I wonder how much that's actually related. When I read the contractor was NG, I asked myself "what the hell are they in that business for?"
The answer, money, is of course, a major suspect in the failure.
This contract should not have gone to someone like NG, who probably just turned around and sold it to EMC who should have been competent. That is, if it really was EMC and not one of their subcontractors.
As much as Northrup is being bashed here, I don't think this problem is specific to NG, but common to many large contractors and their subs.
In the few times I've worked with subcontractors doing IT for the government I've been unimpressed. Even being one step away from the prime contract seems to allow for many problems, both technical and managerial. Requirements and deadlines aren't met, and they pull the BP-Halliburton-Transocean trick of avoiding responsibility by blaming each other (as well as everyone's favorite scapegoat: the government). Trying to get a subcontractor to build things they way they were supposed to will often require waiting for the next spiral, which means going way over budget.
I understand the difficulty with pushing too hard, punishing contractors who screw up and scaring them away from government work, but it seems we've gone too far in accepting very expensive third-rate work. As much as the public likes to say government can't do anything right, how much worse off would we be than $2.4B in the hole with nothing to show for it but a mediocre datacenter run by amateurs? I don't think I'm asking for much, I haven't touched on the very messy political poisoning of contracting.
Not being able to stand anyone having a different opinion from yours makes you perfectly suited for Al Quaeda. Again, come back when you grow up, stupid.
Would you remind me again of that magical formula which says two wrongs make a right? I haven't been to stupid school in a while.
I'm not saying crazy is a strictly right-wing thing, and it takes a moron to argue that I am. Did you read about the today's nut job of the day? He ain't one of you Glenn Beck watchers.
This isn't about a handful of random crazy. It's about a specific movement of crazy. Something can be done to diffuse the latter, but not the former. That starts with demanding that Republican congressmen do not feed the crazy.
As I've pointed out in another post, "most" doesn't matter when their leaders do. It only takes one person, which as I also pointed out, is the problem with any non-insignificant sort of acceptance.
And you conveniently ignore the fact that the right was not granted for individual determination, but as a collective decision. Insane is a perfectly fine way of describing someone who thinks they have the sole capacity and right to choose for the rest of the nation. You are only partially right about revolution is that it is violent, but it is not about assassination. The problem with King George was never looked at in such a way, and the founders would abhor you uncivilized and brutish notion.
On a personal note, if you think I've no taste for violence, I'd be more than happy to school you on the truth. It's a myth that liberals are sissier than you throwbacks, we just don't need it to settle an argument.
To understand my meaning, search for the wildly criticized phase "second amendment remedies". They keep talking about it as if it's a good idea, not the "Bachmann is actually going to convince one of those idiots is going to kill Obama" liberals fear, but a useful tool in their political toolbelt. Waiting for murder to happen isn't good enough when you know violence has already gone beyond the verbal, and the leaders of the crazies are happy to ignore and embrace it.
I find it funny that Obama has never restricted any of the borderline treasonous and conspiratorial speech about killing his party members, nor acted against WikiLeaks and yet he's still getting this nonsense about how he's a dictator who is somehow going to stop wikileaks with this completely ineffective way.
True, but we have connection points and a whole big chunk of the servers here. In the case someone thinks it makes sense to cut the USA off from the rest of the world's networks, and just as your servers are yours (your versions of Ebay and Google are likely properly distributed and might still work), our servers are our business, if you don't mind.
If we want to bullocks our Internet, how are you going to stop us?:)
It's related only in being yet another conspiracy theory used by crazies who see plots against their liberties in every act of government.
It's a very stupid idea proposed by people who don't understand technology. But it's not meant to censor one webserver which can be moved to an unblocked ISP, nor would they shut down the entire network so "forbidden knowledge" couldn't be transferred peer-to-peer (I bet you can get the WikiLeaks content on every major P2P network). Shut down YouTube or ESPN for more than a day and people will be quick to kill the kill switch.
Well put. But I believe the process isn't about enumeration. It's about establishing capacity, that is, building the "switch" which the president's could flip.
We need to get everybody in Washington out, and start fresh, but lets do it right, and not use "second ammendment rights" like the crazy tea-party wants.
you start bitching about how standing up for your rights is a crazy thing to do.
Murdering politicians isn't equivalent to a right to have weapons. That's just one more reason why the tea party is viewed so poorly by sane people.
Read your rant? I must admit that no, not in any detail; I ignore the crying of people who irritate me and reserve my full attention for adults who have something useful to say.
I didn't come for a fight, I only came to inform you that you're acting like an ass in public. The way people once did, but now are afraid to because parents seem to think they can do a piss poor job raising their idiot children.
You're enjoying being defensive and insist on arguing about nothing for no good reason; probably more coddling than discipline, never experienced hardship, certainly never wore the uniform. Whatever the case, it makes for everlasting childhood and is one more source of decline in civility and discourse. I hope you're at least somewhat agreeable offline, or I pity those who must suffer you.
It's almost like you didn't bother to read what I wrote, and instead just jumped right to the part where you get to insult me! Way to show your open-minded, patient, even-tempered, and adaptable nature, old guy!
Wrong guy. I'm the old-fashioned guy raised right who doesn't take kindly to such behavior. So much for your own legendary adaptability and care in reading what others write. Being young doesn't make you any quicker than being old makes one addled, you know.
You continue to attribute to "old guy" a lesser quality than yourself simply because he's older and use that to frame your argument against length of experience. Your comments suggest to the contrary of what you now claim "obvious". Shame that instead of simply agreeing to a clarification, you chose to continue with your childish argumentative responses.
But hey, don't let me take all the fun out of being a prick, sonny.
"Made or done in the traditional or original way, or in a way that faithfully resembles an original" (source)
The wording was "more authentic" as these were compared to sold items which are said to be farther removed from the original design/intent. And given the original props are not commercial items, the definition you used loses all meaning- you can't counterfeit a fictional item.
We're not talking about rote assembly of iPods here. In the world of programming, length is generally a multiplier for quality, whether that quality is good or bad. You'll continue to be treated like a child so long as you cling to your childish view that, all other things being equal, you're his equal. Programming be damned, he's most certainly a better man, which means far more to the majority of employers than your empty boasts.
Isn't it enough to be proud of buying something carefully designed in America, regardless of who manufactured it?
Pride- sure, but that's not the topic at hand, which is all about jobs. Saying "buy American" about Apple is pointless since the majority of Apple-related jobs lie in manufacturing, and those are neither unavailable to American workers, nor favor using American resources.
Or heck, just to be happy with something well designed at all, regardless of origin. A well designed product counts as a win for the human species, I would say, since it serves as a model and an example anyone can follow.
That's an interesting way of thinking but the fact is we're in a world where international economic competition matters to individuals (in jobs and standard of living), and "an example anyone can follow" translates easily into cheating through cheap knockoffs and what idiots call "piracy". And then there's still the argument that Apple's ability to profit is the only guarantee that humanity will have such "wins", and the reason "Intellectual Property" is so prominent in modern diplomacy.
Buying Apple is a good way to feel good about being rich/fashionable, not American. If you want to feel good, buy an American car, but check the parts list to ensure it wasn't just assembled here.
Really? Troll? I must have pissed off somebody childish recently.
I wasn't trying to criticize anybody, just point out that there are degrees of torture.
For the life of me, I can't figure out who would disagree. A crazy lefty who rejects with the degrees thing? A rightist zealot who can't stand critique of the US? Somebody so self-righteous they down-mod anything linking to a non-source like Wikipedia? Ooh- I got it! It's a Wikipedia nazi who hates that there are lists on Wikipedia!
Torture in the modern middle east generally runs the gamut from severe beatings to destruction of limbs, other organs, or paralysis. For more interesting techniques with which humans have mistreated each other, see this list.
'Not' would be methods the US is known to have used recently, such as waterboarding and sleep deprivation. These can certainly be defined under the same word 'torture', but (when done properly) leave no physical damage.
That's a major difference even if you still reject both as unacceptably cruel.
Gravatar? Seriously, never heard of them before today.
I presume its' there in no small part due to Wordpress' use. "Popular website" includes services. Note the high ranking for "double click", of which the average user has never heard and never visited intentionally.
Simple. You RTFA and see who's complaining and why. Even better, study the issue like Renraku who mentioned gangs as an important problem.
Here's the quote that got me, which nobody cared to address:
"New buildings are nice, but when they're run by the same people who've given us a 50 percent dropout rate, they're a big waste of taxpayer money," said Ben Austin, executive director of Parent Revolution who sits on the California Board of Education. "Parents aren't fooled."
How the fuck do you blame teachers for kids not showing up to school?
But instead of details like this and building costs mentioned in other posts, all we get on Slashdot is the standard anti-government rants. But nope, the small-government freaks hadn't the courage to stand up for their usual demands for "personal responsibility" as an equally appropriate argument to the freak quoted in the article.
And you really don't need anywhere near that many unless you want to save time by not making people wait for knives. But of course we don't, I mean, this isn't Stalin's murderous communist Russia, we're talking ab....
I say we start by teaching kids in science class that a "designer" neither killed the dinosaurs (which are, until someone comes up with damn good proof to the contrary, very real), nor chopped the legs of snakes. Then get them to understand concepts like "proof", "validity", and "evidence", how to ask smart questions (ie don't just teach to tests) and how to answer those questions independently..
Grasping those concepts, they can individually disprove and ignore a large amount of falsehoods seen on bad news outlets*, and most of politicians' lies ("Really, you live just miles away from a barely populated district of Russia? Let's leave that 'experience' box unchecked, but definitely check the boxes reading 'might legalize pot' and 'someone I'd like to light up with'") . With a little maturity they might be able turn off "news, tabloid, and nonsense" channels when they spend half their time talking about strange animals, idiot celebrities, and to your point, the latest nonsense from some fringe partisan idiot. I hate Fox for giving them a platform, and MSNBC for covering the crap Fox stoops to for ratings. (Oh, and while I'm on the subject, the idiots who killed SciFi and turned it into a 24/7 channel about supernatural-believing idiots. "Monster Ark" was only pitifully ridiculous- this never-ending broadcasting of braincell-killing ghost hunter drek is criminal. There, I feel better now.)
* Sadly, I can't think of one right now which isn't bad. C-SPAN is real and occasionally worth watching, but doesn't have a news format and often too tedious or covering uninteresting topics.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder how much that's actually related. When I read the contractor was NG, I asked myself "what the hell are they in that business for?"
The answer, money, is of course, a major suspect in the failure.
This contract should not have gone to someone like NG, who probably just turned around and sold it to EMC who should have been competent. That is, if it really was EMC and not one of their subcontractors.
As much as Northrup is being bashed here, I don't think this problem is specific to NG, but common to many large contractors and their subs.
In the few times I've worked with subcontractors doing IT for the government I've been unimpressed. Even being one step away from the prime contract seems to allow for many problems, both technical and managerial. Requirements and deadlines aren't met, and they pull the BP-Halliburton-Transocean trick of avoiding responsibility by blaming each other (as well as everyone's favorite scapegoat: the government). Trying to get a subcontractor to build things they way they were supposed to will often require waiting for the next spiral, which means going way over budget.
I understand the difficulty with pushing too hard, punishing contractors who screw up and scaring them away from government work, but it seems we've gone too far in accepting very expensive third-rate work. As much as the public likes to say government can't do anything right, how much worse off would we be than $2.4B in the hole with nothing to show for it but a mediocre datacenter run by amateurs? I don't think I'm asking for much, I haven't touched on the very messy political poisoning of contracting.
That's not the question at hand.
Not being able to stand anyone having a different opinion from yours makes you perfectly suited for Al Quaeda. Again, come back when you grow up, stupid.
I don't talk politics with partisan assholes. Come back when you grow up.
Would you remind me again of that magical formula which says two wrongs make a right? I haven't been to stupid school in a while.
I'm not saying crazy is a strictly right-wing thing, and it takes a moron to argue that I am. Did you read about the today's nut job of the day? He ain't one of you Glenn Beck watchers.
This isn't about a handful of random crazy. It's about a specific movement of crazy. Something can be done to diffuse the latter, but not the former. That starts with demanding that Republican congressmen do not feed the crazy.
As I've pointed out in another post, "most" doesn't matter when their leaders do. It only takes one person, which as I also pointed out, is the problem with any non-insignificant sort of acceptance.
And you conveniently ignore the fact that the right was not granted for individual determination, but as a collective decision. Insane is a perfectly fine way of describing someone who thinks they have the sole capacity and right to choose for the rest of the nation. You are only partially right about revolution is that it is violent, but it is not about assassination. The problem with King George was never looked at in such a way, and the founders would abhor you uncivilized and brutish notion.
On a personal note, if you think I've no taste for violence, I'd be more than happy to school you on the truth. It's a myth that liberals are sissier than you throwbacks, we just don't need it to settle an argument.
To understand my meaning, search for the wildly criticized phase "second amendment remedies". They keep talking about it as if it's a good idea, not the "Bachmann is actually going to convince one of those idiots is going to kill Obama" liberals fear, but a useful tool in their political toolbelt. Waiting for murder to happen isn't good enough when you know violence has already gone beyond the verbal, and the leaders of the crazies are happy to ignore and embrace it.
I find it funny that Obama has never restricted any of the borderline treasonous and conspiratorial speech about killing his party members, nor acted against WikiLeaks and yet he's still getting this nonsense about how he's a dictator who is somehow going to stop wikileaks with this completely ineffective way.
True, but we have connection points and a whole big chunk of the servers here. In the case someone thinks it makes sense to cut the USA off from the rest of the world's networks, and just as your servers are yours (your versions of Ebay and Google are likely properly distributed and might still work), our servers are our business, if you don't mind.
If we want to bullocks our Internet, how are you going to stop us? :)
It's related only in being yet another conspiracy theory used by crazies who see plots against their liberties in every act of government.
It's a very stupid idea proposed by people who don't understand technology. But it's not meant to censor one webserver which can be moved to an unblocked ISP, nor would they shut down the entire network so "forbidden knowledge" couldn't be transferred peer-to-peer (I bet you can get the WikiLeaks content on every major P2P network). Shut down YouTube or ESPN for more than a day and people will be quick to kill the kill switch.
Well put. But I believe the process isn't about enumeration. It's about establishing capacity, that is, building the "switch" which the president's could flip.
We need to get everybody in Washington out, and start fresh, but lets do it right, and not use "second ammendment rights" like the crazy tea-party wants.
you start bitching about how standing up for your rights is a crazy thing to do.
Murdering politicians isn't equivalent to a right to have weapons. That's just one more reason why the tea party is viewed so poorly by sane people.
Read your rant? I must admit that no, not in any detail; I ignore the crying of people who irritate me and reserve my full attention for adults who have something useful to say.
I didn't come for a fight, I only came to inform you that you're acting like an ass in public. The way people once did, but now are afraid to because parents seem to think they can do a piss poor job raising their idiot children.
You're enjoying being defensive and insist on arguing about nothing for no good reason; probably more coddling than discipline, never experienced hardship, certainly never wore the uniform. Whatever the case, it makes for everlasting childhood and is one more source of decline in civility and discourse. I hope you're at least somewhat agreeable offline, or I pity those who must suffer you.
It's almost like you didn't bother to read what I wrote, and instead just jumped right to the part where you get to insult me! Way to show your open-minded, patient, even-tempered, and adaptable nature, old guy!
Wrong guy. I'm the old-fashioned guy raised right who doesn't take kindly to such behavior. So much for your own legendary adaptability and care in reading what others write. Being young doesn't make you any quicker than being old makes one addled, you know.
You continue to attribute to "old guy" a lesser quality than yourself simply because he's older and use that to frame your argument against length of experience. Your comments suggest to the contrary of what you now claim "obvious". Shame that instead of simply agreeing to a clarification, you chose to continue with your childish argumentative responses.
But hey, don't let me take all the fun out of being a prick, sonny.
You're using the wrong definition. Try this one:
"Made or done in the traditional or original way, or in a way that faithfully resembles an original" (source)
The wording was "more authentic" as these were compared to sold items which are said to be farther removed from the original design/intent. And given the original props are not commercial items, the definition you used loses all meaning- you can't counterfeit a fictional item.
Length of experience means very little
Nope.
We're not talking about rote assembly of iPods here. In the world of programming, length is generally a multiplier for quality, whether that quality is good or bad. You'll continue to be treated like a child so long as you cling to your childish view that, all other things being equal, you're his equal. Programming be damned, he's most certainly a better man, which means far more to the majority of employers than your empty boasts.
It's just a flesh wound!
Isn't it enough to be proud of buying something carefully designed in America, regardless of who manufactured it?
Pride- sure, but that's not the topic at hand, which is all about jobs. Saying "buy American" about Apple is pointless since the majority of Apple-related jobs lie in manufacturing, and those are neither unavailable to American workers, nor favor using American resources.
Or heck, just to be happy with something well designed at all, regardless of origin. A well designed product counts as a win for the human species, I would say, since it serves as a model and an example anyone can follow.
That's an interesting way of thinking but the fact is we're in a world where international economic competition matters to individuals (in jobs and standard of living), and "an example anyone can follow" translates easily into cheating through cheap knockoffs and what idiots call "piracy". And then there's still the argument that Apple's ability to profit is the only guarantee that humanity will have such "wins", and the reason "Intellectual Property" is so prominent in modern diplomacy.
Buying Apple is a good way to feel good about being rich/fashionable, not American. If you want to feel good, buy an American car, but check the parts list to ensure it wasn't just assembled here.
Really? Troll? I must have pissed off somebody childish recently.
I wasn't trying to criticize anybody, just point out that there are degrees of torture.
For the life of me, I can't figure out who would disagree. A crazy lefty who rejects with the degrees thing? A rightist zealot who can't stand critique of the US? Somebody so self-righteous they down-mod anything linking to a non-source like Wikipedia? Ooh- I got it! It's a Wikipedia nazi who hates that there are lists on Wikipedia!
But seriously- what'd I say wrong?
Torture in the modern middle east generally runs the gamut from severe beatings to destruction of limbs, other organs, or paralysis. For more interesting techniques with which humans have mistreated each other, see this list.
'Not' would be methods the US is known to have used recently, such as waterboarding and sleep deprivation. These can certainly be defined under the same word 'torture', but (when done properly) leave no physical damage.
That's a major difference even if you still reject both as unacceptably cruel.
Gravatar? Seriously, never heard of them before today.
I presume its' there in no small part due to Wordpress' use. "Popular website" includes services. Note the high ranking for "double click", of which the average user has never heard and never visited intentionally.
PS- Pointing out your ignorance is pointless.
Well put.
How can you tell who sucks, though?
Simple. You RTFA and see who's complaining and why. Even better, study the issue like Renraku who mentioned gangs as an important problem.
Here's the quote that got me, which nobody cared to address:
"New buildings are nice, but when they're run by the same people who've given us a 50 percent dropout rate, they're a big waste of taxpayer money," said Ben Austin, executive director of Parent Revolution who sits on the California Board of Education. "Parents aren't fooled."
How the fuck do you blame teachers for kids not showing up to school?
But instead of details like this and building costs mentioned in other posts, all we get on Slashdot is the standard anti-government rants. But nope, the small-government freaks hadn't the courage to stand up for their usual demands for "personal responsibility" as an equally appropriate argument to the freak quoted in the article.
And you really don't need anywhere near that many unless you want to save time by not making people wait for knives. But of course we don't, I mean, this isn't Stalin's murderous communist Russia, we're talking ab....
Good question.
I say we start by teaching kids in science class that a "designer" neither killed the dinosaurs (which are, until someone comes up with damn good proof to the contrary, very real), nor chopped the legs of snakes. Then get them to understand concepts like "proof", "validity", and "evidence", how to ask smart questions (ie don't just teach to tests) and how to answer those questions independently..
Grasping those concepts, they can individually disprove and ignore a large amount of falsehoods seen on bad news outlets*, and most of politicians' lies ("Really, you live just miles away from a barely populated district of Russia? Let's leave that 'experience' box unchecked, but definitely check the boxes reading 'might legalize pot' and 'someone I'd like to light up with'") . With a little maturity they might be able turn off "news, tabloid, and nonsense" channels when they spend half their time talking about strange animals, idiot celebrities, and to your point, the latest nonsense from some fringe partisan idiot. I hate Fox for giving them a platform, and MSNBC for covering the crap Fox stoops to for ratings. (Oh, and while I'm on the subject, the idiots who killed SciFi and turned it into a 24/7 channel about supernatural-believing idiots. "Monster Ark" was only pitifully ridiculous- this never-ending broadcasting of braincell-killing ghost hunter drek is criminal. There, I feel better now.)
* Sadly, I can't think of one right now which isn't bad. C-SPAN is real and occasionally worth watching, but doesn't have a news format and often too tedious or covering uninteresting topics.