Tuesday, December 25, 2007
I Can't Believe it's Christmas
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Borat is DEAD
Nader Haters
The Nation’s Eric Alterman hates Ralph Nader
Eric Alterman undeniably has great taste in music, as his recent newsletters describe his attendance at the Neil Young and Hot Tuna gigs this week in New York City. When it comes to preaching the Gore is God mantra, here is where we part company. Although Al Gore blatantly cost Ralph Nader the 2000 election, those in the Al Gore is God camp are still operating under the hallowed delusion that green businessman Gore
would have stopped the myth of the tech lobby sponsored, great labor shortage and job outsourcing through H-1bs
would have broken ties with the insurance companies so we’d all have health coverage today
would have severed ties with Silicon Valley venture capitalists and green tech start up sycophants so that he would not appear to have a conflict of interest with the beltway
would never have evolved into a $2B green tech businessman with potential sites on soaking American taxpayers through quick get rich green tech investments
is a man for the people and not the elites (of course, the cult of Gore spinners really know it is the opposite but don’t want the rest of us to know that)
I met Ralph Nader at a 2000 fundraiser and was struck by how much he emphasized back then that neither candidate was committed to the economy and he stressed that the corporate welfare duopoly of Bush and Gore would both sink the middle class further as they sucked up to the tech lobby demanding increased immigration at a time when white collar jobs were disappearing due to the great dot.com bubble and burst. And yet, so many Democrats ignored this fact and to this day mindlessly bash Nader, a decent and honorable man who cared most for the interests as opposed to corporate welfare candidates who were running, Bush and Gore.
I knew that Gore would do nothing about this back then and to this date, Gore has only proven how dedicated he is to his friends responsible for selling out our white collar jobs with his roles as board advisor and member to Google and Apple and others who subscribe to the let them eat cake third world caste system, great labor shortage scam of outsourcing and driving down compensation at a time when cost of living skyrockets, health insurance is cost prohibitive and or unavailable, The FDA has been sold out, and the feudal lord sentiment that visibly sustains the greedy in this neoliberal cult from the smartest peeps in the room prevail.
Alterman calls the Nader voters a bunch of "Leninists" and yet as Gore’s history demonstrates, a jolt of Leninism is what we needed then and need now more than ever: a bunch of Leninists to rock the boat when journalists, pundits and columnists and authors are intimately pegged to the corporate welfare media trough.
Maybe Gore could indeed use his Nobel winning influence to stop this practice of replacing our white collar professionals with cheap immigrant labor when it has been proved there is no labor shortage here but in fact a shortage of high paid jobs. Has anyone heard him say otherwise? Hmph.
But hey, like I said – Eric Alterman has great taste in music.
-2Truthy
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Lost Loved Ones: Searching for a Heart of Gold
I want to live,
While we still have time, my old friend, visit with Neil Young on his European tour and catch the magic left in a time when yesterday rang so true with family, friends, and songs of good cheer as our now departed quietly remind us of our shared, kindred spirit that knows neither time nor distance or privelege.
That’s all I want to say, that this timeless world takes away from us those we love but never truth and peace, should we allow it.
Stay well and leave this world a better place for it, dammit.
Always,
-2Truthy
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Outsourcing Snags Ground Boeing's Dreamliner
Boeing encountered much bigger challenges than anticipated in its efforts to lower the $10 billion cost of developing the 787 by shifting the job to other companies. It mistakenly thought that it would be easy to snap together at its Seattle-area factory a collection of parts designed and built by worldwide suppliers. The resulting delays have affected 19 of the 52 airlines that have ordered the 787, some of which were counting on using their planes during the 2008 Summer Olympics. Boeing could end up paying millions in penalty payments to customers.
The basic problem Boeing faces is that its suppliers -- instead of using their own engineers to do the design work -- outsourced that work to even smaller companies. And in their eagerness to profit from the 787 windfall, overloaded themselves with work from multiple 787 suppliers. In effect, Boeing is now learning that it did not provide strict enough performance goals to its suppliers. And now it's at their mercy.When Boeing gives its progress briefing on Tuesday, odds are good that the 787 will be delayed even more than originally anticipated. Dreamliner's final-assembly process had been designed to bring together about 1,200 components. Instead, according to Mike Bair, the executive who was replaced when the delay became apparent, said the first airplane had come to the factory in 30,000 pieces.
This gap between expectations and reality suggests that Boeing has a long way to go to get its delivery schedule under control. And it also highlights the dangers of blithely assuming that globalization is the solution to the problem of high costs.
Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in Boeing.
Outsourcing Hazards and Limits
December 7, 2008 Boeing's aggressive effort to outsource development of its new 787 jetliner has resulted in delays, missed deadlines, and unhappy customers and suppliers, all of which, more than likely, has a very familiar ring to many CIOs. How are all these negative lessons-learned affecting future outsourcing plans -- if at all?
The Wall Street Journal had an extensive story on the problems the airline maker is encountering with its much-anticipated Dreamliner 787. According to the Journal, the new plane is at least six months behind schedule, customers are concerned that they won't receive their orders in a timely manner, and suppliers are working overtime to accommodate increasingly aggressive production schedules.
Boeing had conceived a radical new construction process for the Dreamliner, with big chunks being manufactured by outside parties and then assembled by Boeing at its Everett, Wash., plant. That's not dissimilar to the way big application development projects are conceived and constructed. The results Boeing is experiencing aren't dissimilar to what's happened with some (many?) big outsourced applications.
There's certainly something familiar about this statement from the Journal article: "The first Dreamliner to show up at Boeing's factory was missing tens of thousands of parts, Boeing said." Substitute "lines of code" for "parts" and the lesson as it applies to software is the same.
"The missteps underscore the hazards and limits of outsourcing," the Journal article said. Hazards and limits such as these, all of which apply equally to IT outsourcing projects:
>> Communication barriers, including language and geography.
>> Lack of institutional knowledge, which required Boeing to "parachute in" its own engineers and executives to help suppliers.
>> Outsourcers outsourcing to third parties, which compounded problems with production and quality assurance.
Outsourcing may be at something of a crossroads (so to speak). The era of the big-bang IT outsourcing contract is probably over, the last nail in that particular coffin driven in three years ago when Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, canceled a $5 billion outsourcing deal with IBM (NYSE: IBM) and rehired about 4,000 of the workers involved.
There are indications that less-ambitious outsourcing efforts may get suffocated next year. In the Society for Information Management's most recent survey of IT managers, respondents indicated that they had allocated no IT budget dollars for outsourcing in 2008. Whether that means zero funds to IT outsourcing next year, or zero ADDITIONAL funds, isn't entirely clear, but nonetheless it indicates a strong negative trend.
Outsourcing is not a fad, destined to whither away. It's a step in the evolution of the global economy. And negative lessons are important, but not the only lessons to be learned. What companies are wrestling with now is the proper equilibrium for outsourcing -- what, where, and how much exactly. CIOs are at the forefront of that evolution, and of determining that equilibrium. Their experiences with outsourcing will help decide the shape of the global economy for years to come.
What's your take? Have your experiences with outsourcing been mostly negative or mostly positive? And how have those experiences shaped your outsourcing strategy -- more, less, or about the same? -JS
-2Truthy
Friday, December 7, 2007
2Truthy's Happy Friday Hour: Levon Helm
Levon Helm and the Staple Singers
Happy Friday, Loserettes!
Levon Helm (vocalist, drummer, mandolinist of THE BAND) has a new album out called “Dirt Farmers.” He also had cancer so here’s to him beating it. It can happen. I’ve been there, too.
Keep up the good fight for health coverage for all,
2Truthy
Thursday, December 6, 2007
George W. Bush: First MBA President and Why (most) MBA’s Suck
Here’s a little Country song I wrote today. Imagine the late, great Waylon Jennings sing:
George Bush he’s dumb and mean
George Bush there just ain’t been
A president when shove comes to push
That’s half as dumb as ol’ George Bush.
(Repeat).
Just keep singing it over and over…
"Only the educated are free." -- Epictetus - (ca 55-135 A.D.)
“Only the educated in America are headed for annihilation –2Truthy- (ca 2007 and forever)
Fundamentally, most MBA’s are a bunch of freeloading pimps. They are jerks who seek out the company of other jerks in mutual admiration societies where they are most comfortable in their global hangout otherwise known as the seventh circle of hell. Most MBA’s don’t deliver any useful products or services themselves, so in order to get rich they have to find somebody else to “do the job that they can’t do.”
This week, “manipulating the facts” (a term some of our mothers called “lying”) soared to new heights when the National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Iran poses no nuclear threat to the United States, despite the fact that Dubya has been tellin’ us otherwise. Never mind the fact that the two-term duo MBA Dubya and former CEO of Halliburton, Dick Cheney, are trying to make the world “safer” for oil executives and have been running the country. But hey, who needs credibility when you’re the official Dictator of the Free World whose citizens actually believe that this is the supreme land of the American Dream?
Whose American Dream is it? Management versus Labor has been an enduring economic theme in this country for as long as there’s been this country. But when it comes to lying to this country about Saddam having weapons of mass destruction and Iran being a nuclear threat and outing Valerie Plame, this administration – true to form ---has lied and cheated the American public beyond disgrace. The only thing worse than a lying and cheating Republican administration is a Democratic loathsome pack of presidential frontrunners, who, during this week’s NPR Iowa debate, have taken the official low road “Google Oath” of selling out America’s white collar jobs. It is known that Hillary and Barack are Indian lobby whores (pledging to raise the H-1b cap for “infinite” immigrants to take our white collar jobs) but to the disappointment of many, John Edwards sided with them when asked about the GREAT LABOR SHORTAGE AND EDUCATION MYTH during the NPR debate (see transcript above.)
The problem these days is when you to listen to both political parties, you would think that they all believe it’s every American’s birthright to have been promoted into management by now. Although not everyone can be a “manager”, it is possible for the educated and talented among us to work in capacities where human rights and civility in the workplace are not merely courtesies but mandatory conditions in fields like computer science and engineering where it has been proven there is a shortage AND NOT A SURPLUS of jobs. For this reason, there is no excuse for greedy executives here to lobby for MORE cheap labor from India when there aren’t enough jobs to go around for our own citizens.
It’s precisely that smug, asinine, I GOT MINE attitude that screams “if you don’t have an eight figure portfolio by the time you’re fifty, you’re a fucking retard.”
That slogan is evinced by certain self-absorbed “progressive” blogs that are using the Democratic candidates as tools for their hungry asses to get street cred at the MSM trough while they attack and wipe out their very Democratic base. Stupid is as stupid does…As long as you can get a photo op with the Big Dog, who the fuck cares who gets elected? That’s the elitist golden mantra. Where is the civility and respect for intelligence and art and science and, in particular, originality among the people of this country that has outsourced the health and wealth and integrity that those of us with decent ancestors worked so hard to create?
Back to MBA’s. In general, since most MBA’s are typically unoriginal and lack expertise in anything other a thoroughly tainted view of economics, their only path to success is to intimidate the competition. From the beltway to the boardroom, victory through intimidation as opposed to the smartest people in the room is what sells in this country. Go to other culture-rich cities abroad like Dublin, Tehran or Istanbul or Berlin and you will find that the people there are genuinely interesting and unique and humane. But here, the Ugly American and their corporate welfare enablers are unique in their ability to worship the biggest asshole in the room and this can be seen in our journalism and a couple of so-called progressive blogs that are in fact obnoxious and indistinguishable from the same MSM rags they purport to rail against. Do these inarticulate bloggers actually think they are the next Barbara Waters or Katie Couric or Diane Sawyer? What’s the fucking deal here?
Presidents are hired and not voted into office. The problem with hiring MBA’s like Bush and Cheney for president is that they think the way you win is by being the biggest jerk and asshole in the room and by vanishing your competition….kind of like the way they handled the Valerie Plame outing. For them, the mere words “compromise” and “negotiate” and “compassion” mean stand in front of a moving train going 90 mph…
Think of it this way: J.R. Ewing would have made a lousy president and he was smart.
See, if I was looking for someone to run an automobile dealership in Ft. Worth, then Bush might be the kind of guy I could count on not to let the customers screw him out of my money.
But if I were looking to vote for a presidential candidate who was committed to the welfare of America’s educated, white collar middle class, then I would, like the rest of the thinking public have to take a pass on any one of these pre-ordained, One Big Money Party keepers of the corporate welfare castle gate and either not vote at all or vote for an Independent candidate in 2008.
Who that would be is anyone’s guess. Either that, or maybe a vote for a Republican would be the best and final solution, after all?
-2Truthy