Bush's original apointee to head the Department of Homeland Security is on the board of the company that produces the scanners. He says this has nothing to do with them going into airports.

Profit should not be part of the equation. Electricity is a necessity in modern society.

Instead of profit mongers designing, building, running, and maintaining nuclear facilities, it should be a government agency, similar to NASA, in control.

Profit, cost cutting, year-over-year "metrics", and performance-based measures guarantee an environment of deteriorating safety and increased risks. Combined with an anti-regulation mentality and you have a recipe for eventual disaster(s).

Nuclear energy is a "mission critical" activity based on the nature/need of the product and the potential downsides, and NASA is the only model agency I know that has a respectable record of safety.

Better yet, I think the way to go is have the government developing massive solar and wind farms. Make electricity so cheap that coal, oil, and nuclear energy producers can not possibly compete.

The only downside would be the hit terrorists would take. No more money going to hostile countries. No more oil profits funding of terrorist groups. No more nuclear facility targets. No more raw material for nuclear weapons. No more recruitment help from governments invading over misguided fears of weapons of mass destruction.

There is a lot less terror when a solar panel or wind turbine is blown up compared to a nuclear reactor, nuclear waste storage facility, oil refinery, petroleum storage facility, or natural gas pipeline.

Just look at Iraq. We made it a veritable eden.

I bet they'll greet us dancing in the streets.
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My copy of CS5 uses the my 5670's GPU, and it took a while to get used to. You never see a progress bar, even when processing my wifes 20+ megapixel camera. Scary fast.

Republicans are on a tear to eliminate social programs.

Lordy, this program is all about social (media) programs. Cut it, cut it, cut it.

Bachmann, you are a self-described cutter. Cut it. Come on, cut, cut, cut.

Maybe once we see Glen Beck crying about this on Fox the patriot citizenry will kill this outrageous social program.
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Its the rest of the States that are happy to make special allowances for Texas and a couple of other states' succession.

By eliminating the weakest members, the nation as a whole becomes stronger. Much, much stronger.

You cannot legislate intelligence. Apparently, you can legislate the reverse.

So one result of "intelligent design" is stupidity? It doesn't say much for the designer.

Unfortunately, our fine brothers in Texas aren't exactly stellar exemplars of evolution, either.

The US government spent the 7 years following 9/11 keeping people terrified. If you read that as the government doing the terrorist's job, you possess properly working higher brain function.

In fact, the US reaction went way beyond anything "the enemy" could have hoped for.

The alleged mastermind said directly that the attack was intended to bring financial harm to the US. The US responded with trillions of dollars of wartime debt. As a token of appreciation, the US threw in recruitment benefits that will help terrorist organizations for decades. While they were at it, the US government stomped all over rights of the its citizens. Heck, why not? As if that wasn't enough, they also work very hard at keeping the terror of 9/11 alive, playing with "threat levels" whenever the people don't seem terrified enough.

The truly astounding thing is how much money they are continually throwing at things that do not improve security at all.

This will not play well with the /. crowd, but these high tech electronic gizmos don't work. People have made it through screening with handguns. And as people have said since the get-go, people don't even need to get past the security check to terrorize at airports (presumably all terrorist targets are air travel centric).

Maybe gizmos act as a deterrent, "Ooh, surely their superior technology form an impenetrable barrier, lets just give up trying" but I doubt it.

Many people have been arguing for more effective, lower tech solutions that actually will work. Dogs and pigs can detect an enormous range of aromas, don't need to see a nearly undressed image of your body, don't need to physically touch your naughty bits, and don't expose you to radiation.

If the government goal was effective security, wouldn't they use the very inexpensive and very effective dogs rather than the machines that cost millions and are not effective?

What would be more intimidating, a refrigerator-sized machine or a pack of hungry looking German Shepherds sniffing at your pant leg?

Testing can only prove the presence of bugs, not the absence.

It doesn't matter if you have 10,000 test cases or 10,000 times as many. Best case is you catch the bugs you were able to anticipate. And if you think you will be able to simulate real-life loads and traffic patterns of your first year in production, well, good luck with that.

If you are relying on testing to deliver "bug free" systems, you've already lost half the battle.

Do yourself a favor and dump most of your "test case" staff and hire yourself some real engineers. You'll find you didn't need those folks and have higher quality systems.

There is not enough public information to make specific conclusions about the contributing factors for this outage.

We can make specific broad comments about systems that have these type of requirements, performance and otherwise.

Just as there are platforms that have a security model that make them more (or less) secure than other platforms, there are platforms that are inherently better (or worse) at performance.

There are message passing schemes that well suited for this type of system.

There are programming languages that make it easier to develop robust bug-free applications.

There are systems with built-in high-availability fail-over capabilities (as apposed to a typical multiple vendor, multi tiered "solution").

I'm sorry, if they were patching the system after 3 months running in parallel, they probably have much more fundamental problems than the application not yet being production ready.

I think the biggest problem of all is the extreme hubris of vendors and consulting firm who sell the idea that they can apply their products, methodologies, and "industry best practices" (what a load of excrement!) to ANY project, even though they have never attacked a problem in the same class before! We'll have our Super Certified Windbags meet with the other vendors Account Superheros and your Subject Matter Expuds, and we'll have a full project plan and budget on your desk by this Tuesday.

Bzzt! Wrong!

The best case is that they simply fail miserably. Worst case is the get it almost-right and go through the outage/patch cycle for the next decade.

Oh, and for any system that must have near-perfect availability, you want to avoid patching as much as possible. Annually is a nice goal. Every Tuesday, not nice at all. That's begging, pleading, screaming for trouble.

That's simply how things work in the American form of Hypocrisy...er, Democracy.

Spend months firing up the base, build the level of anger and hate, and when it pays off at the ballot box, immediately proceed to violate every promise made.

This is not the exclusive domain of any one political party, but happens when fear, hate and an uninformed populace form a perfect storm in voter polling.

There are a couple of reasons the whole system doesn't implode. First, every "side" is guilty to some extent at some point of everything they accuse others of doing. Everyone does it which makes it somehow okay. Perhaps more importantly, there is a certain about of robustness built into the system, and there is only a certain range of movement allowed by an "average", ie. simple majority, vote of the citizenry.

Coupled with the fact that legislative action involves compromise, the system maintains a certain set point around mediocrity. The only way to stray far is to have majorities across the board.

The US had two years of this very situation with across-the-board majorities. There was the potential to make significant movement for the better or for the worse. One party used rare parliamentary actions like they were candy to throw a wrench in all legislative action. This took the situation from where there was an equal chance of making things better and making things worse, to guaranteeing that things would be worse.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Throw your country under the bus for potential future political gain. Ignoring the morality and patriotism aspects of it all, you have to admire the stone cold brass ones it took to make this your strategy.

A person could get their undergarments in a twist if the system didn't have this built in never-be-far-from-average aspect to it.

'nuff said.

Sources please.

Or did you make all that up?

I am an American, and have had multiple experiences with "foreign" health care systems.

In 10+ years of traveling, my wife has required emergency medical attention on two occasions.

On both occasions, one in Germany and one in Australia, the experience was significantly better than any of my 25+ years of experiences in American HMOs. The waits were short (under 5 minutes in both cases), the services were provided quickly and expertly, and the only non-medical questions asked were for a "visit fee" amount that was so small as to be not worth processing, IMO.

It is truly an amazing thing for Americans to witness walking into a healthcare facility and simply being treated. Well. No questions asked. No insurance card needed. No questions about nationality. No filling out forms. No providing employer information. No long waits. No filing for reimbursements. No fighting with a billing agency. No bureaucratic benefits departments. Nothing but treatment.

Considering the audience here, a reasonable metaphor would be comparing the user experience of "green screen" CRTs with iPods.

Yes, the difference in experience is that dramatic. It can be that much better.

Wow. I don't know where to begin. Is the liberal base really VAST, or is that not what you intended to say? I know scores of Liberals, some of whom might self-identify as part of the Democratic base. That "base" would be a small subset of all Liberals.

None of the Liberals I know are Union workers and low income minorities. None are even Union workers OR low income minorities. We are all highly educated, highly skilled, white and blue collar professionals. Perhaps because of the VAST numbers of liberals there are many distinct liberal groups, so it is unlikely that groups will cross paths with any significant frequency.

I could continue to dissect your post for sport, but I don't consider it a reasonable use of my time.

I will point out, however, that you very well illustrate the incoherent rambling of the extreme right that see content presented on Beck's and Limbaugh's programs as having some basis in reality, rather than the farcical and fact-free fabrications that they are.

BTW, there are reasons Fox media and their darlings like Sarah Palin attack the "mainstream media" and the "intellectual elite" on a regular basis. Those groups are fully capable of exposing factual and logical errors of the positions they espouse on a daily basis. Any exposure to reality threatens the power they are holding over their victims (followers).