
Oh boo hoo, I'm pissing my pants in fear. Am I supposed to run and hide when this rubbish gets trotted out?
While I despise racism and religious oppression, this cleric must realise that the inalienable rights that protect his freedom to worship God the way he wants are also the inalienable rights that protect these dicks' ability to publicise their nasty, small-minded opinions. If you remove fundamental rights from one set of people to appease another set of people then everyone in that jurisdiction's rights are no longer inalienable and they're all up for grabs in the long-term - it's just a question of what constitutes justification after that. He really has to ask himself does he want to want to live in a country where the next set of people that feel oppressed by his opinions can gag him? Does he want to face internment the next time someone sets off a bomb in a holiday resort in the name of his religion? It's a logical conclusion to the chain of oppression that he seems to be opening the door on and, by challenging that inept analogy so strongly, I'm helping to protect him. You'd think a thoughtful man would be grateful...
But I have to admit, if you take out uncovered meat and place it outside, without cover, and the cats come to eat it -- then whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat's? This case is no different.
Ideas aren't meat and sentient, thoughtful humans aren't instinctive predatory felines. Total bloody nonsense. Reasoning by analogy is the sort of bollocks that kept western civilisation in the Dark Ages. It's intellectually bankrupt posturing that can lead to the most specious arguments appearing to have at least the veneer of respectability. Meat and cats have nothing to do with the issue. Mod parent into the Stone Age...
Or you could order in pizza. It's not rocket science - they're just looking for some tiny inkling of intellectual flexibility. Haven't got sufficient resources for the rush job in-house? Then outsource the development...
See Hear is a programme that if there was no BBC, we'll never get. Not only that, they also provide signed (shows with a BSL interpreter in the corner) re-runs of popular shows at late night Thursday (ie at a time when few people are watching - so we can record them) - again something no commerical channels will do.
Sky used to regularly sign programmes late night (although I can't remember any recently). I never memorised days and dates when exactly, as I'm not deaf, but Relic Hunter was signed last year as were a couple of others. Maybe not quite as worthy, but there nonetheless.
And I only watched RH cos I'm a chronic insomniac and it was that or watch LoTR for the 50th time...
Nice libertarian rant - I'm sure you could make the case that every tax is unjust. You shouldn't be charged with a criminal offence for not paying your income tax because you didn't get a heart transplant on the NHS this year, should you? Why should you pay for schools when you're in full-time employment and have no kids? Or pay for the police when you didn't commit any crimes? Or... well, the list goes on. The problem with that way of thinking is it's bollocks. What you're paying for is the safety net, the insurance that when things are bad there be a minimum standard in place. If you're sick there's hospital treatment, if you have kids then you can afford to send them to school rather than up a chimney, if you get attacked in the street then there's someone there to take your name and address and send you a nice victim support letter. Or if your government lies to you and takes you to war under false pretenses then there's a broadcaster that'll basically tell the entire world that it happened.
Two things:
1. TV ownership's not mandatory in the UK, libraries are free, and the license fee would come out of regular income tax anyway.
2. If you don't like paying tax, feel free to buy a one-way plane ticket to some anarchist buttfuck 'republic' (still plenty to choose from) where you get to live in a cave with your automatic rifle, constantly on guard for the next asshole in line wanting to rape, kill, and eat you then play with your toys. Seriously.
I took the bus from NY to Boston (after having to present my passport to buy the bus ticket for cash...) a couple of years ago and I was lucky enough to have the seat next to me taken by a friendly airline pilot (also in the Naval Reserve) and his take on the security guards was priceless. "You've got to remember: a month ago these guys were all flipping burgers." Maybe the ex-Burger King ones are the nicer cos they're more used to the idea of the customer getting things their way...
The underlying script - the concept - is good. But when it left hands of the writer, it wasn't implemented with the game written around it. It got in hands of game designers and they hammered it into the concept of a game, mangling it beyond recognition. Real world isn't split into physics puzzles, vistas, combat arenas and storytelling locations. The commentary track just makes it painfully obvious.
Sometimes I think game designers shouldn't listen to the focus groups. Like Dilbert said, "What users want is more better stuff for free." I like challenges, so I like games that have sometimes have me stumped for a day and a half trying to work out a puzzle. It's the challenge that makes a successful resolution rewarding. Pretty pictures and affirmations are nice but no substitute for the feeling that you persevered and did it on your own. I hate the thought that a good game is being emasculated because designers are listing to (stereotyping at an international level) whiny, lazy little brats with the attention span of brain-damaged goldfish who want everything for nothing. I'll keep playing, cos it's still a unique and great take on the genre but they need to work on re-introducing quality puzzles for Ep2.
Funnily enough, I couldn't care less about your punctuation. What annoyed me was you calling someone else's argument silly, so I decided to launch an unprovoked ad hominem attack. Really not my finest moment. Please accept my apologies - I'm really sorry about my post and, from now on, I vow only to use my powers for good.
Just one teeny thing though: Mozart didn't die destitute. He was in the top 5% of wage-earners in Europe at the time of his death but had no cash-on-hand because he was crap with money, hence the pauper's grave. Sounds like the right plan me - spend all the cash on pals, booze, and tarts before the relatives get it. What a guy!
I'm sorry but this struck me as pretty silly. Mozart wasn't 'high-brow' (i.e. intellectually and asthetically sophisticated) because tickets cost a lot of money; he was, like Beethoven and especially Bach a musical genius who made sophisticated, complicated and beautiful musical constructions. That the people who were predisposed to like him were educated and therefore also predominantly wealthy (in order to get that education) is quite literally a coincidence, a correlation which you confused with causation.
So the order of events is...?
Mozart makes fancy music for fun.
Fancy people with money just happen to like Mozart's fancy music.
???
Mozart profits!
Bollocks.
Mozart knew that
Rich people have money.
Rich people have egos and are used to paying flunkies to fluff their egos.
Rich people with inflated egos don't like what commoners like because they, the rich, are special. If they weren't special they'd be commoners and because they're not commoners they must be special. See how this works? So stuff that commoners can dig is way out.
Mozart could make a huge pile of cash being the best person in Europe at enabling the rich and fancy to demonstrate how special they are by them paying him fat wads of moolah to create fancy music. Music that they can brag to their rich, fancy mates about what rich, fancy patrons of the arts they are and all the fancy richers can pity the commoners for not understanding.
Your narrative is the one lacking a grounding in reality. And, just to prove that you have your head profoundly rammed up your own arse - so far that it defies logic and Euclidean space by actually poking out your own mouth:
That any Joe can pick up a Mozart CD does not mean any Joe can understand and appreciate said CD; music of all genres and categories requires an extant cultural setting and prior aesthetic vocabulary to be appreciated. But, any Joe with exposure and time may learn, like many people with a classical education already had an opportunity to do, to appreciate his works.
Let's leave the jaw-dropping condescension, pretension, and arrogance alone for a second and just concentrate on the fact that Mozart (on many occasions) produced works that the common folks of his time found instantly accessible and gratifying with no need for an extensive and expensive education to appreciate. The Magic Flute did not originally have an all-Smurf cast.
OK, time to wrap up:
From your own damning testimony you have adequately demonstrated that Average Joe is probably smarter than you.
He can probably kick your head in too.
You would probably do well to add that finishing sparkle to your education by learning to shut your noisehole.
Does anyone else ever type in comments that they never mean to post? Just to preview them, then cancel them unsubmitted? Cos that's what happened here. Also, I really do know how to spell genius.
The more I read this the more it looks like a British story. Everybody seems to be treating this issue as a two-player game - the old guy and the geek - when it's likely to be the old guy vs a feral pack of hoody-wearing chavs, plus the geek. The geek's just collateral damage really - I doubt he's the main target inside, avoiding sunlight, sitting at his PC submitting to/. for his 15mins. Here's what I think the geeks should do:
BUILD THE GRUMPY OLD FUCKER BETTER, MORE DISCRIMINATING NON-LETHAL WEAPONS
Hoody chavs are vermin anyway and using them as test subjects for non-lethal weaponry is probably the only way they can serve their communities - probably the only useful thing they'll do their entire lives. Maybe they'll spawn a planet-saving super-genious, but the important point it is they're not that super-genious themselves.
I never spent 6 years with the same people, job, hobby, women, whatever...
Real, living 21st Century human people modded this Funny? This is a fundamental insight into just about all of the western world right now...
Re:Positively fantastic news
on
Growing Insulin
·
· Score: 1
Even by the usual standards of economic illiteracy here, this is pretty dimwitted. It can only drive *down* the cost of insulin; a new route to making insulin can't possibly make it cost *more*.
Like CDs drove down the cost of music when they were in competition with LPs and tapes? Or DVDs brought down the cost of movies when they were in competition with videos? The company that licenses and produces the insulin will just say that the higher quality product produced from a higher yielding process has to cost more to justify all the research and development and drugs trials and license fees. And, if you want the good drugs, you're going to have to pony up.
Meanwhile, all the other insulin producers will be getting the hell out of a market that they know they'll make a loss in if/when the company with the good stuff drops the price to cost. And they won't even face anti-competitive sanctions as they'll have no need to sell it for under cost as it's so damn cheap to manufacture anyway. While they can out-compete their rivals, in reality they have no incentive whatsoever to do so. They can just sit back, wait for the market to empty, and charge whatever they damn well please until the patent runs out.
Business isn't the shit you learnt in Economics in your freshman year. If it was, then those baldy dick professors in their BO-engendering tweed jackets would all be trillionaires.
Jeez, do you guys need a map? He's a time-traveller pimping out his own past ass to himself and his anarchist buds from the future so shit happens the way they want. Why do you think he's going to so much trouble to make sure Gordy's always in the right place at the right time? And why he always knows where one step ahead of Gordy is?
Self-styled pedants should be more careful about ending sentences wit prepositions.
Pfff! I've always gone with Winnie on this one. On hearing an editor had changed his text to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition, Winnie said "This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put."
I like English better than any other language because it's a complete whore. Not like that stuck-up cow French - with it's Académie Française chastity belt. All rules and élitism and nobody getting a bit of touch. English'll take pretty much anything from anywhere. And it'll put it in places you never thought it would fit.
But even whores have their standards. Introducing "actioned" is the linguistic equivalent of locking the aforesaid whore with Mike Tyson in a sound-proofed and windowless room, him with one nostril full of coke and the other full of Viagra.
And nowhere in the text of the essay is the phrase "intelligent design" found. Maybe one version of the total crap that fundies are trying to peddle resembles this rambling crap but SO WHAT?
And you're quoting a source from 160 years ago - 14 years before the On the Origin of Species was even published - rather a lot of critical thinking has happened since then.
Oh, and I detect a smidgen of sectarianism too. Nice.
Is this some sort of darwinian IQ test for terrorists? You can just imagine the gleeful delight on their simple, child-like faces and the unrestrained joy they will experience with unfettered access to telecommunicaions this will allow.
[low hum down a phone line]
"Hello. Is that you Omar?"
"Why, yes it is Osama. How are you today? And what's the weather like like in your donkey burrow in Yemen? The weather's great here in Florida. My view from the Delano Hotel's room window is fabulous - I am also ordering martinis like James Bond."
"Yes, yes... quit your bragging. Just because you weren't born with the most recognisable stripey beard in the world... Now can we please start planning our next atrocity?"
"Ah yes. It is pleasing that we can freely discuss our locations and plans now that the engineers of the American military-industrial complex have told us how to easily counteract their most sophisticated surveillance. Their foolishness in revealing this technique to the entire world, via the internet, has allowed us to dispense with our counter-surveillance training, techniques, and equipment. It is truly a golden age for violent reactionaries wishing to impose a totalitarian pseudotheocracy on the idol-worshipping, hemp-smoking, fornicating, soulless infidels!"
"Wait! Who THE FUCK did you say told you this would work?!"
"Yes, the Americans. They said we'd be safe if we did this. How typically naive of them. Their destruction is assured!"
Business analysts don't get enough time with business experts because the experts are doing their jobs and can't spare enough time to pass on their experience. They're experts because they do their job well and can't be spared, and infinitely more so in a life-or-death job like law enforcement or counter-terrorism. And, because of this dilemma, things get messy. System architects can't plan the infrastructure accurately, developers can't code the application that the business experts want, and testers can't validate the system before it's handed back to the experts.
Is there a solution? The only one I can think of is a long-term effort on the part of the IT community to educate the business experts (and their supervisors and management) as to the value of automation in the jobs they do, get them to consider what it is they do and how they do it with the intention of automating the process at some stage. Have it as part of the business experts' jobs, throughout their careers, to consider how they will systemise and hand over their knowledge to other people. Also, everyone who is classed as a real honest-to-God business expert should have 2 'understudies', one to carry on their job while the experts are putting their thoughts in order, and one to figure out how to automate what the expert knows. The understudy to carry on the job will be tasked full-time on learning and understanding the role, but the one involved with the automation may be required to understudy more than one expert to make the process feasible. Systemised knowledge from the expert should reduce the time needed to come to a genuine understanding of the product to be created.
It's not an easy solution, and it may well have flaws that I haven't considered. If you can think of them I'd like to hear them.
Given that one of the 2 main directorates of the NSA is the Information Assurance Directorate, with the mission statement
IAD's mission involves detecting, reporting, and responding to cyber threats; making encryption codes to securely pass information between systems; and embedding IA measures directly into the emerging Global Information Grid. It includes building secure audio and video communications equipment, making tamper protection products, and providing trusted microelectronics solutions. It entails testing the security of customers' systems, providing OPSEC assistance, and evaluating commercial software and hardware against nationally set standards.
the question is "How come the NSA haven't gone all Enemy of the State on Diebold's collective ass?" I mean we are talking about the most important set of communications in the world's most wealthy democracy: who the people want to run their country.
Someone isn't doing their job.
Mind you, maybe their Signals Intelligence Directorate will intercept this on the way to your servers in the US (I'm in the UK) and they'll take the piss out of the other Directorate until they can't stand the shame and get their fingers out their asses.
Slashdot Mirror
The point is: it's not just pasty-faced geeks on websites bitching about Sony any more - anti-Sony sentiment has gone mainstream. Sony are in meltdown and they're betting the farm on a console that ordinary, non-techie people are displaying a visceral aversion to. The general perception of Sony producing quality products is gone. And the beauty of it is they've given pretty much everyone in every one of their markets reason to suspect and reject their goods.
Sony's unlikely to fail in the long-term due to Japanese business practises - shareholders holding onto stock well past the point westerners would cut their losses and corporations shoring each other up - but in the short- and medium-term they're looking pretty damned screwed.
Oh boo hoo, I'm pissing my pants in fear. Am I supposed to run and hide when this rubbish gets trotted out? While I despise racism and religious oppression, this cleric must realise that the inalienable rights that protect his freedom to worship God the way he wants are also the inalienable rights that protect these dicks' ability to publicise their nasty, small-minded opinions. If you remove fundamental rights from one set of people to appease another set of people then everyone in that jurisdiction's rights are no longer inalienable and they're all up for grabs in the long-term - it's just a question of what constitutes justification after that. He really has to ask himself does he want to want to live in a country where the next set of people that feel oppressed by his opinions can gag him? Does he want to face internment the next time someone sets off a bomb in a holiday resort in the name of his religion? It's a logical conclusion to the chain of oppression that he seems to be opening the door on and, by challenging that inept analogy so strongly, I'm helping to protect him. You'd think a thoughtful man would be grateful...
Ideas aren't meat and sentient, thoughtful humans aren't instinctive predatory felines. Total bloody nonsense. Reasoning by analogy is the sort of bollocks that kept western civilisation in the Dark Ages. It's intellectually bankrupt posturing that can lead to the most specious arguments appearing to have at least the veneer of respectability. Meat and cats have nothing to do with the issue. Mod parent into the Stone Age...
Or you could order in pizza. It's not rocket science - they're just looking for some tiny inkling of intellectual flexibility. Haven't got sufficient resources for the rush job in-house? Then outsource the development...
Sky used to regularly sign programmes late night (although I can't remember any recently). I never memorised days and dates when exactly, as I'm not deaf, but Relic Hunter was signed last year as were a couple of others. Maybe not quite as worthy, but there nonetheless.
And I only watched RH cos I'm a chronic insomniac and it was that or watch LoTR for the 50th time...
And yes I do feel defensive about it now you ask.
Two things:
1. TV ownership's not mandatory in the UK, libraries are free, and the license fee would come out of regular income tax anyway.
2. If you don't like paying tax, feel free to buy a one-way plane ticket to some anarchist buttfuck 'republic' (still plenty to choose from) where you get to live in a cave with your automatic rifle, constantly on guard for the next asshole in line wanting to rape, kill, and eat you then play with your toys. Seriously.
I took the bus from NY to Boston (after having to present my passport to buy the bus ticket for cash...) a couple of years ago and I was lucky enough to have the seat next to me taken by a friendly airline pilot (also in the Naval Reserve) and his take on the security guards was priceless. "You've got to remember: a month ago these guys were all flipping burgers." Maybe the ex-Burger King ones are the nicer cos they're more used to the idea of the customer getting things their way...
Sometimes I think game designers shouldn't listen to the focus groups. Like Dilbert said, "What users want is more better stuff for free." I like challenges, so I like games that have sometimes have me stumped for a day and a half trying to work out a puzzle. It's the challenge that makes a successful resolution rewarding. Pretty pictures and affirmations are nice but no substitute for the feeling that you persevered and did it on your own. I hate the thought that a good game is being emasculated because designers are listing to (stereotyping at an international level) whiny, lazy little brats with the attention span of brain-damaged goldfish who want everything for nothing. I'll keep playing, cos it's still a unique and great take on the genre but they need to work on re-introducing quality puzzles for Ep2.
Just one teeny thing though: Mozart didn't die destitute. He was in the top 5% of wage-earners in Europe at the time of his death but had no cash-on-hand because he was crap with money, hence the pauper's grave. Sounds like the right plan me - spend all the cash on pals, booze, and tarts before the relatives get it. What a guy!
- Mozart makes fancy music for fun.
- Fancy people with money just happen to like Mozart's fancy music.
- ???
- Mozart profits!
Bollocks.Mozart knew that
- Rich people have money.
- Rich people have egos and are used to paying flunkies to fluff their egos.
- Rich people with inflated egos don't like what commoners like because they, the rich, are special. If they weren't special they'd be commoners and because they're not commoners they must be special. See how this works? So stuff that commoners can dig is way out.
- Mozart could make a huge pile of cash being the best person in Europe at enabling the rich and fancy to demonstrate how special they are by them paying him fat wads of moolah to create fancy music. Music that they can brag to their rich, fancy mates about what rich, fancy patrons of the arts they are and all the fancy richers can pity the commoners for not understanding.
Your narrative is the one lacking a grounding in reality. And, just to prove that you have your head profoundly rammed up your own arse - so far that it defies logic and Euclidean space by actually poking out your own mouth: Let's leave the jaw-dropping condescension, pretension, and arrogance alone for a second and just concentrate on the fact that Mozart (on many occasions) produced works that the common folks of his time found instantly accessible and gratifying with no need for an extensive and expensive education to appreciate. The Magic Flute did not originally have an all-Smurf cast.OK, time to wrap up:
Does anyone else ever type in comments that they never mean to post? Just to preview them, then cancel them unsubmitted? Cos that's what happened here. Also, I really do know how to spell genius.
The more I read this the more it looks like a British story. Everybody seems to be treating this issue as a two-player game - the old guy and the geek - when it's likely to be the old guy vs a feral pack of hoody-wearing chavs, plus the geek. The geek's just collateral damage really - I doubt he's the main target inside, avoiding sunlight, sitting at his PC submitting to /. for his 15mins. Here's what I think the geeks should do:
BUILD THE GRUMPY OLD FUCKER BETTER, MORE DISCRIMINATING NON-LETHAL WEAPONS
Hoody chavs are vermin anyway and using them as test subjects for non-lethal weaponry is probably the only way they can serve their communities - probably the only useful thing they'll do their entire lives. Maybe they'll spawn a planet-saving super-genious, but the important point it is they're not that super-genious themselves.
Real, living 21st Century human people modded this Funny? This is a fundamental insight into just about all of the western world right now...
Like CDs drove down the cost of music when they were in competition with LPs and tapes? Or DVDs brought down the cost of movies when they were in competition with videos? The company that licenses and produces the insulin will just say that the higher quality product produced from a higher yielding process has to cost more to justify all the research and development and drugs trials and license fees. And, if you want the good drugs, you're going to have to pony up.
Meanwhile, all the other insulin producers will be getting the hell out of a market that they know they'll make a loss in if/when the company with the good stuff drops the price to cost. And they won't even face anti-competitive sanctions as they'll have no need to sell it for under cost as it's so damn cheap to manufacture anyway. While they can out-compete their rivals, in reality they have no incentive whatsoever to do so. They can just sit back, wait for the market to empty, and charge whatever they damn well please until the patent runs out.
Business isn't the shit you learnt in Economics in your freshman year. If it was, then those baldy dick professors in their BO-engendering tweed jackets would all be trillionaires.
Gordon Freeman
Jeez, do you guys need a map? He's a time-traveller pimping out his own past ass to himself and his anarchist buds from the future so shit happens the way they want. Why do you think he's going to so much trouble to make sure Gordy's always in the right place at the right time? And why he always knows where one step ahead of Gordy is?
I think the succubi in HR have far more appealing quest items.
Pfff! I've always gone with Winnie on this one. On hearing an editor had changed his text to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition, Winnie said "This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put."
I like English better than any other language because it's a complete whore. Not like that stuck-up cow French - with it's Académie Française chastity belt. All rules and élitism and nobody getting a bit of touch. English'll take pretty much anything from anywhere. And it'll put it in places you never thought it would fit.
But even whores have their standards. Introducing "actioned" is the linguistic equivalent of locking the aforesaid whore with Mike Tyson in a sound-proofed and windowless room, him with one nostril full of coke and the other full of Viagra.
And you're quoting a source from 160 years ago - 14 years before the On the Origin of Species was even published - rather a lot of critical thinking has happened since then.
Oh, and I detect a smidgen of sectarianism too. Nice.
It also forbids slaughtering the innocent too...
Is this some sort of darwinian IQ test for terrorists? You can just imagine the gleeful delight on their simple, child-like faces and the unrestrained joy they will experience with unfettered access to telecommunicaions this will allow.
[low hum down a phone line]
"Hello. Is that you Omar?"
"Why, yes it is Osama. How are you today? And what's the weather like like in your donkey burrow in Yemen? The weather's great here in Florida. My view from the Delano Hotel's room window is fabulous - I am also ordering martinis like James Bond."
"Yes, yes... quit your bragging. Just because you weren't born with the most recognisable stripey beard in the world... Now can we please start planning our next atrocity?"
"Ah yes. It is pleasing that we can freely discuss our locations and plans now that the engineers of the American military-industrial complex have told us how to easily counteract their most sophisticated surveillance. Their foolishness in revealing this technique to the entire world, via the internet, has allowed us to dispense with our counter-surveillance training, techniques, and equipment. It is truly a golden age for violent reactionaries wishing to impose a totalitarian pseudotheocracy on the idol-worshipping, hemp-smoking, fornicating, soulless infidels!"
"Wait! Who THE FUCK did you say told you this would work?!"
"Yes, the Americans. They said we'd be safe if we did this. How typically naive of them. Their destruction is assured!"
You forgot price-fixing.
Seriously, someone's human when they assert the right to act and think independently.
Business analysts don't get enough time with business experts because the experts are doing their jobs and can't spare enough time to pass on their experience. They're experts because they do their job well and can't be spared, and infinitely more so in a life-or-death job like law enforcement or counter-terrorism. And, because of this dilemma, things get messy. System architects can't plan the infrastructure accurately, developers can't code the application that the business experts want, and testers can't validate the system before it's handed back to the experts.
Is there a solution? The only one I can think of is a long-term effort on the part of the IT community to educate the business experts (and their supervisors and management) as to the value of automation in the jobs they do, get them to consider what it is they do and how they do it with the intention of automating the process at some stage. Have it as part of the business experts' jobs, throughout their careers, to consider how they will systemise and hand over their knowledge to other people. Also, everyone who is classed as a real honest-to-God business expert should have 2 'understudies', one to carry on their job while the experts are putting their thoughts in order, and one to figure out how to automate what the expert knows. The understudy to carry on the job will be tasked full-time on learning and understanding the role, but the one involved with the automation may be required to understudy more than one expert to make the process feasible. Systemised knowledge from the expert should reduce the time needed to come to a genuine understanding of the product to be created.
It's not an easy solution, and it may well have flaws that I haven't considered. If you can think of them I'd like to hear them.
... you can't get Exeem on suprnova? Doesn't it strike you as a bit hypocritcal when no-one on the damn site will stick a tracker up for it?
Someone isn't doing their job.
Mind you, maybe their Signals Intelligence Directorate will intercept this on the way to your servers in the US (I'm in the UK) and they'll take the piss out of the other Directorate until they can't stand the shame and get their fingers out their asses.