I have heard of entire towns being run off wind power.
However Diesel will remain no matter what. Northern conditions are not...suited, for sustainable energy. You don't get "Sun" for a large portion of the year, also snow cover would complicate panels, conventional batteries do not work "well" at extreme cold temperatures, using water and dams to store potential energy is not really an option. Even with wind, ice and snow would make maintaining them a pain.
The only other alternative is Nukes, but realistically a large nuke plant is not suitable either due to population. Proposed "portable" nuke plants would be a good alternative likely, through would also have to be designed for the elements. I am not sure if there are potential geothermal options in the area, likely not in convenient areas (i.e where people are).
A) The USA already did this twice and remains to this day the only country to ever use nukes to kill civilians of a non-nuke nation. B) The rational for using nukes was public opinion. The USA knew that their public would never support a war in which they would accept such heavy losses, which they would have during a conventional invasion of Japan. For this reason the only option for victory was to kill as many civilians as possible to force Japan to capitulate, which they did. C) If EVER faced with a similar situation; exactly how long do you think it will take to destroy that newly developed doctrine? About as much time it takes to tear it up. D) Given that the only two uses ever specified for Nukes are 1) Deterrence, 2) Mutually assured destruction or doomsday, and 3) See "B)" nothing has really changed.
So it is all ready pointless to create said document other than to abstractly give more weight to the nonproliferation treaties, which really is BS other than mentally. Having said all that, I don't think the USA would ever use it on Iran, as I am pretty sure they could wipe the floor with them conventionally (and be left with a mess like Iraq likely). As for NK, that is another matter. I would say of all countries, that is the one place in the world it would be used. The reason for this is that NK is so fortified, and militarized, that any conventional victory by the USA would fail. The troops would get chewed to hell (even if they are winning), and public opinion for the war would go into the toilet, and a new leader would be elected and end the war.
To date about 5000 Americans have died over a period of 9 years in Iraq. Look how much opposition there is to that war, and how much media coverage every time there are causalities. When the USA went to invade Japan, they were pretty much defeated, yet casualty estimates were into the MILLIONS of allies. NK would be not a whole lot different I don't think. For this reason I hope the people of NK get a more moderate leader than old Kim Jon, as if he does something crazy, there is NO WAY the USA is invading that mess, they will turn it into so much blackened glass before that happens. I believe it is the only place in the world that has that danger.
I think the mortgage meltdown is pretty illustrative of that.
People do stupid things when there isn't any consequences...
If you have corporate entities, that are "too big to fail" or will cause total economic collapse, then I think your probably doing something terribly wrong.
No longer are things priced by binning, now every one has an equal chance.
I would seriously buy one if the price was right. I mean I already own a C2D 1.8 I bought on the assumption that I could overclock the thing to 3.2 or whatever, and then was sorely dissapointed when it couldn't take an OC at all. I mean the ONLY reason I bought it was to OC it.
This would fill that niche. You don't have to sort or test them, heck, you don't even need to market them... what are you gonna say... erm we don't know how fast it will run, nor do we really know how many cores it contains... buy one and find out! Sure I will, just price 'em cheap and I would be all over that! (so long as your secretly not binning all the good ones and just selling rejects!)
I dunno, sounds find to me if the price is right. Overclockers everywhere would have a field day posting their finds! Not sure how you would do the package with a possible variable number of cores. I guess your MB would have to be uber compatible with everything...
Yes yes I know it is an April Fools joke. I still want one for fun though!:)
Unless you think the research chair and professor in Applied Mathematics and Global Change at the University of British Columbia and the professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are also nutjobs. I am inclined to think they know a thing or two about what they are talking about. Both of them agree that the current research is over simplified, faulty assumptions, based on data used improperly. Hardly, foregone conclusion as most people who spout this rhetoric would have you believe.
Calling people names like "deniers" only proves that you are not tolerant of other ideas, and that you only have faith in your own. That is not science.
Myself I am not saying one way or another with any certainty what is happening. However from what I have read and what I have seen, much of the actual science seems to be flawed, and is heavily weighted on assumptions which are in turn based on assumptions, based on sketchy data, in which much of the methods used are questionable. The whole thing has become so politicized now, that there is more politics in it that any bit of science that may have been apart of it.
The release of the emails just added to the mess, in that it showed that "scientists" (and I use that word lightly) were actively trying to prevent people from examining their data, and actively trying to prevent other people with contrary opinions to their own from publishing it in an academic journal, going so far I heard as to try and purchase the journal so they could pick and choose who got published (only the ones that back their findings).
Anyway sketchy. I think people should be more environmentally friendly, and reduce the amount of energy we use anyway. Pollution and wanton consumption without regard is I believe is pretty irresponsible. So far as I am concerned Climate Change or not, it is something we should be doing anyway. I find most of the hype and fervor of the issue to be sensationalistic BS used for purely economical reasons. It is a complex issue that should be investigated thoroughly, and doesn't need people telling others that they are "deniers" etc... of obvious "truths". If your looking for "Truth" pick up a bible or a copy of Philosophy 101, as you won't find any "truth" in science. Science is about "facts", and reproducible experiment, or at the very very least confirmed modeling based on real life data. I have yet to see a model that hasn't failed under any kind of rigor.
Don't even get me started on the fools who blather on about geo-engineering like they know what they are talking about. That's like a blind guy doing surgery using a chainsaw. These would probably be the same morons that 100 years ago would suggest introducing a foreign invasive species to solve some kind of pest problem, not fully understanding the consequences of their actions...
I understand the reason to fight in court, however if he ends up losing, what is to stop him from just moving all his physical servers to some country like Kerblackistan that doesn't give two whits about what some judge in USA land has to say? I mean the whole site is just hosting torrents which are just teeny tiny files that point uTorrent et al where to find the good stuff, correct? That doesn't exactly take a whole lot of horsepower.
I mean Pirate Bay got shut down because the US pressured the crap out of Sweden to do it, but I am sure there are plenty of places that could care less.
Anyway I gotta go blow my bandwidth cap for March/April and download what parts of the internet I don't already have...
It always reminded me of something I heard on TV about cancer research. I am paraphrasing...
The trick isn't finding something that will kill cancer, there are plenty of things that can do that, common things like bleach kill it easily, the trick is to find something that will kill cancer yet at the same time not kill off the host as well...
James Lovelock: "China! We demand you put your democracy on hold so we can get down to business of solving climate change by building sea defenses or some other crazy thing" China: "Um OK?"
Rather than try to "protect" the data contained within a thumb stick (which is kind of passive if you think about it), why not actively try to destroy all data to whatever is connected to the thumb stick instead...
Criminal: "Ha! I stole this thumb stick from that stupid corporation, and I am sure it is just stuffed with credit card info! Now to just use these easily available utilities I found online to crack it..." Plugs in device PC: "Password: " Criminal: "Pffft I can just ignore that, now where did I put that cracker utility..." PC: "Timeout. Initiating self destruct!" Criminal: "Pfft as if it is going to blow up or something, what a joke..." PC: "Virus Loaded....Deleting all files.... Complete. Have a nice day!" Criminal: "....." Criminal: "....."
Running out of people to fly the robot predator drones eh?
I see an easy solution. Why not just automate the whole thing, make an AI that can control these things, that way you can make thousands and thousands of the things! Hey it is probably even cheaper than outsourcing the jobs to Mexicans, Indians, or Chinese, and I mean who wants them in charge of the military might? Why we could create a home grown American AI for Americans. Heck we only have to make one, and then let it communicate via satellites with all of them, how cool is that! That would give us total centralized control over the whole fleet. It would be our network in the sky!
The impact here is one of management. Seals eat fish. We eat fish. Corporations actually do make a lot of money off the fishery both directly and indirectly. Too many seals, eat too many fish. Less fish, equates to less money. Less seals, eat less fish, equates more money.
Seals themselves are pointless to the debate (other than being cute!) other than in regards to how much fish they can gobble up.
Seriously. The USA is by FAR our biggest trading partner. They have been trying to bend us over for years about IP, Copyright and Patent law. If we are not about to capitulate the them, what makes the EU think we give a flying fuck what they say....
1) Buy a red stapler. 2) Mumble. 3) Burn the office to the ground.
Problem solved!
OR
Only post pictures of your guns of Facebook page. Also "Like" various militia groups. Finally randomly show up and visit your bosses house, bring an innocuous gift of some kind. Laugh hysterically at whatever he says.
ROBO: "Hmmm what are you made out of I wonder?" ZAP! ROBO: "Log entry 412: Unidentified Item composed of non-laser compatible matter. May have contained methane as it burned a pretty green color!" ROBO: "Possible life fore discovered, ascertaining composition" ZAP! ROBO: "Log entry 413: False positive on Life assessment. Composed of combustible, non-laser resistant material" ROBO: "ASSIMILATE!"
In defense of the movie, it was going to fail from the start. Take a book that is arguably longer than all three books of Lord of the Rings put together, then squish in all into a movie that is 118 minutes long for at a cost of 44$ million bucks. In comparison, LOTR in total was 683 minutes long and cost 285$ million dollars. That is why it sucked. I bet if Jackson spent 44$ million, and made LOTR 118 minutes it would suck also. You have to cut out so much stuff you make the rest look stupid and ridiculous because you have no understanding what is going on, why, etc...
I don't care how good a writer you are, doing what they did will ruin it before you write the word "The".
Anyway that's my rant. I dislike when people say it sucked as its a stupid silly story (which some might argue anyway), but I enjoyed it (book) and the main reason why the movie sucked was that it was done on the cheap and was about 3 times too short. I would love to see a proper remake, though with the accolades this got, fat chance of that. However I would argue if I was a director/producer and could take a stinker of a movie and do it so that that it rocks would reflect much better on me. The problem is marketing. Too many only want to take a popular movie back in the day, and try to do it "justice". They should be taking crappy movies and retelling them in hopes of improving on them. But I digress...
Way to buy into the BS hype. If you look at the numbers, Profit is based in BILLIONS (highest ever this year), and loss to Pirating is in MILLIONS. That's profit, not net.
So I don't get how people say A) it is killing gaming, or B) that PC gaming is dying.
Lets see, they are making more money now, than they ever have before. I guess that is a sure sign that its done, might as well give up... Sure don't want to make any money in a market that is constantly growing. This is all regardless of the arguments of the people that pirate games, likely wouldn't pay for it anyway, so it is not a loss of a customer.
That is one thing the big box stores always pissed me off about.
Your choices were basically 1) Low end POS, or 2) High end super expensive. Look at Dell's offerings or any other for that matter.
Only way to get mid-range goodness (which incidently is best bang for buck for gaming) is to build it yourself, which is what I do. Some however are not capable of that.
The reason I suspect is profit models and margins.
Couldn't agree more. The same thing up here in Canada. The public has been indoctrinated to think Government is bad and wasteful, and private industry is efficient and good. So government is pressured to reduce numbers and contract everything out.
I can say with 100% confidence that EVERY contractor that wins a bid for any level of government laughs all the way to the bank. They ALL rip off the government to some extent or another. They generally expect that government to not understand what they hell they are doing, and usually managers do not, or are powerless to do anything about it, so they over bill, over estimate, over charge, and take as long as they get paid. To them it is GUARANTEED money. Its not like the government isn't going to pay. Also even if they do a shitty job, and screw the government over, government usually has pretty restrictive vendor policies and HAS to be fair and impartial, so if they submit the lowest bid, and have all the requirements, then they HAVE to select them again. Then they just find every way possible to keep the gravy train going. It is sick.
In the above case they could have had like 5-10 people on salary for each individual contractor, and maintain skills within for the future. However even when you see shit like this happen, it somehow slides right off "private industry" or "contractors" and is still somehow "governments fault". There was a billion dollar boondoggle in Ontario with E-Health, which was the same thing. Political interference, contractor greed, and projects going on forever with contractors getting rich. Yet it was obviously the bureaucracy is at fault right?
Anyway as one of the few technical people that work in government, who actually has to deal with these contractors on occasion, it is frustrating watching them get rich, while we generally take all the blame. Private industry see government contracts as a trough.
I have no idea how this general perception got started (government not good, contract out everything), but we would be a LOT better off if we started to build technical talent from within, and in 3-5 years would be able to be self sufficient. It is a political game as well, as they (contractors) are not on the government salary payroll, so government can act like it is shrinking government becoming more efficient, when actually it is not. The opposite is actually happening. So rather than hire well paid (yet not exorbitant, I have yet to meet anyone rich in the bureaucracy) government workers, they would rather pay for contractors that rip us off and are unaccountable. It is insane.
Although this also brings us back to the "golden age" of gaming on my 286.
Where you had to FIGHT to get the game to even work. Playing with batch files, EMS and XMS memory, loading with 15 floppy disks, etc... Seriously I think it was the messing around with computers to get them to even play games which is what got me interested in computers in the first place, which led to my education path, and presently my work environment....
Wait a tick. I take all the nostalgia back. Burn it all.
Slashdot Mirror
it's that space girls wear very short skirts, with bows, etc...
This design seems a bit too practical if you ask me!
Also EVA suits should be as thick as paint, and as form fitting. None of this bulky BS the Americans and Russians came up with!
I have heard of entire towns being run off wind power.
However Diesel will remain no matter what. Northern conditions are not...suited, for sustainable energy. You don't get "Sun" for a large portion of the year, also snow cover would complicate panels, conventional batteries do not work "well" at extreme cold temperatures, using water and dams to store potential energy is not really an option. Even with wind, ice and snow would make maintaining them a pain.
The only other alternative is Nukes, but realistically a large nuke plant is not suitable either due to population. Proposed "portable" nuke plants would be a good alternative likely, through would also have to be designed for the elements. I am not sure if there are potential geothermal options in the area, likely not in convenient areas (i.e where people are).
"Java...runs very fast"
I must be doing it wrong then.
I am calling BS on this.
A) The USA already did this twice and remains to this day the only country to ever use nukes to kill civilians of a non-nuke nation.
B) The rational for using nukes was public opinion. The USA knew that their public would never support a war in which they would accept such heavy losses, which they would have during a conventional invasion of Japan. For this reason the only option for victory was to kill as many civilians as possible to force Japan to capitulate, which they did.
C) If EVER faced with a similar situation; exactly how long do you think it will take to destroy that newly developed doctrine? About as much time it takes to tear it up.
D) Given that the only two uses ever specified for Nukes are 1) Deterrence, 2) Mutually assured destruction or doomsday, and 3) See "B)" nothing has really changed.
So it is all ready pointless to create said document other than to abstractly give more weight to the nonproliferation treaties, which really is BS other than mentally. Having said all that, I don't think the USA would ever use it on Iran, as I am pretty sure they could wipe the floor with them conventionally (and be left with a mess like Iraq likely). As for NK, that is another matter. I would say of all countries, that is the one place in the world it would be used. The reason for this is that NK is so fortified, and militarized, that any conventional victory by the USA would fail. The troops would get chewed to hell (even if they are winning), and public opinion for the war would go into the toilet, and a new leader would be elected and end the war.
http://www.icasualties.org/
To date about 5000 Americans have died over a period of 9 years in Iraq. Look how much opposition there is to that war, and how much media coverage every time there are causalities. When the USA went to invade Japan, they were pretty much defeated, yet casualty estimates were into the MILLIONS of allies. NK would be not a whole lot different I don't think. For this reason I hope the people of NK get a more moderate leader than old Kim Jon, as if he does something crazy, there is NO WAY the USA is invading that mess, they will turn it into so much blackened glass before that happens. I believe it is the only place in the world that has that danger.
I think the mortgage meltdown is pretty illustrative of that.
People do stupid things when there isn't any consequences...
If you have corporate entities, that are "too big to fail" or will cause total economic collapse, then I think your probably doing something terribly wrong.
A boon for Overclockers really..
No longer are things priced by binning, now every one has an equal chance.
I would seriously buy one if the price was right. I mean I already own a C2D 1.8 I bought on the assumption that I could overclock the thing to 3.2 or whatever, and then was sorely dissapointed when it couldn't take an OC at all. I mean the ONLY reason I bought it was to OC it.
This would fill that niche. You don't have to sort or test them, heck, you don't even need to market them... what are you gonna say... erm we don't know how fast it will run, nor do we really know how many cores it contains... buy one and find out! Sure I will, just price 'em cheap and I would be all over that! (so long as your secretly not binning all the good ones and just selling rejects!)
I dunno, sounds find to me if the price is right. Overclockers everywhere would have a field day posting their finds! Not sure how you would do the package with a possible variable number of cores. I guess your MB would have to be uber compatible with everything...
Yes yes I know it is an April Fools joke. I still want one for fun though! :)
Not everyone disagrees on the claim because it is convenient to do so, many disagree for entirely reasonable critiques of the current science.
Here is a clip from TVO:
http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=7&bpn=779732&ts=2010-03-09%2020:00:00.0
Unless you think the research chair and professor in Applied Mathematics and Global Change at the University of British Columbia and the professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are also nutjobs. I am inclined to think they know a thing or two about what they are talking about. Both of them agree that the current research is over simplified, faulty assumptions, based on data used improperly. Hardly, foregone conclusion as most people who spout this rhetoric would have you believe.
Calling people names like "deniers" only proves that you are not tolerant of other ideas, and that you only have faith in your own. That is not science.
Myself I am not saying one way or another with any certainty what is happening. However from what I have read and what I have seen, much of the actual science seems to be flawed, and is heavily weighted on assumptions which are in turn based on assumptions, based on sketchy data, in which much of the methods used are questionable. The whole thing has become so politicized now, that there is more politics in it that any bit of science that may have been apart of it.
The release of the emails just added to the mess, in that it showed that "scientists" (and I use that word lightly) were actively trying to prevent people from examining their data, and actively trying to prevent other people with contrary opinions to their own from publishing it in an academic journal, going so far I heard as to try and purchase the journal so they could pick and choose who got published (only the ones that back their findings).
Anyway sketchy. I think people should be more environmentally friendly, and reduce the amount of energy we use anyway. Pollution and wanton consumption without regard is I believe is pretty irresponsible. So far as I am concerned Climate Change or not, it is something we should be doing anyway. I find most of the hype and fervor of the issue to be sensationalistic BS used for purely economical reasons. It is a complex issue that should be investigated thoroughly, and doesn't need people telling others that they are "deniers" etc... of obvious "truths". If your looking for "Truth" pick up a bible or a copy of Philosophy 101, as you won't find any "truth" in science. Science is about "facts", and reproducible experiment, or at the very very least confirmed modeling based on real life data. I have yet to see a model that hasn't failed under any kind of rigor.
Don't even get me started on the fools who blather on about geo-engineering like they know what they are talking about. That's like a blind guy doing surgery using a chainsaw. These would probably be the same morons that 100 years ago would suggest introducing a foreign invasive species to solve some kind of pest problem, not fully understanding the consequences of their actions...
Anyway I am ranted out...
I understand the reason to fight in court, however if he ends up losing, what is to stop him from just moving all his physical servers to some country like Kerblackistan that doesn't give two whits about what some judge in USA land has to say? I mean the whole site is just hosting torrents which are just teeny tiny files that point uTorrent et al where to find the good stuff, correct? That doesn't exactly take a whole lot of horsepower.
I mean Pirate Bay got shut down because the US pressured the crap out of Sweden to do it, but I am sure there are plenty of places that could care less.
Anyway I gotta go blow my bandwidth cap for March/April and download what parts of the internet I don't already have...
Judge Judy, Joe Brown, and the rest just got their seasons all extended by 5 years!
Seriously though, put enough of this in the public face, and not behind closed doors, and we shall see how long thing travesty goes on for.
It always reminded me of something I heard on TV about cancer research. I am paraphrasing...
The trick isn't finding something that will kill cancer, there are plenty of things that can do that, common things like bleach kill it easily, the trick is to find something that will kill cancer yet at the same time not kill off the host as well...
Also just like the System Admins cost chart:
Solutions - 10$
Good Solutions - 200$
James Lovelock: "China! We demand you put your democracy on hold so we can get down to business of solving climate change by building sea defenses or some other crazy thing"
China: "Um OK?"
I was thinking more Jeeves and wooster... I mean its the same funny man and straight man routine. Put house in England and add tea and your done.
House/Wooster: "It appears this man as a incurable horrible disease, sucks to be him!"
Wilson/Jeeves: "Indeed."
Done. In fact many roads are already like this!
Of course doing so, MAY slow down drivers, but doesn't necessarily make it any safer. Probably the opposite of that.
Yes because allowing interns access to your systems certainly won't increase piracy....
Rather than try to "protect" the data contained within a thumb stick (which is kind of passive if you think about it), why not actively try to destroy all data to whatever is connected to the thumb stick instead...
Criminal: "Ha! I stole this thumb stick from that stupid corporation, and I am sure it is just stuffed with credit card info! Now to just use these easily available utilities I found online to crack it..."
Plugs in device
PC: "Password: "
Criminal: "Pffft I can just ignore that, now where did I put that cracker utility..."
PC: "Timeout. Initiating self destruct!"
Criminal: "Pfft as if it is going to blow up or something, what a joke..."
PC: "Virus Loaded....Deleting all files.... Complete. Have a nice day!"
Criminal: "....."
Criminal: "....."
Running out of people to fly the robot predator drones eh?
I see an easy solution. Why not just automate the whole thing, make an AI that can control these things, that way you can make thousands and thousands of the things! Hey it is probably even cheaper than outsourcing the jobs to Mexicans, Indians, or Chinese, and I mean who wants them in charge of the military might? Why we could create a home grown American AI for Americans. Heck we only have to make one, and then let it communicate via satellites with all of them, how cool is that! That would give us total centralized control over the whole fleet. It would be our network in the sky!
-Conner
The impact here is one of management. Seals eat fish. We eat fish. Corporations actually do make a lot of money off the fishery both directly and indirectly. Too many seals, eat too many fish. Less fish, equates to less money. Less seals, eat less fish, equates more money.
Seals themselves are pointless to the debate (other than being cute!) other than in regards to how much fish they can gobble up.
Seriously. The USA is by FAR our biggest trading partner. They have been trying to bend us over for years about IP, Copyright and Patent law. If we are not about to capitulate the them, what makes the EU think we give a flying fuck what they say....
1) Buy a red stapler.
2) Mumble.
3) Burn the office to the ground.
Problem solved!
OR
Only post pictures of your guns of Facebook page. Also "Like" various militia groups. Finally randomly show up and visit your bosses house, bring an innocuous gift of some kind. Laugh hysterically at whatever he says.
ROBO: "Hmmm what are you made out of I wonder?" ZAP!
ROBO: "Log entry 412: Unidentified Item composed of non-laser compatible matter. May have contained methane as it burned a pretty green color!"
ROBO: "Possible life fore discovered, ascertaining composition" ZAP!
ROBO: "Log entry 413: False positive on Life assessment. Composed of combustible, non-laser resistant material"
ROBO: "ASSIMILATE!"
I read the book, I thought it was good.
In defense of the movie, it was going to fail from the start. Take a book that is arguably longer than all three books of Lord of the Rings put together, then squish in all into a movie that is 118 minutes long for at a cost of 44$ million bucks. In comparison, LOTR in total was 683 minutes long and cost 285$ million dollars. That is why it sucked. I bet if Jackson spent 44$ million, and made LOTR 118 minutes it would suck also. You have to cut out so much stuff you make the rest look stupid and ridiculous because you have no understanding what is going on, why, etc...
I don't care how good a writer you are, doing what they did will ruin it before you write the word "The".
Anyway that's my rant. I dislike when people say it sucked as its a stupid silly story (which some might argue anyway), but I enjoyed it (book) and the main reason why the movie sucked was that it was done on the cheap and was about 3 times too short. I would love to see a proper remake, though with the accolades this got, fat chance of that. However I would argue if I was a director/producer and could take a stinker of a movie and do it so that that it rocks would reflect much better on me. The problem is marketing. Too many only want to take a popular movie back in the day, and try to do it "justice". They should be taking crappy movies and retelling them in hopes of improving on them. But I digress...
Way to buy into the BS hype. If you look at the numbers, Profit is based in BILLIONS (highest ever this year), and loss to Pirating is in MILLIONS. That's profit, not net.
So I don't get how people say A) it is killing gaming, or B) that PC gaming is dying.
Lets see, they are making more money now, than they ever have before. I guess that is a sure sign that its done, might as well give up... Sure don't want to make any money in a market that is constantly growing. This is all regardless of the arguments of the people that pirate games, likely wouldn't pay for it anyway, so it is not a loss of a customer.
That is one thing the big box stores always pissed me off about.
Your choices were basically 1) Low end POS, or 2) High end super expensive. Look at Dell's offerings or any other for that matter.
Only way to get mid-range goodness (which incidently is best bang for buck for gaming) is to build it yourself, which is what I do. Some however are not capable of that.
The reason I suspect is profit models and margins.
Couldn't agree more. The same thing up here in Canada. The public has been indoctrinated to think Government is bad and wasteful, and private industry is efficient and good. So government is pressured to reduce numbers and contract everything out.
I can say with 100% confidence that EVERY contractor that wins a bid for any level of government laughs all the way to the bank. They ALL rip off the government to some extent or another. They generally expect that government to not understand what they hell they are doing, and usually managers do not, or are powerless to do anything about it, so they over bill, over estimate, over charge, and take as long as they get paid. To them it is GUARANTEED money. Its not like the government isn't going to pay. Also even if they do a shitty job, and screw the government over, government usually has pretty restrictive vendor policies and HAS to be fair and impartial, so if they submit the lowest bid, and have all the requirements, then they HAVE to select them again. Then they just find every way possible to keep the gravy train going. It is sick.
In the above case they could have had like 5-10 people on salary for each individual contractor, and maintain skills within for the future. However even when you see shit like this happen, it somehow slides right off "private industry" or "contractors" and is still somehow "governments fault". There was a billion dollar boondoggle in Ontario with E-Health, which was the same thing. Political interference, contractor greed, and projects going on forever with contractors getting rich. Yet it was obviously the bureaucracy is at fault right?
Anyway as one of the few technical people that work in government, who actually has to deal with these contractors on occasion, it is frustrating watching them get rich, while we generally take all the blame. Private industry see government contracts as a trough.
I have no idea how this general perception got started (government not good, contract out everything), but we would be a LOT better off if we started to build technical talent from within, and in 3-5 years would be able to be self sufficient. It is a political game as well, as they (contractors) are not on the government salary payroll, so government can act like it is shrinking government becoming more efficient, when actually it is not. The opposite is actually happening. So rather than hire well paid (yet not exorbitant, I have yet to meet anyone rich in the bureaucracy) government workers, they would rather pay for contractors that rip us off and are unaccountable. It is insane.
Although this also brings us back to the "golden age" of gaming on my 286.
Where you had to FIGHT to get the game to even work. Playing with batch files, EMS and XMS memory, loading with 15 floppy disks, etc... Seriously I think it was the messing around with computers to get them to even play games which is what got me interested in computers in the first place, which led to my education path, and presently my work environment....
Wait a tick. I take all the nostalgia back. Burn it all.