

Boeing Army Computer System Costly, Unreliable, Lawmakers Say - petethomas
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-01-12/boeing-army-computer-system-costly-unreliable-lawmakers-say.html

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bediger
Does any one seriously believe that US defence/aerospace companies can
actually perform feats of technology any more?

Personally, I blame this on the inability of the US to provide for career
paths for technical employees, and discouraging any kind of experimentation
(chemistry kits, model rockets, electronic tinkering, etc etc) on the part of
kids or adults.

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bartonfink
I work in defense, and I think I agree with you. The "crisis of conscience" I
have is that, on one hand, there are all sorts of colossal fuck-ups and budget
overruns that everybody points to when they talk about bloat in the federal
budget. On the other hand, though, you have things like the underpinnings of
the Internet or work into prosthetics and robotics that have come out of
military research but have been highly beneficial outside of the military
realm. I chose to put more weight on the "other hand" when I chose to work in
defense, but I definitely wish that the country put more emphasis on hard
technical problems than it does.

