If the contractor is getting paid for O&M support already, they are funded to make improvements to the product. They will invariably choose not to, of course.
The guidance is misapplied in most cases. It is a case of creative misrepresentation of the intent of the USG.
About 3 and 4, the acquisition process militates directly against this - the whole idea of "PDSS" and "PPSS" is about transitioning a system to government-run long term support.
Probably true. But the system doesn't call for that. Procurement of new systems is via contract. Saying you are going to constitute an internal government team to produce the system would be shot down instantly in most cases. It violates acquisition rules, and you'd have staffing difficulties.
The acquisition system in the government has its thumb on the scale for hiring these LSIs. The system is built to compete requirements out to this small group of system integrators. They set up as a prime, hire on subs to bring stuff to the table and to fulfill good-intentioned but misguided rules about hiring small businesses and minority-owned contractors, and get the award. Then the cycle proceeds as described above.
The usual idiots with political axes to grind can keep on droning on about things they don't know anything about. I see lots of that above.
Everything Trump said is true in regards Federal IT. Everything Kushner said is also true.
The federal government's IT issue revolves around the huge body shop LSI contractors - GD/NG/BAH/CACI etc. These companies and their subcontractors do a lot of the development and O&M type work associated with federal programs. Key things to remember about these firms:
1) They won't modernize anything without being paid (again). 2) They take prior government guidance and twist it into justification for their incompetence 3) They maximize labor over automation 4) They keep knowledge institutionalized within their company to the maximum extent possible to maintain their incumbent status
These companies and their business practices are a huge reason why Federal IT sucks. They get away with it due to Congressional cover. When pressured, or at risk of losing a contract, their lobby in Congress is activated by notifying the lawmakers that jobs will be lost in their districts. The noise level and scrutiny of the Executive agency is usually sufficient to shut that attempt down. Minor GS-level functionaries melt away when Congressional staffers start getting on their case.
Trump could help with the problem but it's like the Dutch boy trying to use his fingers to fill in holes in the dike. You run out of fingers after a while.
There are other problems like institutional incompetence amongst GS personnel, but those are probably more amenable to solution than the one I describe.
Bottom line: The whole system is broken and sucks.
Oh, I should have added some text. McVeigh was a reaction to Clinton's inexcusable behavior at Waco. 76 people dead because of overzealous enforcement of pointless feel-good firearm regulations. With close to half a billion firearms at large in the US.
Yes, he was a terrorist shitbag. But yes, he was provoked by high-handed and probably unconstitutional federal action.
They didn't know how to make black powder. That had to wait until the 9th century in China, didn't spread to the Middle East till c.1250 and Europe a few decades later.
Vox is a leftist advocacy site and doesn't even try to sugarcoat it.
I'd like to see you link to something from say, Mike Cernovich. Never will happen, but if you're going to link to this partisan tripe, might as well go both ways.
Spent most of my life in and around NYC and I do DC now. Short detours to various flyover country destinations. More retards in Blue America. A lot more, must be something in the water. I'd rather live in Texas, thanks.
The best part is that they think they are smarter than everyone else. A conceit that never fails to make me smile.
Somewhat ironically, dehumidifers essentially work just like you are describing, inasmuch as they pull water vapor out of the air and cause it to condense within the dehumidifier, which stores the excess moisture in a tank. AC units also need drains for the water they pull out of the air.
If you have ever seen a portable room air conditioning unit, they have tanks in the bottom to store the condensed water and can be used as dehumidifiers - some have this setting. Computer room AC units also humidify and dehumidify as required to maintain a set point of humidity. I've never had water condense inside of a server in a climate controlled server room.
The reason why refrigerated cases are not a thing is not even the water issue. It's mostly because the temperature differential a small refrigeration unit could maintain using a compressor and refrigerant gas is not high enough to counteract the heat generated by even a modest computing rig. And if you wanted a case the size of a full size refrigerator, you'd not need it as forced air cooling would suffice in such a large case for any reasonable rig. Also, the fan noise might bug you, but a compressor would knock your socks off. They are very noisy animals.
N.B. Every refrigerator i've ever seen also has at least two fans - one for the evaporator coil and one for the condenser.
My parents owned an appliance store and I grew up doing service calls fixing refrigeration and AC mostly, which dovetailed nicely into running data centers.
The employment to population ratio in the US is a bit over 59%. That means 41% of all Americans able to work, aren't.
This number was near 65% back in the 1990s. Ironically, back in the 1970s, when I was a kid, the number was lower - scraping 55% at that time. However, it was much less common for married women to work back then. The two income household was, socially at least, a 1980s innovation.
So here we are in an era where automated manufacturing and AI-controlled machines will delete millions of jobs. That number is never going to be 65% again. It will be well below 50% in 20 years, and I might be pessimistic.
My first thought on this matter was that humankind has always been quite evil to its surplus population. You need but look back to the last few times there was a significant population surplus where no immediate use for the labor force could be identified. Mao's China, the Ukraine in the 1920s/30s, the Crusades, think hard and you'll come up with some examples. Go back to antiquity and you'll find some really horrid ones.
I submit that we'd find a way to kill off the surplus somehow - gladiatorial combat, mass extermination, whatever. So letting them die by doing stupid shit is actually merciful compared to what is coming for the surplus population.
To think that the people who created/are creating all this computerized automation didn't even think about this. It'll not be believed in the future. But I believe it - so interested in proving that it could be done that they never thought whether it SHOULD be done.
The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Norvell, Jun. 11, 1807 (he got his successor elected the following year)
“The newspapers attacking me are not newspapers in the ordinary sense,” Baldwin said. “They are engines of propaganda for the constantly changing policies, desires, personal vices, personal likes and dislikes of the two men. What are their methods? Their methods are direct falsehoods, misrepresentation, half-truths, the alteration of the speaker's meaning by publishing a sentence apart from the context...What the proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”
Stanley Baldwin, three-time Prime Minister of the UK - 1931 (just before a general election he won)
You asked why - so i'll tell you why. An autopiloting system is dependent on electrical connections. If you fuck up the harness, you're liable. I guarantee you'll be held in as a shop owner if that happens. So you replace the harness and shift the blame to Tesla or its parts supplier.
You haven't done a salt water flood car, apparently. You replace all the harnesses there because even if they work on the day it goes back to the owner, it won't work some time afterward. And there's literally no achievable way to get the corrosion out of the harness once it's tasted salt water.
Anyway, the rules for what to do with wiring harnesses are not straightforward. I have written replace a lot that didn't need replacing, and vice versa. But on the Tesla...it would be in the shop owner's interest to replace and i'd go along with that, as would most insurance companies I have dealt with.
Slashdot Mirror
If the contractor is getting paid for O&M support already, they are funded to make improvements to the product. They will invariably choose not to, of course.
The guidance is misapplied in most cases. It is a case of creative misrepresentation of the intent of the USG.
About 3 and 4, the acquisition process militates directly against this - the whole idea of "PDSS" and "PPSS" is about transitioning a system to government-run long term support.
Probably true. But the system doesn't call for that. Procurement of new systems is via contract. Saying you are going to constitute an internal government team to produce the system would be shot down instantly in most cases. It violates acquisition rules, and you'd have staffing difficulties.
The acquisition system in the government has its thumb on the scale for hiring these LSIs. The system is built to compete requirements out to this small group of system integrators. They set up as a prime, hire on subs to bring stuff to the table and to fulfill good-intentioned but misguided rules about hiring small businesses and minority-owned contractors, and get the award. Then the cycle proceeds as described above.
Fix that, and you're a genius.
The usual idiots with political axes to grind can keep on droning on about things they don't know anything about. I see lots of that above.
Everything Trump said is true in regards Federal IT. Everything Kushner said is also true.
The federal government's IT issue revolves around the huge body shop LSI contractors - GD/NG/BAH/CACI etc. These companies and their subcontractors do a lot of the development and O&M type work associated with federal programs. Key things to remember about these firms:
1) They won't modernize anything without being paid (again).
2) They take prior government guidance and twist it into justification for their incompetence
3) They maximize labor over automation
4) They keep knowledge institutionalized within their company to the maximum extent possible to maintain their incumbent status
These companies and their business practices are a huge reason why Federal IT sucks. They get away with it due to Congressional cover. When pressured, or at risk of losing a contract, their lobby in Congress is activated by notifying the lawmakers that jobs will be lost in their districts. The noise level and scrutiny of the Executive agency is usually sufficient to shut that attempt down. Minor GS-level functionaries melt away when Congressional staffers start getting on their case.
Trump could help with the problem but it's like the Dutch boy trying to use his fingers to fill in holes in the dike. You run out of fingers after a while.
There are other problems like institutional incompetence amongst GS personnel, but those are probably more amenable to solution than the one I describe.
Bottom line: The whole system is broken and sucks.
Oh, I should have added some text. McVeigh was a reaction to Clinton's inexcusable behavior at Waco. 76 people dead because of overzealous enforcement of pointless feel-good firearm regulations. With close to half a billion firearms at large in the US.
Yes, he was a terrorist shitbag. But yes, he was provoked by high-handed and probably unconstitutional federal action.
n/t
I was reading this on a plane last night, and it turns out that Oscar Wilde's comments on women and men and how they differ seem poignant here.
There was lead in the food on December 31, 2010, also. That was the last time you had a fully Democratic controlled government.
You'll have to come up with another lame excuse now.
If you properly filter the site, it remains barely usable.
He lives in a country that has been partitioned, invaded, and raped blind by every one of its neighbors over the past 250 years or so.
Its only reliable ally is the United States.
If you were going to run a torrent site, I would have recommended living pretty much anywhere but Poland.
It would be a twofer. Destroying a Cold War legacy satellite and the huge boondoggle that is the ISS at the same time.
Based on the Antikythera mechanism, i'm not going to rule this out.
They didn't know how to make black powder. That had to wait until the 9th century in China, didn't spread to the Middle East till c.1250 and Europe a few decades later.
Vox is a leftist advocacy site and doesn't even try to sugarcoat it.
I'd like to see you link to something from say, Mike Cernovich. Never will happen, but if you're going to link to this partisan tripe, might as well go both ways.
Spent most of my life in and around NYC and I do DC now. Short detours to various flyover country destinations. More retards in Blue America. A lot more, must be something in the water. I'd rather live in Texas, thanks.
The best part is that they think they are smarter than everyone else. A conceit that never fails to make me smile.
And then they won. Funny, that.
Somewhat ironically, dehumidifers essentially work just like you are describing, inasmuch as they pull water vapor out of the air and cause it to condense within the dehumidifier, which stores the excess moisture in a tank. AC units also need drains for the water they pull out of the air.
If you have ever seen a portable room air conditioning unit, they have tanks in the bottom to store the condensed water and can be used as dehumidifiers - some have this setting. Computer room AC units also humidify and dehumidify as required to maintain a set point of humidity. I've never had water condense inside of a server in a climate controlled server room.
The reason why refrigerated cases are not a thing is not even the water issue. It's mostly because the temperature differential a small refrigeration unit could maintain using a compressor and refrigerant gas is not high enough to counteract the heat generated by even a modest computing rig. And if you wanted a case the size of a full size refrigerator, you'd not need it as forced air cooling would suffice in such a large case for any reasonable rig. Also, the fan noise might bug you, but a compressor would knock your socks off. They are very noisy animals.
N.B. Every refrigerator i've ever seen also has at least two fans - one for the evaporator coil and one for the condenser.
My parents owned an appliance store and I grew up doing service calls fixing refrigeration and AC mostly, which dovetailed nicely into running data centers.
9th Circuit is the most reversed circuit of the 11 existing circuits. There's no tap dancing around that one.
The employment to population ratio in the US is a bit over 59%. That means 41% of all Americans able to work, aren't.
This number was near 65% back in the 1990s. Ironically, back in the 1970s, when I was a kid, the number was lower - scraping 55% at that time. However, it was much less common for married women to work back then. The two income household was, socially at least, a 1980s innovation.
So here we are in an era where automated manufacturing and AI-controlled machines will delete millions of jobs. That number is never going to be 65% again. It will be well below 50% in 20 years, and I might be pessimistic.
My first thought on this matter was that humankind has always been quite evil to its surplus population. You need but look back to the last few times there was a significant population surplus where no immediate use for the labor force could be identified. Mao's China, the Ukraine in the 1920s/30s, the Crusades, think hard and you'll come up with some examples. Go back to antiquity and you'll find some really horrid ones.
I submit that we'd find a way to kill off the surplus somehow - gladiatorial combat, mass extermination, whatever. So letting them die by doing stupid shit is actually merciful compared to what is coming for the surplus population.
To think that the people who created/are creating all this computerized automation didn't even think about this. It'll not be believed in the future. But I believe it - so interested in proving that it could be done that they never thought whether it SHOULD be done.
You'd think they were out of the mainstream of jurisprudence, judging by how often that happens.
This is why.
As Machiavelli said, however deceived in generalities, men are not deceived in particulars.
The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Norvell, Jun. 11, 1807 (he got his successor elected the following year)
“The newspapers attacking me are not newspapers in the ordinary sense,” Baldwin said. “They are engines of propaganda for the constantly changing policies, desires, personal vices, personal likes and dislikes of the two men. What are their methods? Their methods are direct falsehoods, misrepresentation, half-truths, the alteration of the speaker's meaning by publishing a sentence apart from the context...What the proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”
Stanley Baldwin, three-time Prime Minister of the UK - 1931 (just before a general election he won)
You can keep asking that question forever. The only answer is hubris. They can, therefore they are.
You asked why - so i'll tell you why. An autopiloting system is dependent on electrical connections. If you fuck up the harness, you're liable. I guarantee you'll be held in as a shop owner if that happens. So you replace the harness and shift the blame to Tesla or its parts supplier.
You haven't done a salt water flood car, apparently. You replace all the harnesses there because even if they work on the day it goes back to the owner, it won't work some time afterward. And there's literally no achievable way to get the corrosion out of the harness once it's tasted salt water.
Anyway, the rules for what to do with wiring harnesses are not straightforward. I have written replace a lot that didn't need replacing, and vice versa. But on the Tesla...it would be in the shop owner's interest to replace and i'd go along with that, as would most insurance companies I have dealt with.