I am not a frequent flyer, but I have been on more than my fair share of cross-country and transcontinental flights, particularly in the past 10 years. I have yet to witness anyone using one of those built-into-the-seatback telephones. Perhaps that's because I don't fly first class, which is where all the people are who can afford $5.00+ per minute for a phone call. Even when I was flying for company business, the company's default policy was to disallow reimbursement for airplane phone charges. Has anyone here ever been sitting next to someone who carried on a long conversation using one of these devices?
I wonder if people will be sneaking into the airplane restrooms to use their cellphones if they're OK per the FAA but banned by law. That should raise some interesting issues.
10% collateral damage is remarkably low. Estimates for WWII are 40 - 60%, and that ignores the 20 million Russian civilians who died along the way. NATO's bombing campaign in Kosovo was around 80%.
Is your comment based on an unfortunate personal experience?
[Long reply essentially boiling down to "Yes"]
That sounds really awful. You have my sympathy; really you do. But what you describe isn't a contrast between centralized and balkanized IT. Your story is an example of what happens when dysfunctional IT meets ineffective/ignorant technical management, and management's goal changes from getting the job done efficiently, to looking good against a set of nonsensical standards. My experience shows that it doesn't have to be that way.
Is your comment based on an unfortunate personal experience? I have worked as an engineer for two aerospace behemoths, with tens of thousands of employees at locations spread out all over the country. In both cases, IT was centralized, and that brought with it a high degree of conformity with respect to operating systems and common software tools such as MS Office; however, the engineering types didn't have any trouble at all in obtaining, installing, and using whatever specialized tools (including alternative operating systems) they required to do their jobs. IT's part of that was limited to procurement.
I now work for a much smaller company (< 800 employees), and the situation is similar, if smaller in scale. Everybody uses MS Office. IT uses Landesk to roll out Windows updates, but they leave my Mac pretty much alone, and they don't give a crap about the Linux box under my desk. They're a service provider, and they just don't get involved with the technical tools I might need and use, beyond processing purchase orders.
Balkanization usually doesn't have anything to do with serving the needs of the users. It's mostly about empire building and job security. The local tyrant can screw you up just as effectively as the faceless guy in another state.
At any rate, none of this has anything to do with NASA's issues, which appear from TFA to result mostly from a lack of buy-in from middle management. By the way, that doesn't necessarily mean that middle management should be buying in; it just means that there appears to be a lot of infighting going on.
2. Drone/UAS means there's nobody controlling it. That's not the case here.
Correction: The media has determined that "drone" means "any unmanned aircraft of any size, regardless of its manner of operation." The media has also determined that any story about any unmanned aircraft of any size shall be accompanied by a photograph of a Predator, preferably in the act of launching a Hellfire missile.
Throwing $2.5 billion at "desktops, laptops, computer equipment and end-user services such as help desk and data backup" doesnt sound like underfunding IT to me.
You're right; it wouldn't be, if that's what they were doing, which they aren't. TFA is pretty enlightening; you should read the first couple of pages.
This is an Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity contract with a potential worth of $2.5B. IDIQ means a phased program where whether the vendor gets to continue supplying products and services, depends on whether the customer is (1) satisfied with past performance, and (2) convinced that that the program is meeting its goals. This is not a case of "Here's $2.5 Billion. There's more where that came from; please do your best." If this ends up with $2.5B spent and goals not meant, then NASA will have seriously screwed up. That's the sort of result that IDIQ contracts are designed to prevent.
This contract is for more than computers, help desk and data backup; NASA wants to migrate from a balkanized IT structure to an enterprise structure, which is a massive cultural change. Unsurprisingly, the NASA managers whose empires consist of the disparate parts of the IT structure are not exactly embracing the new order of things.
People have repeatedly enumerated the things they don't like. Don't be lazy; read the commentns. tl;dr: It's ugly. It wastes a lot of space. It is missing a lot of features that long-time users fine useful. It is change for the sake of change
It stands to reason that this system has been around a long time and would not be built to handle newer technologies, so at some point you'd have to rebuild it from scratch to optimize newer web applications, right?
Wrong. I don't think you even know what you're talking about with the "at some point you'd have to rebuild it from scratch to optimize newer web applications" comment.
Ultimately I see the same comments, the same moderation system, and the same news stories, with some new features. I'm not a big fan of the default design, but the FAQ says you can still use the same "Classic" design with the new system.
The Classic site will disappear in a couple of months. Suggest you re-read the "Movin on up" banner at the top of the Classic site.
The rest of your post is more "what do you think is wrong", which you can answer for yourself by browsing the comments. Rest assured it isn't "Change is annoying".
Replying using Beta, just for the thrill of it all.
See, you wouldn't have to explain your UID if everyone was using Beta, 'cause your UID doesn't show up in Beta.
I would have quoted your first paragraph, but Beta doesn't seem to have a "Quote parent" link.
Hmm, no "Parent" link, either. Crap. And the whitespace. And the low-contrast grey text, who thought that was a good idea? And holy crap, the Preview looks really, really awful!
Starting to feel disoriented and queasy now. Gotta go.
This may be true where you live, but it is certainly not true everywhere, or even in most jurisdictions. Generally, revenue from traffic tickets is split between the state and the city where the ticket was issued. The city's portion goes into its general fund. Among other things, the city's police force is paid for out of the city's general fund. So while traffic ticket revenue may not go directly to the police department, at least some portion of it ends up there.
Actually, to show entrapment you have to make a judge or jury believe that the government induced the individual to commit the crime. Creating the opportunity to commit the crime isn't enough. Providing aid (as in, providing bomb-making materials) isn't enough.
Not entrapment:
Perp: I want to kill that guy.
Cop: Want to borrow my knife?
Perp: Hey, thanks, man.
Entrapment:
Perp: I hate that guy.
Cop: Me, too. I'll give you $1000 to kill him.
Perp: I dunno. Seems kind of extreme.
Cop: Come on. I'll give you $2000 to kill him.
Perp: Oh, all right. I could use the money.
How did the Republican politicians "they themselves" receive Medicaid? Most of them are millionaires, and Medicaid is mostly for struggling women and children. And of course as politicians they are by definition employed and not receiving unemployment benefits.
You said, "any of your vague statements". I gave you a list of Federal aid programs turned down by Republican state administrations. And you are the one who invoked Republican politicians, not the OP. Did you really expect a list of name of individuals who, for example, qualified for food stamps but didn't apply for them? Don't be silly.
Maybe if you provided a single concrete example of any of your vague statements there would even be a potential for a debate here...
OK, here are a few:
Arizona turned down Federal money for Medicaid for 17 years.
Ohio, Wisconsin, and Florida all turned down Federal stimulus money for high-speed rail development (Ohio and Wisconsin later kinda sorta backed down).
Arizona, Wisconsin, Alaska, and Pennsylvania turned down Federal money for unemployment benefit extension
23 states turned down Federal assistance for expansion of Medicaid
You're right. If only Lyndon Johnson hadn't forced the Johnson Space Center to be build in Houston, 1,000 miles away from Cape Canaveral. If only Robert Byrd hadn't funnelled over $4 Billion in pork to West Virginia while at the same time the state was dropping from 39th to 48th place in average family income. In other words, if only politicians of all stripes weren't so willing to do anything to get re-elected. Sometimes it's buying votes from the citizenry; sometimes its taking bribes from donors. It's always self interest over national interest, and anyone who's read Twain's The Gilded Age knows it's been going on for a long, long time.
Meanwhile $1k would be a significant raise for most of the rank and file - and more importantly a degree of income equalization would help keep the "nobility" from getting as out-of-touch with the populace as they're currently prone to be.
Bear in mind that to get the $927 before-tax raise I mentioned would require the confiscation of all executive compensation, not just "a degree" of income equalization. Which raises the question, "What constitutes 'a degree' of income equalization?"
Right, engineers... tend to be in or near the 10%.... They are already the valued lapdogs of the 1%.
So now it's not the 1% with their boots on the necks of the 99%; it's the 1% and their lapdogs the 10% who are oppressing the 90%? How long until the top 20% are declared the enemy? Whoops, that might be a strawman; let me rephrase. Do you consider anyone the enemy, whose lot in life has been improving consistently for a significant period of time?
At any rate, the discussion was about providing incentives to encourage more people to become engineers, right? Maybe my mistake was in assuming that the AC to whom I originally responded was talking about engineers when he suggested that companies "pay more of it [all the money] to the people who actually make the company work."
Perhaps a better solution would be for companies to stop paying all the money to the managers and pay more of it to the people who actually make the company work.
You mean convince the 1% at the top to stop hoarding all of the money? Isn't that how the economy is meant to work?
Line managers and middle managers are not part of "the 1%". You're talking about executive management and corporate officers, typically vice presidents and CxOs. Those positions are usually so sparse that confiscating most their compensation and redistributing it to the rank and file wouldn't do much to elevate the lifestyle of the rank and file.
For example, executive compensation at Northrop Grumman in 2012 totalled $64.9 million. Split among the corporation's 70,000 employees, that would come to an extra $927 for the year, pre-tax, which would translate to about $560 net for most engineers. That's a movie with popcorn and sodas for two, once a month, and maybe gas to get to and from the cinema. Not exactly a lifestyle changer.
The statistic isn't useless, just misstated. The study she's talking about (referred to here) actually found that out of all the STEM jobs shown in movies and TV shows, 16% of them were filled by females and 84% were filled by males. Not the same as saying 16% of female characters and 84% of male characters held STEM jobs. I'm suspicious, though, because the study also found that "No female protagonists or co leads are shown with STEM careers." I'm pretty sure that Emily Deschanel's character on Bones has a STEM job.
I can't say I've seen a non-editorial account in the Guardian or the Washington post that paints Snowden as a hero.
Well, non-editorial accounts by definition shouldn't be doing any "painting". They should try just to report facts, without regard to whether they are cold, dry, and/or unpleasant. Unfortunately, that sort of reporting is almost non-existent these days, as most people seem to want to be told what opinions they should hold.
For everything that doesn't move, it should be wired anyway.
So I should rip up carpet and drill holes through walls to connect my television to my router? No thanks.
Some wired connections are so logistically onerous that wireless may be the only reasonable approach. I used an old pair of Linksys WET11s to link my upstairs subnet to the router downstairs for over 10 years before finally making the switch to powerline Ethernet, and even that was in doubt until I figured out how to keep the powerline adapter from causing havoc with the Uverse TV signal.
The jury is supposed to be a check on power, not simply a rubber stamp for the state.
What you're talking about is called jury nullification, and is generally frowned upon by judges. The jury's job is to be a trier of fact. When the jury goes into the business of trying law instead of fact, you get mostly bad results, as in all-white juries finding black defendants guilty on the basis of race rather than not guilty on the basis of evidence.
The people who designed the system anticipated plenty, and were fearful of what might eventually happen. You should browse through the Federalist Papers some time when you get the chance; there are some real eye-openers in there.
The Federal government cannot order states to do much, and what they can mandate must be funded.
Not really true, although the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (1995) was an attempt to put the brakes on this sort of thing. Here is a very short list of unfunded Federal mandates requiring the states to spend money without Federal compensation. There have been hundreds since the first on on this list. The most recent example is probably the Medicaid Expansion program associated with Obamacare, in which the Federal Government is paying all of the cost for (I believe) the first 3 years, after which the participating States start picking up part of the cost (roughly 10%).
The combined populations of metro LA and metro San Francisco make up about 50% of California's total population. The rest of the state would probably be overjoyed if LA and SF would secede from California.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry; Freedom of Screech is protected by the First Amendment.
I am not a frequent flyer, but I have been on more than my fair share of cross-country and transcontinental flights, particularly in the past 10 years. I have yet to witness anyone using one of those built-into-the-seatback telephones. Perhaps that's because I don't fly first class, which is where all the people are who can afford $5.00+ per minute for a phone call. Even when I was flying for company business, the company's default policy was to disallow reimbursement for airplane phone charges. Has anyone here ever been sitting next to someone who carried on a long conversation using one of these devices?
I wonder if people will be sneaking into the airplane restrooms to use their cellphones if they're OK per the FAA but banned by law. That should raise some interesting issues.
10% collateral damage is remarkably low. Estimates for WWII are 40 - 60%, and that ignores the 20 million Russian civilians who died along the way. NATO's bombing campaign in Kosovo was around 80%.
Is your comment based on an unfortunate personal experience?
[Long reply essentially boiling down to "Yes"]
That sounds really awful. You have my sympathy; really you do. But what you describe isn't a contrast between centralized and balkanized IT. Your story is an example of what happens when dysfunctional IT meets ineffective/ignorant technical management, and management's goal changes from getting the job done efficiently, to looking good against a set of nonsensical standards. My experience shows that it doesn't have to be that way.
Is your comment based on an unfortunate personal experience? I have worked as an engineer for two aerospace behemoths, with tens of thousands of employees at locations spread out all over the country. In both cases, IT was centralized, and that brought with it a high degree of conformity with respect to operating systems and common software tools such as MS Office; however, the engineering types didn't have any trouble at all in obtaining, installing, and using whatever specialized tools (including alternative operating systems) they required to do their jobs. IT's part of that was limited to procurement.
I now work for a much smaller company (< 800 employees), and the situation is similar, if smaller in scale. Everybody uses MS Office. IT uses Landesk to roll out Windows updates, but they leave my Mac pretty much alone, and they don't give a crap about the Linux box under my desk. They're a service provider, and they just don't get involved with the technical tools I might need and use, beyond processing purchase orders.
Balkanization usually doesn't have anything to do with serving the needs of the users. It's mostly about empire building and job security. The local tyrant can screw you up just as effectively as the faceless guy in another state.
At any rate, none of this has anything to do with NASA's issues, which appear from TFA to result mostly from a lack of buy-in from middle management. By the way, that doesn't necessarily mean that middle management should be buying in; it just means that there appears to be a lot of infighting going on.
2. Drone/UAS means there's nobody controlling it. That's not the case here.
Correction: The media has determined that "drone" means "any unmanned aircraft of any size, regardless of its manner of operation." The media has also determined that any story about any unmanned aircraft of any size shall be accompanied by a photograph of a Predator, preferably in the act of launching a Hellfire missile.
Commercial planes can fly with upto 1/2 their engines disabled
And you can live with up to 1/2 of your kidneys removed. When would you like to schedule the surgery?
Throwing $2.5 billion at "desktops, laptops, computer equipment and end-user services such as help desk and data backup" doesnt sound like underfunding IT to me.
You're right; it wouldn't be, if that's what they were doing, which they aren't. TFA is pretty enlightening; you should read the first couple of pages.
This is an Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity contract with a potential worth of $2.5B. IDIQ means a phased program where whether the vendor gets to continue supplying products and services, depends on whether the customer is (1) satisfied with past performance, and (2) convinced that that the program is meeting its goals. This is not a case of "Here's $2.5 Billion. There's more where that came from; please do your best." If this ends up with $2.5B spent and goals not meant, then NASA will have seriously screwed up. That's the sort of result that IDIQ contracts are designed to prevent.
This contract is for more than computers, help desk and data backup; NASA wants to migrate from a balkanized IT structure to an enterprise structure, which is a massive cultural change. Unsurprisingly, the NASA managers whose empires consist of the disparate parts of the IT structure are not exactly embracing the new order of things.
Why are so many people against the new design?
People have repeatedly enumerated the things they don't like. Don't be lazy; read the commentns. tl;dr: It's ugly. It wastes a lot of space. It is missing a lot of features that long-time users fine useful. It is change for the sake of change
It stands to reason that this system has been around a long time and would not be built to handle newer technologies, so at some point you'd have to rebuild it from scratch to optimize newer web applications, right?
Wrong. I don't think you even know what you're talking about with the "at some point you'd have to rebuild it from scratch to optimize newer web applications" comment.
Ultimately I see the same comments, the same moderation system, and the same news stories, with some new features. I'm not a big fan of the default design, but the FAQ says you can still use the same "Classic" design with the new system.
The Classic site will disappear in a couple of months. Suggest you re-read the "Movin on up" banner at the top of the Classic site.
The rest of your post is more "what do you think is wrong", which you can answer for yourself by browsing the comments. Rest assured it isn't "Change is annoying".
Replying using Beta, just for the thrill of it all.
See, you wouldn't have to explain your UID if everyone was using Beta, 'cause your UID doesn't show up in Beta.
I would have quoted your first paragraph, but Beta doesn't seem to have a "Quote parent" link.
Hmm, no "Parent" link, either. Crap. And the whitespace. And the low-contrast grey text, who thought that was a good idea? And holy crap, the Preview looks really, really awful!
Starting to feel disoriented and queasy now. Gotta go.
This may be true where you live, but it is certainly not true everywhere, or even in most jurisdictions. Generally, revenue from traffic tickets is split between the state and the city where the ticket was issued. The city's portion goes into its general fund. Among other things, the city's police force is paid for out of the city's general fund. So while traffic ticket revenue may not go directly to the police department, at least some portion of it ends up there.
Actually, to show entrapment you have to make a judge or jury believe that the government induced the individual to commit the crime. Creating the opportunity to commit the crime isn't enough. Providing aid (as in, providing bomb-making materials) isn't enough.
Not entrapment:
Perp: I want to kill that guy.
Cop: Want to borrow my knife?
Perp: Hey, thanks, man.
Entrapment:
Perp: I hate that guy.
Cop: Me, too. I'll give you $1000 to kill him.
Perp: I dunno. Seems kind of extreme.
Cop: Come on. I'll give you $2000 to kill him.
Perp: Oh, all right. I could use the money.
How did the Republican politicians "they themselves" receive Medicaid? Most of them are millionaires, and Medicaid is mostly for struggling women and children. And of course as politicians they are by definition employed and not receiving unemployment benefits.
You said, "any of your vague statements". I gave you a list of Federal aid programs turned down by Republican state administrations. And you are the one who invoked Republican politicians, not the OP. Did you really expect a list of name of individuals who, for example, qualified for food stamps but didn't apply for them? Don't be silly.
Maybe if you provided a single concrete example of any of your vague statements there would even be a potential for a debate here...
OK, here are a few:
You're right. If only Lyndon Johnson hadn't forced the Johnson Space Center to be build in Houston, 1,000 miles away from Cape Canaveral. If only Robert Byrd hadn't funnelled over $4 Billion in pork to West Virginia while at the same time the state was dropping from 39th to 48th place in average family income. In other words, if only politicians of all stripes weren't so willing to do anything to get re-elected. Sometimes it's buying votes from the citizenry; sometimes its taking bribes from donors. It's always self interest over national interest, and anyone who's read Twain's The Gilded Age knows it's been going on for a long, long time.
Meanwhile $1k would be a significant raise for most of the rank and file - and more importantly a degree of income equalization would help keep the "nobility" from getting as out-of-touch with the populace as they're currently prone to be.
Bear in mind that to get the $927 before-tax raise I mentioned would require the confiscation of all executive compensation, not just "a degree" of income equalization. Which raises the question, "What constitutes 'a degree' of income equalization?"
Right, engineers ... tend to be in or near the 10% .... They are already the valued lapdogs of the 1%.
So now it's not the 1% with their boots on the necks of the 99%; it's the 1% and their lapdogs the 10% who are oppressing the 90%? How long until the top 20% are declared the enemy? Whoops, that might be a strawman; let me rephrase. Do you consider anyone the enemy, whose lot in life has been improving consistently for a significant period of time?
At any rate, the discussion was about providing incentives to encourage more people to become engineers, right? Maybe my mistake was in assuming that the AC to whom I originally responded was talking about engineers when he suggested that companies "pay more of it [all the money] to the people who actually make the company work."
Perhaps a better solution would be for companies to stop paying all the money to the managers and pay more of it to the people who actually make the company work.
You mean convince the 1% at the top to stop hoarding all of the money? Isn't that how the economy is meant to work?
Line managers and middle managers are not part of "the 1%". You're talking about executive management and corporate officers, typically vice presidents and CxOs. Those positions are usually so sparse that confiscating most their compensation and redistributing it to the rank and file wouldn't do much to elevate the lifestyle of the rank and file.
For example, executive compensation at Northrop Grumman in 2012 totalled $64.9 million. Split among the corporation's 70,000 employees, that would come to an extra $927 for the year, pre-tax, which would translate to about $560 net for most engineers. That's a movie with popcorn and sodas for two, once a month, and maybe gas to get to and from the cinema. Not exactly a lifestyle changer.
The statistic isn't useless, just misstated. The study she's talking about (referred to here) actually found that out of all the STEM jobs shown in movies and TV shows, 16% of them were filled by females and 84% were filled by males. Not the same as saying 16% of female characters and 84% of male characters held STEM jobs. I'm suspicious, though, because the study also found that "No female protagonists or co leads are shown with STEM careers." I'm pretty sure that Emily Deschanel's character on Bones has a STEM job.
I can't say I've seen a non-editorial account in the Guardian or the Washington post that paints Snowden as a hero.
Well, non-editorial accounts by definition shouldn't be doing any "painting". They should try just to report facts, without regard to whether they are cold, dry, and/or unpleasant. Unfortunately, that sort of reporting is almost non-existent these days, as most people seem to want to be told what opinions they should hold.
For everything that doesn't move, it should be wired anyway.
So I should rip up carpet and drill holes through walls to connect my television to my router? No thanks.
Some wired connections are so logistically onerous that wireless may be the only reasonable approach. I used an old pair of Linksys WET11s to link my upstairs subnet to the router downstairs for over 10 years before finally making the switch to powerline Ethernet, and even that was in doubt until I figured out how to keep the powerline adapter from causing havoc with the Uverse TV signal.
The jury is supposed to be a check on power, not simply a rubber stamp for the state.
What you're talking about is called jury nullification, and is generally frowned upon by judges. The jury's job is to be a trier of fact. When the jury goes into the business of trying law instead of fact, you get mostly bad results, as in all-white juries finding black defendants guilty on the basis of race rather than not guilty on the basis of evidence.
The people who designed the system anticipated plenty, and were fearful of what might eventually happen. You should browse through the Federalist Papers some time when you get the chance; there are some real eye-openers in there.
The Federal government cannot order states to do much, and what they can mandate must be funded.
Not really true, although the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (1995) was an attempt to put the brakes on this sort of thing. Here is a very short list of unfunded Federal mandates requiring the states to spend money without Federal compensation. There have been hundreds since the first on on this list. The most recent example is probably the Medicaid Expansion program associated with Obamacare, in which the Federal Government is paying all of the cost for (I believe) the first 3 years, after which the participating States start picking up part of the cost (roughly 10%).
The combined populations of metro LA and metro San Francisco make up about 50% of California's total population. The rest of the state would probably be overjoyed if LA and SF would secede from California.
Obligatory Far Side.