Wow! Most poignant and true statement about the procurement process I have read to date. I would, however, like to add that "safe" route doesn't mean "nobody got fired for buying IBM" or other trusted entity. Safe means lowest bidder, or, the one that meets the letter, not the spirit of the requirement. It is what happens when those who are doing the purchasing are separated from those who need the purchased items.
Because it is possible and demonstratable to grow InAs today. It is grown in bulk, single crystal material. Graphene, while making strides in the "manufacturable" direction, is still practically relegated to grad students shaving pencils with razors onto tape to get a single monolayer film.
We also note that this is *not* spending, but simply tax income. Keep in mind we should expect that tax income should lag tax law by about a year for the tax law to take effect. The GDP steadily rises, so the main difference is the tax income (total dollars). As a nation, the US tends to hang out around 11%-12% Tax/GDP ratio. There were some low years (2002-2004) which seems to align (with said lag) with the Democratic control of the Senate, although it could also be blamed on the "Bush Tax Cuts" (2001, if I recall correctly).
Short answer, looking at a president, a congress, a party, etc. is potentially a myopic view.
You are probably right, it is "cheap". I am, however, sure it doesn't include expenses on the government outside of paying the contracted development group (contract cost). If it takes four government people (I don't really know), that is probably about $500K/year in salary, maybe another $20K in travel/year, etc. I don't know anything about the game, so I could be way off base here, but if it is run off of government servers, cost to set those up and maintain those would also not be included in the price.
And not to belabor the point, but did you just get that DoD-approved software? How did it come? Install CD? Can not put that media into your computer. What if your computer is messed up (as mine is right now). My first thought a rescue CD. Oh wait, that it not allowed, because it, too, is external media.
Speaking from within the Air Force, "external" media has a different definition than you think. For example, an Air Force purchased USB drive (FIPS certified hardware encryption), only plugged into Air Force owned and maintained computers, is forbidden under this directive.
DARPA has been responsible for funding the development of many technologies which have had a major impact on the world The operative word is that they fund the development...
DARPA has no research laboratories. They have no computational computer network. They are program managers. They are no more researchers than the PHB is a programmer. They are good at moving money around and have a great BS meter. The closest thing to research I have seen in SETA contractors working for a DARPA Program Manager. They do some background work, determine the state of the art, and potential for different research areas.
The NNIN is about four years old. There is certainly a review process. My understanding is each facility has their own process, in part because each facility has their own areas of expertise. So you put in an application to a facility and a board of faculty from that facility (I think two or three) review the technical proposal. The two I have completed were composed of a two page document that outlines what you hope to accomplish, identifying metrics, and a "plan of attack," if you will.
Actually, Tony Tether is not just in charge of this challenge, he is in charge of DARPA (he is the director of DARPA). He is known to be overly involved (everything that is funded through DARPA gets the direct blessing of him... i.e. he does not trust any of the program managers to fund without his involvement).
MunnMultimedia has no connections, but Stacy Munn does. In fact, Stacy Munn (resume found here) has current employment at Microsoft (rather with a contractor at Microsoft) doing "Learning and Media Specialist." This document is not outside the realm of her work or portfolio.
My first thought was that this site was too obvious too straight forward to be a Microsoft product. It, however, just might be legit.
Won't work. Each pixel would have to travel in a different mode along the fiber or they'd all be blurred together, and you control so many modes.
I disagree, but only in practice. You are right in your interpretation, that the grandparent post suggests imaging onto a single fiber. Imaging using a fiber bundle instead. This actually works and a two dimensional scene, imaged on to the front facet of a fiber bundle will have an additional image plane on the back facet of the bundle. The complication and impracticality comes about because these are highly lossy (there must be absorbers put between individual fibers). I can't quickly find a link on line that shows the imaging property in action, but rest assured, it works. An imaging camera product based on this can be seen in the Schott Corp website. Ones I have seen are relatively short (a few inches long). Resolution would only be as good as the fiber bundle spacing, and again, light throughput is pretty small.
I have to read *3* *books* *a* *week* on average. Not picture
books either I assue you. It is a lot of work, but the upshot is
improved grammer and spelling skills that are lacking in the
technical (missing noun). As for those that say "you will be working at mcdonalds(no capitalization of proper noun)" ,
I'm going on to so a PhD in socialolgy where I'll be line for tenure
where I have a much more rewarding job then being a science freak or
an engineer.
Oh the irony. This coming to you from a "science freak", so what do I know. I guess I should check my contract because the wool must have been pulled over my eyes when they claimed to have given me tenure (evidently tenure is only given to non-technical degree holders).
Actually, as I understand it, the problem with presbyopia is both the lens, itself as well as the muscles around the eye. If you read one more sentence on the link you provide, it states as much. Quoted here for the sake of posterity:
Presbyopia is the eye's diminished power of accommodation that occurs with aging. The most widely held theory is that it arises from the loss of elasticity of the crystalline lens, although changes in the lens' curvature from continual growth and loss of power of the ciliary muscles (the muscles that bend and straighten the lens) have also been postulated as its cause.
Indeed, I am with you there. In fact, I will call the police if someone if masturbating, even if it is to the comics section of the newspaper. I think to maintain the ability to access pornographic sites is the implicit understanding that there *may* be reasons to do so (and are not reasons to forbid it). While I can't speak from first hand, I can say my wife took a class in human sexuality as part of a mental health counseling program. She said this class was pretty heavy on the nudity and graphic pictures/videos (yes, this was all done in the classroom). It wouldn't be out of place for a student (or the professor) to be doing studying on adult websites. I don't know any that did (the embarrassment was pretty much universal), but it is a reasonable subject.
As for being a jerk, it is sort of against the law as far as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is concerned, at least when it comes to employer/employee relationships. There are also Good Samaritan Laws throughout the states that would deam that you can't be a jerk to someone that tries to help you. I am sure there are other examples as well.
There is no law prohibiting looking at porn on tax payer expense, is there? Aren't citizens "allowed" (or "have the right," if you will) to do what they please, provided it is not prohibited by the law of the land? I am not aware of a law allowing me walk down a publicly funded sidewalk in jeans and a t-shirt with a tennis-ball in my left hand, but I don't hesitate to do so because there is no law against it.
Oh, and don't forget, it is these adults (even the ones that look at porn on tax payer expense) that pay taxes. It is not just you and your upstanding, look-at-porn-only-at-home kind that pay taxes. It is our pocket that tax money comes from, not just yours.
Frankly, I speak English, and this half-arsed corporatisation of American colloquia needs to stop. It's not attractive, and it makes British ears very unhappy.
Not for nothing, but this verbization* of words by damn British colloquia hurts my sensitive American ears.
I didn't see it live on TV at elementary school, but rather I saw it live at school. From central Florida, you can see (but not hear) shuttle launches. We went outside and watched the launch and were quite confused as to the (what I will colloquially call the) explosion. I distinctly remember rumors that there were two rockets to be launched that day and maybe they hit each other (after the fact, you could see the solid-rocket booster path back to earth and in the confusion, people mistook this for the plume of a launching rocket). I also remember people thinking that the burst was just the rocket separation (which we had never seen before). I also remember, distinctly, a girl that couldn't stop crying and it was really annoying at the time.
I remember that there was quite a bit of confusion for hours after the fact, though this could have been the teachers and grown-ups keeping us out of the loop because they didn't want to have to explain such a thing.
Several others have mentioned that spam will be "solved" once the sending of it has been stopped. I am not sure that Microsoft could ever solve spam in this sense (or any company, for that matter). I don't deny that MS could make great inroads on the problem based purely on their numbers, but when other operating systems, other filters, other mail programs, etc. exist, Microsoft couldn't possibly be responsible for these.
This is not to say they are not responsible for their corner of the world, but the best they can do is fix their SMTP holes, include spam filtering software in all of their software/webware products, and if they are feeling useful, develop a clear and documented solution that could used on other systems/programs.
However asking MS to "solve the problem" is a bit much, even if they did overextend the claim originally.
Ummm... yeah. I guess I should have pointed out that the post you replied to was complete bunk. In as much as it is a joke, the "strangely" reference should henseforth be considered a joke as well.
But yes, your point is quite true. Many wars have monetary repercussions. Thank you for your business.
Is this a mission statement from the early 1990's or something?
In all likelyhood, yes... it is from the early 90's. You see the US government is not quick in doing anything, and especially not something as serious as coming up with a new "mission statement." You see, a committee was initiated to accomplish a new USAF mission statement in October, 1989 (beginning of the 1990 fiscal year). After a two year fact-finding period, a new mission statement was proposed without the words "sovereign" and "global interest." Strangely, there were references to the contries economy ("in defense of the nation's economy" - i'm paraphrasing).
After six years of berrating from the Department of the Treasury, this last line was taken out. At this time, the democratic party held the commander in chief position and the Air Force Secratary was forced to add a more global impact to the mission statement. Quite frankly, the only reason it wasn't released in FY99 was that it was sitting on a civil servant's desk awaiting a rubber stamp. A month ago, the Air Force had a clean-up "down day" which allowed this employee to clean their desk and find the mission statement paperwork.
Uhh... he did include gas prices from $2.50/gal to $10.00/gal on every single chart. This isn't good enough for you? I don't know that he would be well versed in fossil fuel futures, and even if he did include these, I don't know that I would believe them.
Please note the section in the article titled "Value Retention." He notes:
Looking at the values in Figure 14, it seems that comparing the Corolla to the Prius is fairly representative of the hybrid advantage in this area. The Prius is holding its value better than any other vehicle and the Honda Insight (the only other hybrid that has been around long enough to include) is among the best of the economy cars.
This seems to adress your first two concerns with this article. While the calculations on monthly dollar savings do not consider the value retention, it is not overlooked completely.
As for the "fun to drive" concern, I am sure that "OmniNerd" likely tried to include this. However, trying to address the core thesis of the article - "Is purchasing a gas-electric hybrid financially beneficial," I am sure he found it exceedingly difficult to include a "fun to drive" financial metric. The "math" doesn't seem too far off at all, considering the scope of the article.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow! Most poignant and true statement about the procurement process I have read to date. I would, however, like to add that "safe" route doesn't mean "nobody got fired for buying IBM" or other trusted entity. Safe means lowest bidder, or, the one that meets the letter, not the spirit of the requirement. It is what happens when those who are doing the purchasing are separated from those who need the purchased items.
Because it is possible and demonstratable to grow InAs today. It is grown in bulk, single crystal material. Graphene, while making strides in the "manufacturable" direction, is still practically relegated to grad students shaving pencils with razors onto tape to get a single monolayer film.
Just for the record here, here is what I could find on the US Tax incomes:
Year US Tax Income ($M) GDP ($B) Tax/GDP
2009 $1,398,542 (a) Not Available ---
2008 $1,602,823 (a) Not Available ---
2007 $1,571,322 (a) Not Available ---
2006 $1,478,945 (a) $11541.614 (b) 0.128140224
2005 $1,339,363 (c) $11163.759 (b) 0.119974200
2004 $ 998,328 (c) $10822.914 (b) 0.092242970
2003 $ 925,477 (c) $10466.951 (b) 0.088418967
2002 $1,006,389 (c) $10095.771 (b) 0.099684214
2001 $1,145,414 (c) $ 9910.034 (b) 0.115581238
2000 $1,211,749 (d) $ 9887.749 (b) 0.122550542
1999 $1,064,160 (d) $ 9671.089 (b) 0.110035178
1998 $1,017,274 (d) $ 9237.081 (b) 0.11012938
(a) source: http://www.fms.treas.gov/bulletin/b2009_4fd.doc
(b) source: http://forecasts.org/data/data/GDPC96.htm (c) source: http://fms.treas.gov/bulletin/b45.pdf
(d) source: http://fms.treas.gov/bulletin/b42.pdf
This, combined with historical information about Congress:
Year House Maj.(e) Senate Maj.(f)
2009 Democrat even
2008 Democrat even
2007 Republican Republican
2006 Republican Republican
2005 Republican Republican
2004 Republican Republican
2003 Republican Republican
2002 Republican even/Democrat
2001 Republican Democrat
2000 Republican Republican
1999 Republican Republican
1998 Republican Republican
(e) source: http://clerk.house.gov/art_history/house_history/index.html
(f) source: http://senate.gov/pagelayout/history/one_item_and_teasers/partydiv.htm
We also note that this is *not* spending, but simply tax income. Keep in mind we should expect that tax income should lag tax law by about a year for the tax law to take effect. The GDP steadily rises, so the main difference is the tax income (total dollars). As a nation, the US tends to hang out around 11%-12% Tax/GDP ratio. There were some low years (2002-2004) which seems to align (with said lag) with the Democratic control of the Senate, although it could also be blamed on the "Bush Tax Cuts" (2001, if I recall correctly).
Short answer, looking at a president, a congress, a party, etc. is potentially a myopic view.
You are probably right, it is "cheap". I am, however, sure it doesn't include expenses on the government outside of paying the contracted development group (contract cost). If it takes four government people (I don't really know), that is probably about $500K/year in salary, maybe another $20K in travel/year, etc. I don't know anything about the game, so I could be way off base here, but if it is run off of government servers, cost to set those up and maintain those would also not be included in the price.
And not to belabor the point, but did you just get that DoD-approved software? How did it come? Install CD? Can not put that media into your computer. What if your computer is messed up (as mine is right now). My first thought a rescue CD. Oh wait, that it not allowed, because it, too, is external media.
Speaking from within the Air Force, "external" media has a different definition than you think. For example, an Air Force purchased USB drive (FIPS certified hardware encryption), only plugged into Air Force owned and maintained computers, is forbidden under this directive.
This should have been modded redundant. There were half a dozen users posting earlier that had the same message.
Read the DARPA wiki.
DARPA has been responsible for funding the development of many technologies which have had a major impact on the world The operative word is that they fund the development...DARPA has no research laboratories. They have no computational computer network. They are program managers. They are no more researchers than the PHB is a programmer. They are good at moving money around and have a great BS meter. The closest thing to research I have seen in SETA contractors working for a DARPA Program Manager. They do some background work, determine the state of the art, and potential for different research areas.
The NNIN is about four years old. There is certainly a review process. My understanding is each facility has their own process, in part because each facility has their own areas of expertise. So you put in an application to a facility and a board of faculty from that facility (I think two or three) review the technical proposal. The two I have completed were composed of a two page document that outlines what you hope to accomplish, identifying metrics, and a "plan of attack," if you will.
This sounds similar to what DARPA's EMPiRe project is doing.
Actually, Tony Tether is not just in charge of this challenge, he is in charge of DARPA (he is the director of DARPA).
He is known to be overly involved (everything that is funded through DARPA gets the direct blessing of him... i.e. he does not trust any of the program managers to fund without his involvement).
MunnMultimedia has no connections, but Stacy Munn does. In fact, Stacy Munn (resume found here) has current employment at Microsoft (rather with a contractor at Microsoft) doing "Learning and Media Specialist." This document is not outside the realm of her work or portfolio.
My first thought was that this site was too obvious too straight forward to be a Microsoft product. It, however, just might be legit.
I disagree, but only in practice. You are right in your interpretation, that the grandparent post suggests imaging onto a single fiber. Imaging using a fiber bundle instead. This actually works and a two dimensional scene, imaged on to the front facet of a fiber bundle will have an additional image plane on the back facet of the bundle. The complication and impracticality comes about because these are highly lossy (there must be absorbers put between individual fibers). I can't quickly find a link on line that shows the imaging property in action, but rest assured, it works. An imaging camera product based on this can be seen in the Schott Corp website. Ones I have seen are relatively short (a few inches long). Resolution would only be as good as the fiber bundle spacing, and again, light throughput is pretty small.
Oh the irony. This coming to you from a "science freak", so what do I know. I guess I should check my contract because the wool must have been pulled over my eyes when they claimed to have given me tenure (evidently tenure is only given to non-technical degree holders).
It works fine for me (Firefox 1.0.7 on Hoary).
Indeed, I am with you there. In fact, I will call the police if someone if masturbating, even if it is to the comics section of the newspaper. I think to maintain the ability to access pornographic sites is the implicit understanding that there *may* be reasons to do so (and are not reasons to forbid it). While I can't speak from first hand, I can say my wife took a class in human sexuality as part of a mental health counseling program. She said this class was pretty heavy on the nudity and graphic pictures/videos (yes, this was all done in the classroom). It wouldn't be out of place for a student (or the professor) to be doing studying on adult websites. I don't know any that did (the embarrassment was pretty much universal), but it is a reasonable subject.
As for being a jerk, it is sort of against the law as far as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is concerned, at least when it comes to employer/employee relationships. There are also Good Samaritan Laws throughout the states that would deam that you can't be a jerk to someone that tries to help you. I am sure there are other examples as well.
There is no law prohibiting looking at porn on tax payer expense, is there? Aren't citizens "allowed" (or "have the right," if you will) to do what they please, provided it is not prohibited by the law of the land? I am not aware of a law allowing me walk down a publicly funded sidewalk in jeans and a t-shirt with a tennis-ball in my left hand, but I don't hesitate to do so because there is no law against it.
Oh, and don't forget, it is these adults (even the ones that look at porn on tax payer expense) that pay taxes. It is not just you and your upstanding, look-at-porn-only-at-home kind that pay taxes. It is our pocket that tax money comes from, not just yours.
Not for nothing, but this verbization* of words by damn British colloquia hurts my sensitive American ears.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=corporathttp://www.askoxford.com/results/?view=searchresu
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/corporatisation
http://www.bartleby.com/cgi-bin/texis/webinator/a
[*]yes, I get the irony
I didn't see it live on TV at elementary school, but rather I saw it live at school. From central Florida, you can see (but not hear) shuttle launches. We went outside and watched the launch and were quite confused as to the (what I will colloquially call the) explosion. I distinctly remember rumors that there were two rockets to be launched that day and maybe they hit each other (after the fact, you could see the solid-rocket booster path back to earth and in the confusion, people mistook this for the plume of a launching rocket). I also remember people thinking that the burst was just the rocket separation (which we had never seen before). I also remember, distinctly, a girl that couldn't stop crying and it was really annoying at the time.
I remember that there was quite a bit of confusion for hours after the fact, though this could have been the teachers and grown-ups keeping us out of the loop because they didn't want to have to explain such a thing.
Several others have mentioned that spam will be "solved" once the sending of it has been stopped. I am not sure that Microsoft could ever solve spam in this sense (or any company, for that matter). I don't deny that MS could make great inroads on the problem based purely on their numbers, but when other operating systems, other filters, other mail programs, etc. exist, Microsoft couldn't possibly be responsible for these.
This is not to say they are not responsible for their corner of the world, but the best they can do is fix their SMTP holes, include spam filtering software in all of their software/webware products, and if they are feeling useful, develop a clear and documented solution that could used on other systems/programs.
However asking MS to "solve the problem" is a bit much, even if they did overextend the claim originally.
Ummm... yeah. I guess I should have pointed out that the post you replied to was complete bunk. In as much as it is a joke, the "strangely" reference should henseforth be considered a joke as well.
But yes, your point is quite true. Many wars have monetary repercussions. Thank you for your business.
In all likelyhood, yes... it is from the early 90's. You see the US government is not quick in doing anything, and especially not something as serious as coming up with a new "mission statement." You see, a committee was initiated to accomplish a new USAF mission statement in October, 1989 (beginning of the 1990 fiscal year). After a two year fact-finding period, a new mission statement was proposed without the words "sovereign" and "global interest." Strangely, there were references to the contries economy ("in defense of the nation's economy" - i'm paraphrasing).
After six years of berrating from the Department of the Treasury, this last line was taken out. At this time, the democratic party held the commander in chief position and the Air Force Secratary was forced to add a more global impact to the mission statement. Quite frankly, the only reason it wasn't released in FY99 was that it was sitting on a civil servant's desk awaiting a rubber stamp. A month ago, the Air Force had a clean-up "down day" which allowed this employee to clean their desk and find the mission statement paperwork.
Uhh... he did include gas prices from $2.50/gal to $10.00/gal on every single chart. This isn't good enough for you? I don't know that he would be well versed in fossil fuel futures, and even if he did include these, I don't know that I would believe them.
This seems to adress your first two concerns with this article. While the calculations on monthly dollar savings do not consider the value retention, it is not overlooked completely.
As for the "fun to drive" concern, I am sure that "OmniNerd" likely tried to include this. However, trying to address the core thesis of the article - "Is purchasing a gas-electric hybrid financially beneficial," I am sure he found it exceedingly difficult to include a "fun to drive" financial metric. The "math" doesn't seem too far off at all, considering the scope of the article.