Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
I don’t understand Lex?
Are you comparing the absoulte horrid abilities of the NMCI to load or even stay up and running to the Chance-Vought F4U Corsair take off procedures and how complex that plane was to how simple it appears to be to run a computer network.
Ah. The video on the main page is the F4U start and pre-takeoff procedure. The video on the comments page is for EDS. Lex’s comment masks sense for the EDS video.
While waiting for the email to come back up, by the way, you could see the entire video that the Corsair startup came from, as well as a lot of WW2-era aviation over at Zeno’s Warbirds site (http://www.zenoswarbirdvideos.com/).
Well, maybe not while you’re at work. But still.
EDS has some classic commercials. anyone remember “the running of the squirrels?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnxS94em8uA
Never having seen this ad before I thought (all the way through) “What does this have to do with NMCI?” And then, of course, it became immediately apparent at the end.
FWIW, the commercial and its analogy is spot-on, with the possible exception that not all the folks constructing the plane in mid-flight are given parachutes… I’ve seen more than one person screw up and get tossed overboard without a second thought.
And Charles…you have no idea “…how simple it appears to be to run a computer network.” Your key word is “appears.” It’s damned difficult under normal circumstances, and the difficulty increases by an order of magnitude when migrating from one environment to another while trying to maintain a reasonable level of service. Just sayin’…
And who couldn’t love a job where the boss pays for your skydives after work?
Building the NMCI IS a difficult proposition. Keeping the whole network up and running while making substantial changes to the whole architecture is very much like building an airplane inflight.
My objection comes from the underbidding of the contract (IBM bid out at $11-13 billion, no one wondered about EDS?) and the laughable timespan they gave for completion (3 yrs to get it up and running 2 yr follow on project, IBM said 5-7 yrs). Not sure if these are the correct numbers, but this is what I was told when I got onto the project.
Underbid, over-promise, under-deliver and milk the gubment for all the cash you can. The contractors get paid, the Sailors and Marines get screwed.
I like the idea of letting the warfighters fight and offloading the BS to civvies (sailors belong on ships and ships belong at sea) but the system still has to work or the warfighters will be battling the network when they should be resting and recharging.
If they ever get the kinks out, there will be a substantial benefit to the services.
Oh, BTW the Army and Air Force are both doing the NMCI type thing now. EDS didn’t even get invited to bid on those projects.