Umm..NO..the Gov't Agencies will still "manage" the contractor(s) into doing stupid things in order to save a few bucks or save political face for someone. And don't forget the CongressCritters who don't want DC's in their districts closed. Think the BRAC (DoD) process on a much larger scale of agencies and locations. Total freaking chaos. Looks great on paper, works pretty well in the private sector, but it will be a massive fustercluck in the Gov't.

Well the reason they won't pay real $$$ is they bid it so low to win the work and MUST staff it with H1Bs. In the end the epitath of the failed project will be "Yea, but we did it CHEAP". I've worked for NGIT on a Gov't project and as the PM (Contract..they offered me perm for 30% of my rate) saw the rates we were offering to firms to bring us GOOD Java people and they were talking $25/hr and this was during the good times in IT!!! I get 5-10 emails a week from people with Indian last names asking me to sell them my 25+ yrs of expertise for $45-55 per hour plus pay my own expenses. I don't see how H1Bs do it. Rent is the same for everyone, food is the same price and transportaton is needed. So how do you live on those kind of wages in a place like DC or Beltway or NYC or LA?? Until the Gov't gets rid of lowest bid wins and actually looks at expertise, value and past success as predictors of future sucess versus dollar cost we are going to be stuck in this rut. Unfortunately while it does cost LESS to do it the RIGHT way in the LONG term, no one looks past next year's budget number. And if the buttload of debt and other issues the US has right now those budget numbers are going to be skinny so expect the trend to continue and maybe even get worse thus the savings that were planned will not be realized and we are right back in the same overpriced and underdelivered IT.

I can't imagine lawyers in India that are in-depth knowledgeable about the US Legal System and what is required to file and what arguments to make, not to mention admitted to the bar in the USA Taking depositions and actually going to court would be difficult from India! Maybe those guys type the standard form letters MS sends out alleging patent and copyright violations. Actually their web site says they do all the legwork paralegals normally do like case law and other research, etc for IP law cases. So they aren't lawyers but lawyers helpers.

Mr Smith is acting like an asshole. That sort of language isn't going to win him any sympathy from SWA even if they WERE wrong.

Yep, I fly a lot too, SWA's response is very nice and very reasonable. It's a LOT more than other airlines, say American, would do. In this case the customer IS wrong and SWA points that out in a nice way.

Not quite. If at first it doesn't fit then get a bigger hammer! THEN you patch with duct tape and baling wire.

I know the situation you mention, it was discussed here a while ago. In the USA it wouldn't be anything to take to court. As I recall all this "promise" was verbal and wasn't actually in the contracts. As I understand it there is also some blame to go towards SkyB, after all they SIGNED the contract with the different terms. In most countries a signed contract trumps any verbal agreement.I think SkyB have some people in thier pockets as well and there could also be some other vendors such as IBM "helping" out such that the contract gets re-awarded and they can win the next time. Pretty messy situation and unfortunately this crap is common when big money gets involved with big firms and big shot execs and lawyers. It DOES NOT mean EDS/HP as a whole is corrupt.

yep, I suspect there are some nice Science Sattelites that could benefit from heavylift. Right now they use Titan to put anything big up there.

Strong words, got proof? I'm sure some folks at HP and thier lawyers would like to discuss this with you.

It also didn't mention that EDS had this Data Center planned, designed and construction underway BEFORE the "merger" (aka purchase of EDS accounts not people) with HP. HP didn't know much about running Data Centers until they bought EDS, and now they are taking credit for the work done by EDS before HP bought them.

Aries was supposed to be that "modular" concept. It tries to be too many things and does none of them well. The low to mid range Aires capability exists now so why not focus on the heavy lift version? Not to metion the vibration problems Aires has that would shake a crew to death and might even be worse than first thought. Any Shuttle derived concept would have to be massively beefed up to handle a capsule and would also have to be certified as man-rated which is not an easy thing.

Space Station was cancelled, restarted, delayed, changed, funding cut, etc. in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and so on. There NEVER was a "clear vision" for WHY we neede ISS other than a place for the Shuttle to go. I worked on at least two iterations of "ISS". The moon mission was a side effect of the Cold War and somewhat a legacy of JFK. There was some really cool inventions that came out of the program and were commercialized and lots of technology invented that went on to be used for many years. Right now, the leaders in invention and technology for Space is in the commercial sector, but there is not a heavy lift MAN-RATED launch platform in the US commerical or NASA inventory at this time. There were some other alternatives that were proposed that were strictly heavy lift for manned missions but they were shot down for the Aries that was more "scalable" for many types of missions. This was a mistake as those other missions are being filled right now by commerical ventures like Atlas and Titan IV. Maybe it was a case of NASA wanted the whole launch "business" to itself like back in the 1960s. If the program was refocused on building a simple, efffective man-rated heavy lift launch vehicle (think Saturn V but modern) I think something could be ready in a few years. Granted we might have to "license" some engine technology from the Russians but it is doable. Spending more $$$ on R&D isn't going to progress anything. A TON of research was done in the 1960s and 1970s that can be reused, updated and put into practice, there really isn't a lot of NEW things the R&D money is going to invent. Just a different kind of "pork".

IIRC, 30 is considered the threshold amount of data samples to be comsidered statistically valid for a normal population. Lower than that allows results to quickly skewed by only 1 or 2 data points. One other point that was drummed home in Graduate Stats class was that many doctors don't know statistics and those that do many times cherry pick patients and/or filter the data so its skwed to the desirable result. In other words they are not impartial and let the data say what the results are for many reasons (money is #1) . In a case like this, everyone wants a good result to help these people but I'm afraid given the sample size and emotional component (and the fact no one has validated the study) leads me to say this is more marketing for more funding versus reporting a real breakthru in the treatment of such patients.

The back and forth thing is just a phone call. Takes less than a minute. My wife runs several hundred dollar Visa/MC purchases all the time in her business. We just call a toll free number, type in the card # and amount and if it needs verified by a person they come on and ask a question or two then give you the Verification number. The liability for fraud still lies with the merchant, they got your item, you got nada. The CC just charges the bad purchase it back to the merchant, they are not out a dime. VbV is nothing but marketing.