powdermonkey

Open CRS Reports

For some unknown reason the Congressional Research Service (CRS) won't post any of the reports they generate for Congress anywhere accessible on the Web, even though we (the US taxpayer) pays for them. A website has popped up that lists these reports, Open CRS. CRS produces some great reports about terrorism, US politics, etc. Check it out.

Article: Katrina Imagery Warehouse: The Inside Story

Good article about the underground/backroom Katrina response on the Federal level. Basically a distributed group of folks around the country putting together all the imagery that was eventually shared with Google and Nasa. Link: Katrina, the Inside Story - all using open source software tools as well.

Del.icio.us Tags

If you haven't started tagging you should, see Del.icio.us Tags or mine: SocialTags.

Great story, robotics on the cheap and fast

Story about the 2nd DARPA Grand Challenge Robot Race through the desert in WSJ. Team of Amateurs Cuts Ahead of Experts in Computer-Car Race, by Lee Gomes. Basically in 10 months and $600k and no experience, an IT shop of an insurance company was able to hack together a solution AND place 4th.

"In an unheralded fourth place, though -- just 37 minutes behind the winner -- was an entrant from Gray Insurance, a small, family-owned casualty company in Metairie. Fourth place may not sound like any big whoop until you realize that the Gray Team finished ahead of cars from some of America's most elite technical universities, as well as from a number of big defense contractors. In fact, theirs was one of only five vehicles that managed to even cross the finish line.

The Gray Team (darpa.grayinsco.com²) had no prior experience in elite fields like robotics or artificial intelligence, spending their days instead in humdrum corporate data-processing tasks. They didn't decide to get involved in the race until 10 months ago, and didn't take delivery of the car they used until April."

- need more of this...

Technorati Profile

Technorati Profile

New DOD Agency to Centralize Business Processes

Article: New Agency to Centralize management of Defense Business Programs, I would like to think this would decrease costs and increase capabilites, but I have my doubts.

The Halloween Fairy

From a friend of ours, they've created the Halloween Fairy, as an attempt to not have kids eat 100K of worthless calories Halloween Fairy Website.

Or buy from Amazon: The Halloween Fairy Book.

Flu Wiki

Flu Wiki. What to do about the avian flu, besides stocking up on Tamiflu...

Crooked Corp Gets Nuke Controls

From Defense Tech. Story:

"Companies found to be crooked one day are given giant contracts the next. Sometimes this is unavoidable -- like when there's only one firm with has the expertise to tackle a particular task. But more often, it seems, the Pentagon goes out of its way to reward business that screw them over.

Take this story from Defense Industry Daily, for example: In April 2005, L-3 Communications subsidiary Interstate Electronics Corp. in Anaheim, CA was placed under criminal investigation for providing faulty parts to the CSEL [Combat Survivor/Evader Locator] search and rescue GPS/ beacon/ communicators used by US aviators, special forces teams, et. al. - and concealing test failures. So, naturally, they've just been awarded a contract to support the test; instrumentation hardware for most of America's nuclear missile fleet; and all of Britain's."

Now why is the procurement system not broken? There is no real concept of a reputation system (and no impact or effect if you screw somethign up) mainly a fine and 'time-out'. Transparency doesn't exist. What is needed is a rated reputation system that impacts a company if they do wrong otherwise it's just business as usual and the soldier (and taxpayer) gets the short end.

See Link

Del.icio.us Tags: military, reputation, procurement

Body Monitoring

Very interesting company, BodyMedia. They build monitoring devices for the body. Pretty cool, now if someone could just hack my Shuffle to it...

Del.icio.us Tags: body monitoring technology wearable