The article specifically states that the soldier is their "mass communications specialist", and that he was being paid to edit the articles to support Guantanamo.
Now that you mention it, with everything about Gitmo being top secret, I guess a mass communication officer wouldn't have much to do except edit Wikipedia.
Reminds me of communists and their military political officers.
Two possibilities: in the process of porting, they have to rewrite all of the bits that call grody Windows bits, such as IE, and therefore many problem bits get fixed . . . or they just write bad code all over again, Linux gets the blame, and hospitals revert at great cost.
You don't "call" IE, you serve it. And the description poster provided is of the Java server code rewrite that didn't work like the prior "tty" system. That's mainframe terminal software. (I'm an AS/400 System i programmer. McKesson also used to run their enterprise software on AS/400, but they also bought HBOC medical system software company which was mainframe software, so it's probably referring to that.)
There was a big problem with the HBOC thing, lawsuits, etc., but they would have rewritten in J2EE anyway. And you'll hear people who have to use web systems replacing mainframe tty systems saying the same thing everytime. I have a collection of articles that make that point over and over.
The centralization that we're currently undergoing is massive, this problem was (IMHO) scape goated to a poor change control process.
Thanks for that excellent insight from the inside.
First of all, the soft computer press quoting of idiot bigwigs and their scapegoating for whatever they're planning and then again the scapegoating when it fails is irritating, but it's the only semi-technical info available. If it weren't for Slashdot where AC's can dish the dirt we would only have incoherent scapegoating filtered through biased (for anything incompetent executives spin) journalism. Thanks to you and Slashdot once again.
The other point I'd like to make is that a switchover to another system that is kept synched but also live with it's own critical mass is not acceptable, and didn't happen because of it. One was the rightful concern of bringing down a live system with whatever problem brought your own system down, which they pointed out afterwards, and the other is that which you pointed out, probable overload.
As everyone here probably knows, the synching needs to take place with a spare system for the High Availability being sought. Transactions of course can also go to the other regions as messages and be processed on an as available basis, but the HA system would be kept synched in real time with ability to fail over to it. This should happen without any concern of locking it up as it's not live with another group of people.
Yes, the HA spare is somewhat expensive, but vendors typically charge much less on licensing and such for an HA system. The VA needs to implement this remotely from their four regional centers as other large organizations that must keep running do.
They may even get their oft cited ITIL certification if they put a failover system in place that can actually work.
If by sucessfully automated you mean some convoluted plan whereby it's downloaded, printed, photographed on a wooden table, printed (again), rekeyed, changed manually and uploaded again via VBA you're 100% right.
No, all these hundreds of millions of dollars of failed ERP systems are attempts to replace mainframe / midrange systems that works far better than any buzzword bonanza they can come up with.
This brings up an important point: organizations don't bother to try to simplify their business rules. Complex business rules make life harder even IF the computer does work because people still have to verify the results and answer questions from users (paycheck receivers). Beurocrats build up layers of messy rules like a desk or fridge that nobody ever cleans. Until real AI is invented, it may be unrealistic for a computer to magically fix it all. If such a system is too complex for regular payroll clerks to understand and navigate, then it is probably beyond automation also.
You do realize that legacy software successfully automated all those complex business rules, don't you?
asking such a question on slashdot is a waste of time since most of the answers will be stupid comments...
lots of excellent answers were posted. As to whether this should have been a Slashdot thread, it was the only thread today I thought was interesting enough to check out. Usually there's three or four.
Most (or possibly all) banks insure your deposits against that sort of fraud; it would be a huge hassle, sure, but to say that it would be life-ending is just sensationalist.
They'll replace thousands of dollars transferred from your account? There was a big writeup on this recently about how the funds were used to buy stuff and sent to a network of unsuspecting accomplices who were duped into shipping the contraband overseas.
At no point in the article did anyone say, oh, so what, my bank insures me against this kind of fraud. Why even bother writing an article on it?
Nope, they were pretty distraught for having all their losses insured. And with credit card, I thought there was a limit of $50 refunded for fraud?
But there were others whose identity was stolen, and their life was ruined. They said so.
can compromise your entire life, and ruin your future.
I'm skeptical.
You can be skeptical for those that enter no personal data such as passwords, account numbers, and credit card info online, but for everyone else their future is ruined when their accounts are drained and even their identity stolen because a trojan forwarded their keystrokes to a Commie, excuse me, enterprising capitalist thriving in a socialist country.
You did know that the leaders of the South had already realized that slavery most likely couldn't last and were having internal discussions about how to gracefully (for them) and painlessly (again for them) end it, right? Then again, you probably believe that the War of Northern Aggression was fought over slavery.
Yeah, right, in your Ron Paul delusional world.
He really brings out some doozies out of the woodwork.
The Democrats recently elected to Congress have already showed their spinelessness. Just last week they voted to give the President sweeping new powers for warrantless spying on citizens -- just because he asked for it.
Only for six months, to coincide with the coming showdown on Iraq.
Well, that's not the system that the framers of the constitution set up. They have three different sovereignties: the local government, the state, and the federal government. Each state has its own constitution, and is supposedly sovereign.
Sounds like you think Washington and Jefferson and Franklin set up the European Union.
Yeah, the democrats have really been disappointing since they took control of congress.
This is really irritating when there are enough Republicans to block the action we Democrats want to take, which for that matter require a veto proof majority with a Republican as president.
Some good action has been taken so far despite that. But nothing much will happen until next election and more Democrats and a Democratic president are elected.
But the wonderful thing about him is that, as a libertarian, he believes that the federal government has no role in deciding these issues. He would leave them up to the states to decide. In favor of women's reproductive rights? Create a petition to get the matter into your state legislature or constitution. Want single payer health care? Pressure your state representatives, or, again, get enough signatures to get it on your state's ballots.
That's just passing the buck. Representatives to a state legislature are not wiser than representatives to a federal legislature. The interests of one state are not different than the interests of another state if we are to have a United States.
If individual states are somehow wiser, then certainly there are states in the South that would still have slavery, and states in the west that would declare themselves independent overlords of compounds, and states in the northeast that might also take independence a bit too far.
I hope we survive till Bush-Cheney fascists get removed from office, hoping that one of them doesn't declare martial law and suspend the Constitution they've been ignoring anyway.
The we need to undo all their bad deeds and start over.
Of course, we won't be able to undo the damage done by the Iraq war and the busted national debt anytime soon.
I thought about this the other day, anyone know if they've ever tried splitting the smarter/average/dumb kids up into their own classes permanently from 5th or so through 12th, as in they hardly ever see the other groups anymore except between classes and at lunch? I would be curious if the social structures in each group would clash, or if the system would work.
That's the way my education was from 1958 to 1970 when I graduated. I can't imagine why anyone would do otherwise.
There was next to no clashes between the merit based classes. If anything, kids don't particularly want to be smart at that point anyway. There's nothing popular about it.
It's utterly ridiculous to have slow learners mixed in with fast learners.
I was one of the "beneficiaries" of the 1950s-1960s "Sputnik" educational reforms.
Then, like today, it was much easier for schools to keep classes uniform by holding bright kids back so that more effort could be spent on the "slow" ones. Uniformity is the goal, and it's a lot easier to dumb down smart kids than the other way 'round.
I was a 1950s-1960s student from grade school through high school. My experience resembles nothing like your faddish populist statement above.
Grade school was uniform, but from 7th grade on students were assigned to classes based on merit. I was chosen for honors classes in high school as well, but went into vocationl electronics. (I'm a programmer now.)
We had in junior high experimental programs of reading comprehension and the like. This was pre-PC days and the material and self-testing was in various paper forms.
I don't know what you did back then, but the only thing that would have held you back was yourself.
meanwhile, an entry screening system goes down at LAX and 8,000 passengers are stranded for hours upon end. The one reason given so far is an optical fiber line going down. Personally, I don't trust anything this government administration says.
Because the mainstream has moved so far away from the ideals that this country was founded on, and so far away from the Constitution, and so far away from liberty, that to speak the words the Founding Fathers of the US once did, sounds a bit nuts these days.
If by mainstream you mean Republican neocons, that would make your statement right, but they are not mainstream.
Dumb question, but if nobody trains new developers, then where the heck are those more experienced developers supposed to come from? And of course the related question, where did the few that we now have come from?
Consulting companies hire as many people that have necessary credentials as they can and bill them out same day.
The comsulting companies make big bucks, rookies get experience, and Fred Brooks gets proven right over and over.
I doubt that the "100% LAMP" infrastructure would be redone in MS.NET. There's probably some talk of picking up a MS technology based package instead.
If in fact there was talk of replacing the LAMP infrastructure, it would indicate current dissatisfaction with it from the business.
Given the high percentage of commercial solutions in MS technology, it would be amazing if a business wasn't considering one of them. I don't see that as reflecting on LAMP at all, just on whether there are superior or equally as good LAMP package solutions to what they are considering.
That has nothing to do with Linux, Apache, or P scripting languages. It has only to do with writing business applications that meet and exceed business requirements, and are just as good and cost effective as MS technology solutions.
Slashdot Mirror
The article specifically states that the soldier is their "mass communications specialist", and that he was being paid to edit the articles to support Guantanamo.
Now that you mention it, with everything about Gitmo being top secret, I guess a mass communication officer wouldn't have much to do except edit Wikipedia.
Reminds me of communists and their military political officers.
rd
Two possibilities: in the process of porting, they have to rewrite all of the bits that call grody Windows bits, such as IE, and therefore many problem bits get fixed . . . or they just write bad code all over again, Linux gets the blame, and hospitals revert at great cost.
You don't "call" IE, you serve it. And the description poster provided is of the Java server code rewrite that didn't work like the prior "tty" system. That's mainframe terminal software. (I'm an AS/400 System i programmer. McKesson also used to run their enterprise software on AS/400, but they also bought HBOC medical system software company which was mainframe software, so it's probably referring to that.)
There was a big problem with the HBOC thing, lawsuits, etc., but they would have rewritten in J2EE anyway. And you'll hear people who have to use web systems replacing mainframe tty systems saying the same thing everytime. I have a collection of articles that make that point over and over.
rd
The centralization that we're currently undergoing is massive, this problem was (IMHO) scape goated to a poor change control process.
Thanks for that excellent insight from the inside.
First of all, the soft computer press quoting of idiot bigwigs and their scapegoating for whatever they're planning and then again the scapegoating when it fails is irritating, but it's the only semi-technical info available. If it weren't for Slashdot where AC's can dish the dirt we would only have incoherent scapegoating filtered through biased (for anything incompetent executives spin) journalism. Thanks to you and Slashdot once again.
The other point I'd like to make is that a switchover to another system that is kept synched but also live with it's own critical mass is not acceptable, and didn't happen because of it. One was the rightful concern of bringing down a live system with whatever problem brought your own system down, which they pointed out afterwards, and the other is that which you pointed out, probable overload.
As everyone here probably knows, the synching needs to take place with a spare system for the High Availability being sought. Transactions of course can also go to the other regions as messages and be processed on an as available basis, but the HA system would be kept synched in real time with ability to fail over to it. This should happen without any concern of locking it up as it's not live with another group of people.
Yes, the HA spare is somewhat expensive, but vendors typically charge much less on licensing and such for an HA system. The VA needs to implement this remotely from their four regional centers as other large organizations that must keep running do.
They may even get their oft cited ITIL certification if they put a failover system in place that can actually work.
rd
When I saw the headline, I first thought of VA Linux-
When I read it, I first thought Veteran's Administration. VA Linux IT meltdown doesn't even make a lot of sense.
Of course, I've been reading about federal government IT meltdown's for a long time, so I'm conditioned.
rd
If by sucessfully automated you mean some convoluted plan whereby it's downloaded, printed, photographed on a wooden table, printed (again), rekeyed, changed manually and uploaded again via VBA you're 100% right.
No, all these hundreds of millions of dollars of failed ERP systems are attempts to replace mainframe / midrange systems that works far better than any buzzword bonanza they can come up with.
rd
This brings up an important point: organizations don't bother to try to simplify their business rules. Complex business rules make life harder even IF the computer does work because people still have to verify the results and answer questions from users (paycheck receivers). Beurocrats build up layers of messy rules like a desk or fridge that nobody ever cleans. Until real AI is invented, it may be unrealistic for a computer to magically fix it all. If such a system is too complex for regular payroll clerks to understand and navigate, then it is probably beyond automation also.
You do realize that legacy software successfully automated all those complex business rules, don't you?
rd
I can't think of any other way to explain the fact that his (kdawson's) stories are mostly fluff.
Maybe fluff, but not useless. The bitching is sort of entertaining.
rd
very useful info. thanks.
rd
asking such a question on slashdot is a waste of time since most of the answers will be stupid comments...
lots of excellent answers were posted. As to whether this should have been a Slashdot thread, it was the only thread today I thought was interesting enough to check out. Usually there's three or four.
rd
Most (or possibly all) banks insure your deposits against that sort of fraud; it would be a huge hassle, sure, but to say that it would be life-ending is just sensationalist.
They'll replace thousands of dollars transferred from your account? There was a big writeup on this recently about how the funds were used to buy stuff and sent to a network of unsuspecting accomplices who were duped into shipping the contraband overseas.
At no point in the article did anyone say, oh, so what, my bank insures me against this kind of fraud. Why even bother writing an article on it?
Nope, they were pretty distraught for having all their losses insured. And with credit card, I thought there was a limit of $50 refunded for fraud?
But there were others whose identity was stolen, and their life was ruined. They said so.
rd
can compromise your entire life, and ruin your future.
I'm skeptical.
You can be skeptical for those that enter no personal data such as passwords, account numbers, and credit card info online, but for everyone else their future is ruined when their accounts are drained and even their identity stolen because a trojan forwarded their keystrokes to a Commie, excuse me, enterprising capitalist thriving in a socialist country.
rd
You did know that the leaders of the South had already realized that slavery most likely couldn't last and were having internal discussions about how to gracefully (for them) and painlessly (again for them) end it, right? Then again, you probably believe that the War of Northern Aggression was fought over slavery.
Yeah, right, in your Ron Paul delusional world.
He really brings out some doozies out of the woodwork.
rd
The Democrats recently elected to Congress have already showed their spinelessness. Just last week they voted to give the President sweeping new powers for warrantless spying on citizens -- just because he asked for it.
Only for six months, to coincide with the coming showdown on Iraq.
rd
Well, that's not the system that the framers of the constitution set up. They have three different sovereignties: the local government, the state, and the federal government. Each state has its own constitution, and is supposedly sovereign.
Sounds like you think Washington and Jefferson and Franklin set up the European Union.
rd
Yeah, the democrats have really been disappointing since they took control of congress.
This is really irritating when there are enough Republicans to block the action we Democrats want to take, which for that matter require a veto proof majority with a Republican as president.
Some good action has been taken so far despite that. But nothing much will happen until next election and more Democrats and a Democratic president are elected.
rd
But the wonderful thing about him is that, as a libertarian, he believes that the federal government has no role in deciding these issues. He would leave them up to the states to decide. In favor of women's reproductive rights? Create a petition to get the matter into your state legislature or constitution. Want single payer health care? Pressure your state representatives, or, again, get enough signatures to get it on your state's ballots.
That's just passing the buck. Representatives to a state legislature are not wiser than representatives to a federal legislature. The interests of one state are not different than the interests of another state if we are to have a United States.
If individual states are somehow wiser, then certainly there are states in the South that would still have slavery, and states in the west that would declare themselves independent overlords of compounds, and states in the northeast that might also take independence a bit too far.
At least too far to still have a United States.
rd
I hope we survive till Bush-Cheney fascists get removed from office, hoping that one of them doesn't declare martial law and suspend the Constitution they've been ignoring anyway.
The we need to undo all their bad deeds and start over.
Of course, we won't be able to undo the damage done by the Iraq war and the busted national debt anytime soon.
rd
I thought about this the other day, anyone know if they've ever tried splitting the smarter/average/dumb kids up into their own classes permanently from 5th or so through 12th, as in they hardly ever see the other groups anymore except between classes and at lunch? I would be curious if the social structures in each group would clash, or if the system would work.
That's the way my education was from 1958 to 1970 when I graduated. I can't imagine why anyone would do otherwise.
There was next to no clashes between the merit based classes. If anything, kids don't particularly want to be smart at that point anyway. There's nothing popular about it.
It's utterly ridiculous to have slow learners mixed in with fast learners.
rd
I was one of the "beneficiaries" of the 1950s-1960s "Sputnik" educational reforms.
Then, like today, it was much easier for schools to keep classes uniform by holding bright kids back so that more effort could be spent on the "slow" ones. Uniformity is the goal, and it's a lot easier to dumb down smart kids than the other way 'round.
I was a 1950s-1960s student from grade school through high school. My experience resembles nothing like your faddish populist statement above.
Grade school was uniform, but from 7th grade on students were assigned to classes based on merit. I was chosen for honors classes in high school as well, but went into vocationl electronics. (I'm a programmer now.)
We had in junior high experimental programs of reading comprehension and the like. This was pre-PC days and the material and self-testing was in various paper forms.
I don't know what you did back then, but the only thing that would have held you back was yourself.
rd
meanwhile, an entry screening system goes down at LAX and 8,000 passengers are stranded for hours upon end. The one reason given so far is an optical fiber line going down. Personally, I don't trust anything this government administration says.
rd
I'm of Swedish, Irish and German descent.
Is meh Swedish, Irish or German?
Because the mainstream has moved so far away from the ideals that this country was founded on, and so far away from the Constitution, and so far away from liberty, that to speak the words the Founding Fathers of the US once did, sounds a bit nuts these days.
If by mainstream you mean Republican neocons, that would make your statement right, but they are not mainstream.
rd
Doesn't Zemlin have any idea how Microsoft got its good track record fending off the competition?
rd
Dumb question, but if nobody trains new developers, then where the heck are those more experienced developers supposed to come from? And of course the related question, where did the few that we now have come from?
Consulting companies hire as many people that have necessary credentials as they can and bill them out same day.
The comsulting companies make big bucks, rookies get experience, and Fred Brooks gets proven right over and over.
rd
I doubt that the "100% LAMP" infrastructure would be redone in MS .NET. There's probably some talk of picking up a MS technology based package instead.
If in fact there was talk of replacing the LAMP infrastructure, it would indicate current dissatisfaction with it from the business.
Given the high percentage of commercial solutions in MS technology, it would be amazing if a business wasn't considering one of them. I don't see that as reflecting on LAMP at all, just on whether there are superior or equally as good LAMP package solutions to what they are considering.
That has nothing to do with Linux, Apache, or P scripting languages. It has only to do with writing business applications that meet and exceed business requirements, and are just as good and cost effective as MS technology solutions.
rd