Believe me, some of us have been writing and writing. The trouble is that we are dealing with wholly unelected 'representatives' whose only agenda is their govt puppet masters and industry lobbyists.
But even my elected representative (one of Blair's babes) ignores everything I send [OONA KING!! Yes, you! I hope you are reading this]. Or they are so intellectually challenged that the phrase 'software patent' means something to do with underwear for sick people (so what's all the fuss about?)...
This isn't military, the system is being run by commercial companies. From the military point of view the system can be downgraded in areas of conflict. From the start, the driver for the European system was domestic use.
The main point behind this is the increased accuracy. The US GPS is almost useless in a lot of European cities (winding, narrow streets). In London, I sometimes get 300/400m accuracy on my Garmin (which is not much good for accurate navigation) and, 25% of the time, I get an unuseable signal ("Too weak").
And as for Europe declaring war on the US (with what, a very limited nuclear arsenal compared to the massive US stockpile?), nuclear systems use all sorts of other navigational aids besides GPS. Even 'ordinary' non-cruise missiles use other reasonably accurate methods which have been around long before GPS.
Totally agree. I have had major arguments about this and wrote a paper detailing why you should avoid Javascript like the plague, even on Intranets.
Where I have got my way, it has been found that the maintenance effort diminishes significantly. Even MS has JSscript differences, even for exactly the same IE build (major, minor) but on different platforms (gasp!).
If you don't keep a heavy handed grip on the use of browser scripting, you find function and scope creep. 'Cos, let's face it, a lot of developers are too lazy to discipline themselves and re-use script libraries. If the whole DOM was a proper object model with strong typing, namespace mangling, standard compiled scripts and the whole project build overhead thing, then perhaps browser embedded code might be useful (IMHO)...
Don't panic, we've got aproximately 5 billion years to think of a way off this planet...
Re:Unfounded anxiety?
on
Offshoring IT
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
When I first started in the IT business (many moons ago), wages were excellent and the politics were bearable. Over the decades following, I have seen wages fall in real terms to about 1/3 of what they once were. Meanwhile, the politics in IT departments are about as vicious as any Brussels or Washington back (and front) stabbing operation.
IMHO, the trend downwards on both counts will continue with outsourcing. I now tell anyone who wants to join the over-stressed lifestyle of IT development world to study who they might work for, and what they might work on, very carefully indeed. And keep up with all the technologies, re-train yourself in something every two to three years. How many people out there lost out because they stuck with Fortran, DFDs or VMS? I know some, albeit a very few, gained because those skills became scarce but in general, you end up in a dead-end maintenance job if you don't re-train regularly.
...and happened to have the TV news on, and watched live as the Waco compound was stormed...
If that's the sort of reason for watching TV, how much do you have to watch to catch all these live events? 24 hours a day? I'd get a life if I were you...
It was far worse in the US. I used to go to a gym in the mornings before work and watch CNN. After a couple of days and 20 minutes of no news each time, I switched to the cartoons - just like everyone else in the gym. Nothing to do with dumb people, just that if you wern't an ad addict, there wasn't much else to see.
Inside wireless ports? Sheesh, I worked for one well-known company that had a network of 13,000 clients in Europe alone. Because they used 'creative' methods of securing the firewalls and routers (and they couldn't figure how to allow certain types of access), 'trusted' clients had dial-in access that went right behind the firewalls! No VPN or anything. They had employees that could connect over the VPN and just browse out any old how; we found one guy (a manager) managed his own commercial Web site using Telnet and FTP entirely on the company's coin. Porn downloads and audio feeds were usual (which is why the system was slow). Their main push to improve security was to stick an extra proxy server outside the firewall! The routers configured at the network provider had more security than the firewall system. It got so bad, they brought in an expensive consultant for 3 months to sort out networking and security. Fifteen months later, he was still there. The company's bureaucracy made change, even if it was urgent, almost impossible.
Stuff gets ejected off the surface of Mars and ends up on our planet anyway. All sorts of organic stuff can survive the journey too. This is a non-item if ever there was one.
The logical conclusion is that you'd prefer to pay a toll on every road/sidewalk you use, on every traffic light you pass; pay up when the police stop you being mugged or when firemen put out your kitchen fire; pay the total fees for every school your kids use; pay the extra instead of subsidising food (which Dubya increased substantially); have Wal*Mart pay proper medical contributions (ok, we might all agree to that); pay to use every park, wilderness or river (or just let them all get strip mined and drained for irrigation I suppose). All of these at one time (in the past), were run by stock-holding companies (private fire-fighting companies operated in Rome during the Empire, for example) but were found to be inequitable and were run in an arbitrary fashion.
Modern societies often run infrastructure: roads, rail, water & sewage, airports etc. as a government owned or quasi-government owned operation because it is too important to be left to the swings of market demand. The EU pumps huge amounts of money into infrastructure when new countries join. It massively boosts the economy, just look at Spain and Ireland. Ireland is called the 'Celtic tiger' because with its greatly improved infrastructure, it could attract the likes of Microsoft to jump their economy further still.
When an operation becomes mature (Arpanet, local cable, GSM etc.), once a critical mass has been reached, then the authorities can, in some cases, sell off the asset.
I think Verizon have done a great disservice to the citizens of PA. What's the betting other states and cities that set up govt. sponsored networks will be ahead of PA in 5 years time?
And I've worked with a number of companies in India that were all CMM Level 5 (or whatever the mantra is). All screwed upright royally (does an almost unreadable and buggy 637 line Javascript function on a Web page [not an include] conform to CMM level 5?).
ISO 900x is a smoke screen. The number of certified (and financial) companies for whom I've worked where a 'Backup' folder on the 'S:' drive is supposed to be the saviour if anything goes wrong is just laughable. And the reviews and checks to see if your company is conforming to ISO900x? Hah! Does anyone (except maybe the CTO) ever see these guys? And if you do, do you pipe up in front of the IT director/CTO/CIO/, "They're all BS-ing you Mr. Inspector. It's all a crock of crap, the 'S:' drive is nearly always full!" or whatever? Yeah, right...
Yes, as a result guns are (still) remarkably rare in the UK. Any gun crimes get on the front pages. Ozzy Osbourne was burgled the other day and he tackled the guy who broke free and ran off (with the jewelry). If guns had been involved who knows what might have happened. We tend not to shoot people who come to the front door looking for directions as well...
They go over budget because when a project is accurately costed, some idiot manager somewhere goes beserk and says it must be done in time-(large chunk of time) and for cost-(managers' & directors' bonuses). Knowing this most s/w projects are unrealistically timed and funded. Anyway, EDS has right royally screwed up on all the big govt. projects yet the govt. continues to use them. Is that as a result of competence?
Unfortunately faxyourmp does not work for all MPs - it certainly does not work for my MP (one of Blair's babes). But then again, she has never acknowledged a single email or letter either (probably doesn't have a clue what I'm on about).
Anyway, I rather suspect EDS has our govt. in it's back pocket. Just about everything they touch get totally fcuk'd up - but they continue to be given £billions.
Don't overdo the antibiotics? Are you in the US? Antibiotics (eg: tetracycline, penicillin and streptomycin) are used as growth promoters in cattle and other animals. Antibiotic resistance genes are being transferred from the environment into our bodies: New Scientist for the scary details.
I've lived in France, Holland, Germany and Switzerland and the (universal) health care systems there are first class. It was perfectly feasible to top up on your insurance to get, say, single rooms in a hospital. But don't confuse Europe with the UK, where the health care system is very patchy, internally overloaded with bureaucracy, is currently suffering a major IT overhaul (another ongoing EDS fcukup, no doubt) and can be frighteningly shoddy and poor in some areas.
Then try Bulldog. I've just signed up unlimited 4Mb with unlimited free UK landline calling for one monthly fee. UKonline.net is rolling out 8Mb for 50% of the country and promises phone services in the future (not mentioned on their site, might have been on the Beeb). HomeChoice does 2/4Mb with all the (40+?) Freeview TV channels on demand (and it's not cable) and a phone service. There's plenty of others.
But anyway, you can always go for Internet phone system for about £5-00 a month making and receiving calls from any phone anywhere, eg: redtelecom.co.uk, sipgate.co.uk etc.etc. Calls are usually free to co-operating providers. Sipgate is free to about 10 others: FWD, Freenet, IAXnet etc.
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Believe me, some of us have been writing and writing. The trouble is that we are dealing with wholly unelected 'representatives' whose only agenda is their govt puppet masters and industry lobbyists.
But even my elected representative (one of Blair's babes) ignores everything I send [OONA KING!! Yes, you! I hope you are reading this]. Or they are so intellectually challenged that the phrase 'software patent' means something to do with underwear for sick people (so what's all the fuss about?)...
This 'ere EGGNOG system. Is it up and running in the UK? Is it compatible with WAAS, can I get a WAAS based GPS and get the benefits from EGGNOG?
This isn't military, the system is being run by commercial companies. From the military point of view the system can be downgraded in areas of conflict. From the start, the driver for the European system was domestic use.
The main point behind this is the increased accuracy. The US GPS is almost useless in a lot of European cities (winding, narrow streets). In London, I sometimes get 300/400m accuracy on my Garmin (which is not much good for accurate navigation) and, 25% of the time, I get an unuseable signal ("Too weak").
And as for Europe declaring war on the US (with what, a very limited nuclear arsenal compared to the massive US stockpile?), nuclear systems use all sorts of other navigational aids besides GPS. Even 'ordinary' non-cruise missiles use other reasonably accurate methods which have been around long before GPS.
Totally agree. I have had major arguments about this and wrote a paper detailing why you should avoid Javascript like the plague, even on Intranets.
Where I have got my way, it has been found that the maintenance effort diminishes significantly. Even MS has JSscript differences, even for exactly the same IE build (major, minor) but on different platforms (gasp!).
If you don't keep a heavy handed grip on the use of browser scripting, you find function and scope creep. 'Cos, let's face it, a lot of developers are too lazy to discipline themselves and re-use script libraries. If the whole DOM was a proper object model with strong typing, namespace mangling, standard compiled scripts and the whole project build overhead thing, then perhaps browser embedded code might be useful (IMHO)...
Don't panic, we've got aproximately 5 billion years to think of a way off this planet...
When I first started in the IT business (many moons ago), wages were excellent and the politics were bearable. Over the decades following, I have seen wages fall in real terms to about 1/3 of what they once were. Meanwhile, the politics in IT departments are about as vicious as any Brussels or Washington back (and front) stabbing operation.
IMHO, the trend downwards on both counts will continue with outsourcing. I now tell anyone who wants to join the over-stressed lifestyle of IT development world to study who they might work for, and what they might work on, very carefully indeed. And keep up with all the technologies, re-train yourself in something every two to three years. How many people out there lost out because they stuck with Fortran, DFDs or VMS? I know some, albeit a very few, gained because those skills became scarce but in general, you end up in a dead-end maintenance job if you don't re-train regularly.
...and happened to have the TV news on, and watched live as the Waco compound was stormed...
If that's the sort of reason for watching TV, how much do you have to watch to catch all these live events? 24 hours a day? I'd get a life if I were you...
It was far worse in the US. I used to go to a gym in the mornings before work and watch CNN. After a couple of days and 20 minutes of no news each time, I switched to the cartoons - just like everyone else in the gym. Nothing to do with dumb people, just that if you wern't an ad addict, there wasn't much else to see.
Inside wireless ports? Sheesh, I worked for one well-known company that had a network of 13,000 clients in Europe alone. Because they used 'creative' methods of securing the firewalls and routers (and they couldn't figure how to allow certain types of access), 'trusted' clients had dial-in access that went right behind the firewalls! No VPN or anything. They had employees that could connect over the VPN and just browse out any old how; we found one guy (a manager) managed his own commercial Web site using Telnet and FTP entirely on the company's coin. Porn downloads and audio feeds were usual (which is why the system was slow). Their main push to improve security was to stick an extra proxy server outside the firewall! The routers configured at the network provider had more security than the firewall system. It got so bad, they brought in an expensive consultant for 3 months to sort out networking and security. Fifteen months later, he was still there. The company's bureaucracy made change, even if it was urgent, almost impossible.
Stuff gets ejected off the surface of Mars and ends up on our planet anyway. All sorts of organic stuff can survive the journey too. This is a non-item if ever there was one.
The logical conclusion is that you'd prefer to pay a toll on every road/sidewalk you use, on every traffic light you pass; pay up when the police stop you being mugged or when firemen put out your kitchen fire; pay the total fees for every school your kids use; pay the extra instead of subsidising food (which Dubya increased substantially); have Wal*Mart pay proper medical contributions (ok, we might all agree to that); pay to use every park, wilderness or river (or just let them all get strip mined and drained for irrigation I suppose). All of these at one time (in the past), were run by stock-holding companies (private fire-fighting companies operated in Rome during the Empire, for example) but were found to be inequitable and were run in an arbitrary fashion.
Modern societies often run infrastructure: roads, rail, water & sewage, airports etc. as a government owned or quasi-government owned operation because it is too important to be left to the swings of market demand. The EU pumps huge amounts of money into infrastructure when new countries join. It massively boosts the economy, just look at Spain and Ireland. Ireland is called the 'Celtic tiger' because with its greatly improved infrastructure, it could attract the likes of Microsoft to jump their economy further still.
When an operation becomes mature (Arpanet, local cable, GSM etc.), once a critical mass has been reached, then the authorities can, in some cases, sell off the asset.
I think Verizon have done a great disservice to the citizens of PA. What's the betting other states and cities that set up govt. sponsored networks will be ahead of PA in 5 years time?
And I've worked with a number of companies in India that were all CMM Level 5 (or whatever the mantra is). All screwed upright royally (does an almost unreadable and buggy 637 line Javascript function on a Web page [not an include] conform to CMM level 5?).
ISO 900x is a smoke screen. The number of certified (and financial) companies for whom I've worked where a 'Backup' folder on the 'S:' drive is supposed to be the saviour if anything goes wrong is just laughable. And the reviews and checks to see if your company is conforming to ISO900x? Hah! Does anyone (except maybe the CTO) ever see these guys? And if you do, do you pipe up in front of the IT director/CTO/CIO/, "They're all BS-ing you Mr. Inspector. It's all a crock of crap, the 'S:' drive is nearly always full!" or whatever? Yeah, right...
APL, a very terse language that required a special keyboard: sigAPL
He sold out some time ago. It was bought by GM, I believe and they recently sold it (as an MBO?).
Well... don't get EDS to work on it!
I was referring to the Japanese guy who knocked on someone's door in the US hoping to ask for directions but was shot dead instead...
Yes, as a result guns are (still) remarkably rare in the UK. Any gun crimes get on the front pages. Ozzy Osbourne was burgled the other day and he tackled the guy who broke free and ran off (with the jewelry). If guns had been involved who knows what might have happened. We tend not to shoot people who come to the front door looking for directions as well...
They go over budget because when a project is accurately costed, some idiot manager somewhere goes beserk and says it must be done in time-(large chunk of time) and for cost-(managers' & directors' bonuses). Knowing this most s/w projects are unrealistically timed and funded. Anyway, EDS has right royally screwed up on all the big govt. projects yet the govt. continues to use them. Is that as a result of competence?
Unfortunately faxyourmp does not work for all MPs - it certainly does not work for my MP (one of Blair's babes). But then again, she has never acknowledged a single email or letter either (probably doesn't have a clue what I'm on about).
Anyway, I rather suspect EDS has our govt. in it's back pocket. Just about everything they touch get totally fcuk'd up - but they continue to be given £billions.
Don't overdo the antibiotics? Are you in the US? Antibiotics (eg: tetracycline, penicillin and streptomycin) are used as growth promoters in cattle and other animals. Antibiotic resistance genes are being transferred from the environment into our bodies: New Scientist for the scary details.
I've lived in France, Holland, Germany and Switzerland and the (universal) health care systems there are first class. It was perfectly feasible to top up on your insurance to get, say, single rooms in a hospital. But don't confuse Europe with the UK, where the health care system is very patchy, internally overloaded with bureaucracy, is currently suffering a major IT overhaul (another ongoing EDS fcukup, no doubt) and can be frighteningly shoddy and poor in some areas.
As I have posted several times on /., the GDP per hour worked in France is higher than the US and the UK.
What, the poster can't make a reference to a Groklaw question now?
Then try Bulldog. I've just signed up unlimited 4Mb with unlimited free UK landline calling for one monthly fee. UKonline.net is rolling out 8Mb for 50% of the country and promises phone services in the future (not mentioned on their site, might have been on the Beeb). HomeChoice does 2/4Mb with all the (40+?) Freeview TV channels on demand (and it's not cable) and a phone service. There's plenty of others.
But anyway, you can always go for Internet phone system for about £5-00 a month making and receiving calls from any phone anywhere, eg: redtelecom.co.uk, sipgate.co.uk etc.etc. Calls are usually free to co-operating providers. Sipgate is free to about 10 others: FWD, Freenet, IAXnet etc.