The Japanese economy does have some significant problems, but it's driven by broader structural challenges versus their decision to use fax machines instead of email. Their economy has stalled for about twenty years, effectively shrinking over time. While unemployment has been kept low, it's come at the expense of economic growth and stagnant wages, leading to shrinking household buying power as inflation grows faster than incomes. Meanwhile, the global marketplace has become more and more competitive, making it even harder for Japan to restart their export-driven economy. Lots of really smart people debating on how they got there and how they can break out, but so far, the Japanese government efforts to try and spend their way out has only led to massive public debt. In short, Japan has much bigger problems that modernizing IT isn't going to solve.
The short post of four US Senators and five US mayors includes one openly gay mayor and a older Latina woman who started her political career organizing Mexican laborers with Cesar Chavez. That alone casts a bit of doubt on the accuracy of this list.
An alternative theory - a lot of these individuals may have signed up for these mailing lists simply to monitor these groups, and some of them may have just been signed up by other people as a prank. Just pulling information from a mailing list hardly represents membership.
Based on the posts, I think people don't realize that Raytheon owns computer security firm Websense through a joint venture, a deal where Raytheon merged their own $400M valuation commercial cybersecurity business into the Websense to create a half a billion dollar commercial cyber business. That doesn't even cover their existing government networks, communications and cyber business which is a very different animal altogether. Therefore, the statements that the firm somehow doesn't have any software and cybersecurity chops as stated by the OP is a bit absurd.
A distinction that needs to be made: we're bringing manufacturing back to the United States but not necessarily all the manufacturing jobs. Automation and other manufacturing efficiencies developed over the last three decades means we can make more with much few people, and even the quality of those jobs is different from before - in the old days, it would be large numbers of middle class, blue collar jobs. Now, it's a small handful of highly skilled white collar workers and an army of minimum wage individuals who only have their jobs because they're still cheaper than a robot.
As the article noted, the double benefit of this system is not just the token energy it generates but the ability to better control HVAC costs by reducing the amount of heat that goes in through the windows, reducing demands on air conditioning in the summer. That being said, based on the pictures, this system is not pretty: the lines running through the translucent cells are rather annoying to look at and could be shot down by builders for the aesthetics alone. It would be better if they could deploy this as some sort of window shade that can be retracted to allow for unobstructed views (looking at the photos of the sample setup, it reminds me of the translucent shades used in a lot of newer offices), but I don't think this technology is there.
Now that they've started to gain ground, imagine the next steps: they start suing you because your Wi-Fi router is harming them, suing coffee shops and restaurants to remove Wi-Fi hotspots because of the harm it causes them, telecom companies to remove cell towers because it is harmful to them, etc. This will not end well...
Especially if they do get this classified as a disability and start trying to leverage Americans with Disabilities Act.
Now that they've started to gain ground, imagine the next steps: they start suing you because your Wi-Fi router is harming them, suing coffee shops and restaurants to remove Wi-Fi hotspots because of the harm it causes them, telecom companies to remove cell towers because it is harmful to them, etc. This will not end well...
My favorite story in this category has to be Sparkler Filters based in Conroe, TX. Apparently, they still have a IBM 402, the only known remaining working system of this classic 1948 model. The Computer History Museum tried to coax the company in selling their system to them as an exhibit, but apparently, they failed. The company will reconsider as they slowly phase out the punch card system for PC's.
It's an unfortunate situation for those with the rare conditions; there's a lot more potential profit in finding a way to genetically prevent pain for billions of people than it is to cure the handful with the condition.
This one line in the opening comment rubbed me the wrong way, that some how, the pain and suffering of those billions of people is less important than the handful ill with a rare condition. It's not just crassly about profits, but it's a real ethical dilemma - maybe for the greater good, greatest bang for your research buck, focusing on those billions is a greater benefit to humanity than the small handful with an extremely rare condition. I hate making this statement because I don't want to downplay the severe suffering of those with rare genetic disorders, but I feel the issue is more nuanced than the hand waving the original post does on the trade off.
This is one of the reasons why government work is so expensive. Everything needs to be checked, verified, and certified, creating massive process intensive bureaucracies which increase the overhead costs of all projects.
Clearly you don't read GAO's reports: they have an entire section dedicated to all the problems in the Federal government including F-35 or defense acquisition as a whole. Unfortunately, the people who they report to, Congress, doesn't seem to really pay attention to what they publish unless it aligns with their scapegoat of the day.
I always viewed the bachelors degree not as a gift of learning but as a demonstration of basic literacy in a particular subject area. I don't expect an engineer to be an expert in their field coming out of college, but if they have an engineering degree, I can have some confidence that they at least understand basic chemistry, physics and more complicated mathematics while also being able to handle a little bit of stress and get stuff done. Same with an art degree - they may not be an expert in their particular field, but at least they have demonstrated some level of competency in terms of artistic sense, a level of "trainability" in the tools used in the art field, and the minimum grit in getting things done. Certainly not saying that people without a college degree don't have these characteristics, but a college degree at least provides an easily visible certification that helps reduce the risk of a dud hire.
Should add... if you actually read the article, the "pseudonym" he was posting under was nothing more than the title of "Shahjahanpur (City) News" with his photograph right there on it. He just setup a second Facebook account act as a news feed.
Even though he went by an alias on Facebook, he did post his own picture on the account. I don't think he was even seriously trying to conceal who he was; he probably didn't expect the corrupt official to take such a drastic step. Given that case, there's nothing that Facebook can do in this kind of situation.
Small Correction - Google outright acquired Skybox Imaging and their soon to be launched constellation of satellites, not just partnered. So Google will still be in the satellite game, just focused on the imagery market versus broadband from space.
All kinds of engineering talent, organizational expertise, a logistics and trade network that spanned the Mediterranean world; were necessary to run something like the Colosseum. Those loads of wild animals(some pretty exotic) and ample supplies of variously trained gladiators don't just deliver themselves, you know; nor is building that much stadium seating with rocks and manual labor exactly trivial.(Never mind the 'let's flood the place and have a lethal naval battle' days, those are a huge pain.)
Sounds kind of like the Internet - millions of advances in science, engineering, commerce and logistics across the entire planet so individuals can get cat videos and porn on demand.
I am really surprised that CMU didn't include any "No Poaching" clauses in their partnership with Uber. This is standard practice in most partnerships in the private sector for this very scenario. Clearly CMU didn't, or didn't do it correctly, and Uber took them to the shed - stepped in with the partnership, identified the people who were key, then quickly gutted the institution of their key talent. Maybe there was arrogance on CMU's part, thinking that their professors and researchers would not be tempted away from tenure and university prestige for something like money... not realizing the kind of money that Uber would throw around.
Completely agreed. People want causes, a purpose for their lives. Whether it be following God, bringing about the "proletariat revolution", liberating your "people," defending the Republic, or whatnot, people look for causes and many of them don't mind martyrdom in the name of that greater good.
Not to be too cynical, but the Bolivians are used to being kicked around by larger countries. They know what to expect and how to respond and fight back. Assange however takes this to a new level of humiliation for them: the Bolivians have found out that they're now pawns of a western megalomaniac who before they assumed was an ally or at least a friendly. That, and at least the large imperialist powers had the courtesy to apologize. Assange doesn't even bother, saying that his role in violating Bolivian national sovereignty was for the "greater good."
It's like an out of control police force, who, operating on an anonymous tip, kicks down your door and beats you, violating your civil rights. Yes, that's bad, but it's even more humiliating when you find out that the guy who dropped the tip was supposedly a friend you had been working with, who involuntarily sacrificed you as a pawn for what he perceived as the "greater good."
We can even take this one step up. The gate crashers come up to a security checkpoint, and when asked routine questions, they accelerate off and ram a marked car with security personnel in it. Any armed security guard, witnessing a clearly hostile vehicle employing lethal force (i.e. trying to ram a coworker) in order to breech a secure perimeter, would probably open fire at that point, not just military or police.
If anyone ever wondered why government contracting is so expensive, this is it. The government customers demand customization of commercial products that drive up development costs and complicate manufacturing while the bureaucracy's demand for documentation and "transparency" places a massive overhead burden on contractors to meet the requirements. Add on to it the government's lack of discipline in developing requirements and making changes, and your "cheap" program triples in cost with delivery moving two years to the right. As someone who worked in a business that dealt with both commercial and government clients, the former looks for a product that fits their needs then buys it whereas the latter looks for a product, modifies it, then continuously alters the requirements over and over right up to production.
Sometimes, I think this is also the reason why the government clings to cost-plus contracting: with fixed price, they have to be disciplined about the requirements because once the fixed price contract is in effect, they can't tinker with it any further. Cost-plus, they can keep changing requirements, and the contractor will simply roll it into the bill.
Slashdot Mirror
The Japanese economy does have some significant problems, but it's driven by broader structural challenges versus their decision to use fax machines instead of email. Their economy has stalled for about twenty years, effectively shrinking over time. While unemployment has been kept low, it's come at the expense of economic growth and stagnant wages, leading to shrinking household buying power as inflation grows faster than incomes. Meanwhile, the global marketplace has become more and more competitive, making it even harder for Japan to restart their export-driven economy. Lots of really smart people debating on how they got there and how they can break out, but so far, the Japanese government efforts to try and spend their way out has only led to massive public debt. In short, Japan has much bigger problems that modernizing IT isn't going to solve.
The short post of four US Senators and five US mayors includes one openly gay mayor and a older Latina woman who started her political career organizing Mexican laborers with Cesar Chavez. That alone casts a bit of doubt on the accuracy of this list.
An alternative theory - a lot of these individuals may have signed up for these mailing lists simply to monitor these groups, and some of them may have just been signed up by other people as a prank. Just pulling information from a mailing list hardly represents membership.
The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country.
The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.
The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who actually run the country.
No offense, but university professors don't necessarily make good journalists. Very different skill set.
Based on the posts, I think people don't realize that Raytheon owns computer security firm Websense through a joint venture, a deal where Raytheon merged their own $400M valuation commercial cybersecurity business into the Websense to create a half a billion dollar commercial cyber business. That doesn't even cover their existing government networks, communications and cyber business which is a very different animal altogether. Therefore, the statements that the firm somehow doesn't have any software and cybersecurity chops as stated by the OP is a bit absurd.
A distinction that needs to be made: we're bringing manufacturing back to the United States but not necessarily all the manufacturing jobs. Automation and other manufacturing efficiencies developed over the last three decades means we can make more with much few people, and even the quality of those jobs is different from before - in the old days, it would be large numbers of middle class, blue collar jobs. Now, it's a small handful of highly skilled white collar workers and an army of minimum wage individuals who only have their jobs because they're still cheaper than a robot.
As the article noted, the double benefit of this system is not just the token energy it generates but the ability to better control HVAC costs by reducing the amount of heat that goes in through the windows, reducing demands on air conditioning in the summer. That being said, based on the pictures, this system is not pretty: the lines running through the translucent cells are rather annoying to look at and could be shot down by builders for the aesthetics alone. It would be better if they could deploy this as some sort of window shade that can be retracted to allow for unobstructed views (looking at the photos of the sample setup, it reminds me of the translucent shades used in a lot of newer offices), but I don't think this technology is there.
Now that they've started to gain ground, imagine the next steps: they start suing you because your Wi-Fi router is harming them, suing coffee shops and restaurants to remove Wi-Fi hotspots because of the harm it causes them, telecom companies to remove cell towers because it is harmful to them, etc. This will not end well...
Especially if they do get this classified as a disability and start trying to leverage Americans with Disabilities Act.
Now that they've started to gain ground, imagine the next steps: they start suing you because your Wi-Fi router is harming them, suing coffee shops and restaurants to remove Wi-Fi hotspots because of the harm it causes them, telecom companies to remove cell towers because it is harmful to them, etc. This will not end well...
My favorite story in this category has to be Sparkler Filters based in Conroe, TX. Apparently, they still have a IBM 402, the only known remaining working system of this classic 1948 model. The Computer History Museum tried to coax the company in selling their system to them as an exhibit, but apparently, they failed. The company will reconsider as they slowly phase out the punch card system for PC's.
It's an unfortunate situation for those with the rare conditions; there's a lot more potential profit in finding a way to genetically prevent pain for billions of people than it is to cure the handful with the condition.
This one line in the opening comment rubbed me the wrong way, that some how, the pain and suffering of those billions of people is less important than the handful ill with a rare condition. It's not just crassly about profits, but it's a real ethical dilemma - maybe for the greater good, greatest bang for your research buck, focusing on those billions is a greater benefit to humanity than the small handful with an extremely rare condition. I hate making this statement because I don't want to downplay the severe suffering of those with rare genetic disorders, but I feel the issue is more nuanced than the hand waving the original post does on the trade off.
This is one of the reasons why government work is so expensive. Everything needs to be checked, verified, and certified, creating massive process intensive bureaucracies which increase the overhead costs of all projects.
Clearly you don't read GAO's reports: they have an entire section dedicated to all the problems in the Federal government including F-35 or defense acquisition as a whole. Unfortunately, the people who they report to, Congress, doesn't seem to really pay attention to what they publish unless it aligns with their scapegoat of the day.
I always viewed the bachelors degree not as a gift of learning but as a demonstration of basic literacy in a particular subject area. I don't expect an engineer to be an expert in their field coming out of college, but if they have an engineering degree, I can have some confidence that they at least understand basic chemistry, physics and more complicated mathematics while also being able to handle a little bit of stress and get stuff done. Same with an art degree - they may not be an expert in their particular field, but at least they have demonstrated some level of competency in terms of artistic sense, a level of "trainability" in the tools used in the art field, and the minimum grit in getting things done. Certainly not saying that people without a college degree don't have these characteristics, but a college degree at least provides an easily visible certification that helps reduce the risk of a dud hire.
Should add... if you actually read the article, the "pseudonym" he was posting under was nothing more than the title of "Shahjahanpur (City) News" with his photograph right there on it. He just setup a second Facebook account act as a news feed.
Even though he went by an alias on Facebook, he did post his own picture on the account. I don't think he was even seriously trying to conceal who he was; he probably didn't expect the corrupt official to take such a drastic step. Given that case, there's nothing that Facebook can do in this kind of situation.
Small Correction - Google outright acquired Skybox Imaging and their soon to be launched constellation of satellites, not just partnered. So Google will still be in the satellite game, just focused on the imagery market versus broadband from space.
All kinds of engineering talent, organizational expertise, a logistics and trade network that spanned the Mediterranean world; were necessary to run something like the Colosseum. Those loads of wild animals(some pretty exotic) and ample supplies of variously trained gladiators don't just deliver themselves, you know; nor is building that much stadium seating with rocks and manual labor exactly trivial.(Never mind the 'let's flood the place and have a lethal naval battle' days, those are a huge pain.)
Sounds kind of like the Internet - millions of advances in science, engineering, commerce and logistics across the entire planet so individuals can get cat videos and porn on demand.
I am really surprised that CMU didn't include any "No Poaching" clauses in their partnership with Uber. This is standard practice in most partnerships in the private sector for this very scenario. Clearly CMU didn't, or didn't do it correctly, and Uber took them to the shed - stepped in with the partnership, identified the people who were key, then quickly gutted the institution of their key talent. Maybe there was arrogance on CMU's part, thinking that their professors and researchers would not be tempted away from tenure and university prestige for something like money... not realizing the kind of money that Uber would throw around.
Completely agreed. People want causes, a purpose for their lives. Whether it be following God, bringing about the "proletariat revolution", liberating your "people," defending the Republic, or whatnot, people look for causes and many of them don't mind martyrdom in the name of that greater good.
Not to be too cynical, but the Bolivians are used to being kicked around by larger countries. They know what to expect and how to respond and fight back. Assange however takes this to a new level of humiliation for them: the Bolivians have found out that they're now pawns of a western megalomaniac who before they assumed was an ally or at least a friendly. That, and at least the large imperialist powers had the courtesy to apologize. Assange doesn't even bother, saying that his role in violating Bolivian national sovereignty was for the "greater good."
It's like an out of control police force, who, operating on an anonymous tip, kicks down your door and beats you, violating your civil rights. Yes, that's bad, but it's even more humiliating when you find out that the guy who dropped the tip was supposedly a friend you had been working with, who involuntarily sacrificed you as a pawn for what he perceived as the "greater good."
We can even take this one step up. The gate crashers come up to a security checkpoint, and when asked routine questions, they accelerate off and ram a marked car with security personnel in it. Any armed security guard, witnessing a clearly hostile vehicle employing lethal force (i.e. trying to ram a coworker) in order to breech a secure perimeter, would probably open fire at that point, not just military or police.
If anyone ever wondered why government contracting is so expensive, this is it. The government customers demand customization of commercial products that drive up development costs and complicate manufacturing while the bureaucracy's demand for documentation and "transparency" places a massive overhead burden on contractors to meet the requirements. Add on to it the government's lack of discipline in developing requirements and making changes, and your "cheap" program triples in cost with delivery moving two years to the right. As someone who worked in a business that dealt with both commercial and government clients, the former looks for a product that fits their needs then buys it whereas the latter looks for a product, modifies it, then continuously alters the requirements over and over right up to production.
Sometimes, I think this is also the reason why the government clings to cost-plus contracting: with fixed price, they have to be disciplined about the requirements because once the fixed price contract is in effect, they can't tinker with it any further. Cost-plus, they can keep changing requirements, and the contractor will simply roll it into the bill.
Oh wait... Fixed link. :P
What could possibly go wrong? Not like anyone made a movie about it. Oh wait. Better buy a train ticket soon. :P