The scope of the screw ups on this is so big that new vernacular and laws will be coined. College courses will be created solely focusing on the screw ups involved in this system. Many of epic software disasters of the past will be forgotten because of how they fade in comparison.

The problems:

o $5B estimate to produce the site (WTF!) but only a $1B budget granted to create the site (still, WTF! )
o Hofstadter’s Law
o 55 contractors and Conway's law
o 2 weeks of integration testing before going live (seriously? a thousand WTF!)
o Unknown size of the Cone of Uncertainty at launch
o Failure to adopt 'Worse is Better' OR 'The Right Thing'

The solution involves a heavy dose of outside programmer's thus invoking Brook's Law.

The $5B estimate is nealry 24,000 man-years of effort at $100/hr. So, congress said, 'no way', we think it is only 5,000 man-years. Yeah. Congress is overseeing a software project.

On all other points you've made, kudos. However, Space Camp does not operate within the budget of NASA. It is part of the United State Space and Rocket Center Museum. Having developed and sold a simulator to Space Camp, I wish they had part of NASA's budget. Museums are not deep pocket customers.

I don't believe the value of the current simulators (none of which I worked on, btw) is diminished in the least by being reflective of the last 32 years of manned flight. The important parts of what is being taught is not about specific flight hardware as much as it is about planning and teamwork in the adverse conditions that space provides.

Those savvy to 2600 I am sure remember, but for the rest: Ma Bell was recording metadata and voice without wiretaps. It began with Project Greenstar and was used to evaluate and catch the first phone phreaks. (See "Exploding The Phone:..." by Phil Lapsley for an interesting read on this.)

From personal experience and knowledge of people involved, the US gov't was at least capturing voice data on select people since before 1964. This came to light to me in 1988, as related by someone that was interviewed and questioned about phone conversations that took place prior to 1964. This did not involve illegal activity prior to 1964 nor in 1988. Upon learning of this, I assumed the gov't has been capturing but not listening to all that it can (just as was done in Project Greenstar) and that only when certain issues came to light, was the listening performed.

My son and I were looking forward to playing this until we played in the first beta. With a one hour limit on play time, practically no new content to be experienced in that beta, and some really oddball bugs, I knew a decent play experience would have to be several months away. It is clear the imminent release data was driven by forces outside of the developers' authority. This was not a milestone driven release schedule, therefore, ignore all the spin coming from EA marketing. The game is in alpha, even now. The improvement they report for server access can be explained by customers staying away in droves.

You missed a key point regarding the word "abuse". It all sounds legit until you ponder the security issues and how easy it could be to gain access to the database--even legitimately. e.g., I'm writing an app to tutor math students. In fact, I just spent 10 minutes creating an introduction to Algebra, so I'm legit, now please provide access to the database.

Real security has been a joke in my kids' school system. It is hardly fear-mongering to extrapolate what that means for the database described in the article.

people who buy these will eventually regret the proprietary cartridges.

Culture happens anyway. It is always present and is not a fad. As you say, there may be a fad in promoting a "developer culture" as some kind of HR marketing ploy, which may all the point you hoped to make with that, but a culture exists, whether it is fostered or not. I think the OP is asking how to foster a good culture, and given that he is not in HR, I take his question at face value.

Your dysfunctional example is a case where good culture is not being fostered by the tribal leaders Seeking good culture includes seeking to reduce the effects of dysfunctional companies on the tribe.

I've worked in environments where a "fake" culture, denoted by the equivalent of Hawaiian-shirt Fridays, was promoted. That happens when clueless people try to grow the tribe beyond practical limits (there is a limit) or simply don't understand what culture is. But it is likewise clueless to suggest that "hippie dippie" stuff should be avoided. There is no right or wrong in those things. They are simply attributes that are available to be adopted or not according to the needs of the tribe.

I totally agree that a good goal is "people who can do their jobs and interact with others", but like "profit $5 million annually per employee" is another good goal, it is not enough to say the goal, there must be a plan.

Initially, we had the problem you cite. We adapted, however, and a couple of things fixed it.

We would play daily (Texas Hold 'Em), carrying over our chips from the previous day, with blinds increasing at the beginning of the day until Thursday, when the blinds would increase on a much accelerated schedule and a winner emerged (usually by the end of the lunch hour). On Friday, we went out to lunch and the the winner would have lunch paid for by the rest of the team. I maintained a spreadsheet for chip counts and statistics over time, which tended to make winning a matter of pride. Also, if you busted out early during lunch, you had to shuffle and deal at least until someone else went bust. On Monday, we'd all get 400 chips and each day after that, we were bankrolled another 200, permitting those that were broke to get back into the game and have a chance to win the free lunch. Took a while to evolve rules to that point, but we all adopted conservative, rational play once all the pieces were in place. I eventually made a spreadsheet to keep track of the daily stuff and the lunch money.

Think like a tribe and do things to strengthen the tribe. A culture is strengthened by rituals and mutual goals, so do things that reinforce that. Divide your culture into three areas: 1) Work, 2) Play, 3) Philosophical; and do things that will reinforce those. Here are some specific recommendations:

Work
Adopt development methodologies (like Agile) stolen/gleaned from well-documented sources. Adopt specific syntactical coding standards so that everyone's code looks identical. Do not permit anyone to use tools to make their code "pretty". Have inclusive meetings to hash out the specifics and get complete buy-in from all team (tribe) members. Document well for future members. More specifically, institute weekly code reviews (at least until they start becoming pointless because everyone is finally on the same page) where one person's code is examined and discussed. This is a ritual that exposes egos, reveals misunderstandings, and exposes weaknesses that can be remedied. After a few cycles through everyone in the team, this will become less difficult and there will be far fewer issues found. Pro tip: start with the tribe leader's code. New members will view code reviews as a kind of initiation, which it is. I was on a team of five developers that did this and it did more to bring us together as a tribe than any single thing. Caught tons of bugs well before they were integrated into the rest of the system. (Initially, we could not check code in until it had been reviewed.)

Play
Eat lunch together as a tribe at least once a week if not more often. Eat in the office and play poker, (not for money) if possible. Always invite everyone in the tribe and if you have a lone wolf that never eats with everyone else, have his boss start holding work lunches, requiring attendance (and then just don't do any real work). Similarly, have some kind of family friendly weekend, off-site event at least once a quarter, paid for by the company if possible, such as cookouts, bowling, sporting event. Ideally, this will be more picnic-like than movie-like to foster getting to know families. I was part of a team that did this (not the same as the one mentioned above). Picnics, a softball team, a volleyball team, movie days (we'd take a long lunch and all go to a new release) were all part of it. It was great until we merged with another company that took over, trashed our budget for such things, split the tribe, started having conference calls during lunch time. Tribe hung on for a while but once these changes were in place, it was clear to us that the company that took us over had no soul.

Philosophical
Have regular "meetings" to discuss technology trends, ideas, stuff found on the web. A lot of this will happen at those regular lunches but try to let lunch be more social, less work talk. As individuals, investigate new methodologies and tools to adopt and then discuss them in a group. Find out what websites each of you regularly reads. Tell war stories from previous jobs or college. Think of these meetings as the time to plan how to strengthen the tribe. The atmosphere of these "meetings" should be akin to sitting around the campfire, sipping on a beer, smoking a pipe, looking at the stars, telling stories. The agenda is not about getting anything done for work, but just about sharing thoughts. Don't let looking at the web become the focus. If no one is talking, then you are doing it wrong. Meeting once a week should suffice.

Note that all three activities above will go far to introduce new team members to the culture and get them integrated into a productive environment. This is important in the long run as rapid team growth can kill a culture. These activities go far to reinforce hierarchy and retain the culture, as well as identify issues that new members may bring along as baggage.

As a species, we are wired to be social and our social construct is wired to be tribal, both in size and in hierarchy. Also, our tribal roots center on the meal, so adding food to any of the suggestions above is good. Food traditions are the cornerstone of cultures and that is part of our wiring. We learn to trust one another by eating shared food. Food prep is ritualistic, so when possible, rely on each other to make food or acquire food. Making a lunch for all, on site with everyone involved will do more to bond the tribe than anything else, but such a thing may not be possible at your facility. So do what you can to approximate that.