Believe it or not, this is _not_ an article purely about techie talk. Skip towards the end where we actually get political, even though that's known to be a sure way to kill a thread in the dc.* heirarchy. JBT wrote: > > klaatu; > > > No, it's not so much the operating system, it's the ability to use that > > operating system to provide supercomputer power that's Y2K-ready, for about > > sixty-thousand dollars. > "Clustering" is cool if you need it. Perhaps my area of responsibility > is too narrow as I have been around many Departments in the DC Gov but > Health is my biggest concern. I see no need for super computer anything. > I'll assume you know of such processing needs and defer to your > judgement that that kind of horsepower is necessary. For what I've seen > around here I could do with non clustered, Intel machines. The only thing that _I_ personally could see them needing this for is for CAD or visual-database type stuff, for instance the visualization systems whereby you'd merge data from (let's say) assets-management, and the trees databases, to produce a point-and-click intranet web-based map of which trees on which city-owned properties were scheduled to have someone go by and trim them. Another user might need to generate a map of non-city properties needing plumbing inspections, etc, combined with point-and-click pop-ups specifying ownership of the properties, with clickable availability of their taxes-paid status and so forth. Another use might be for MPD doing extremely-fast generation of crime-activity maps, etc., or possibly for those huge search-engines that create correlations out of vast amounts of widely disparate data types. > > > It's also about software costs. Each NT license costs what, $300.00 or so? And > > what do you get with it? NT. And that's all that you get. If you just went > > with a plain ol' vanilla Red Hat or Slackware, you get about 2000 applications > > ranging from typesetting through word-processors and mail-handlers. If you > > want to cough up $300 per machine, you get a very nice office-suite. Plus you > > can get an extended-SQL client-server database system for exactly free. > Software costs are PART of the issue but manpower is expensive too. I > love good inexpensive software but who is going to run it? I think you > have to look at TOTAL cost of software, hardware and labor. This is the one main drawback that Linux has, and that is that it's not at all easy for someone who's "clueless" to set up. Getting the graphic-user interface set-up is particularly problematic. That's one reason that I created a "spawning drive", that way instead of doing an install from the install disks, I just have to fdisk and format the target drive, copy the entire spawning drive to the clone, and it's almost ready to go, other than to go down a checklist of config files, to give the machine its IP address and hostname and so forth. As much labor as can be done that's not utterly site-specific, I've already done. > I agree NT > for most situations is a very poor choice, figures the District would > try to mandate it! I don't know enough about the "yellow pages", LDAP > or "directory services" around LINUX but I think it's one of the FIRST > issues that has to be brought under control. The "yellow pages" (NIS) are installed but not implimented. NIS is IMHO an immense and intolerable yawning chasm of a security hole and should never be used. Same with NFS remote-mounting of files for sharing across the network. It's purely a legacy concept from a time when a one-gig harddrive cost a thousand dollars and all software was site-licensed for fee. In a free-software mode under Linux, when you can get 6 gigs of harddrive for under $200.00, there's just no point in sticking to a centrally-served model unless you actually _want_ to strive for the Network Computer Skinny Client model, in which case you should stick to JAVA anyways. With today's desktops' massive storage, every computer can be a full-figured system with everything that the user needs right there on their desktop, except possibly for data - and that can be served a lot more securely with encrypted intranet http, or encrypted 'rdist'. > Another huge area of cost > can be security and resource\user management - I love Novell's NDS for > this type of thing. Resource management, except for maybe a Beowulf cluster, wouldn't be much of an issue; every "average" user would have on their desktop probably lots more power than they could concievably use. Again, each user has their own machine, with everything on it that they'd need except perhaps their data, which IMHO should be served centrally via intranet http (ideally encrypted). As for security, there's 'ssh' which is a DES/IDEA-encrypted telnet/rsh application. > I have not tried accessing my SQL databases (Oracle) > under a Linux client yet, I am still reading and playing with it. See http://www.postgresql.org for a nice client-server database system. Or ponder the possibilities of using the GNU database system. There's also the possibility of having a script that converts database entries to HTML, which would allow many different databases to be indexed by a webcrawler bot like Harvest. For more on Harvest, see http://harvest.transarc.com > Everything belongs in a database! I am currently am getting into JAVA > and JAVA on Linux if it works well maybe I could even move my programs > to JAVA and save on my Netware purchases. :> For Java under Linux, please see http://www.blackdown.org/ > > > Apache webserver, the FTP server, mail-handling and listservs and in fact I > > can't think of a better basis for a firewall or masquerader. > I'm not sure how LINUX stacks up as a firewall. The web server, > Masquerader, FTP, SMTP mail, list servs should be checked out on Linux > and if Linux can compete & win - more power to it. I believe it might. > Let the needs be defined in every project and may the best man win. Exactly. As far as ftp, I haven't had any problems, not that so many people hit my site. But in the last four months, the Apache webserver at my home site has reliably sent out about 2.5 gigabytes of web-pages, the SOCKS-5 and masquerade have been working just fine, the firewalling evidently works okay too. There is something quirky about my sendmail SMTP), it doesn't like passing on MIME-multipart mail generated by Netscape. I've got several low-volume Majordomo (listserv) lists running, and they seem to be trouble-free. > > > See, that's exactly the problem. What would you like to change about that? > > Keep in mind that the main reason the DCFRA came is here was because of the DC > > Government's ways over the last decade, driving the city into the mud. > I have not seen that the presence of the DCFRA has changed too much. > Name a DC Dept\Agency that is better because of it? Schools? So far they've got a slightly upgraded (suitiable for beast, if not yet for man, as it were) physical infrastructure. Some improvement in some programs, notably in the implimentation of a policy requiring summer school for poor students. Arguably, the greatest improvement in services in the whole District Government. > DHS? Hmmm - at least they're starting to do more checking of licenses on day-care facilities. Also, a new guy is now in position who's stated that he intends to completely revamp the whole employment-training system, as well as changing the focus of the unemployment system away from just passing out the checks, and towards enrollment in job-training and job-placement. How well he'll do and how far this will go remains to be seen - but its definitely one of the areas in which the District has had the worse failings via-a-vis perpetuation of a Welfare Culture of poverty, indolence and hopelessness. > Health? Also still a true horror story, and noplace is this more evident in plight of the homeless, in particular of the mentally-ill homeless. There are simply almost no services (outside of charity) for the homeless. I know one guy who got shot up at Dupont Circle and rather than incur more debt and have to deal with the DC system, just cut the bullet out of his arm himself and a month later it looks like hell but it's probably better than it'd be if he'd tried to get any services from the DC Government. > Police? This has been another area of significant improvement, at least so far as equipment for the officers is concerned. Aerial support is now available, though I beleive it's from co-ordination with the Park Police. There are new police cars all over town, instead of the former situation where nearly half of police cars didn't even have working radios, with 88 cars missing or unaccounted-for and a repairs lead-time averaging two months. As for the status of reforms at their evidence-storage facility, I can't say. The Medical Examiner's Office? Still backlogged and still icky - but new procedures are coming online and hopefully they'll eventually get sufficient local equipment so as to be able to tell the difference between cyanide poisoning and heart-attack. More problematic is the present failure of the police/M.E. interface to revise the standards by which the "determine" whether a death is ruled "cause unknown" or "homicide". It has been estimated by some that as many as three-fourths of the District's "unknown causes of death" cases should have been ruled "homicide" but policy was to go with the less-specific system, possibly rather than have Congress (sooner than it did) assume direct control of the District and through a military occupation, rather than through an imposition of a civil-governance authority. It may still develop, as policy in this regard is revised, that we will get one heck of a lot more cops on the streets, all of whom have been specially trained to know the difference between someone who choked on a drink and one who choked on a drink full of chemicals. > Anything up at Judiciary? How much money have they > thrown at the problems? TONS! To get the city efficient (I'll stay away > from the issues of what roles the government should and should not fill) > you would have to change the rules the citizens of this town want to > live by. Nothing has changed in that. I concur absolutely. The place has been essentially anarchistic (where not kleptocratic) for so long that a local culture that definitely "won't play in peoria" has assumed the role of the mainstream. This culture actually _prefers_ a society where they can get away with murder, conduct all deals under the table, break every rule there is, and have it all paid for several times over by the taxpayer-at-large. > They vote for people based on > certain criteria, those people deliver. What they delivered, which kept them re-elected, was incompetence in setting the local situation right. I don't believe that most people in DC would ever in a minute vote against corruption, because the local culture is itself corrupt, rotten through and through. There's never been any better example IMHO of the truism "democracy is several wolves and a sheep sitting down to vote what's for dinner" than the District. Pardon me for waxing allegorical here... Basically it's a conclave of wolves and they'll be damned if they'll vote for someone that will make them stop eating sheep. Even the cops know that and realize that if they try to make the wolves stop eating sheep they'll be fighting against the vast majority and they have better sense than to try; the wolves were also the majority in the police department, so it would seem. Hence the former state of systemic corruption, which the local wolves fattened upon. However, this is after all the capital of the Nation and the nation is, in majority, a large enough group of non-wolves to force a revision of attitude... until, of course, home-rule is returned. And then once again democracy in the District will essentially be about voting on who to have for dinner. But I predict, and it may be all for the worse, that the wrong lesson will have been learned here regarding corruption: from here on in the wolves will be _efficient_ wolves, not attract attention. But those who play by the rules will continue to be dinner until they, too, stop playing by the rules. > Forget what Barry smoked - he > had a message, people voted for it, not everyone but enough. As to > really cleaning up the government it is so simple. 1)Make it smaller, DC > doesn't want that. In a fit of total madness or possible clarity, I'll come right out and say that possibly the only thing that will provide good government for DC is to require that anyone who works for it not be a District resident. Hardly democratic but it would tend to keep the people for voting themselves positions in a bloated ineffectual bureaucracy. > Notice that when the MAYOR did not work, we just > added another layer the DCFRA. Add more layers, that's what this town > does cause Congress thinks that way. Add, add, add. 2)Make good rules > that everybody must follow. All the current graft goes against rules but > who cares. It would seem that you and I do. Of course we're clearly in the minority. > I wonder if past reformers now work in the companies that > they awarded the contracts to? Isn't that against District rules? Who > cares? The "revolving door" is the oldest and biggest scam around this town, or so it seems, it's been a mainstay of local business culture for so long that it's the standard of "how it is" rather than the objectional scam as the rest of the US sees it. > I've even dealth with internal affairs in the city when I was > called in as a "witness", nothing happened to the guilty party. The > person was just moved, to a higher position of course. Ever see a > district person fired? Hell no. They can't be, or couldn't be. And guilt in a District corruption charge only shows that they're interested in playing by DC rules. So of course they get a higher position. > Know what happened to that person caught in > Baltimore driving a government car on new years eve and the car got > stolen? Remember that story in the papers? Wanna guess where they are > now? We have enough rules. DC has enough money. I better just quit, I'll > talk forever. > > > What I see as happening is that I think there's an entrenched system of > > payoffs and kickbacks and cronyism and professional unaccountability. What > > sparked this thread off, however, was that it appears that a new cronyism > > tried to sleaze its way in, and didn't quite carry it off. > We will see if they suceed in carrying it off or not, I hope that they > will not. But what will be done? Another big contractor will come in, > IBM I believe you said for Y2K, and spend another boat load of money. > You think DC will let the procurement and personnel systems be redone? Nope - it's all about one hand washing the other, though this being DC I imagine it's other parts that are getting wet if you get my drift. > Think the financial system will "talk " to one another so there could be > some accoutnability? eg)Think the DPW (public works) sysytem that came > in to redo the gasoline, car repair etc. etc. system and manage things > will succeed? Or do you think that many people profit too much by the > lack of accountability to allow change. Absolutely. You've never seen so much bad attitude and footdragging as the District Government rank-and-file have exuded in the last year or so. > > > And how glad we are it didn't happen, $50,000,000 is a lot of money to spend, > > especially considering that computerwise, DC's not ready for the year 1985, > > much less the Year 2000. They don't have that many computers to > > replace/re-code-for, and there can't possibly be that many embedded systems in > > town that are the responsibility of the DC Government; it never had the money > > to buy any since the technology really developed. > > > DC should get new systems and trash the old. They have nothing of value. Actually, this is probably too much caffeine talking here, but about DC's corruption, I am oddly reminded of one of those remakes of Night of the Living Dead: You know, if you've just got a couple of zombis wandering around biting the living and turning them into the mindless walking dead (I think that probably describes most DC bureacrats, especially the midlevel ones) the time to deal with them is before the entire town is shambling about hungrily, moaning their hunger for "brains". At that point in time, everything falls apart, you can't expect the mindless walking dead to do such a hot job of keeping the city organized. (In this particular film, which had some great moments, when the undead munch out on the first cops to arrive to investigate, one of the zombis gets on the radio and says "send more brains, I mean cops!") And of course if you send in someone who's got the brains to do the job, of course the first thing that happens is that the zombis close ranks and eat the brains. And yet another enters the ranks of meandering ghouls and the garbage _still_ doesn't get collected. In this film, of course the only thing that can be done is to nuke the place, rather than have it spread. To resolve the allegory, let's say that the thing to have done in the District would be to have simply decapitated the bureaucracy and replace it wholesale with a new one, from the top down, in one stroke. But in practice, what happened is that, as you say, we just got another layer of bureaucracy, and as the new heads came online, I suspect that they, too, basically got their brains eaten and thus the zombi virus of endemic District corruption perpetuates itself, same disease, different body. > > sorry to talk so much; Likewise! But at least it's discussing the District and its problems <"brains! more brains!"> and not inane blabbings about liberals and conservatives. > JBT -- Be kind to your neighbors, even though they be transgenic chimerae. Re-transmission of this e-mail expressly prohibited. Non-UseNet re-transmission of this article is a willful violation of US Copyright Law and the Berne Convention. Statutory damages are $250,000.00 Whom thou'st vex'd waxeth wroth: Meow. http://earthops.net/klaatu/