Quoting "Andrew S. Townley" <ast@a...>:

> The types of things Len is talking about are at the heart of some of the
> key challenges to actually deliver the Federal Information Sharing
> program usefully...
>
> I agree with Len:  it's not about politics, it's about people.

yeah.. yeah...

>
> ast
>
> On Thu, 2006-11-02 at 14:20, Len Bullard wrote:
>> 1)  We care.  Those are our people out there.  Politics only enter into that
>> obligation as regards procurement.  Never break faith with those who have
>> not broken faith with you.  It sounds cherry, but that is what team means.
>>
>> 2)  They use ANYTHING to make repairs.  During one brouhaha, the repair guys
>> told me they collected soda cans, cut them, and used them patch flak holes.
>> They will disassemble and reassemble anything from spare parts even if the
>> vendor told them not to.  There are no Radio Shacks in the Indian Ocean.
>>
>> 3)  Real-time X3D can do things PDF can't do.  Drilldown IS the problem.  It
>> is faster and much more informative to jump to the correct viewpoint and
>> auto rotate into position.  It is also easy to convert the CAD drawings into
>> X3D than any PDF.  Try chat inside PDF.  Now try it inside even the cheapest
>> 3D with freeware and unencumbered IP.  If your customers don't get this,
>> then they are about to spend themselves poor.
>>
>> 4) Parts handling databases are already advanced.  That bit most of us
>> understand.
>>
>> 5) Running forever.  See B52 and HAWK.  Hardware systems often outlive
>> software operating systems and programming languages.  Not news.

I'm not in a disagreable mood today...

yup.... yup... yup...

except for one point.... reality...

we still don't see here a single parts listing in xml yet for all  
these wonderful parts systems being talked about. It's mostly ascii  
files, spreadsheets and pdfs...

explain that...

David