A Huge Challenge 2

[CajunCenturion]

An interesting read

http://news.com.com/2030-6682_3-1001642.html?tag=vs4_toc

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[johnwm]

Well it's seriously good news for any underemployed computer or security-related people in the States! I'm sure that the overall program will find a few more small countries to crush dictators to overthrow but let's all hope that the evidence is slightly stronger than so far produced.

There's always something spooky when you see stuff that was written as Science Fiction/Political satire 60 years ago now coming true. Just move the date back by 19 years, change Guantanamo Bay to Room 101, add a few minor changes of name etc and read George Orwell!

A famous American once said "Those who ignore the lessons of history are bound to repeat them", but another said "History is bunk". All the great empires built in the past (including Greek, Roman, Hun, Spanish and British) have influenced large parts of their respective worlds, but all have fallen and left their perpetrators impoverished.

Let's all hope for the sake of the rest of the world that Dubya is guided by the lessons of history, rather than by global megalomania.

 

[guestgulkan]

Will all this spending produce results?
Anybody can collect data - it is the quality of data that's important (and the people interpreting this data).
Organisations like police, CIA and FBI and other intelligence agencies are huge bureaucratic organisations who are not known for working together.
These people have made so many monumental mess-ups over the past few years, I think there is a general lack of confidence in these organisations.
People are fickle - a few years of no incidents and things will just go back to the way they were.

 

[chiph]

I'm just wondering how they plan to integrate all these separate systems (the Libertarian in me doesn't want them to). If you have company "A" writing an immigrant identification solution for INS, and company "B" writing an immigrant identification solution for the Coast Guard, how will they tie together?

And a civil liberties question: Once someone is in an immigration database, how long before they are a trusted citizen and removed? I would say that "watch lists" on citizens are un-American.

Chip H.

 

[SPguru]

chiph, for how the two would work together is where middleware, such as, MQSeries and MQSIntegrator come in.

 

[dilettante]

MOM tends to require closer coupling and cooperation than they'll be willing to live with. Probably something more akin to web services or totally ad hoc like the message envelopes NLETS uses for State and other member interfaces today.

 

[sleipnir214]

<sarcasm>
I knew I could depend on someone's invoking Orwell
</sarcasm>

chiph:
How do you know there are two separate immigration ID apps being written? At least one person in this organization is smart enough to know the value of allowing companies to bid solutions, not just implementations.



Want the best answers? Ask the best questions:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

TANSTAAFL!!

 

[Stevehewitt]

</Sarcasm>
Use .NET!!
<Sarcasm/>



Steve Hewitt

 

[chiph]

How do you know there are two separate immigration ID apps being written? At least one person in this organization is smart enough to know the value of allowing companies to bid solutions, not just implementations.

Because the consulting company will make more money if they submit a bid for a custom-written app, rather than a off-the shelf solution.

The usual approach is to sell the customer on the high-quality of the employees, but after winning the contract, staff it with 1 or 2 high-level guys, and fill out the rest with recent grads. When a milestone approaches, the consulting company will sub-contract the work out to a group of skilled developers who in 8 weeks will do the work that the staffers couldn't do in the previous 6 months.

The favorite practice of a former &quot;Big-Six&quot; accounting firm was to burn through laser toner cartridges. Any little change to a document required a full copy to be printed. They killed trees like you wouldn't believe. Over the months I observed them, I saw them write little code, but a lot of doc (that usually turned out to be worthless). Just another way to inflate the bill and appear to be doing real work.

Chip H.

 

[sleipnir214]

chiph:
Rampant cynicism aside, we still have no evidence that duplicate apps are being written, as in your example of ID applications.

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

TANSTAAFL!!