I'm surprised that the drone used such a simpleminded technique as the one described in the article. For centuries, sailors have used a technique called dead reckoning that extrapolates from a previously known position, speed, and direction to an estimated current position. Today, when navigation instruments fail, sailors still use the technique. A friend of mine crewed on a boat sailing from Norfolk, VA to St. Thomas, USVI (roughly 1500 miles) using nothing but dead reckoning. When they arrived in St. Thomas, they were about two miles off course. I'm not a drone expert, but the attack that the Iranians mounted against the drone could easily have been defeated using other countermeasures besides GPS signals.
Muslims inherited the scientific work of the Assyrians, who were a highly prolific community of scientific theorists, when they conquered them. Within 100 years of the conquest, no significant new scientific work was accomplished by this community. Muslims conquered centers of scholarship (e.g., Alexandria) and maintained them through the dark ages. This was an important contribution, but it should be understood for what it was - maintenance of centers of scholarship that others created without contributing significant scholarship on top of the established paradigm. Has Christianity been hostile to science? Of course, examples (Galileo et al.) are well known. However, science advanced, perhaps despite Christian orthodoxy, once the dark ages ended. Significant scientific advancement stopped within 100 years of the Muslim conquest of the Assyrians (roughly 900 CE) and restarted in 1200 CE when the dark ages ended.
I must say that this thread is Slashdot at its best. Knowledgeable people, whose knowledge was earned from years of study, freely share their knowledge with the rest of us. I am humbled by their knowledge, but more importantly, I am stunned by the generosity of these posters.
Half the population is below the median, Hazel. It is below the average if and only if intelligence is normally distributed. So, while you condescend the lower half of the population, get your statistics right.
The Andromeda Strain, 1971, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qEsqjJAY-k, has a scene where scientists are simulating the growth of a foreign living substance, the Andromeda Strain. The substance grows exponentially and the computer "blows up" trying to keep up with the high speed growth. The computer's console device was a TTY. Although most computers in those days had TTY consoles, it is funny to see scientists entering in commands on the TTY. Of course, the TTY lives on as the standard input device in Unix. etc. operating systems. We just don't have a physical TTY in front of us any more. In those days hardly anyone was exposed to computers and movies' depictions of the giant machines usually had operators wearing lab coats and carrying clipboards.
My firm's business model includes part time workers working from home on their own computers. Since these knowledge workers already have computers and high speed internet access AND since all of our applications are web based, why do we need to replicate the employee's hardware/software/service environment? We test applications against IE, Firefox, and Chrome to insure compatibility. Even though we buy all services from the cloud, we need to stay abreast of changes in technology such as smart phone access. Consequently, we have a CIO. Our research shows that security problems are more likely to occur in in-house hosted environments than in SaaS environments. Nothing is fool-proof and vigilance is always requiremed, but our model has been working well so far. Finally, the employees love working at home. We have zero capital requirements and happy employees. What's not to like about that?
Allow me to generalize sqlewis100's post. The examples provided are business processes that separate responsibilities such that fraud can only occur if multiple parties (e.g., those who print the checks and those who sign them) collude. If such safeguards are built into all business processes, then the probability of fraud is minimized; it is never eliminated. In a mature field such as accounting, best practice business processes contain safeguards that raise the price of fraudulent behavior to prohibitively high levels. The problem with IT is that it is about 500 years behind accounting. There is no escaping IT's relative immaturity. We are vulnerable until we can mature the field. I just hope that it doesn't take 500 years.
The problem with some entrepreneurs is that they can't execute. That is, they must develop a business plan and execute it. If the plan underestimates the value of programmers, the business will fail. If the plan correctly values the programmer, but the plan is not executed correctly, the business will fail. Additionally, entrepreneurs must be able to adjust the plan when the facts change.
Unless Carlin believes, er believed, in the ubiquity of the normal distribution, then his joke should read "Think about how stupid the median person is. Now, realize that half of them are dumber than that."
I can't speak to all of the poster's comments, but I can address the Medicaid point. I have worked for over 25 years for Medicaid contractors and have done so in 14 states, so I have a pretty good perspective on the pluses and minuses of outsourcing this service. Medicaid is usually the largest line item in a state's budget. Consequently, IT and other services required to run the program are not only expensive, but highly visible. Many state bureaucracies have concluded that they do not want to risk such exposure and are willing to pay for the privilege of pointing their fingers at a contractor whenever there are problems. Most of these contracts' operational expenses pay for non-IT services such as mail room, data entry, call center, and other staff. These personnel fall into the same category as the janitors, security personnel, and others that the poster identifies. Most of these contracts require the contractor to develop at a fixed price a system for the state to be used in the operations phase of the contract. State IT units are unwilling to take on such risk and, instead, only develop systems on a cost-plus basis. Most of these contracts require the contractor to supply a minimum number of IT staff devoted to change orders, so the contractor only makes additional money when the volume of change orders exceeds the capacity of the contracted minimum of staff. Additionally, maintenance required for bug fixes is usually not a reimbursable expense. Again, contractors are required to assume risk that states will not take on. Health care administration is a rapidly changing (You cannot imagine the impact of HIPAA on health care administrators, public and private), and contractors with multiple contracts are much better able to understand the changing environment, develop solutions for the changes, and leverage experience from all of their contracts for the benefit of each individual contract. Although there are only about five contractors in this market, the competition is brutal, resulting in lower prices for states. Although it would seem that states lose valuable expertise when an incumbent contractor loses a re-bid, the reality is that people working for the old contractor tend to go to work for the new contractor.
Are these contractors perfect? Absolutely not. I have seen failures that could only be resolved by kicking the contractor out. This is obviously painful to the contractor, but very disruptive to the state. States could save themselves this disruption by changing some of their procurement rules (e.g., the bidder with the lowest bid price exceeds a minimum technical score) that reward lower quality proposals. They could also increase the Medicaid program's performance by optimizing their end-to-end business processes prior to issuing an RFP. Many states' business processes are fundamentally broken. If you compare the head count used in a state-staffed operation vs. the head count used in a contractor-staffed operation, you often see a two- or three-to-one difference. Medicaid RFPs are notoriously ambiguous and routinely include phrases such as "including but limited to" in requirements statements. Fully modeled and documented processes generate fully developed use cases.
Ray Kurzweill's "The Singularity is Near" predicts human brain simulation within 20-30 years. His predictions are based on estimates in hardware advances (e.g., Moore's Law), advances in AI, Neuroscience, and other technologies required to crack this problem. His work was vetted by experts in those fields (he is an expert in AI) and since the book's publication in 2005, no serious objections have been raised about the underlying science and engineering required to simulate the human brain. IBM's simulation of a cat's cerebral cortex is a step towards ultimately simulating a human brain. Kurzweill's argument (accelerating change) indicates that the IBM simulation will be followed by other simulations of increasing complexity and the rate that these simulations are undertaken will accelerate over time. Perhaps Ray could chime in here and put this thing into perspective.
I am shocked that the writings of Nassim Taleb have not been mentioned in this thread. His books (e.g., Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan) address many of the shortcomings of conventional financial models. He is a trader who has rejected many of the standard models used by most traders as well as the models used by economists. The arguments advanced by Neoclassical and Keynesian economists are largely irrelevant to the risks identified by Taleb.
Am I the only one with an employer that has the attitude "If I can't see you working, you aren't working"?
In fact, the last few companies I've worked at have been like that. Maybe I've just been unlucky, but "working from home" hasn't been an option at any point in my career.
Your employer will die. Not only will your employer fail to attract employees who prefer to work remotely, but your employer's costs will be higher than its competitors. At my firm, all employees work remotely. These knowledge workers all have broadband access, computers, printers, etc.... all the tools that they need to work in our web based environment. And speaking of the environment, remote workers combined with cloud computing is the ultimate green business model. As the business grows, no additional office space or servers are required. Of course, as the business grows, we are consuming more resources from the hosting providers that our SaaS providers use. This lean business model will eat your employer's business for lunch.
Postings like this are the reason that I endure much of the drivel posted on/. I have one comment about the original argument. Centralizing the counter-intel function presents a single target to the Chinese to obtain our defensive as well as our offensive strategies and tactics. An organization diffused across the DoD, NSA, CIA, universities, and the usual suspects may be less efficient than a centralized organization, but may also be less vulnerable to attack than a centralized organization in the same way as dispersing navy ships across multiple home ports.
The desktop market is becoming obsolete, so why chase this market? More and more applications are becoming web-based (my business and government clients are asking for/demanding zero administration work stations). Microsoft's main desktop competitor is web-based applications - not other OSes. Fighting with Microsoft for a shrinking desktop-centric market doesn't make sense to me. Instead, pursue the server and web-based applications markets.
Evolution is a threat to fundamentalist beliefs. Consider how various Christian groups react to evidence conflicting with their beliefs. Let us partition Christians into Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and Fundamentalists. I am ignoring groups like the Orthodox who I don't understand. Catholics, Anglicans, and Fundamentalists react differently when science presents evidence that conflicts with long-held beliefs.
The Catholic hierarchy learned long ago that inconvenient evidence such as the universe not rotating around the earth did not undermine their theology. Thus, they modified their beliefs about science, but they did not modify their core beliefs. In general, the Catholic faithful have adopted the Catholic hierarchy's understanding of these evidence/belief conflicts.
Anglicanism is grounded in the three-legged construct of scripture, tradition (i.e., the laying on of hands by Jesus onto the disciples and to others throughout the ages), and reason. Each of these components is in tension with the others and Anglicans believe that truth will emerge from this tension. Consequently, evidence contrary to scripture and other beliefs is worked out (this a often a long and acrimonious process) within the Anglican communion until they believe that they understand where God stands on the issue.
Fundamentalists are grounded in scripture alone and many Fundamentalists believe that scripture must be literally interpreted. Consequently, when evidence conflicts with scripture, Fundamentalism, itself, is attacked. I think this explains their attacks against evolution and anything else that threatens scripture.
If I remember correctly, I need to deliver money to you in a plain brown bag in the dead of night. I am sure that there are not many of us on this site old enough to remember Fire Sign Theatre.
Regards,
Porgy, Mudhead, & the gang at Shadow Valley Condoms
Carr wrote the May 2003 Harvard Business Review's "IT Doesn't Matter." His argument (grossly simplified) was that IT is a "utility" and businesses should not invest in IT because IT cannot differentiate one firm from another. In a well known (to the business community, but apparently not to./) rebuttal to Carr's article (Smith & Fingar's "IT Doesn't Matter, Business Processes Do", Meghan-Kiffer Press, 2003,) it is argued (again, grossly simplified) that IT is critical to optimizing business processes - the true source of enterprise value. A business that optimizes its processes differentiates itself (positively) from its competitors. In fact, Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) is a new layer on the enterprise software stack. For those of you coming from the SOA space, BPMS is the choreography layer.
Carr's current article's argument that IT functions should be taken over by functional units only perpetuates the silo thinking of most organizations. Budgeting IT resources on a departmental basis perpetuates islands of automation, redundant/conflicting rules, ridiculous internal interfaces., etc. Outsourcing some or all IT functions may be reasonable in some cases, but turning control of IT over to the various functional units in an organization is insane.
Much of the science attributed to 9th-11th century Islam is actually Assyrian. The Assyrians produced significant scientific achievements for centuries, were defeated militarily by Islamic invaders, forced to convert, and, within about 100 years, stopped producing any meaningful science. Google 'Assyria Science Islam' for numerous articles on this. The early Muslims, perhaps, understood the importance of science by capturing it, building libraries, etc. However, they never mastered the scientific method or the attitudes that support science. Consequentially, "getting back to the golden age of Islamic science" is not really possible. As the author stated, developing and supporting attitudes conducive to science is critical to scientific progress is Islamic countries, but it will be the first time that substantive scientific work takes place in Islamic countries.
A short Economics lesson is in order here. When a firm prices its product differently for different customers or niche markets, the firm is said to be using discriminatory pricing. The classic example used in introductory Economics texts is charging adults higher prices than children for movie tickets. The movie theatre does this because children do not have as much money as adults, i.e., their demand is more elastic than adults. The theatre may be able to maximize its profit with discriminatory pricing. I say "may be able to" because the product (the movie) is also important. Most children will not attend an Ingmar Bergman film festival at any price. Note that the theatre's ability to charge prices (to both adults and children) is limited by other theatres across town.
The marginal cost of exposing the movie to another set of eyes is zero until the theatre runs out of seats. Software is different because you only run out of "seats" when every person on the globe has obtained a copy of your software. If the software were in a competitive market, a software publisher's ability to charge various prices is limited by other publishers' prices. If you are a monopoly publisher, and I think Microsoft is one, then you can charge any price that you want to in any national market.
If Microsoft is operating rationally, and I think that it is, it will set a price in each national market that maximizes revenue in that market. Remember, since marginal cost of producing another copy of the software is essentially zero, revenue maximization is also profit maximization.
Slashdot Mirror
Vote Libertarian!
I'm surprised that the drone used such a simpleminded technique as the one described in the article. For centuries, sailors have used a technique called dead reckoning that extrapolates from a previously known position, speed, and direction to an estimated current position. Today, when navigation instruments fail, sailors still use the technique. A friend of mine crewed on a boat sailing from Norfolk, VA to St. Thomas, USVI (roughly 1500 miles) using nothing but dead reckoning. When they arrived in St. Thomas, they were about two miles off course. I'm not a drone expert, but the attack that the Iranians mounted against the drone could easily have been defeated using other countermeasures besides GPS signals.
Drop dead.
Muslims inherited the scientific work of the Assyrians, who were a highly prolific community of scientific theorists, when they conquered them. Within 100 years of the conquest, no significant new scientific work was accomplished by this community. Muslims conquered centers of scholarship (e.g., Alexandria) and maintained them through the dark ages. This was an important contribution, but it should be understood for what it was - maintenance of centers of scholarship that others created without contributing significant scholarship on top of the established paradigm. Has Christianity been hostile to science? Of course, examples (Galileo et al.) are well known. However, science advanced, perhaps despite Christian orthodoxy, once the dark ages ended. Significant scientific advancement stopped within 100 years of the Muslim conquest of the Assyrians (roughly 900 CE) and restarted in 1200 CE when the dark ages ended.
I must say that this thread is Slashdot at its best. Knowledgeable people, whose knowledge was earned from years of study, freely share their knowledge with the rest of us. I am humbled by their knowledge, but more importantly, I am stunned by the generosity of these posters.
Half the population is below the median, Hazel. It is below the average if and only if intelligence is normally distributed. So, while you condescend the lower half of the population, get your statistics right.
The Andromeda Strain, 1971, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qEsqjJAY-k, has a scene where scientists are simulating the growth of a foreign living substance, the Andromeda Strain. The substance grows exponentially and the computer "blows up" trying to keep up with the high speed growth. The computer's console device was a TTY. Although most computers in those days had TTY consoles, it is funny to see scientists entering in commands on the TTY. Of course, the TTY lives on as the standard input device in Unix. etc. operating systems. We just don't have a physical TTY in front of us any more. In those days hardly anyone was exposed to computers and movies' depictions of the giant machines usually had operators wearing lab coats and carrying clipboards.
My firm's business model includes part time workers working from home on their own computers. Since these knowledge workers already have computers and high speed internet access AND since all of our applications are web based, why do we need to replicate the employee's hardware/software/service environment? We test applications against IE, Firefox, and Chrome to insure compatibility. Even though we buy all services from the cloud, we need to stay abreast of changes in technology such as smart phone access. Consequently, we have a CIO. Our research shows that security problems are more likely to occur in in-house hosted environments than in SaaS environments. Nothing is fool-proof and vigilance is always requiremed, but our model has been working well so far. Finally, the employees love working at home. We have zero capital requirements and happy employees. What's not to like about that?
Allow me to generalize sqlewis100's post. The examples provided are business processes that separate responsibilities such that fraud can only occur if multiple parties (e.g., those who print the checks and those who sign them) collude. If such safeguards are built into all business processes, then the probability of fraud is minimized; it is never eliminated. In a mature field such as accounting, best practice business processes contain safeguards that raise the price of fraudulent behavior to prohibitively high levels. The problem with IT is that it is about 500 years behind accounting. There is no escaping IT's relative immaturity. We are vulnerable until we can mature the field. I just hope that it doesn't take 500 years.
The problem with some entrepreneurs is that they can't execute. That is, they must develop a business plan and execute it. If the plan underestimates the value of programmers, the business will fail. If the plan correctly values the programmer, but the plan is not executed correctly, the business will fail. Additionally, entrepreneurs must be able to adjust the plan when the facts change.
Unless Carlin believes, er believed, in the ubiquity of the normal distribution, then his joke should read "Think about how stupid the median person is. Now, realize that half of them are dumber than that."
Are these contractors perfect? Absolutely not. I have seen failures that could only be resolved by kicking the contractor out. This is obviously painful to the contractor, but very disruptive to the state. States could save themselves this disruption by changing some of their procurement rules (e.g., the bidder with the lowest bid price exceeds a minimum technical score) that reward lower quality proposals. They could also increase the Medicaid program's performance by optimizing their end-to-end business processes prior to issuing an RFP. Many states' business processes are fundamentally broken. If you compare the head count used in a state-staffed operation vs. the head count used in a contractor-staffed operation, you often see a two- or three-to-one difference. Medicaid RFPs are notoriously ambiguous and routinely include phrases such as "including but limited to" in requirements statements. Fully modeled and documented processes generate fully developed use cases.
Ray Kurzweill's "The Singularity is Near" predicts human brain simulation within 20-30 years. His predictions are based on estimates in hardware advances (e.g., Moore's Law), advances in AI, Neuroscience, and other technologies required to crack this problem. His work was vetted by experts in those fields (he is an expert in AI) and since the book's publication in 2005, no serious objections have been raised about the underlying science and engineering required to simulate the human brain. IBM's simulation of a cat's cerebral cortex is a step towards ultimately simulating a human brain. Kurzweill's argument (accelerating change) indicates that the IBM simulation will be followed by other simulations of increasing complexity and the rate that these simulations are undertaken will accelerate over time. Perhaps Ray could chime in here and put this thing into perspective.
The FDA's unconscionable foot dragging could result in tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths in the US.
The best bet seems to be an AA battery, but I've not seen any indication that anyone in the region has AA.
You can find AA batteries in any drugstore. Why shouldn't you be able to find them in Afghanistan?
I am shocked that the writings of Nassim Taleb have not been mentioned in this thread. His books (e.g., Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan) address many of the shortcomings of conventional financial models. He is a trader who has rejected many of the standard models used by most traders as well as the models used by economists. The arguments advanced by Neoclassical and Keynesian economists are largely irrelevant to the risks identified by Taleb.
Am I the only one with an employer that has the attitude "If I can't see you working, you aren't working"?
In fact, the last few companies I've worked at have been like that. Maybe I've just been unlucky, but "working from home" hasn't been an option at any point in my career.
Your employer will die. Not only will your employer fail to attract employees who prefer to work remotely, but your employer's costs will be higher than its competitors. At my firm, all employees work remotely. These knowledge workers all have broadband access, computers, printers, etc. ... all the tools that they need to work in our web based environment. And speaking of the environment, remote workers combined with cloud computing is the ultimate green business model. As the business grows, no additional office space or servers are required. Of course, as the business grows, we are consuming more resources from the hosting providers that our SaaS providers use. This lean business model will eat your employer's business for lunch.
Adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) caused much of financial meltdown in the housing market.
Postings like this are the reason that I endure much of the drivel posted on /. I have one comment about the original argument. Centralizing the counter-intel function presents a single target to the Chinese to obtain our defensive as well as our offensive strategies and tactics. An organization diffused across the DoD, NSA, CIA, universities, and the usual suspects may be less efficient than a centralized organization, but may also be less vulnerable to attack than a centralized organization in the same way as dispersing navy ships across multiple home ports.
The desktop market is becoming obsolete, so why chase this market? More and more applications are becoming web-based (my business and government clients are asking for/demanding zero administration work stations). Microsoft's main desktop competitor is web-based applications - not other OSes. Fighting with Microsoft for a shrinking desktop-centric market doesn't make sense to me. Instead, pursue the server and web-based applications markets.
The Catholic hierarchy learned long ago that inconvenient evidence such as the universe not rotating around the earth did not undermine their theology. Thus, they modified their beliefs about science, but they did not modify their core beliefs. In general, the Catholic faithful have adopted the Catholic hierarchy's understanding of these evidence/belief conflicts.
Anglicanism is grounded in the three-legged construct of scripture, tradition (i.e., the laying on of hands by Jesus onto the disciples and to others throughout the ages), and reason. Each of these components is in tension with the others and Anglicans believe that truth will emerge from this tension. Consequently, evidence contrary to scripture and other beliefs is worked out (this a often a long and acrimonious process) within the Anglican communion until they believe that they understand where God stands on the issue.
Fundamentalists are grounded in scripture alone and many Fundamentalists believe that scripture must be literally interpreted. Consequently, when evidence conflicts with scripture, Fundamentalism, itself, is attacked. I think this explains their attacks against evolution and anything else that threatens scripture.
If I remember correctly, I need to deliver money to you in a plain brown bag in the dead of night. I am sure that there are not many of us on this site old enough to remember Fire Sign Theatre.
Regards,
Porgy, Mudhead, & the gang at Shadow Valley Condoms
If you lived here, you'd be home by now!
Carr's current article's argument that IT functions should be taken over by functional units only perpetuates the silo thinking of most organizations. Budgeting IT resources on a departmental basis perpetuates islands of automation, redundant/conflicting rules, ridiculous internal interfaces., etc. Outsourcing some or all IT functions may be reasonable in some cases, but turning control of IT over to the various functional units in an organization is insane.
Much of the science attributed to 9th-11th century Islam is actually Assyrian. The Assyrians produced significant scientific achievements for centuries, were defeated militarily by Islamic invaders, forced to convert, and, within about 100 years, stopped producing any meaningful science. Google 'Assyria Science Islam' for numerous articles on this. The early Muslims, perhaps, understood the importance of science by capturing it, building libraries, etc. However, they never mastered the scientific method or the attitudes that support science. Consequentially, "getting back to the golden age of Islamic science" is not really possible. As the author stated, developing and supporting attitudes conducive to science is critical to scientific progress is Islamic countries, but it will be the first time that substantive scientific work takes place in Islamic countries.
The marginal cost of exposing the movie to another set of eyes is zero until the theatre runs out of seats. Software is different because you only run out of "seats" when every person on the globe has obtained a copy of your software. If the software were in a competitive market, a software publisher's ability to charge various prices is limited by other publishers' prices. If you are a monopoly publisher, and I think Microsoft is one, then you can charge any price that you want to in any national market.
If Microsoft is operating rationally, and I think that it is, it will set a price in each national market that maximizes revenue in that market. Remember, since marginal cost of producing another copy of the software is essentially zero, revenue maximization is also profit maximization.