First, I'd rather just have my player be able to handle whatever files I encounter. It's much easier than bothering with file translators - which make the quality even worse anyway.
As for American spy-ops drivel, it's material I could easily access and it served my purpose pretty well. My goal wasn't to educate myself about world affairs, but rather improve my language skills. Propoganda in the foreign language works well, regardless of the origin.
Radio Free Iraq was excellent because it was targetting native Iraqis with a variety of dialects. I found it was easier to listen too and more fully comprehend because they tended to speak more clearly with good anunciation and probably a more simplified vocabulary. It's much easier to understand than stuff like AlJazeera, and helped my language skills a lot.
Anyway, if I have a computing device, I like to be able to use it to its fullest potential. Why use just the native Ipod programming if you can reprogram it to do even more? That's like buying a house with an extra room, but you won't use it because it has been walled off.
That's a very good question. There are a few things you learn in the Army:
1. there is the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way. 2. it's best to do what you're told and not ask why 3. few things make sense, and you'll just get a headache from trying to make sense of them
I suppose we belt-sanded them while in the secure compound in case we got ambushed while driving the 3 blocks between the secure compound and the burn facility. Of course, the whole thing was on a big Army base, so there probably weren't too many terrorists and spies running around.
When I was in military intelligence... well, I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you sort of thing..
Just normal PCs running windows and office, with top secret documents and all.
Of course, when we discarded a computer, we removed the harddrives, open them up, used a belt-sander on the platters, then put the platters in an incinerator that was hot enough to melt them.
I've downloaded tons of legitimate news material in foreign lanuages. Each service seems to use a different codec. Voice of America used to use.au files, then.mp3. Deutche Welle used.ra, as did Radio Free Iraq. A CD of Arabic news I received only had wma. This use is common in military and government circles where people need to maintain language skills.
Music is not the only reason to have an i-pod, and stolen files is not the only reason you'd have a mixture of codecs.
So get off your high-horse and quit assuming everyone that wants to do something unusual is a criminal.
Extradition is a legal process not a military one. If he's to be extradited, it should be to the US legal system, not the US military. It's pretty simple.
If England's going to give him to the US military to be inhumanely treated, that's called rendition.
Working that sort of extreme schedule has a price. First of all, you never see your family, sleep at the office 3 nights of the week, don't get exercise, eat whatever you can get quickly, have no time for recreation, etc. It's called "death march" for a reason. Constant headaches, blackouts, racing pulse, dizziness were common symptoms among the engineering team.
That all makes me wonder how effective you all were working like that. It's a race to the bottom when each person is willing to work just one more half hour. How much of that work was re-working stuff that was done wrong?
Do you ever think that maybe getting some more sleep, more exercise, and a little time away, would have made your work-time more effective and efficient?
It's been many years since I worked at McDonalds, but we had a crunch time every day from about 11:30 to 1:30. In a way, it was nice because the time just flew. On the other hand, it was quite stressful because there was a very high level of expection of performance and accuarcy.
Then, since we were close to the town's concert venue, we always got slammed before concerts.
We were in just as much of a position to lose our jobs as any game developer for screwing up - so the stress was there, and it was real. Managers were evaluated daily on all kinds of metrics; their stress naturally flowed to us as well.
They don't worry about ticking because modern bombs don't tick.
But when your desk starts to vibrate that's when they worry. Nine times out of ten it's an electric razor, but every once in a while... it's a dildo. Of course it's company policy never to imply ownership in the event of a dildo... always use the indefinite article a dildo, never your dildo.
By the end of that day, 15 subway stations in the world's busiest subway system had been affected. Of these, stations along the Hbiya line were the most heavily affected, some with as many as 300 to 400 persons involved. The number injured in the attacks was just under 3,800. Of those, nearly 1,000 actually required hospitalization--some for no more than a few hours, some for many days. A very few are still hospitalized. And 12 people were dead.
So... I'll get even fatter because I'm getting even more energy out of the food I eat?!
Actually, I've noticed my apetite gets sated sooner and while I'm still eating the same crap (spicy thai food, hotwings, beer & pizza), I think I get full faster and eat less.
I think where I'm benefiting most, though, is that since there aren't big chunks of barely-chewed food in my stomach, it has to work a lot less on breaking down those chunks - thus less acid, and less heartburn.
It's hard to believe that after years (we're talking since high school - almost 20 years) of eating rolaids and tums that I may be able to give them up - and without taking some other odd drug like prilosec.
Thank Gods for the Hindus and their old sayings about chewing!
All I've "proven" is that if a miracle is observable and measurable, it's not really a miracle afterall - just slight of hand where we might not have seen the hand - YET.
If a miracle were broadcast from Time Square on New Year's Eve with irrefutable scientific proof that it could not possibly have occurred without a supernatural explanation, people would still refuse to believe in it.
What you're describing is impossible by definition. A miracle is by definition something that cannot be proved scientifically - and therefore needs a supernatural explanation. Once you have irrefutable scientific proof, it is no longer a miracle but simply a phenomenon.
Saying "irrefutable scientific proof of a miracle" is like asking, "Can an omnipotent god create an unmoveable object?" If he's omnipotent, then he can't create an object that he can't move - otherwise, he wouldn't be omnipotent, by definition.
And finally, if two states successfully adopt and implement open data format policies, other states will be more inclined to follow.
This will be great, until, just as they're trying to do with food labelling standards, the federal government makes a law with a new standard that specifically invalidates any state laws that are more restrictive.
But I guess you can't blame the lobbyists... would you rather bribe..err..payoff..err, I mean, lobby a handful of people in one town, or have to spread your efforts across 50 towns and a lot more people?
I would add to all that a problem with frequent heart-burn. I go through rolaids like they're candy.
Until this last week. An office worker of mine is Hindu and told me, in an unrelated conversation, about a Hindu proverb or saying that says to chew each bite of food 28 times. He said something about how you'll eat less and enjoy your food more.
So, I started thinking about how I chew. I was startled. Probably as a result of always being on the go, and maybe bad eating habits from the Army, I mostly chew my food just enough to swallow it. So, I've really focused on chewing my food. I find that it often takes up to 40 chews to get a good thorough job of it. But, the amazing result is that for the last week, without changing my diet (which includes spicy thai food, hot wings, etc), I haven't needed a rolaids or tums.
A few years ago, a 500K file was routine and we were able to e-mail those. Now 500 MB files are pretty routine. My computer can handle it, the network can handle it, my memory stick (used to be floppies) can handle it. Why shouldn't my e-mail handle it too?
While you're using mailed bricks as a metaphor, I'd put a postage stamp on a brick and mail it if that was what I needed to do for my job. In other words, I do what I need to do to get my job done. Sometimes I have to do it in a way that doesn't make sense from the outside. Believe me, I'm trying to fix that. But in the meantime, I mail the brick because I have to. Everyone can receive the brick I mail them and the postal service has a reasonable service level when it comes to intact delivery of my brick.
Strange...the Bush crew is often portrayed as bumblers who can't do anything right, then they are accused of being devious co-conspirators to rule the world. Which is it guys?
I think it's a case of stupid-productive people.
Given a matrix with two qualities: smart vs stupid, and productive vs unproductive
smart productive people are the best - they do lots of stuff and do it well smart unproductive people are generally non-harmful - they do stuff well, but just not much of it stupid unproductive people are generally non-harmful too - they might do stupid stuff, but they don't do much of it
It's the stupid-productive people that you really have to watch out for. Not only do they do stupid stuff, they do a lot of it.
I remember reading an account of an Iraqi general (pre Gulf-War I - when we were still their "friends") who visited the US. He was a pilot and got the opportunity to fly. When looking at the aviation map, he noted the small areas marked on the map and asked if that was where they could fly. His American counterpart explained that in fact, the small areas were the restricted areas and that he could fly pretty much everywhere else. He was astounded. In Iraq, he could only fly in very limited areas.
I'd hate to see the US emulate the former Iraqi administration in its restrictive flight policies.
(I think the book was "Ally to Adversary" by Rick Francona - but I've read a lot of books about Iraq. It's hard to keep them all straight.)
Oh, you're referring to the asswiping skills, well, these are learnable if you're willing to bend over proper
Well, most jobs have their unpleasant aspects. But what I'm talking about is not really the schmoozing you're describing.
First, though, I'm not in marketing or sales. I'm in operations.
From my experience, most "business problems" have two components: a math problem, and a people problem. The math problem is usually the easiest. It's mostly empirical and your case can usually be proven with statistics. The people problem is usually a lot more difficult because people are not logical, usually have competing agendas, and often don't understand the simplicity of that math problem.
For example, in a project, I've gone through tons of historical data, found trends, and determined that if we did a certain thing in our business process, we'd save an average of 5% of our supply chain costs. We run some simulations that verify our assumptions - and maybe even get a small part of the company to try out the changes. The changes are scaleable and should work for most of the organization. The VP I work for likes it and wants to see the change take place.
Now is the hard part. I'm pretty junior in the company. I now need to make the case to multiple director-level people in the organization and find a way to convince them that the changes we want to make will yield an improvement, and that they can make the changes with the resources at hand. They don't report to my VP, so he can't just tell them to do it. With some of those directors, I can make a pretty easy case just with the math. Others will need other ways to convince them. Some will be convinced that the change is good and will work - but they believe they don't have the resources to do it. Of course, some don't believe that the changes have any relevance to their organization.
That's probably the hardest part of my job. And it's really great when I get buy-in from everyone and the project goes succesfully. It's really frustrating, though, to know you have the answer - you know how to make things beter - and you just can't get the key people to buy-in.
I agree that most "business types" do not understand technology well, nor what techies do (believe me, I've done a fair amount of tech work before and have seen it first-hand). But I believe that misunderstanding often goes both ways. I've often seen techies pushing the "latest & greatest" thing just because it's new - and not because it really serves a good business purpose.
So, all you job requires is answering the above 7 questions, which can be found in any extremely easy to read business book?
Do you always over-simplify like that? That's just one example of the many things I do in my job. The guy said he could do my job in his sleep, so I picked on of the easier examples of what I do. It's not just terminology, but rather, understanding how things work together. One you can get from a book. The other usually requires experience - just like coding, and just like managing a coding project.
And as for my education, I've done considerable amounts of physics, and math. And it is challenging, but I also find it has a direct application to the work I do. A supply chain can be thought of as nothing more than a network with interesting dynamics, latencies, and information flow. Running an efficient demand-pull model is in a way application of what you learn in an Engineering Control Systems class to a business process - signals, feedback, out-of-control processes, etc. In fact, I consider a lot of what I do "business engineering" - applying engineering principles to business processes.
Have you ever tried to actually work with a team to actually build a complexed > 100 000 lines of code product?
Nope - but I'm not a programmer or a programming project manager. But I've worked to implement multiple supply chain models in an organization that uses a matrix structure. That means there is few chains-of-command, and very little ability to call on someone who can/will say "do-it, or else". It also means you have get consensus on your project and point of view from people with a variety of backgrounds and motivations.
It's one thing to run a team when you have hire/fire authority. It's much more difficult when you have no autority at all over the people you need to do work for you and you have to rely on your ability to make your case in a variety of ways - and to convince those people that they should expend their already limited resources on your project.
I'm not trying to impress anyone. But I am trying to point out that there is a lot more to what some "suits" do than read magazines and play golf.
Being able to explain what demand-pull is and knowing how to actually implement it are two very different things. I ask for an explanation because it's hard to give a demonstration of implementation here on Slashdot. I'll wager that he can't implement it if he can't even explain it.
I didn't add the fact that we work in a matrix organization here, so there are no clear chains-of-command and very few people who can simply tell people to "do it, or else". Implementing anything requires the ability to get buy-in from a lot of people. That usually takes a great deal of charisma and influencing skills.
I could do your job in my sleep; you couldn't do mine in a million years.
So let me ask you some questions related to my job.
How would you implement a demand-pull model in a supply chain? What are the key features of that model and for what kinds of products is demand-pull recommended? And for those products, what is the expected benefit of using demand-pull? What is considered the most important variable in implementing a successful demand-pull model? And what usually happens when a demand-pull model is implemented incorrectly? And when that happens, how do you solve the resulting problems?
For what kind of products is a demand-pull model not appropriate? For those products, which model(s) are more appropriate?
I know you can do my job in your sleep, so I expect you'll be able to answer quickly.
And if you're product is a database, we've already found a contractor that has a much better attitude than yours. They happen to wear suits - and I guess they're over-dressed for our offices. But they do great work, suits or not.
I'm not a suit, per-se, but I work at a strategic level in my company - I'm just lucky enough that we can wear jeans and sandals if we want to. I also used to be a techie, and there's a good chance it wouldn't take me a million years to learn your job.
Some method of stopping the bribery must be found.
And as soon as you find it, and manage to get it through a legislative process, it will already be full of holes, and politicians will already have figured out how to get around it.
It's like DRM. Pretty much as soon as you come up with a method, someone clever enough will figure out how to get around it.
Slashdot Mirror
First, I'd rather just have my player be able to handle whatever files I encounter. It's much easier than bothering with file translators - which make the quality even worse anyway.
As for American spy-ops drivel, it's material I could easily access and it served my purpose pretty well. My goal wasn't to educate myself about world affairs, but rather improve my language skills. Propoganda in the foreign language works well, regardless of the origin.
Radio Free Iraq was excellent because it was targetting native Iraqis with a variety of dialects. I found it was easier to listen too and more fully comprehend because they tended to speak more clearly with good anunciation and probably a more simplified vocabulary. It's much easier to understand than stuff like AlJazeera, and helped my language skills a lot.
Anyway, if I have a computing device, I like to be able to use it to its fullest potential. Why use just the native Ipod programming if you can reprogram it to do even more? That's like buying a house with an extra room, but you won't use it because it has been walled off.
That's a very good question. There are a few things you learn in the Army:
1. there is the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way.
2. it's best to do what you're told and not ask why
3. few things make sense, and you'll just get a headache from trying to make sense of them
I suppose we belt-sanded them while in the secure compound in case we got ambushed while driving the 3 blocks between the secure compound and the burn facility. Of course, the whole thing was on a big Army base, so there probably weren't too many terrorists and spies running around.
When I was in military intelligence... well, I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you sort of thing..
Just normal PCs running windows and office, with top secret documents and all.
Of course, when we discarded a computer, we removed the harddrives, open them up, used a belt-sander on the platters, then put the platters in an incinerator that was hot enough to melt them.
I've downloaded tons of legitimate news material in foreign lanuages. Each service seems to use a different codec. Voice of America used to use .au files, then .mp3. Deutche Welle used .ra, as did Radio Free Iraq. A CD of Arabic news I received only had wma. This use is common in military and government circles where people need to maintain language skills.
Music is not the only reason to have an i-pod, and stolen files is not the only reason you'd have a mixture of codecs.
So get off your high-horse and quit assuming everyone that wants to do something unusual is a criminal.
I highly doubt that they will extradite him directly to Guantanamo.
Right... they'll probably stop in Egypt on the way so they can have him interrogated.
Extradition is a legal process not a military one. If he's to be extradited, it should be to the US legal system, not the US military. It's pretty simple.
If England's going to give him to the US military to be inhumanely treated, that's called rendition.
Working that sort of extreme schedule has a price. First of all, you never see your family, sleep at the office 3 nights of the week, don't get exercise, eat whatever you can get quickly, have no time for recreation, etc. It's called "death march" for a reason. Constant headaches, blackouts, racing pulse, dizziness were common symptoms among the engineering team.
That all makes me wonder how effective you all were working like that. It's a race to the bottom when each person is willing to work just one more half hour. How much of that work was re-working stuff that was done wrong?
Do you ever think that maybe getting some more sleep, more exercise, and a little time away, would have made your work-time more effective and efficient?
Every day from 11:30 to 1:30 or so.
It's been many years since I worked at McDonalds, but we had a crunch time every day from about 11:30 to 1:30. In a way, it was nice because the time just flew. On the other hand, it was quite stressful because there was a very high level of expection of performance and accuarcy.
Then, since we were close to the town's concert venue, we always got slammed before concerts.
We were in just as much of a position to lose our jobs as any game developer for screwing up - so the stress was there, and it was real. Managers were evaluated daily on all kinds of metrics; their stress naturally flowed to us as well.
Libraries of Congress? It's one of my favorite units.
They don't worry about ticking because modern bombs don't tick.
But when your desk starts to vibrate that's when they worry. Nine times out of ten it's an electric razor, but every once in a while... it's a dildo. Of course it's company policy never to imply ownership in the event of a dildo... always use the indefinite article a dildo, never your dildo.
When I was in the army, we pretty much treated chem and bio the same. Put on your mask, take your atropene, and wait to die.
It's hard to shake the mindset, I suppose.
According to a report on the CDC website (http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol5no4/olson.htm), 12 people died in the attack on the subway.
By the end of that day, 15 subway stations in the world's busiest subway system had been affected. Of these, stations along the Hbiya line were the most heavily affected, some with as many as 300 to 400 persons involved. The number injured in the attacks was just under 3,800. Of those, nearly 1,000 actually required hospitalization--some for no more than a few hours, some for many days. A very few are still hospitalized. And 12 people were dead.
So... I'll get even fatter because I'm getting even more energy out of the food I eat?!
Actually, I've noticed my apetite gets sated sooner and while I'm still eating the same crap (spicy thai food, hotwings, beer & pizza), I think I get full faster and eat less.
I think where I'm benefiting most, though, is that since there aren't big chunks of barely-chewed food in my stomach, it has to work a lot less on breaking down those chunks - thus less acid, and less heartburn.
It's hard to believe that after years (we're talking since high school - almost 20 years) of eating rolaids and tums that I may be able to give them up - and without taking some other odd drug like prilosec.
Thank Gods for the Hindus and their old sayings about chewing!
All I've "proven" is that if a miracle is observable and measurable, it's not really a miracle afterall - just slight of hand where we might not have seen the hand - YET.
If a miracle were broadcast from Time Square on New Year's Eve with irrefutable scientific proof that it could not possibly have occurred without a supernatural explanation, people would still refuse to believe in it.
What you're describing is impossible by definition. A miracle is by definition something that cannot be proved scientifically - and therefore needs a supernatural explanation. Once you have irrefutable scientific proof, it is no longer a miracle but simply a phenomenon.
Saying "irrefutable scientific proof of a miracle" is like asking, "Can an omnipotent god create an unmoveable object?" If he's omnipotent, then he can't create an object that he can't move - otherwise, he wouldn't be omnipotent, by definition.
And finally, if two states successfully adopt and implement open data format policies, other states will be more inclined to follow.
This will be great, until, just as they're trying to do with food labelling standards, the federal government makes a law with a new standard that specifically invalidates any state laws that are more restrictive.
But I guess you can't blame the lobbyists... would you rather bribe..err..payoff..err, I mean, lobby a handful of people in one town, or have to spread your efforts across 50 towns and a lot more people?
I would add to all that a problem with frequent heart-burn. I go through rolaids like they're candy.
Until this last week. An office worker of mine is Hindu and told me, in an unrelated conversation, about a Hindu proverb or saying that says to chew each bite of food 28 times. He said something about how you'll eat less and enjoy your food more.
So, I started thinking about how I chew. I was startled. Probably as a result of always being on the go, and maybe bad eating habits from the Army, I mostly chew my food just enough to swallow it. So, I've really focused on chewing my food. I find that it often takes up to 40 chews to get a good thorough job of it. But, the amazing result is that for the last week, without changing my diet (which includes spicy thai food, hot wings, etc), I haven't needed a rolaids or tums.
I'm startled and amazed by this!
So, chew your food!
A few years ago, a 500K file was routine and we were able to e-mail those. Now 500 MB files are pretty routine. My computer can handle it, the network can handle it, my memory stick (used to be floppies) can handle it. Why shouldn't my e-mail handle it too?
While you're using mailed bricks as a metaphor, I'd put a postage stamp on a brick and mail it if that was what I needed to do for my job. In other words, I do what I need to do to get my job done. Sometimes I have to do it in a way that doesn't make sense from the outside. Believe me, I'm trying to fix that. But in the meantime, I mail the brick because I have to. Everyone can receive the brick I mail them and the postal service has a reasonable service level when it comes to intact delivery of my brick.
Strange...the Bush crew is often portrayed as bumblers who can't do anything right, then they are accused of being devious co-conspirators to rule the world. Which is it guys?
I think it's a case of stupid-productive people.
Given a matrix with two qualities: smart vs stupid, and productive vs unproductive
smart productive people are the best - they do lots of stuff and do it well
smart unproductive people are generally non-harmful - they do stuff well, but just not much of it
stupid unproductive people are generally non-harmful too - they might do stupid stuff, but they don't do much of it
It's the stupid-productive people that you really have to watch out for. Not only do they do stupid stuff, they do a lot of it.
I remember reading an account of an Iraqi general (pre Gulf-War I - when we were still their "friends") who visited the US. He was a pilot and got the opportunity to fly. When looking at the aviation map, he noted the small areas marked on the map and asked if that was where they could fly. His American counterpart explained that in fact, the small areas were the restricted areas and that he could fly pretty much everywhere else. He was astounded. In Iraq, he could only fly in very limited areas.
I'd hate to see the US emulate the former Iraqi administration in its restrictive flight policies.
(I think the book was "Ally to Adversary" by Rick Francona - but I've read a lot of books about Iraq. It's hard to keep them all straight.)
Oh, you're referring to the asswiping skills, well, these are learnable if you're willing to bend over proper
Well, most jobs have their unpleasant aspects. But what I'm talking about is not really the schmoozing you're describing.
First, though, I'm not in marketing or sales. I'm in operations.
From my experience, most "business problems" have two components: a math problem, and a people problem. The math problem is usually the easiest. It's mostly empirical and your case can usually be proven with statistics. The people problem is usually a lot more difficult because people are not logical, usually have competing agendas, and often don't understand the simplicity of that math problem.
For example, in a project, I've gone through tons of historical data, found trends, and determined that if we did a certain thing in our business process, we'd save an average of 5% of our supply chain costs. We run some simulations that verify our assumptions - and maybe even get a small part of the company to try out the changes. The changes are scaleable and should work for most of the organization. The VP I work for likes it and wants to see the change take place.
Now is the hard part. I'm pretty junior in the company. I now need to make the case to multiple director-level people in the organization and find a way to convince them that the changes we want to make will yield an improvement, and that they can make the changes with the resources at hand. They don't report to my VP, so he can't just tell them to do it. With some of those directors, I can make a pretty easy case just with the math. Others will need other ways to convince them. Some will be convinced that the change is good and will work - but they believe they don't have the resources to do it. Of course, some don't believe that the changes have any relevance to their organization.
That's probably the hardest part of my job. And it's really great when I get buy-in from everyone and the project goes succesfully. It's really frustrating, though, to know you have the answer - you know how to make things beter - and you just can't get the key people to buy-in.
I agree that most "business types" do not understand technology well, nor what techies do (believe me, I've done a fair amount of tech work before and have seen it first-hand). But I believe that misunderstanding often goes both ways. I've often seen techies pushing the "latest & greatest" thing just because it's new - and not because it really serves a good business purpose.
So, all you job requires is answering the above 7 questions, which can be found in any extremely easy to read business book?
Do you always over-simplify like that? That's just one example of the many things I do in my job. The guy said he could do my job in his sleep, so I picked on of the easier examples of what I do. It's not just terminology, but rather, understanding how things work together. One you can get from a book. The other usually requires experience - just like coding, and just like managing a coding project.
And as for my education, I've done considerable amounts of physics, and math. And it is challenging, but I also find it has a direct application to the work I do. A supply chain can be thought of as nothing more than a network with interesting dynamics, latencies, and information flow. Running an efficient demand-pull model is in a way application of what you learn in an Engineering Control Systems class to a business process - signals, feedback, out-of-control processes, etc. In fact, I consider a lot of what I do "business engineering" - applying engineering principles to business processes.
Have you ever tried to actually work with a team to actually build a complexed > 100 000 lines of code product?
Nope - but I'm not a programmer or a programming project manager. But I've worked to implement multiple supply chain models in an organization that uses a matrix structure. That means there is few chains-of-command, and very little ability to call on someone who can/will say "do-it, or else". It also means you have get consensus on your project and point of view from people with a variety of backgrounds and motivations.
It's one thing to run a team when you have hire/fire authority. It's much more difficult when you have no autority at all over the people you need to do work for you and you have to rely on your ability to make your case in a variety of ways - and to convince those people that they should expend their already limited resources on your project.
I'm not trying to impress anyone. But I am trying to point out that there is a lot more to what some "suits" do than read magazines and play golf.
Being able to explain what demand-pull is and knowing how to actually implement it are two very different things. I ask for an explanation because it's hard to give a demonstration of implementation here on Slashdot. I'll wager that he can't implement it if he can't even explain it.
I didn't add the fact that we work in a matrix organization here, so there are no clear chains-of-command and very few people who can simply tell people to "do it, or else". Implementing anything requires the ability to get buy-in from a lot of people. That usually takes a great deal of charisma and influencing skills.
I could do your job in my sleep; you couldn't do mine in a million years.
So let me ask you some questions related to my job.
How would you implement a demand-pull model in a supply chain? What are the key features of that model and for what kinds of products is demand-pull recommended? And for those products, what is the expected benefit of using demand-pull? What is considered the most important variable in implementing a successful demand-pull model? And what usually happens when a demand-pull model is implemented incorrectly? And when that happens, how do you solve the resulting problems?
For what kind of products is a demand-pull model not appropriate? For those products, which model(s) are more appropriate?
I know you can do my job in your sleep, so I expect you'll be able to answer quickly.
And if you're product is a database, we've already found a contractor that has a much better attitude than yours. They happen to wear suits - and I guess they're over-dressed for our offices. But they do great work, suits or not.
I'm not a suit, per-se, but I work at a strategic level in my company - I'm just lucky enough that we can wear jeans and sandals if we want to. I also used to be a techie, and there's a good chance it wouldn't take me a million years to learn your job.
Some method of stopping the bribery must be found.
And as soon as you find it, and manage to get it through a legislative process, it will already be full of holes, and politicians will already have figured out how to get around it.
It's like DRM. Pretty much as soon as you come up with a method, someone clever enough will figure out how to get around it.