I'm sorry, but this is just plain cool. We can now record every single bit of information that the human race has produced, and know that it will last for another 13.8 billion years. Think of it! All of our fairy tails, such as The Brothers Grim, Mother Goose, the bible, the quran, intelligent design, chemtrails, the illuminati, you name it...
Odin. Zeus. Quetzalcoatl. Moroni.
Billions of years from now some truly intelligent species will discover our eternal library and laugh their alien asses off!
You're not looking at the big picture: if we live in a society that promotes stupidity (Trump, anti-vaxxers, chemtrail believers), then a non-vaccinated person making someone else sick, perhaps even fatally so, is just Darwin doing his job at the societal scale.
The first thing Bechtel did when they took over the LANL contract in 2006 was to triple the number to upper-level managers making more than $200K per year from 20 to 60. It did wonders for the overhead rate.
I grew up in Los Alamos and I worked there during my high school years through some of graduate school. The article completely failed to mention one of the main culprits for a lot of these problems: The Department of Energy. While I do not have knowledge beyond what is in the press for most of the incidents mentioned, the ones where I do mostly include a major role in the problem played by DOE ranging from their screwed up policies to direct involvement. Given this, a new contractor can only do so much.
Or only so much less, in the case lf Bechtel-led LANS.
But I basically agree with you. BTW, I also grew up in Los Alamos, and worked there during some of my undergrad days. Oh, and then spent two decades there as a staff member.
There are ingrained issues at the labs. A new management company can't come in a get rid of existing dysfunctional subcontractors. Their employees often have bad attitudes and live in an entitlement culture. The DOE needs to let new companies displace the existing ones completely and just hire the existing people that want to get jobs done.
With that said, their are sections of the labs that do great work and have talented people. Those are usually in the smaller, more focused programs.
Wow, sounds like the voice of experience from an actual current or past LANL employee. I spent 20 years at LANL. During the last 15 years there my group brought in all of our own funding from external, non-DOE sources for non-weapons work. We had to fight LANL management and the DOE to do this, because they resented us doing work for others.
We brought in work from other agencies in spite of the fact that due to LANL's exorbitant overhead costs the annual FTE rate (the amount of money we we had to charge outside agencies for one year of a staff person's time) was more than $500,000.
These days, due to Bechtel/UC's top-heavy management structure, and the general inefficiency with which they run the place, the overhead rates are even higher than they were when I left the lab in 2005. Current FTE rates for staff at LANL now exceeds $600,000 per year.
The question is: why would anybody want to spend that much money to do scientific research when it could be done elsewhere much more cost effectively?
Cosmic Background Radiation, Bell Labs Band Theory of Semiconductors, Bell Labs Information Theory, Bell Labs Atomic Force Microscope, IBM Josephson Junction Circuitry, IBM LASER, Bell Labs High Temperature Superconductors, IBM
That's off the top of my head. I see the Zampolits in the universities have worked their magic on you very well.
Yes, well: The big dog in the current LANL contractor LLC is Bechtel. A construction company. Running a National Lab. No wonder everything is screwed up at LANL. A huge paradigm mismatch occurred when Bechtel took over the LANL contract in 2006.
Two people died while I was there (industrial accident) back in the 80's when it was solely a Berkeley contract. IIRC, White Sands was the private operator and LA was the University operated arms.
Um, no. White Sands (?) is a National Monument just south of Alamagordo, NM. The University of California managed the LANL contract from the mid-40's through 2006, when i tlost the contract to the current LLC, LANS.
And, why I left it last year. Wrong-headed top-level management will forever hamstring a company's IT infrastructure. Let Darwin do his job; in the mean time you might want to look for a more progressive place to work.
Slashdot Mirror
A colleague seem insulted when it was claimed that he produced write-only code.
I'm sorry, but this is just plain cool. We can now record every single bit of information that the human race has produced, and know that it will last for another 13.8 billion years. Think of it! All of our fairy tails, such as The Brothers Grim, Mother Goose, the bible, the quran, intelligent design, chemtrails, the illuminati, you name it...
Odin.
Zeus.
Quetzalcoatl.
Moroni.
Billions of years from now some truly intelligent species will discover our eternal library and laugh their alien asses off!
You're not looking at the big picture: if we live in a society that promotes stupidity (Trump, anti-vaxxers, chemtrail believers), then a non-vaccinated person making someone else sick, perhaps even fatally so, is just Darwin doing his job at the societal scale.
The first thing Bechtel did when they took over the LANL contract in 2006 was to triple the number to upper-level managers making more than $200K per year from 20 to 60. It did wonders for the overhead rate.
I grew up in Los Alamos and I worked there during my high school years through some of graduate school. The article completely failed to mention one of the main culprits for a lot of these problems: The Department of Energy. While I do not have knowledge beyond what is in the press for most of the incidents mentioned, the ones where I do mostly include a major role in the problem played by DOE ranging from their screwed up policies to direct involvement. Given this, a new contractor can only do so much.
Or only so much less, in the case lf Bechtel-led LANS.
But I basically agree with you. BTW, I also grew up in Los Alamos, and worked there during some of my undergrad days. Oh, and then spent two decades there as a staff member.
There are ingrained issues at the labs. A new management company can't come in a get rid of existing dysfunctional subcontractors. Their employees often have bad attitudes and live in an entitlement culture. The DOE needs to let new companies displace the existing ones completely and just hire the existing people that want to get jobs done.
With that said, their are sections of the labs that do great work and have talented people. Those are usually in the smaller, more focused programs.
Wow, sounds like the voice of experience from an actual current or past LANL employee. I spent 20 years at LANL. During the last 15 years there my group brought in all of our own funding from external, non-DOE sources for non-weapons work. We had to fight LANL management and the DOE to do this, because they resented us doing work for others.
We brought in work from other agencies in spite of the fact that due to LANL's exorbitant overhead costs the annual FTE rate (the amount of money we we had to charge outside agencies for one year of a staff person's time) was more than $500,000.
These days, due to Bechtel/UC's top-heavy management structure, and the general inefficiency with which they run the place, the overhead rates are even higher than they were when I left the lab in 2005. Current FTE rates for staff at LANL now exceeds $600,000 per year.
The question is: why would anybody want to spend that much money to do scientific research when it could be done elsewhere much more cost effectively?
Really ?
Cosmic Background Radiation, Bell Labs
Band Theory of Semiconductors, Bell Labs
Information Theory, Bell Labs
Atomic Force Microscope, IBM
Josephson Junction Circuitry, IBM
LASER, Bell Labs
High Temperature Superconductors, IBM
That's off the top of my head. I see the Zampolits in the universities have worked their magic on you very well.
Yes, well: The big dog in the current LANL contractor LLC is Bechtel. A construction company. Running a National Lab. No wonder everything is screwed up at LANL. A huge paradigm mismatch occurred when Bechtel took over the LANL contract in 2006.
Two people died while I was there (industrial accident) back in the 80's when it was solely a Berkeley contract. IIRC, White Sands was the private operator and LA was the University operated arms.
Um, no. White Sands (?) is a National Monument just south of Alamagordo, NM. The University of California managed the LANL contract from the mid-40's through 2006, when i tlost the contract to the current LLC, LANS.
True.
Corporate America rewards their CEOs for failure.
And, why I left it last year. Wrong-headed top-level management will forever hamstring a company's IT infrastructure. Let Darwin do his job; in the mean time you might want to look for a more progressive place to work.
Dang, another lost generation. STTOS is a lost art, apparently. At least amongst the /. crowd.
I bought a couple of the C1s to replace my Pi B units. I wrote about the experience here:
http://things-linux.blogspot.c...
What are *your* experiences.
Way better than yours in German. Promise. ;-)
Genau!
What are *your* experiences.
Ever hear of The Inquisition? How about Catholic pedophile priests? And WTF does the Vatican need with its estimated $45 billion net worth?
The catholic religion is pretty fucking vile.
Let's hear it for religion. Again.
See subject line.
Here ya go: http://oneplus.net/
Not quite true, there were 8 more cases in Nigeria during the last reporting period: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
that Darwin was right.
people are, you know, to stupid to get satire on their own.
I thought cold caused shrinkage.
Pretty fucking stupid, actually. And generally speaking, they're right.
He got a well-deserved heckling at BlackHat this summer: http://www.businessinsider.com/keith-alexander-gets-heckled-at-black-hat-2013-7
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"