Interesting Links for 28-4-2011

[andrewducker]

• What can movie stars tell us about marriage? That education matters.
  (tags: education relationships)
• Small areas of the brain go to sleep when we're up too late
  (tags: sleep brain)
• Simple tests may spot autism in one-year-olds
  (tags: autism children)
• Aircraft carrier costs to rise by at least a billion (again) - now double the original cost.
  (tags: military uk budget EpicFail)
• The Suck Fairy - when re-reading childhood favourites is a bad idea.
  (tags: books reading)
• Apple is apparently not storing your location. Kinda.
  (tags: apple location privacy)
• Empathy, evil and justice at the Royal Institution
  (tags: empathy genetics hormones nurture psychology)
• Windows 8 to have account roaming via the cloud.
  (tags: windows identity data internet)
• A good overview of what today's GDP figures mean for the economy
  (tags: gdp economy uk)
• Vote now for the best sci-fi film never made (I voted for The Forever War)
  (tags: movies scifi)

Comments

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

What I find genuinely bizarre about the aircraft carriers is that apparently the government are in the regular habit of signing contracts with private companies in which they are allowed to run over budget as much as they please, and the government will happily pay.

This seems the exact opposite of the way every other contract in the world works. If somebody says they will deliver 'x' for 'y', then you pay 'y', and its their job to make sure they can still make a profit at it.

[andrewducker]

I suspect it's down to change requests. The article talks about changing one (or both) of the carriers to fly planes rather than helicopters, and refitting them to manage the eurofighter and suchlike. If that wasn't in the original spec then the suppliers will be giggling and rubbing their hands together...

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Given the original spec seemed to call for an aircraft carrier that wasn't going to be able to handle any currently developed airplanes, I suppose it was rather inevitable that the designs would have to be changed.

We've made a truly horrible mistake getting rid of the Harriers.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Not quite. Most long-term contracts in the construction and heavy engineering sectors work like this. What happens is that company A commissions company B to make something big (let's say an oil pipeline, since that's what one of my former clients used to make). At various stages throughout the project, company B will make 'claims' to recover some of their cost overruns. These claims will be negotiated between the two companies. Some will be accepted without quibble (changes in scope etc), some will be argued over and settled with a compromise (perhaps extra labour costs due to weather delays in the North Sea) and some will be refused pretty much straight away.

Nobody ever spares a thought for how much extra hassle this creates for the auditors...


What I don't understand about defence procurement in this country is how consistently bad it is. I mean every single large defence project is late and costs more. My suspicion is MoD incompetence (at least compared to rather clever industry negotiators). I'd like to see a good Defence Secretary sort it out.

[andrewducker]

I agree that bad contract negotiators are definitely part of the problem (and not just in the government, I've seen it time and again from private companies too).

Most outsourcing companies seem to make most of their cash from change requests. Come in with a low headline rate, and then end up charging at least double because the user didn't know what they wanted up front, and kept changing their mind. As no user ever knows what they want, this is a constant...

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

That's still better than the IT projects - they come in late and over-budget *and don't work*...

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

I used to know the guy who ran a company that did one of those late over budget pieces of IT for the NHS.

His daddy is a close personal friend of several major Tory ex-ministers, well connected. This is how his sons company got the contract in the first place.

And the company consisted of, the Owner, a managing director, a corporate director, 4 project managers, and 1, yes, 1 programmer.

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

Having done contract IT work for the government - albeit local government rather than national - I am not even slightly surprised. And having used the NHS' IT systems I'm frankly surprised a programmer was ever allowed near the things - I thought they were just manifestations of pure entropy.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

The problem seemed to be... well. Several things.

1) The one programmer wasn't very good. But none of his superiors knew he wasn't very good. Because nobody else in the company even really knew how to switch a PC on.

2) The management team spent a lot of time flying down to London for high level meetings with civil servants, and would come back with extensive lists of things that needed to be implemented, would sit down with the programmer, and yell at him when he said this would likely take months of work.

3) They were just contracted to do one small part of the overall NHS IT system, and it was supposed to interlock with the other small bits being developed by other IT firms, but none of the other firms ever spoke to each other to discuss how they would actually integrate their systems.

And they got paid millions. Most of which went into opening a big new office suite in Edinburgh because the management didn't have enough office space. And during this move, their one programmer finally quit.

I believe they carried on for another year or two on the project, without any actual development being done because they didn't hire any more programmers.

It was truly epic fail.

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

That sounds exactly like the company I worked for, CompuWeb, which had a staff of approximately thirteen, of whom three were in any way technical. The company went bankrupt due to incompetence on the part of its founder, who bailed and left its debts behind and now runs an IT consulting firm with a whole three employees - the owner, a 'technical account manager' and a 'director: strategic projects'.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this is endemic across the whole industry isn't it? A bunch of crooks and con-men.

The government really desperately need to stop shelling out millions upon millions of pounds for IT projects that a couple of smart teenagers could complete in a week or two.

[andrewducker]

To be fair, not all of it is like that. I know of one system that was very good (because I worked with the people doing it) for recording data from intensive care cots. And I worked myself on one system for recording all care carried out in neonatal intensive care units in South-East Thames.

But a lot of it really is awful.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

I feel it might go beyond incompetence. The number of people who leave the MoD and walk right into very highly paid 'consultancy' jobs in the defence companies is more than a little bit suspicious.

[errolwi.livejournal.com]

Ask Boeing how that works in practice with fixed-price-per-unit supply contracts for 787 components.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

You know, it's strange. I was almost certain their was a movie version of Stranger In A Strange Land with David Bowie in it. But, checking IMDB, apparently not. I wonder how I got that in my head.

[hravan.livejournal.com]

Youre making awfully good sense.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Does this film exist or am I just having brain farts as I get old?

possibly both

[hravan.livejournal.com]

why destroy the illusion? itg worked for gaiman

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

You're probably thinking of The Man Who Fell To Earth, which is kinda-sorta-a little bit like Stranger.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Gotcha.

Thanks! It's been bugging me all day!

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

If there's such a thing as reliable empathy testing, I recommend it for administrators in the caring professions.