You have to remember that during the depths of the economic downturn there was tremendous pressure to cut federal spending to reduce the debt. The newly-powerful Tea Party in particular made it their second-highest frothing point, behind ACA. Democrats lost a lot of seats in Congress over alleged "spending". (Whether that's "fair" or not I won't address here. Politics is perception.)
Under that kind of political pressure, NASA is a prime target because it's not a bread-and-butter program. When people don't have jobs nor safety nets, spending on space is not a priority of theirs. Any explicit cuts made by O was simply a response to the will of the people at the time. It's what's supposed to happen in a democracy.
Further, the sequester, which reduced NASA's budget automatically, was a bipartisan "trigger" that kicked in if a certain budget agreement was not made in time.
As far as moon programs, if I remember correctly, O was against manned missions to the moon, not unmanned scientific probes. Thus, the article summary is misleading. This was because he felt manned missions to asteroids and Mars were better priorities.
That's more or less my original point. The politics of funding make longer-term saving difficult. My reference to Keynes was merely a hypothetical situation presented as a hypothetical situation to be commented on and critiqued later in the text.
I was trying to illustrate that forces of the general system of government tend to overwhelm the practical power of a given president. If any president resists spending during good-times, it's a happy accident and a rare accident, and they probably won't get sufficient credit during their tenure.
I'm not sure there's a constitutional or legislative fix for such pressure to spend during good times. It may take experimentation, which voters don't like. A "balanced budget amendment" is one approach, but doesn't give flexibility during down-turns.
Some way to put "soft" incentives should be considered. One suggestion was to tie representatives' pay to the deficit, but that had legal problems. Maybe create a law that representatives have to wear chicken-suits if the debt grows a certain % above GDP if GDP growth is zero or positive for X consecutive quarters, and there has been no down-turn within the last 3 quarters. Wearing chicken-suits won't halt gov't or trigger any significant event, just create embarrassment. Thus, it's a low-risk tactic.
Sometimes you just have to experiment to learn what works and what doesn't. Speculating in a corner only goes so far, and simulating politics on super-computers is still a dark art.
Arm-Chair Viewpoint (Re:No one is asking YOU)
on
Let's Not Go To Mars
·
· Score: 1
Or Reinhold Messner. They said it couldn't be done without oxygen tanks.
I agree that just because you and me don't like crowded conditions, stale air, and risk; does not mean others aren't willing to suffer for glory, achievement, and the challenge.
After all, others can't figure out why us nerds are so happy in mom's basement. Mom's basement could be transported to Mars and we'd never know the difference. (Although, I hear they don't have pizza delivery there.)
Question: If a bed doesn't fit in a room because it's too big, what is too big? Donald: "Your head! You look like a damned pumpkin!" Question: If Alex lent money to Joe because they were broke, who needed the money? Donald: "They are BOTH losers because one is a deadbeat and the other is a sucker!" Question: Should Greece leave the Euro? Donald: "I'll buy the whole damned place and make THEM pay for my purchase!"
"...Michigan joins the motor-vehicle agencies in five other states -- California, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico and Vermont -- who have also parted with HP after attempting similar computer modernization projects."
So the customer eventually sues for this [bad] system that is unfinished and over budget. Large IT company comes back with all the documentation and contract legalese and says "Sorry about your luck"
Contractors typically have a lot of experience CYA-ing for the kind of work they do, unlike the customers, who are not experts at IT contract writing. It's a lopsided arrangement where the swindler has the experience of a 100 swindles behind them.
The contract was made by EDS. HP had nothing to do with it, other than having acquired EDS.
Same issue, both are/were large companies with the resources to study and compare.
So you are saying that when HP acquired EDS, they laid off too many seasoned mainframe experts to save money by hiring young guns, who didn't know a mainframe from Pikachu?
I wonder if the contract allows them to say, "We are in over our head and want out." It probably does, but with a big penalty.
in all fairness, getting off the mainframe is very VERY difficult
True, but HP should have known this based on experience with other mainframe projects or via research on similar projects by other companies. The contract should be public info, and they can hire industrial spies. They have no excuse for not knowing that off-mainframe projects in general are difficult. A start-up, I can understand.
But in general any line-of-business platform that has decades of domain logic built into it will be difficult to migrate. A lot of institutional logic is encoded in the stack (COBOL, JCL, file structures, databases, etc.)
Perhaps some long-term design planning earlier can simplify the project per being "migration friendly", but few think and plan that far ahead. There's no net incentive in a typical org to look more than about 5 years down the road. When you got management breathing down your neck to finish a project, you are pressured to get it done now rather than clean.
Mainframes are not that bad after-all. They're reliable and stable, even though the hardware costs more. Just write new projects in new languages & techniques if you fear you won't be able to find mainframe-specific techs in the future. No matter what language/stack you choose, it will likely be obsolete in a decade or two anyhow.
When the banks are too large, we practically have to bail them out. Banks are key infrastructure. If too many fail, the economic machinery of the country chokes.
I have to disagree in general. If the system strongly encourages a certain behavior, then it's unrealistic to put the blame solely on those who follow what the system encourages.
Further, an honest candidate probably won't get elected. The over-promising one will beat them.
We have to fix a bad system if we really want to solve the problem. Repeatedly beating up on prez's won't solve anything, even if some of the blame is theirs.
Politics focuses too much on who to blame over how to fix the system in general. If we over-focus on individuals, we just reinvent the bad wheel over and over.
To try to use a technical analogy, you can keep complaining about how vacuum tubes are bulky, energy-pigs, and unreliable until the cows come home, blaming the "lousy rotten" tube manufactures. The real solution is to invent the transistor.
Only after the unemployment rate went sky high did Hoover experiment with public works programs. He originally hoped things would fix themselves and mostly left things alone at first. True, FDR was a flip-flopper, but that appears to be a good thing in this case. Politics is messy.
Slashdot Mirror
...to verify their work.
It reminds me of the online "Dilbert Mission Statement Generator" of the 90's. Here's a smaller sample:
http://www.strauss.za.com/sla/...
I used the DMSG for filler text for draft reports and websites. Often the managers didn't know it was filler and it stayed around into production.
I thought the threat was "cloudification", not "uberification". The buzzwordification is confusificating me.
You are over-simplifying things.
You have to remember that during the depths of the economic downturn there was tremendous pressure to cut federal spending to reduce the debt. The newly-powerful Tea Party in particular made it their second-highest frothing point, behind ACA. Democrats lost a lot of seats in Congress over alleged "spending". (Whether that's "fair" or not I won't address here. Politics is perception.)
Under that kind of political pressure, NASA is a prime target because it's not a bread-and-butter program. When people don't have jobs nor safety nets, spending on space is not a priority of theirs. Any explicit cuts made by O was simply a response to the will of the people at the time. It's what's supposed to happen in a democracy.
Further, the sequester, which reduced NASA's budget automatically, was a bipartisan "trigger" that kicked in if a certain budget agreement was not made in time.
As far as moon programs, if I remember correctly, O was against manned missions to the moon, not unmanned scientific probes. Thus, the article summary is misleading. This was because he felt manned missions to asteroids and Mars were better priorities.
that there's plenty of room for Hillary server jokes here.
That's more or less my original point. The politics of funding make longer-term saving difficult. My reference to Keynes was merely a hypothetical situation presented as a hypothetical situation to be commented on and critiqued later in the text.
I was trying to illustrate that forces of the general system of government tend to overwhelm the practical power of a given president. If any president resists spending during good-times, it's a happy accident and a rare accident, and they probably won't get sufficient credit during their tenure.
I'm not sure there's a constitutional or legislative fix for such pressure to spend during good times. It may take experimentation, which voters don't like. A "balanced budget amendment" is one approach, but doesn't give flexibility during down-turns.
Some way to put "soft" incentives should be considered. One suggestion was to tie representatives' pay to the deficit, but that had legal problems. Maybe create a law that representatives have to wear chicken-suits if the debt grows a certain % above GDP if GDP growth is zero or positive for X consecutive quarters, and there has been no down-turn within the last 3 quarters. Wearing chicken-suits won't halt gov't or trigger any significant event, just create embarrassment. Thus, it's a low-risk tactic.
Sometimes you just have to experiment to learn what works and what doesn't. Speculating in a corner only goes so far, and simulating politics on super-computers is still a dark art.
Or Reinhold Messner. They said it couldn't be done without oxygen tanks.
I agree that just because you and me don't like crowded conditions, stale air, and risk; does not mean others aren't willing to suffer for glory, achievement, and the challenge.
After all, others can't figure out why us nerds are so happy in mom's basement. Mom's basement could be transported to Mars and we'd never know the difference. (Although, I hear they don't have pizza delivery there.)
Your link is about democracy in Iraq, not about troops staying. Neither of you gave any decent evidence/link of your troop-stay claim.
So we take out 5,000 mid-level jerks JUST IN CASE one of them grows to be Hitler-like? Not practical for many reasons. Hindsight is fool's gold.
It's a Trump-Bot!
Question: If a bed doesn't fit in a room because it's too big, what is too big?
Donald: "Your head! You look like a damned pumpkin!"
Question: If Alex lent money to Joe because they were broke, who needed the money?
Donald: "They are BOTH losers because one is a deadbeat and the other is a sucker!"
Question: Should Greece leave the Euro?
Donald: "I'll buy the whole damned place and make THEM pay for my purchase!"
P.S. Death from illness sucks more
Another source:
http://www.michigan.gov/som/0,...
An interesting quote:
"...Michigan joins the motor-vehicle agencies in five other states -- California, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico and Vermont -- who have also parted with HP after attempting similar computer modernization projects."
Contractors typically have a lot of experience CYA-ing for the kind of work they do, unlike the customers, who are not experts at IT contract writing. It's a lopsided arrangement where the swindler has the experience of a 100 swindles behind them.
Same issue, both are/were large companies with the resources to study and compare.
So you are saying that when HP acquired EDS, they laid off too many seasoned mainframe experts to save money by hiring young guns, who didn't know a mainframe from Pikachu?
I wonder if the contract allows them to say, "We are in over our head and want out." It probably does, but with a big penalty.
That was my original point also: anti-trust enforcement.
True, but HP should have known this based on experience with other mainframe projects or via research on similar projects by other companies. The contract should be public info, and they can hire industrial spies. They have no excuse for not knowing that off-mainframe projects in general are difficult. A start-up, I can understand.
But in general any line-of-business platform that has decades of domain logic built into it will be difficult to migrate. A lot of institutional logic is encoded in the stack (COBOL, JCL, file structures, databases, etc.)
Perhaps some long-term design planning earlier can simplify the project per being "migration friendly", but few think and plan that far ahead. There's no net incentive in a typical org to look more than about 5 years down the road. When you got management breathing down your neck to finish a project, you are pressured to get it done now rather than clean.
Mainframes are not that bad after-all. They're reliable and stable, even though the hardware costs more. Just write new projects in new languages & techniques if you fear you won't be able to find mainframe-specific techs in the future. No matter what language/stack you choose, it will likely be obsolete in a decade or two anyhow.
If one inadvertently lands in a residential area, and they see the word "Atomics", they may not be very calm about it.
Who would want to build anything in N. Dakota; it's fly-over country......oh
When the banks are too large, we practically have to bail them out. Banks are key infrastructure. If too many fail, the economic machinery of the country chokes.
It was modded as a joke, but turning out more and more true:
http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
No, more like:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...
I have to disagree in general. If the system strongly encourages a certain behavior, then it's unrealistic to put the blame solely on those who follow what the system encourages.
Further, an honest candidate probably won't get elected. The over-promising one will beat them.
We have to fix a bad system if we really want to solve the problem. Repeatedly beating up on prez's won't solve anything, even if some of the blame is theirs.
Politics focuses too much on who to blame over how to fix the system in general. If we over-focus on individuals, we just reinvent the bad wheel over and over.
To try to use a technical analogy, you can keep complaining about how vacuum tubes are bulky, energy-pigs, and unreliable until the cows come home, blaming the "lousy rotten" tube manufactures. The real solution is to invent the transistor.
That averages out to "3 Chan".
Only after the unemployment rate went sky high did Hoover experiment with public works programs. He originally hoped things would fix themselves and mostly left things alone at first. True, FDR was a flip-flopper, but that appears to be a good thing in this case. Politics is messy.
...with 20 years of experience in Java 9.