Having worked in/with the US military on and off for 30+ years I can honestly say I have never encountered this attitude or heard some say "Who cares it isn't really my money being spent."
[...]
Now some contractors will try to rip off the government and perhaps they have that attitude
There we go. Who gets to spend public funds again? The GI grunt on the front line or the contractor paying off the right people?
The argument that government is chock full of honest people and hence, doesn't have the above attitude is only relevant, if those honest people are the ones doing or controlling the spending. They aren't.
Actually, the Spectrum article says the opposite. The private sector wastes just as much money, and manages just as badly, as the government.
Here's what the article you quote actually says on the matter:
This is only one of the latest in a long, dismal history of IT projects gone awry [see table above, "Software Hall of Shame" for other notable fiascoes]. Most IT experts agree that such failures occur far more often than they should. What's more, the failures are universally unprejudiced: they happen in every country; to large companies and small; in commercial, nonprofit, and governmental organizations; and without regard to status or reputation. The business and societal costs of these failures--in terms of wasted taxpayer and shareholder dollars as well as investments that can't be made--are now well into the billions of dollars a year.
Quantify "universally unprejudiced", show the authors actually did that analysis here, and then show that is even remotely relevant to your claim that the much larger private sectors wastes just as much money on IT projects.
Recall that a lot of paying IEEE members work for government projects. Saying that the much larger private sector wastes money too at the same level while having no evidence to support that assertion is a sop to them.
The private world doesn't generate ten billion dollar complete failures for IT upgrades, for example. And I doubt their examples of billion dollar failures (over-represented by governments BTW) under-report the private sector that much. It's much harder to hide a billion dollar IT failure than it is to hide a ten million dollar IT failure.
I think free-market ideologues should read less Ayn Rand and more IEEE Spectrum. And pay less attention to right-wing theories and more attention to what actually happens in the real world.
And when we do read more IEEE Spectrum and see that our educated assertions are borne out, then what's next on the path to enlightenment?
Of course, as Paul Krugman says, if the Republicans want to destroy government, in order to prove government never works, they can cause a lot of harm to their country and sometimes succeed. (Not that centerist Democrats are much better.)
If the irrelevant comment about "free market ideologues" and Ayn Rand didn't clue us to your political bias, this sure does. The mental failwaves from Republicans are what makes us incompetent. Wah!
Not in government myself, but I'd like the people who rag on the government to start showing proof of their work.
And no, you don't get to say X government project failed, so all government projects fail.
How about for starters the complete failure of US federal and state governments to price a project so that the actual spending more or less is in line with the original estimate of spending?
They can also earn less than $250k from the invention even if it meets the conditions of the contest easily. It depends on the circumstances of the inventor.
They could use the Internet for its intended purpose of inexpensively distributing information and put the materials online for free. I realize how unthinkable that option is to some, but it is a possibility that no one else here seems to be considering.
They're not going to do that. That makes it irrelevant whether one can think about it or not.
The big problem with this "push", if it's real, is that the Obama administration doesn't have the credibility it needs to back the treaty. Nobody who didn't already want the treaty is going to believe a thing these guys say.
I would like to point out, yes, it is your money being spent. It is your money. It is my money. It is our kids and grandkids money (debt).
It is, if you control the project in question. But when it's just shoved down a rathole without any consequence for the guilty, then it's not your money any more.
Failure to control the project (changing requirements after the project is well underway).
Conflict of interest (getting paid more for delaying or hindering a project).
That's sarcasm right? The problem here is the class is probably going to be better than the usual Fullterton experience because the professor chose a different text.
It's worth noting since we're on the subject, that there is a huge conflict of interest here with all of the appearance of being heavily exploited. I see two ways that could be eliminated:
1) Don't use the textbook in question.
2) Sell the textbook at cost. That's be something like $30-75 apiece depending on circumstances and the quality of the book.
In addition, the department may want to look at removing these two professors from such an obvious conflict of interest. Revoking tenure may also be warranted if it is determined that the professors abused their positions of authority in order to make a buck.
This has nothing to do with academic book pricing. Notice all the high priced books have a small handful in stock (1 left, 9 left, etc). It's a standard selling strategy for out of print used books which get to this few. Buy up the remaining copies and sell them for hundred of dollars to the collector who just has to have the 2005 edition of Strang rather than settle for the far cheaper 2009 edition.
I rather use the word, "drones". But by all means, fair or dirty, let's detour this group into something more productive than limiting drones to government organizations and big businesses.
Without the one child policy China would have over 2 billion right now.
Only if one ignores that a key driver of that population growth was the poverty induced by Marxism. What the One Child policy allowed was the communist government to continue its reign to present. If instead, they had adopted a capitalism-based technocracy policy like the Japanese did back in 1950, when the communists took over, they could have population control, freedom, and a developed world population now.
People in the West think that government telling people how many children they can have is one of the highest forms of tyranny, regardless of actual results.
It still is especially when you consider actual results.
Oh, a funny. You do realize that there are real people who actually do risk their lives digging up landmines right? And they do so to save other people from dying or getting maimed by these landmines?
Isn't it sad that data center downtime is far more expensive than permanent downtime for a human being?
What's sad about it? Downtime creates downtime for other human lives too. At some point, you have to acknowledge that this is a trade off, a person assumes risk to their own lives in order to make other peoples' lives better or more productive.
Liberalism is a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of liberty and equality.
Notice the use of the word, "liberty" here. The whole point of the main article is that these groups are demanding a substantial impairment of freedom of speech on US college campuses. Sure, ending rape is a liberal value. Ending free speech on college campuses (of all places to do that) is not.
And claiming that "conservative" means that you are required to or want to defend rape is a straw man argument simply because that is not true. As to who jokes about male prison rape, I think that is more an authoritarian thing and using the power of the state to humiliate those the joker despises or wishes to control.
At this point, none of the various political labels you mention really have a set meaning or do an adequate job (which they may have never done) of describing peoples' political attitudes. A lot of the current day arguments remain over ancient disagreements and propose ancient solutions. So we could say that "conservative" is vastly larger than it is commonly held to be. When someone says we need to do something lest we revert back to horse-and-buggy era labor problems, they make a conservative argument even if they are advocating a very liberal policy.
Further, there is a hidden assumption here that conservative and liberal are exclusive, while I would probably be in the union of those two ideas.
Slashdot Mirror
Having worked in/with the US military on and off for 30+ years I can honestly say I have never encountered this attitude or heard some say "Who cares it isn't really my money being spent."
[...]
Now some contractors will try to rip off the government and perhaps they have that attitude
There we go. Who gets to spend public funds again? The GI grunt on the front line or the contractor paying off the right people?
The argument that government is chock full of honest people and hence, doesn't have the above attitude is only relevant, if those honest people are the ones doing or controlling the spending. They aren't.
Actually, the Spectrum article says the opposite. The private sector wastes just as much money, and manages just as badly, as the government.
Here's what the article you quote actually says on the matter:
This is only one of the latest in a long, dismal history of IT projects gone awry [see table above, "Software Hall of Shame" for other notable fiascoes]. Most IT experts agree that such failures occur far more often than they should. What's more, the failures are universally unprejudiced: they happen in every country; to large companies and small; in commercial, nonprofit, and governmental organizations; and without regard to status or reputation. The business and societal costs of these failures--in terms of wasted taxpayer and shareholder dollars as well as investments that can't be made--are now well into the billions of dollars a year.
Quantify "universally unprejudiced", show the authors actually did that analysis here, and then show that is even remotely relevant to your claim that the much larger private sectors wastes just as much money on IT projects.
Recall that a lot of paying IEEE members work for government projects. Saying that the much larger private sector wastes money too at the same level while having no evidence to support that assertion is a sop to them.
The private world doesn't generate ten billion dollar complete failures for IT upgrades, for example. And I doubt their examples of billion dollar failures (over-represented by governments BTW) under-report the private sector that much. It's much harder to hide a billion dollar IT failure than it is to hide a ten million dollar IT failure.
I think free-market ideologues should read less Ayn Rand and more IEEE Spectrum. And pay less attention to right-wing theories and more attention to what actually happens in the real world.
And when we do read more IEEE Spectrum and see that our educated assertions are borne out, then what's next on the path to enlightenment?
Of course, as Paul Krugman says, if the Republicans want to destroy government, in order to prove government never works, they can cause a lot of harm to their country and sometimes succeed. (Not that centerist Democrats are much better.)
If the irrelevant comment about "free market ideologues" and Ayn Rand didn't clue us to your political bias, this sure does. The mental failwaves from Republicans are what makes us incompetent. Wah!
Not in government myself, but I'd like the people who rag on the government to start showing proof of their work.
And no, you don't get to say X government project failed, so all government projects fail.
How about for starters the complete failure of US federal and state governments to price a project so that the actual spending more or less is in line with the original estimate of spending?
I think the previous poster meant "head of the State Department", but if they didn't, you set them straight.
They can also earn less than $250k from the invention even if it meets the conditions of the contest easily. It depends on the circumstances of the inventor.
They could use the Internet for its intended purpose of inexpensively distributing information and put the materials online for free. I realize how unthinkable that option is to some, but it is a possibility that no one else here seems to be considering.
They're not going to do that. That makes it irrelevant whether one can think about it or not.
The big problem with this "push", if it's real, is that the Obama administration doesn't have the credibility it needs to back the treaty. Nobody who didn't already want the treaty is going to believe a thing these guys say.
I would like to point out, yes, it is your money being spent. It is your money. It is my money. It is our kids and grandkids money (debt).
It is, if you control the project in question. But when it's just shoved down a rathole without any consequence for the guilty, then it's not your money any more.
Here's two more:
Failure to control the project (changing requirements after the project is well underway).
Conflict of interest (getting paid more for delaying or hindering a project).
That's sarcasm right? The problem here is the class is probably going to be better than the usual Fullterton experience because the professor chose a different text.
It's worth noting since we're on the subject, that there is a huge conflict of interest here with all of the appearance of being heavily exploited. I see two ways that could be eliminated:
1) Don't use the textbook in question.
2) Sell the textbook at cost. That's be something like $30-75 apiece depending on circumstances and the quality of the book.
In addition, the department may want to look at removing these two professors from such an obvious conflict of interest. Revoking tenure may also be warranted if it is determined that the professors abused their positions of authority in order to make a buck.
Such a brazen conflict of interest should threaten accreditation and be much more significant problem than merely using a different textbook.
This has nothing to do with academic book pricing. Notice all the high priced books have a small handful in stock (1 left, 9 left, etc). It's a standard selling strategy for out of print used books which get to this few. Buy up the remaining copies and sell them for hundred of dollars to the collector who just has to have the 2005 edition of Strang rather than settle for the far cheaper 2009 edition.
I rather use the word, "drones". But by all means, fair or dirty, let's detour this group into something more productive than limiting drones to government organizations and big businesses.
Why do you want them to kick off so you aren't inconvenienced?
Why do you hate the unicorns so much that you must bring in non sequitur fallacies into your arguments?
China was a colony force-fed opium by those capitalists you so adore
Not in 1950.
Without the one child policy China would have over 2 billion right now.
Only if one ignores that a key driver of that population growth was the poverty induced by Marxism. What the One Child policy allowed was the communist government to continue its reign to present. If instead, they had adopted a capitalism-based technocracy policy like the Japanese did back in 1950, when the communists took over, they could have population control, freedom, and a developed world population now.
making middle-class living while risking your life for maximum profits of others is pretty grotesque, and should be illegal.
Point to someone who's doing that and we'll see if you know what you're talking about.
So does constraining the freedom of millions of people because you can't be bothered to create a society where people are wealthy.
People in the West think that government telling people how many children they can have is one of the highest forms of tyranny, regardless of actual results.
It still is especially when you consider actual results.
Oh, a funny. You do realize that there are real people who actually do risk their lives digging up landmines right? And they do so to save other people from dying or getting maimed by these landmines?
I would LOL at slashdotters arguing over what is better, LMFAO or ROFL.
Isn't it sad that data center downtime is far more expensive than permanent downtime for a human being?
What's sad about it? Downtime creates downtime for other human lives too. At some point, you have to acknowledge that this is a trade off, a person assumes risk to their own lives in order to make other peoples' lives better or more productive.
Sorry, I wrote the above. I don't know why I wasn't considered as logged in since I didn't have to fill out a captcha to post.
Liberalism is a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of liberty and equality.
Notice the use of the word, "liberty" here. The whole point of the main article is that these groups are demanding a substantial impairment of freedom of speech on US college campuses. Sure, ending rape is a liberal value. Ending free speech on college campuses (of all places to do that) is not.
And claiming that "conservative" means that you are required to or want to defend rape is a straw man argument simply because that is not true. As to who jokes about male prison rape, I think that is more an authoritarian thing and using the power of the state to humiliate those the joker despises or wishes to control.
At this point, none of the various political labels you mention really have a set meaning or do an adequate job (which they may have never done) of describing peoples' political attitudes. A lot of the current day arguments remain over ancient disagreements and propose ancient solutions. So we could say that "conservative" is vastly larger than it is commonly held to be. When someone says we need to do something lest we revert back to horse-and-buggy era labor problems, they make a conservative argument even if they are advocating a very liberal policy.
Further, there is a hidden assumption here that conservative and liberal are exclusive, while I would probably be in the union of those two ideas.