I know the situation you mention, it was discussed here a while ago. In the USA it wouldn't be anything to take to court. As I recall all this "promise" was verbal and wasn't actually in the contracts. As I understand it there is also some blame to go towards SkyB, after all they SIGNED the contract with the different terms. In most countries a signed contract trumps any verbal agreement.I think SkyB have some people in thier pockets as well and there could also be some other vendors such as IBM "helping" out such that the contract gets re-awarded and they can win the next time. Pretty messy situation and unfortunately this crap is common when big money gets involved with big firms and big shot execs and lawyers. It DOES NOT mean EDS/HP as a whole is corrupt.
It also didn't mention that EDS had this Data Center planned, designed and construction underway BEFORE the "merger" (aka purchase of EDS accounts not people) with HP. HP didn't know much about running Data Centers until they bought EDS, and now they are taking credit for the work done by EDS before HP bought them.
Aries was supposed to be that "modular" concept. It tries to be too many things and does none of them well. The low to mid range Aires capability exists now so why not focus on the heavy lift version? Not to metion the vibration problems Aires has that would shake a crew to death and might even be worse than first thought. Any Shuttle derived concept would have to be massively beefed up to handle a capsule and would also have to be certified as man-rated which is not an easy thing.
Space Station was cancelled, restarted, delayed, changed, funding cut, etc. in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and so on. There NEVER was a "clear vision" for WHY we neede ISS other than a place for the Shuttle to go. I worked on at least two iterations of "ISS". The moon mission was a side effect of the Cold War and somewhat a legacy of JFK. There was some really cool inventions that came out of the program and were commercialized and lots of technology invented that went on to be used for many years.
Right now, the leaders in invention and technology for Space is in the commercial sector, but there is not a heavy lift MAN-RATED launch platform in the US commerical or NASA inventory at this time. There were some other alternatives that were proposed that were strictly heavy lift for manned missions but they were shot down for the Aries that was more "scalable" for many types of missions. This was a mistake as those other missions are being filled right now by commerical ventures like Atlas and Titan IV. Maybe it was a case of NASA wanted the whole launch "business" to itself like back in the 1960s. If the program was refocused on building a simple, efffective man-rated heavy lift launch vehicle (think Saturn V but modern) I think something could be ready in a few years. Granted we might have to "license" some engine technology from the Russians but it is doable. Spending more $$$ on R&D isn't going to progress anything. A TON of research was done in the 1960s and 1970s that can be reused, updated and put into practice, there really isn't a lot of NEW things the R&D money is going to invent. Just a different kind of "pork".
IIRC, 30 is considered the threshold amount of data samples to be comsidered statistically valid for a normal population. Lower than that allows results to quickly skewed by only 1 or 2 data points. One other point that was drummed home in Graduate Stats class was that many doctors don't know statistics and those that do many times cherry pick patients and/or filter the data so its skwed to the desirable result. In other words they are not impartial and let the data say what the results are for many reasons (money is #1) . In a case like this, everyone wants a good result to help these people but I'm afraid given the sample size and emotional component (and the fact no one has validated the study) leads me to say this is more marketing for more funding versus reporting a real breakthru in the treatment of such patients.
The back and forth thing is just a phone call. Takes less than a minute. My wife runs several hundred dollar Visa/MC purchases all the time in her business. We just call a toll free number, type in the card # and amount and if it needs verified by a person they come on and ask a question or two then give you the Verification number. The liability for fraud still lies with the merchant, they got your item, you got nada. The CC just charges the bad purchase it back to the merchant, they are not out a dime. VbV is nothing but marketing.
Listen yes, from Non-US locations. Perfectly legal. Look up Echelon. At least (right now) the Government isn't proposing using remote spy drones to monitor the population like has been proposed in the UK.
"normal" citizens? Not hardly, only targeted calls from people who might be terrorists or helping terrorists and most of that international calls. I don't think even the NSA has the compute power to monitor every landline, cell, VOIP call in the USA. They also need good probable cause, Ahmed's call back home to check on his lapis mine in Afghanistan isn't going to get him monitored.
If they were really do monitor convo's by everyday citizens as you said then prosecutors for ciriminal cases like murder, rape, etc. should also be get those transcripts to put the criminal away. And wow, the good that data could do in civil cases like divorce. I can just see the divorce lawyer getting those transcripts of the calls to your girlfriend or prostitute..slam dunk divorce and she gets everything.
Obama actually isn't in control either. I think some combination of his Chicago advisers, Pelosi and Reid are. For someone with his credentials, you take away his teleprompter and you wouldn't know he went to Harvard. When things are going wrong everyone in DC likes to blame everyone else so there isn't much difference there to be sure. At least Bush gave many millions of Iraqis back their country while Obama wants his Government to take over all of ours.
I see by your ID you are not new here, but did you forget the rules that say don't let facts get in the way of a good Bush and USA bashing? And of course that bashing has to be modded to +5 when it really needs a -5 (Troll) rating.
Sun has had X86 Intel and AMD servers for about 3 to 4 yrs now. Mutli-core CPU and multi CPU both. And blades. Of course they also had a lot of advanced features that made them expensive, and HP/Dell and sometimes IBM killed them on price at the 2 to 4 CPU low end pizza boxes. But you can't say they aren't "established".
The judgement couldn't happen to a nicer firm. HP screwed a lot of EDSers when they took over, and cut benefits and salaries to BELOW the level the "real" HP people were making. And they raided the pension fund for billions (HP has no pension plan)/ And they were going to keep the EDS brand...and they did for less than a year. Bad Karma comes back at you in many ways. That said there are a lot of good people at HP-EDS who may be hurt by all this crap even if they had nothing to do with it.
Having worked for EDS as Senior Technical Staff I can tell you that you EDS was greatly burdened with incompetent, underperforming, meddling middle managers who had nothing better to do but get in the way. HP has sacked most of that level. Technology wise EDS has a few very sharp good people, lots of good processes (commonl NOT followed), many hard workers who put in ungodly hours to try to fixing the mess the meddling managers created but seems to like to overcommit and underdeliver. They do a good job of things like hosting and infrastructure (in fact they host most of the airline reservations systems worldwide) but seem to stumble badly on new development work.
Agreed 100%. As a former HP-EDS employee who got involved in a fixing a few debacles it was usually a lot of overpromising by Sales that got the trouble started.
When they start tieing sales commissions to the delivery team actually being able to make good on what was promised then maybe there will be some changes. The Sales team would never buy into that as they think the delivery team are idiots and would screw them with cost over-runs, change orders for no costs, etc. . So you make BOTH teams have a moderate base + good sized completion bonus (by completion I mean client sign off). SInce both have money at risk I think you would get a good contract, a workable set of requirements, and at a cost that is still competitive. Of course one day pigs will fly too.
I'm not at all knowledgable about UK law but in the USA verbal agreements or promises are non-binding (if exception such was made by a corporate officer not Joe SalesGuy) so one cannot sue for specific performance or damages.
Good. When I talked to them 2 yrs ago about an Architect job what I described was what they told me a typical workweek for "staff" job was like. The thought was with so many amenities on site people didn't need that much time off.
You really think Ada is the be all of embedded? DOD gave up on requiring Ada many years ago and starting allowing whatever works best. There are even embedded Java versions avaiable, C and C++ are very popular as well. Then if you REALLY need tight code you write in assembler, or maybe you hand tune the code the compiler generates (that is a black art!). Ada is a cool language, maybe one of the most full featured ones ever built but it's a monster to learn, and is IMHO harder to program that C or C++.
Other than the Linux distros and the fact I haven't forgotten some languages but I really don't want to use them again the answer is YES. I've written software to kill people and software to rip off people (dot coms), worked in Sales, Consulted, worked in QA, been an IT Manager, and had my own business. Being versatile has kept me employed for 26 yrs excepting one small period during the 9/11 downturn. It's been a fun ride but frankly there really isn't much left for me but CIO and that's not likely as I don't do politics well. Oh, and I have an MBA that's 10 yrs back. The premise that you can't have BOTH is false.
Just remember that's not a 40 or 50 hour wage. Amazon is more like a 60 hour week plus being on call in case something breaks at 3AM. Microsoft is probably not much different except that they hire a lot of contractors and like to replace employees with contractors who are easier to get rid off.
Just to compare, I'm not a programmer now but I was for many years early in my career. I moved to Architecture and worked my way up to Enterprise Architect and I make > $140K . But somedays I'd give back my big bucks to go back to the much easier job of a programmer. But no one wants a programmer with 27 yrs experience!!
First off, his actions speak louder than anything. He is a Marxist, in Moderartes clothing. Go look at the party platform of the United States Communist Party and compare it to what Obama is doing, they are one and the same. He likes to hide behind the people in Congress and let them take the heat but behind the scences via his advisors and even in person he fully supports what is happening. You can fool a lot of people once but you can't fool nearly as many twice.
If the market wants productst they'll buy it, we don't need Government "stimulus" to encourage them. Plus those "stimulus" contracts normally come with a lot of Government "red tape" which sucks 30-40% out for overhead. There is proof out there that the Government money is not vital as firms have done some great things with zero Government bucks (Spaceship 2).
Ferrying people to LEO or ISS is silly, by the time this stuff goes online ISS will be de-orbited. LEO hops to where, Space Dock?? Why should be go back to the Moon? Why, we've been there and know it pretty well, unless it's a long term presence it's wasted money. A better idea is funds to do some cool R&D like the Space Elevator or technology for a Misson to Mars. Warp Drive anyone? Or lets see if Quantam Entaglement might yield the equalivent of a Star Trek transporter.
Also consider that there are very few firms in the US who have the know-how to undertake such work, and they are the same ones who are working for NASA now. So the money goes to the same people, just from a different Government account.
Human error happens in programming and in medical procedures. It cannot be 100% eliminated until robots are programming robots. There can be addtional efforts taken to produce quality software such as more testing, more software/hardware interlocks, formal methods to prove systems, etc..Better traning and maybe other things like actually evaluating the techs and MDs and firing the ones who screw up more than average could help.
Medical care is under intense pressure to do more with less and thus the techs are rushed or are backed up and overworked thus making mistakes. The software doesn't know this. It does what is asked. So you must correct many issues at the same time, better software, better training, better procedures, more techs, more Radiation Treatment facilities all of which cost more money. Too much costs and you go out of business, too many mistakes and you do as well. Catch-22.
I think it's just a conspiracy by the lawyers to keep themselves employed. "Hey Fred, who can we sue this year that might have something sorta remotely similar in color to our latest gadget? We need something to keep our paychecks coming in and if we win we all get bonuses. What do ya mean the consumer might get screwed? We're lawyers, we don't care who gets screwed as long as it isn't us"
...the mess that exists in the Windows operating systems....
There, fixed it for you. Unless improperly configured, UNIX/Linux don't have these issues. Windows has them be default with pitifully few workarounds.
Any nation whose Scientitsts think submarines should float is not one I trust to be moving asteroids in the right direction!!
No one has said how they plan to move several million tons of rock even the tiniest bit (mothballed nukes? Strap on Boosters? A huge spacetug pushing it?), so the important part of the whole plan in still TBD. I think the parent post is right, this all ounds more and more like something a Government would dream up to line someone's pockets (their own).
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I know the situation you mention, it was discussed here a while ago. In the USA it wouldn't be anything to take to court. As I recall all this "promise" was verbal and wasn't actually in the contracts. As I understand it there is also some blame to go towards SkyB, after all they SIGNED the contract with the different terms. In most countries a signed contract trumps any verbal agreement.I think SkyB have some people in thier pockets as well and there could also be some other vendors such as IBM "helping" out such that the contract gets re-awarded and they can win the next time. Pretty messy situation and unfortunately this crap is common when big money gets involved with big firms and big shot execs and lawyers. It DOES NOT mean EDS/HP as a whole is corrupt.
yep, I suspect there are some nice Science Sattelites that could benefit from heavylift. Right now they use Titan to put anything big up there.
Strong words, got proof? I'm sure some folks at HP and thier lawyers would like to discuss this with you.
It also didn't mention that EDS had this Data Center planned, designed and construction underway BEFORE the "merger" (aka purchase of EDS accounts not people) with HP. HP didn't know much about running Data Centers until they bought EDS, and now they are taking credit for the work done by EDS before HP bought them.
Aries was supposed to be that "modular" concept. It tries to be too many things and does none of them well. The low to mid range Aires capability exists now so why not focus on the heavy lift version? Not to metion the vibration problems Aires has that would shake a crew to death and might even be worse than first thought. Any Shuttle derived concept would have to be massively beefed up to handle a capsule and would also have to be certified as man-rated which is not an easy thing.
Space Station was cancelled, restarted, delayed, changed, funding cut, etc. in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and so on. There NEVER was a "clear vision" for WHY we neede ISS other than a place for the Shuttle to go. I worked on at least two iterations of "ISS". The moon mission was a side effect of the Cold War and somewhat a legacy of JFK. There was some really cool inventions that came out of the program and were commercialized and lots of technology invented that went on to be used for many years. Right now, the leaders in invention and technology for Space is in the commercial sector, but there is not a heavy lift MAN-RATED launch platform in the US commerical or NASA inventory at this time. There were some other alternatives that were proposed that were strictly heavy lift for manned missions but they were shot down for the Aries that was more "scalable" for many types of missions. This was a mistake as those other missions are being filled right now by commerical ventures like Atlas and Titan IV. Maybe it was a case of NASA wanted the whole launch "business" to itself like back in the 1960s. If the program was refocused on building a simple, efffective man-rated heavy lift launch vehicle (think Saturn V but modern) I think something could be ready in a few years. Granted we might have to "license" some engine technology from the Russians but it is doable. Spending more $$$ on R&D isn't going to progress anything. A TON of research was done in the 1960s and 1970s that can be reused, updated and put into practice, there really isn't a lot of NEW things the R&D money is going to invent. Just a different kind of "pork".
IIRC, 30 is considered the threshold amount of data samples to be comsidered statistically valid for a normal population. Lower than that allows results to quickly skewed by only 1 or 2 data points. One other point that was drummed home in Graduate Stats class was that many doctors don't know statistics and those that do many times cherry pick patients and/or filter the data so its skwed to the desirable result. In other words they are not impartial and let the data say what the results are for many reasons (money is #1) . In a case like this, everyone wants a good result to help these people but I'm afraid given the sample size and emotional component (and the fact no one has validated the study) leads me to say this is more marketing for more funding versus reporting a real breakthru in the treatment of such patients.
The back and forth thing is just a phone call. Takes less than a minute. My wife runs several hundred dollar Visa/MC purchases all the time in her business. We just call a toll free number, type in the card # and amount and if it needs verified by a person they come on and ask a question or two then give you the Verification number. The liability for fraud still lies with the merchant, they got your item, you got nada. The CC just charges the bad purchase it back to the merchant, they are not out a dime. VbV is nothing but marketing.
Listen yes, from Non-US locations. Perfectly legal. Look up Echelon. At least (right now) the Government isn't proposing using remote spy drones to monitor the population like has been proposed in the UK.
"normal" citizens? Not hardly, only targeted calls from people who might be terrorists or helping terrorists and most of that international calls. I don't think even the NSA has the compute power to monitor every landline, cell, VOIP call in the USA. They also need good probable cause, Ahmed's call back home to check on his lapis mine in Afghanistan isn't going to get him monitored.
If they were really do monitor convo's by everyday citizens as you said then prosecutors for ciriminal cases like murder, rape, etc. should also be get those transcripts to put the criminal away. And wow, the good that data could do in civil cases like divorce. I can just see the divorce lawyer getting those transcripts of the calls to your girlfriend or prostitute..slam dunk divorce and she gets everything.
Obama actually isn't in control either. I think some combination of his Chicago advisers, Pelosi and Reid are. For someone with his credentials, you take away his teleprompter and you wouldn't know he went to Harvard. When things are going wrong everyone in DC likes to blame everyone else so there isn't much difference there to be sure. At least Bush gave many millions of Iraqis back their country while Obama wants his Government to take over all of ours.
I see by your ID you are not new here, but did you forget the rules that say don't let facts get in the way of a good Bush and USA bashing? And of course that bashing has to be modded to +5 when it really needs a -5 (Troll) rating.
Sun has had X86 Intel and AMD servers for about 3 to 4 yrs now. Mutli-core CPU and multi CPU both. And blades. Of course they also had a lot of advanced features that made them expensive, and HP/Dell and sometimes IBM killed them on price at the 2 to 4 CPU low end pizza boxes. But you can't say they aren't "established".
The judgement couldn't happen to a nicer firm. HP screwed a lot of EDSers when they took over, and cut benefits and salaries to BELOW the level the "real" HP people were making. And they raided the pension fund for billions (HP has no pension plan)/ And they were going to keep the EDS brand...and they did for less than a year. Bad Karma comes back at you in many ways. That said there are a lot of good people at HP-EDS who may be hurt by all this crap even if they had nothing to do with it.
Having worked for EDS as Senior Technical Staff I can tell you that you EDS was greatly burdened with incompetent, underperforming, meddling middle managers who had nothing better to do but get in the way. HP has sacked most of that level. Technology wise EDS has a few very sharp good people, lots of good processes (commonl NOT followed), many hard workers who put in ungodly hours to try to fixing the mess the meddling managers created but seems to like to overcommit and underdeliver. They do a good job of things like hosting and infrastructure (in fact they host most of the airline reservations systems worldwide) but seem to stumble badly on new development work.
Agreed 100%. As a former HP-EDS employee who got involved in a fixing a few debacles it was usually a lot of overpromising by Sales that got the trouble started.
When they start tieing sales commissions to the delivery team actually being able to make good on what was promised then maybe there will be some changes. The Sales team would never buy into that as they think the delivery team are idiots and would screw them with cost over-runs, change orders for no costs, etc. . So you make BOTH teams have a moderate base + good sized completion bonus (by completion I mean client sign off). SInce both have money at risk I think you would get a good contract, a workable set of requirements, and at a cost that is still competitive. Of course one day pigs will fly too.
I'm not at all knowledgable about UK law but in the USA verbal agreements or promises are non-binding (if exception such was made by a corporate officer not Joe SalesGuy) so one cannot sue for specific performance or damages.
Good. When I talked to them 2 yrs ago about an Architect job what I described was what they told me a typical workweek for "staff" job was like. The thought was with so many amenities on site people didn't need that much time off.
You really think Ada is the be all of embedded? DOD gave up on requiring Ada many years ago and starting allowing whatever works best. There are even embedded Java versions avaiable, C and C++ are very popular as well. Then if you REALLY need tight code you write in assembler, or maybe you hand tune the code the compiler generates (that is a black art!). Ada is a cool language, maybe one of the most full featured ones ever built but it's a monster to learn, and is IMHO harder to program that C or C++.
Other than the Linux distros and the fact I haven't forgotten some languages but I really don't want to use them again the answer is YES. I've written software to kill people and software to rip off people (dot coms), worked in Sales, Consulted, worked in QA, been an IT Manager, and had my own business. Being versatile has kept me employed for 26 yrs excepting one small period during the 9/11 downturn. It's been a fun ride but frankly there really isn't much left for me but CIO and that's not likely as I don't do politics well. Oh, and I have an MBA that's 10 yrs back. The premise that you can't have BOTH is false.
Just remember that's not a 40 or 50 hour wage. Amazon is more like a 60 hour week plus being on call in case something breaks at 3AM. Microsoft is probably not much different except that they hire a lot of contractors and like to replace employees with contractors who are easier to get rid off. Just to compare, I'm not a programmer now but I was for many years early in my career. I moved to Architecture and worked my way up to Enterprise Architect and I make > $140K . But somedays I'd give back my big bucks to go back to the much easier job of a programmer. But no one wants a programmer with 27 yrs experience!!
First off, his actions speak louder than anything. He is a Marxist, in Moderartes clothing. Go look at the party platform of the United States Communist Party and compare it to what Obama is doing, they are one and the same. He likes to hide behind the people in Congress and let them take the heat but behind the scences via his advisors and even in person he fully supports what is happening. You can fool a lot of people once but you can't fool nearly as many twice.
If the market wants productst they'll buy it, we don't need Government "stimulus" to encourage them. Plus those "stimulus" contracts normally come with a lot of Government "red tape" which sucks 30-40% out for overhead. There is proof out there that the Government money is not vital as firms have done some great things with zero Government bucks (Spaceship 2).
Ferrying people to LEO or ISS is silly, by the time this stuff goes online ISS will be de-orbited. LEO hops to where, Space Dock?? Why should be go back to the Moon? Why, we've been there and know it pretty well, unless it's a long term presence it's wasted money. A better idea is funds to do some cool R&D like the Space Elevator or technology for a Misson to Mars. Warp Drive anyone? Or lets see if Quantam Entaglement might yield the equalivent of a Star Trek transporter.
Also consider that there are very few firms in the US who have the know-how to undertake such work, and they are the same ones who are working for NASA now. So the money goes to the same people, just from a different Government account.
Human error happens in programming and in medical procedures. It cannot be 100% eliminated until robots are programming robots. There can be addtional efforts taken to produce quality software such as more testing, more software/hardware interlocks, formal methods to prove systems, etc. .Better traning and maybe other things like actually evaluating the techs and MDs and firing the ones who screw up more than average could help.
Medical care is under intense pressure to do more with less and thus the techs are rushed or are backed up and overworked thus making mistakes. The software doesn't know this. It does what is asked. So you must correct many issues at the same time, better software, better training, better procedures, more techs, more Radiation Treatment facilities all of which cost more money. Too much costs and you go out of business, too many mistakes and you do as well. Catch-22.
I think it's just a conspiracy by the lawyers to keep themselves employed. "Hey Fred, who can we sue this year that might have something sorta remotely similar in color to our latest gadget? We need something to keep our paychecks coming in and if we win we all get bonuses. What do ya mean the consumer might get screwed? We're lawyers, we don't care who gets screwed as long as it isn't us"
MAD of AT&T and Microsoft?? Bring it on!! That could be a good thing.
...the mess that exists in the Windows operating systems.... There, fixed it for you. Unless improperly configured, UNIX/Linux don't have these issues. Windows has them be default with pitifully few workarounds.
Any nation whose Scientitsts think submarines should float is not one I trust to be moving asteroids in the right direction!! No one has said how they plan to move several million tons of rock even the tiniest bit (mothballed nukes? Strap on Boosters? A huge spacetug pushing it?), so the important part of the whole plan in still TBD. I think the parent post is right, this all ounds more and more like something a Government would dream up to line someone's pockets (their own).