Not impressed. E.g. his knock on the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars" per its detractors) is on a architectural strawman constructed by its enemies, the people involved planned on sane, somewhat independent defense in depth systems, where one failure of any sort would hopefully be compensated for by the other systems. E.g. "Brilliant Pebbles" were entirely unnetworked except for the necessary "GO!" signal, each would look at its view of the the attack and decide which booster it should try to take out.
And it ignores its stunning political success: the Soviets, after Brezhnev pretty much bankrupted the country with a return to Stalinist repression and all the money spent on the military, especially the 3 complete armies of armor on down supplied to North Vietnam (one used up piecemeal, one destroyed in the first post-"peace" attack, the final succeeded because the Democrats stopped supplying the South with ammo), and the Strategic Rocket Forces.
The latter of which SDI was going to entirely obsolete in one "generation"; faced with the expense of replacing all that investment, and the loss of first strike capability (you have to count on your enemies defenses working somewhat, and you can't pick which warheads make it), threw in the towel. We won the decades long Protracted Conflict/Cold War "without firing a shot", one of the greatest diplomatic successes in history. But it's an Idée fixe among the ignorant like Bray that it was an impossible failure, heck, he doesn't even consider people like me to be sane, "the foaming-at-the-mouth right wing".
Oh, yeah, the embedded systems contractors who do this sort of work have a much higher rate of success, and frequently not one you can fake in peacetime, either that fly-by-wire plane flies or crashes. The success of e.g. the F-16, F-117, F-18, B-2, F-22 speak for themselves. And the ABM Standard Missile 3 and it's supporting AEGIS system sure seem to be able to blow up things....
So if he's this stunningly ignorant or biased about a proven governmental success, how much is the rest of his judgement to be trusted?
Like this ludicrous analysis, either massively ignorant of the basic facts, or trying to protect the political and civil service types responsible for this mess. Seeing as how those masters of the universe in the HHS's CMMS decided to handle the integration job of coordinating 50+ contractors, including integration testing per the AP. And made it impossible for them to succeed: per the NYT "In the last 10 months alone, government documents show, officials modified hardware and software requirements for the exchange seven times." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6583327), those changes continued through the last week before the launch, and full testing obviously was delayed until that last week.
Seriously, I know an equivalent S-expression system wouldn't have been accepted, but it's nonetheless an over-complicated nothingburger to us Lispers.
More seriously, XML is a micro level thing, it says nothing about his high macro level political and systems development knowledge (proven to be sorely lacking as I demonstrate), goodwill (ditto), or expertise (seems to be sorely lacking, but that could be politics interfering).
To make one point perhaps more clear, he's talking about a inextricably political thing and can't help but to totally denigrate the other side on false grounds. Doesn't even have the self-discipline to hide it. So he impeaches his comments, showing he's not to be taken any more seriously than any random Joe programmer on the street. Or rather, even less seriously.
Comments
Not impressed. E.g. his knock on the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars" per its detractors) is on a architectural strawman constructed by its enemies, the people involved planned on sane, somewhat independent defense in depth systems, where one failure of any sort would hopefully be compensated for by the other systems. E.g. "Brilliant Pebbles" were entirely unnetworked except for the necessary "GO!" signal, each would look at its view of the the attack and decide which booster it should try to take out.
And it ignores its stunning political success: the Soviets, after Brezhnev pretty much bankrupted the country with a return to Stalinist repression and all the money spent on the military, especially the 3 complete armies of armor on down supplied to North Vietnam (one used up piecemeal, one destroyed in the first post-"peace" attack, the final succeeded because the Democrats stopped supplying the South with ammo), and the Strategic Rocket Forces.
The latter of which SDI was going to entirely obsolete in one "generation"; faced with the expense of replacing all that investment, and the loss of first strike capability (you have to count on your enemies defenses working somewhat, and you can't pick which warheads make it), threw in the towel. We won the decades long Protracted Conflict/Cold War "without firing a shot", one of the greatest diplomatic successes in history. But it's an Idée fixe among the ignorant like Bray that it was an impossible failure, heck, he doesn't even consider people like me to be sane, "the foaming-at-the-mouth right wing".
Oh, yeah, the embedded systems contractors who do this sort of work have a much higher rate of success, and frequently not one you can fake in peacetime, either that fly-by-wire plane flies or crashes. The success of e.g. the F-16, F-117, F-18, B-2, F-22 speak for themselves. And the ABM Standard Missile 3 and it's supporting AEGIS system sure seem to be able to blow up things....
So if he's this stunningly ignorant or biased about a proven governmental success, how much is the rest of his judgement to be trusted?
Like this ludicrous analysis, either massively ignorant of the basic facts, or trying to protect the political and civil service types responsible for this mess. Seeing as how those masters of the universe in the HHS's CMMS decided to handle the integration job of coordinating 50+ contractors, including integration testing per the AP. And made it impossible for them to succeed: per the NYT "In the last 10 months alone, government documents show, officials modified hardware and software requirements for the exchange seven times." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6583327), those changes continued through the last week before the launch, and full testing obviously was delayed until that last week.
"So if he's this stunningly ignorant or biased about a proven governmental success, how much is the rest of his judgement to be trusted?"
This is Tim "XML" Bray. So, yeah.
XML???
I rest my case ^_^!
Seriously, I know an equivalent S-expression system wouldn't have been accepted, but it's nonetheless an over-complicated nothingburger to us Lispers.
More seriously, XML is a micro level thing, it says nothing about his high macro level political and systems development knowledge (proven to be sorely lacking as I demonstrate), goodwill (ditto), or expertise (seems to be sorely lacking, but that could be politics interfering).
To make one point perhaps more clear, he's talking about a inextricably political thing and can't help but to totally denigrate the other side on false grounds. Doesn't even have the self-discipline to hide it. So he impeaches his comments, showing he's not to be taken any more seriously than any random Joe programmer on the street. Or rather, even less seriously.