From the "What was she thinking?" file....

Boeing shows Darleen Druyun the door: what was she thinking? I guess she may have missed the procurement scandals of the 1980's, and must have missed the MANDATORY annual ethics training.

I'm a fan of Alan Simpson, former U. S. Senator from the great state of Wyoming. Al's been particularly critical of AARP. I heard about Third Millenium by reading an interview Al gave, which mentioned this group as an alternative approach to that taken by AARP.

I'm also a sucker for good "news" sites. The Onion is one of the very best. RealStupidNews and Fark are also good.

I'm a sucker for well-written food critiques. Today's critique comes to us from the folks at Flak Magazine.

One of the topics that I'll need to write a bit about in the next week or so, is the use of "open source" in combat, weapon, and military command and control systems. I did a quick Google(tm) search on "military use of open source", and what should pop up, but a reference to The Initiative for Software Choice. There must be an art to naming organizations -- make sure the average reading can't figure out exactly what you're for, and what you're against. Who wouldn't be against "Software Choice"? Wouldn't it be positively un-[fill in your nationality here] to be against "Software Choice"? Welcome to Software Choice

Found this site while looking around for something else (UML and C++ documentation tools): Boost C++ Libraries

I was searching around the Web, this evening, looking for information on my old friend Dr John A Gauss, formerly the CIO over at VA and before that, a Rear Admiral in the U. S. Navy. I ran across this interesting site: Open Government Information Awareness

Here's another interesting RAND Corporation report related to interoperability: Interoperability: A Continuing Challenge in Coalition Air Operations

While doing a little interoperability-related research this afternoon, I ran across this report. I haven't read it yet, but I suspect there are some useful tidbits contained within. The subject of the Global Information Grid is always worth a quick read. Who Runs What in the Global Information Grid: Ways to Share Local and Global Responsibility

It's a stretch to say I'm adept at engineering statistics. I always keep one or two statistics books at hand. Here's a helpful link to the Engineering Statistics Handbook, located at our very own National Institute of Standards and Technology: NIST/SEMATECH e-Handbook of Statistical Methods

In the reference section of today's missives, I offer two entries. The first is Dictionaraoke.org -- a site that I believe I heard about (about which I heard?) on NPR: National Public Radio. Dictionaraoke.org - The Singing Dictionary

The second entry is one that I came upon this evening, whilst looking up the definition of the word "canard". I was searching for a word that would be appropriate to describe the myth that floats around in DoD that goes something like "application-centric approaches lead to O(n**2) effort". The word "canard" isn't really appropriate, so I'll keep searching. Anyway, the site is UrbanDictionary.com.

Happy research.

This RAND Corporation study is somewhat dated, but a good source of background material.

Interoperability: A Continuing Challenge in Coalition Air Operations

How telling it is that the key words 'tactical', 'data', 'link', 'interoperability', and 'problems' would generate about 12,900 results in a Google(tm) search. The full employment act of the 1990's (which, unfortunately, has not been repealed as we march headlong into the new century). Sigh.

Google Search: tactical data link interoperability problems

I've run across several references to the "C2 Integrated Exchange Data Model" -- I'd like to do a more thorough examination of this data model and assess its completeness in the context of my work and research. Because it is a data model, and not an object model, I'd be inclined to believe it is incomplete. More work, and a lot more studying of the proposal, is needed.

Google Search: c2 integrated exchange data model

I ran across a reference to this site this afternoon. While they've shut down due to budget cuts, there's some interesting work here.

"The Institutional Governance of Interoperability in the Computer and Telecommunication Industries"