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PoliGAF 2013 |OT3| 1,000 Years of Darkness and Nuclear Fallout

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P

PhoenixDark

Banned
Most of my early bans were on the gaming side; the OT was more lenient back in the day, so we got away with a lot of stuff. As long as you don't name call you'll be fine in the OT, whereas it's very easy to get banned for frivolous stuff in gaming.

I miss the days when Amir0x would give us free reign to troll Nintendo fans. Although there isn't much fun in kicking Nfans now, given even they admit their dire straights now.
 
H

Hitokage

Setec Astronomer
I miss the days when I never had to think about what Amir0x was doing. That "free reign" he gave you was a symptom of something else.
 
A

Averon

Member
We're on the eve of next-gen console launches and one of them has been screwing up since its reveal in May. The gaming side being as toxic as it is shouldn't be surprising.
 
I

ISOM

Member
makingmusic476 said:
My bigger concern is the number of Dems backing away from the bill. They should be presenting a united front, pointing out that the website has significantly improved over the past three weeks and people are getting enrolled.

Instead they're fracturing, allowing Republican fearmongering to win the day.
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Well yeah that I don't know why democrats let republicans creep in with their criticisms even if it is justified about the affordable care act website. If you let republicans take an inch they go for a mile. Democrats still tend to not be united front of just sticking together no matter what. The success of the law will be tied to democrats future.
 
P

Piecake

Member
I found this article to be interesting

For the first time in history, a president has had to stand in the Rose Garden to apologize for a broken Web site. But HealthCare.gov is only the latest episode in a string of information technology debacles by the federal government. Indeed, according to the research firm the Standish Group, 94 percent of large federal information technology projects over the past 10 years were unsuccessful — more than half were delayed, over budget, or didn’t meet user expectations, and 41.4 percent failed completely.

So why is it that the technology available to Mr. Obama as president doesn’t compare to the technology he used to win an election? Much of the problem has to do with the way the government buys things. The government has to follow a code called the Federal Acquisition Regulation, which is more than 1,800 pages of legalese that all but ensure that the companies that win government contracts, like the ones put out to build HealthCare.gov, are those that can navigate the regulations best, but not necessarily do the best job. That’s evidenced by yesterday’s Congressional testimony by the largest of the vendors, CGI Federal, which blamed everyone but itself when asked to explain the botched rollout of the new Web site.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/25/opinion/getting-to-the-bottom-of-healthcaregovs-flop.html

94%?!?!? Holy fuck. This seems like an obvious area of reform, but now I am beginning to understand why all of our projects, from high speed rail to whatever, seems to cost so damn much than other countries.

I wonder if individual states have a similar absurd aquisition regulations. It would be interesting to see a study on the costs of state projects compared to the amount of insane red tape guidelines in the regulations
 
T

thepotatoman

Unconfirmed Member
Piecake said:
I found this article to be interesting



http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/25/opinion/getting-to-the-bottom-of-healthcaregovs-flop.html

94%?!?!? Holy fuck. This seems like an obvious area of reform, but now I am beginning to understand why all of our projects, from high speed rail to whatever, seems to cost so damn much than other countries.

I wonder if individual states have a similar absurd aquisition regulations. It would be interesting to see a study on the costs of state projects compared to the amount of insane red tape guidelines in the regulations
Click to expand...

I wouldn't be surprised if 94% of large scale private projects come late, under budget, and not as expected. Everyone over promises and under delivers. A project manager almost has to today, since it's better to undershoot and add resources instead of overshoot and waste resources.

Do even 6% of video games make it to market without delays, major crunch times, or first day patches? The only difference is government isn't so cutthroat as to force crunch times unless they absolutely definitely have to, unlike game development where it's always expected.
 
P

Piecake

Member
thepotatoman said:
I wouldn't be surprised if 94% of large scale private projects come late, under budget, and not as expected. Everyone over promises and under delivers. A project manager almost has to today, since it's better to undershoot and add resources instead of overshoot and waste resources.

Do even 6% of video games make it to market without delays, major crunch times, or first day patches? The only difference is government isn't so cutthroat as to force crunch times unless they absolutely definitely have to, unlike game development where it's always expected.
Click to expand...

Since you don't seem to think this is a major factor in things costing the government a lot more than other countries, what do you contribute to that discrepancy?
 
B

Black Mamba

Member
Piecake said:
I found this article to be interesting



http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/25/opinion/getting-to-the-bottom-of-healthcaregovs-flop.html

94%?!?!? Holy fuck. This seems like an obvious area of reform, but now I am beginning to understand why all of our projects, from high speed rail to whatever, seems to cost so damn much than other countries.

I wonder if individual states have a similar absurd aquisition regulations. It would be interesting to see a study on the costs of state projects compared to the amount of insane red tape guidelines in the regulations
Click to expand...

According to this article, it's 94% of commercial and gov't projects combined.

But his IT advisors shouldn't be surprised -- the success rate for large, multi-million dollar commercial and government IT projects is very low.

The Standish Group, which has a database of some 50,000 development projects, looked at the outcomes of multimillion dollar development projects and ran the numbers for Computerworld.

Of 3,555 projects from 2003 to 2012 that had labor costs of at least $10 million, only 6.4% were successful. The Standish data showed that 52% of the large projects were "challenged," meaning they were over budget, behind schedule or didn't meet user expectations. The remaining 41.4% were failures -- they were either abandoned or started anew from scratch.
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http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9243396/Healthcare.gov_website_didn_t_have_a_chance_in_hell_
 
R

rocketknight

Member
http://thinkprogress.org/immigration/2013/10/25/2840541/heck-gop-neck/

House Republicans no longer plan to vote on an immigration reform bill this year. As one prominent Republican congressman explained, it’s unreasonable to expect a party that can’t keep the government open to be able to pass a bill like immigration reform.

The Hill reported that Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) said he thinks it is unrealistic to pass the “divisive and difficult issue” of reform because it can barely handle the basics of a functioning government.

“I don’t even think we’ll get to that point until we get these other problems solved,” Cole said. “We’re not sure we can chew gum, let alone walk and chew gum, so let’s just chew gum for a while.”
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lol
 
P

platypotamus

Member
JesseEwiak said:
Except in many cases, the latter is true. At least among the "every popular game made after 1998 is shit" wing of the Nostalgia Party. :)
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Well the vast majority of games made after 1998 ARE shit.

Where I differ from the Nostalgia Party is that I acknowledge that this is true for the vast majority of pre-1998 games as well.

I guess I'm in the irrelevant 3rd party: Most Games Are Shit.
 
T

thepotatoman

Unconfirmed Member
Piecake said:
Since you don't seem to think this is a major factor in things costing the government a lot more than other countries, what do you contribute to that discrepancy?
Click to expand...

I don't know, I'd have to see exactly what you're comparing. Either way I don't think that has anything to do with over promising and under delivering. If we did bring down costs, we would just start over promising and under delivering under those new costs.

For the record, if we completely fail on a contract, we lose out on the money, not the government. We promise to do XYZ for X price, we can't just cancel it and say pay us anyway. At that point the promise was ours as much as theirs since we said we could do it. And 1 out of the 2 of my projects came very close to failing that. It turned out to be a bigger job than expected and we basically had to say either write a new contract to pay us enough for another programmer, or cancel it and we get nothing for our 2 months of work.

It just depends on how able they are to stop or restart a project. The lady in charge of that had plans of impressing a certain politician to move up into that politician's office and so she found the funds to do it since the project was a major part of her career plans. But if they don't have the funds, then they don't have the funds.

The only dumb thing about my experience in government is the use it or lose it policy, where if you don't use all your funds by the end of the fiscal year, you lose what you didn't spend, and you might have your budget slashed for next year because you apparently don't need that much money. That obviously creates some waste, but it's hard to say how much. That hard deadline might be a big cause for the larger number of completely failed projects, where a business doesn't have to worry about that.
 
P

Piecake

Member
thepotatoman said:
I don't know, I'd have to see exactly what you're comparing. Either way I don't think that has anything to do with over promising and under delivering. If we did bring down costs, we would just start over promising and under delivering under those new costs.

For the record, if we completely fail on a contract, we lose out on the money, not the government. We promise to do XYZ for X price, we can't just cancel it and say pay us anyway. At that point the promise was ours as much as theirs since we said we could do it. And 1 out of the 2 of my projects came very close to failing that. It turned out to be a bigger job than expected and we basically had to say either write a new contract to pay us enough for another programmer, or cancel it and we get nothing for our 2 months of work.

It just depends on how able they are to stop or restart a project. The lady in charge of that had plans of impressing a certain politician to move up into that politician's office and so she found the funds to do it since the project was a major part of her career plans. But if they don't have the funds, then they don't have the funds.

The only dumb thing about my experience in government is the use it or lose it policy, where if you don't use all your funds by the end of the fiscal year, you lose what you didn't spend, and you might have your budget slashed for next year because you apparently don't need that much money. That obviously creates some waste, but it's hard to say how much.
Click to expand...

That wasnt the author's point though. His point was that the regulations are just so absurd and complex that the people who best know how to deal with that stuff get the contracts, not the people who necessarily know how to do the job well. The author suggests that this results in our incredible failure rate, and I would guess it also has to do with ballooning costs
 
T

thepotatoman

Unconfirmed Member
Piecake said:
That wasnt the author's point though. His point was that the regulations are just so absurd and complex that the people who best know how to deal with that stuff get the contracts, not the people who necessarily know how to do the job well. The author suggests that this results in our incredible failure rate, and I would guess it also has to do with ballooning costs
Click to expand...

I know, I'm refuting the authors way of interpreting that statistic by offering a different one through my small amount of experience. I have never heard a story where regulations caused problems in finding contracts. Being the best offer and being on the good side of the person that gives out those contracts are all that matters, and being the best offer often means over promising.
 
S

speculawyer

Member
Oblivion said:
So that one Republican dude who got fired after his Daily Show interview apologized for what happened. And by "apologized", I mean he insisted he didn't do anything wrong and it was everyone else's fault for what happened:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/nc-goper-who-called-blacks-lazy-uses-n-word-to-defend-himself
Click to expand...

He called them 'gutless' . . . which kinda seems like a way of saying "I just said what we all think but they are too afraid to say it out loud."
 
T

theprodigy

Member
PhoenixPause said:
Most of my early bans were on the gaming side; the OT was more lenient back in the day, so we got away with a lot of stuff. As long as you don't name call you'll be fine in the OT, whereas it's very easy to get banned for frivolous stuff in gaming.

I miss the days when Amir0x would give us free reign to troll Nintendo fans. Although there isn't much fun in kicking Nfans now, given even they admit their dire straights now.
Click to expand...

you're joking right, it's as easy as ever
 
Z

zero shift

Banned
JesseEwiak said:
Except in many cases, the latter is true. At least among the "every popular game made after 1998 is shit" wing of the Nostalgia Party. :)
Click to expand...

I've played more old games for the first time this generation than new ones. I find no real difference in quality, just different genres and formulas getting more popular over time.


Playing old games is like watching old movies from the 70s and 80s. Some of the great have aged but most hold up.

My favorite games I've played this generation include System Shock II, Jet Set Radio, Pulseman, Metal Gear 2, and Sin & Punishment.
 
C

ClassyPenguin

Banned
cartoon_soldier said:
I made one. People blamed Obama for something
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24.png
 
W

Wilsongt

Member
Y'know, at this point, it's almost easier to name ways that the GOP hasn't tried to attack Obamacare than to list all the ways they have.
 
T

TheHeretic

Banned
makingmusic476 said:
That's the point. Discouraging raises past a certain point, or rendering them completely impossible, leads to more money going towards workers, either through raises or new hires.

And those incomes will get taxed too.

Though the cutoff should be around 1.5-2 million. I think the 90% rates from the 50s hit dollars earned above what would be something like 3 million today.
Click to expand...

This never happens. Back when marginal tax rates were much higher companies were very creative in financing their executives raises. Everything from company cars, exorbitant business expenses, stock options, being paid in stock entirely, and of course leveraging the lower tax rates of other countries.

The idea that companies will start funneling money to their workers if marginal tax rates are raised seems to be based on hope more than anything else. The labour market adheres to supply and demand functions, tax policy can't change that.

You can never underestimate people's creativity when it comes to money, and income taxes are the easiest to dodge. The Northern European countries with very large states and revenue streams increasingly rely on consumption taxes for this reason.
 
D

dramatis

Member
Just curious, how are the ballot proposals from your states looking?

New York wants to authorize casino gaming:
The proposed amendment to section 9 of article 1 of the Constitution would allow the Legislature to authorize up to seven casinos in New York State for the legislated purposes of promoting job growth, increasing aid to schools, and permitting local governments to lower property taxes through revenue generated.
Click to expand...

They mail this informative voter guide to voters that describe both the reasons to vote yes and the reasons to vote no, and under the "Reasons to Vote Yes" for the above proposal, there's this:
Casino gambling is a fun recreational activity that should be more accessible to New Yorkers.
Click to expand...
Sounds so fishy lol
 
M

Mike M

Nick N
dramatis said:
Just curious, how are the ballot proposals from your states looking?
Click to expand...

Only ones in WA are a measure by professional gadfly Tim Eyman to "protect ballot petition signature gatherers" (no idea if it has any chance of passing, but anything from Eyman should just be an automatic no vote for all sensible people), and a measure to label foods containing GMOs. No idea what the polls look like on that one, but my gut is that it will pass.
 
G

GhaleonEB

Member
timetokill said:
So they're saying end of November now?
What an embarrassment.
Click to expand...

End of November until they're more or less done making fixes. The steady improvement that has occurred since launch is expected to pick up between now and then. Still late in the game, but it's not like they're going to flip a switch and fix everything.
 
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