Must be why your Sunday Globe didn't get delivered:
"Globe home delivery woes persist" by Dan Adams Globe Staff January 11, 2016
For the second consecutive Sunday, thousands of Boston Globe subscribers did not get their papers because of a shortage of drivers after a switch to a new delivery vendor.
That's odd because the Globe just rode along with one, although many drivers in the region are immigrants from Brazil, Haiti, and Central America who work second and third jobs in construction, food services, and cleaning and are paid $300 to $400 a week.
Is that why there is another surge in migrants coming from the region?
More than 6,000 papers, representing about 3 percent of the Globe’s 205,000 Sunday subscribers, never left subcontractors’ distribution centers Sunday, a company executive said — even after dozens of Globe employees responded to a 5 a.m. plea by management for volunteers to help with deliveries.
Uh-oh.
Now, I've been covering this side road story for the last 11 days, and I went on a run with them (hold the applause, please).
“We apologize for our inconsistent delivery,” said Peter Doucette, the Globe’s vice president of consumer sales and marketing. “Our expectation is that every subscriber gets their paper on time every day and we’re not going to rest until we get it fixed.”
All I can say is it used to be that way, and after a while the apologies no longer matter.
Think of it as someone who keeps saying sorry every other second.
Don't you get sick of that person and just want them to go away, the problem they created and keep contributing to be damned?
The delivery problems stem from the Globe’s switch to a new distributor, ACI Media Group, which has been unable to hire enough drivers to take over the routes of the previous vendor. Some former drivers have told the Globe that ACI wanted them to deliver more papers for the same base rate. The new delivery routes also proved to be convoluted and time-consuming.
Some have told them ACI wouldn't even talk to them!
Meanwhile, a group of about 15 North Shore delivery drivers walked off the job at 3 a.m. Sunday, saying ACI and its local subcontractor don’t offer enough work to each driver, misclassify them as independent contractors instead of employees, and require them to pick up papers from a distant distribution center in Woburn, where they are forced to bag papers outside or in their cars. The carriers, organized by the Lynn Worker Center, said they left 3,000 papers behind Sunday.
“These workers are getting less money now with ACI,” said Julio Ruiz, executive director at the center, which represents immigrant laborers. “They’re risking their jobs [by speaking out]. They’re not going back to work until the company responds to their demands.”
Because of the, you know, illegals thing?
ACI executives did not respond to requests for comment.
The delivery debacle prompted the Globe to hire back its former distributor, Publishers Circulation Fulfillment Inc., or PCF, which is scheduled Monday to reclaim deliveries in areas where the problems have been most severe.
How are those cancellation figures coming anyway?
Many of the routes that did not get delivered Sunday were in Greater Boston and were served by an ACI distribution facility in Newton.
Ah, given the location of the failures it is no wonder this is cause concern.
So did the Globe call anybody in to help?
Nice to see that they said what they really think working next to you (ha-ha), huh?
I wonder if the 5 a.m. phone call this week was funny.
Although Globe executives expect rapid improvement beginning Monday, they cautioned it could take as long as six weeks for service to return to normal everywhere.
We were told four to six months just a week ago. Must be a typo.
And it was already "normal" before all this?
Doucette said the companies were taking steps to recruit more drivers and that they rolled out better routing technology in one of the most troubled distribution areas.
Yeah, it was all sh**ty computer software (sigh!!!!).
You know, I should just be thankful I got a Globe at all.
After all, it's a goddamn miracle!
--more--"
What excuse is next, the GPS system supplied by Raytheon?
"Raytheon GPS upgrade project loses its way" by Hiawatha Bray Globe Staff January 03, 2016
Raytheon Co. earned worldwide ridicule in October when its billion-dollar blimp protecting the skies over the nation’s capital broke loose, dragging thousands of feet of cable across the countryside before crashing in Pennsylvania.
Just floating that by you.
But another major project run by the Waltham giant defense contractor has also slipped its tether: a multibillion-dollar overhaul of the equipment that controls the nation’s Global Positioning System or GPS. The Next Generation Operational Control System, or OCX, is designed to work with new GPS satellites that are scheduled to be launched beginning in 2017.
OCX was supposed to be completed in 2016 and cost no more than $1.5 billion. Instead it’s years behind schedule and much more expensive; the Air Force now expects OCX won’t be completed until 2022 and could cost as much as $5.6 billion, according to the Reuters news service.
So what black hole didn't that money disappear down?
The Air Force and Raytheon each declined to comment in detail. But military analysts and the US Government Accountability Office say both Raytheon and the Pentagon dramatically underestimated the difficulty of creating a more sophisticated and secure ground control system.
Indeed, a year ago, when the overruns surfaced as an issue, Raytheon chief executive Thomas Kennedy pointed to the sheer complexity of the GPS upgrade, noting “it is revolutionary relative to adding information capability to a very large ground station for the GPS system. We have been working with the Air Force on that program. We believe that we have turned a corner on that program moving forward,” Kennedy told stock analysts in a conference call in January 2015.
But since then it doesn’t appear the situation has improved — at least to the Pentagon’s satisfaction.
“The OCX program is a disaster, just a disaster, and it’s embarrassing to have to stand in front of people and try to defend it, so I won’t,” General John Hyten, commander of Air Force Space Command, said at an event in Washington last month, according to Reuters.
I hope the corruption was worth it, American taxpayers.
This from a government that has looted the social service programs with which it was entrusted and seems to exist only to further corporate power and the Israel war agenda (complete with lavish, publicly-financed lifestyle).
Raytheon officials declined to be interviewed for this article. But, in a statement, the company said it is “focused on continued development of the modernized, cyber-hardened GPS OCX. We are fully committed to delivering, without compromise, the modernized GPS ground controls envisioned and required by the Air Force.”
Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Va., defense think tank, said he was surprised to see a company of Raytheon’s reputation have so much trouble.
“This is a core technology area for Raytheon,” Thompson said. “It’s just unusual to see them get so far off track on this.”
In a report issued in September, the GAO pointed to a key moment in 2012, two years after Raytheon began work: the Air Force goaded the company into speeding up development to have the ground control system ready for the new generation of GPS satellites that were supposed to be in orbit in 2014. The speed-up proved unnecessary; the satellites themselves were delayed until 2017.
But the scheduling shift required a major revamp of the OCX project and a major increase in costs.
Thompson said another Pentagon request — that the system be impervious to hackers — also proved to be a burden.
WHAT?
“The Pentagon had become very preoccupied by potential cyberattacks both from state and non-state actors,” said Thompson. “So it built a very imposing set of requirements — far beyond what would typically be required of even a military installation.”
According to the GAO, Raytheon did not understand the full extent of the Air Force’s data security standards until 2013, three years after the project had begun. Raytheon had assumed many cybersecurity standards would be waived — a common practice in other military programs.
I'm thinking the hackers are not who you think they are then.
Look what I found while lost, folks.
The entire hacking scare and $cam is just that. It can only be the U.S. government, $oftware $ecurity firms (can't get anything right except an ATM machine apparently, not even a paper delivery route never mind sensitive health care stuff, and don't you worry about transacting all financial information over it either. Shop, bank, it's all good), or the untouchable Jewish mafia.
Hacking standards being waved for the most sensitive of military programs, a "common practice?"
C'MON!
Instead, the Air Force insisted on getting everything it originally wanted, as well as additional features to fend off new threats.
“Consequently, Raytheon found that it had greatly underestimated the cost and time to meet these requirements,” the GAO report said.
The OCX fiasco has spawned concern in Congress.
OH!
The military needs the new OCX to enable more accurate navigation by land, sea, and air forces and to make the system tougher for an enemy to hack or jam.
Do Globe reporters even read what they write, and where was the editor?
Ah, just waive that.
And in the 20 years since the original GPS network was completed, it’s become a vital tool for millions of businesses and billions of people around the world.
God help us if it ever goes down.
The GPS system is in no immediate danger of collapse. But some of the 31 active GPS satellites are approaching the end of their useful lives.
That explains all the problems with the wondrous technology down here then.
Another area of neglect with missing money.
And the new wave of satellites due to begin launching in 2017, from Lockheed Martin Corp., include upgrades that can’t be managed over the existing ground control network. These improvements will be useless until Raytheon finishes OCX.
We know what they did with the loot.
Hope they did a better job with it than they did Social Security.
Is it po$$ible that the entire U.$. $y$tem is based on nothing more than fraud and corruption?
Until then, the Air Force may have to manage the new satellites through the old-school ground control system. That means operating the new satellites in “legacy mode,” akin to running Microsoft’s old DOS software on a computer designed for Windows 10. Many improved features will be unavailable.
Won't that hurt our war-fighting capability, this Empire that is supposed to be so superior to all enemies?
What's with the never-ending pos products being churned out by the war machine anyway?
This is already happening with M-code, a military GPS frequency that’s much stronger and less susceptible to jamming. Eighteen newer GPS satellites broadcast M-code, which will be standard on future satellites.
“You should be able to use it deeper indoors and in higher levels of jamming — all the things we want for war-fighting,” said John Betz, a senior scientist at the Mitre Corp. in Bedford, a military contractor that helped develop M-code.
What ones do they have planned, huh? What do they know that we do not?
But the military won’t access M-code until OCX is complete. The same goes for a new GPS frequency tailored especially for aircraft and a second signal for civilian use, which will make commercial and personal GPS receivers as accurate as those used by the military. None of these new features will benefit anybody until the OCX is complete.
Defense workshop Northrup Grumman Corp. has said it would bid on upgrading OCX if an exasperated Pentagon decides to give up on Raytheon.
Maybe they can get the job done.
It's what they do, and who knows what they will do next.
But there’s no sign that this is about to happen.
Ah.
After all, said Thompson, “If you try to start over, it’ll take forever.”
So Raytheon has a monopoly of sorts, doesn't it?
Not that it matters; you can view the handful of large war procurers as the $ame kind of entity.
--more--"
I don't know where I'm going to from here readers.
When I started this blog it was about ending the wars (instead there were at least three more and expansions) and cataloguing the crimes of the mass-murdering war criminals of the U.S. political cla$$, 9/11, more blog works posted than this pos propaganda from the pre$$, and a naive focus on politics in trying to insure fair elections. I scroll down this blog now and look at my titles and find nothing resembling my original goals or concerns.
When I find my way again I will get back to you.
NEXT DAY DELIVERY:
"For the first time since Dec. 28, all Globe delivery routes in Greater Boston were manned and no papers were left behind at regional distribution centers, executives said. Still, many subscribers did not receive their papers, likely because of inexperienced carriers and lingering problems with inefficient routes, executives said. ACI and PCF did not return requests for comment."
Then why doesn't the reporter just call upstairs?
Certainly John Henry's people are in contact with them both.
I mean, this whole thing (the tens of thousands of missed deliveries) is MAKING THEM LOOK BAD!
Of course, they “expect to iron [the problems] out over the next couple weeks.”
I may have found a few paths or two here today.
We will see where they lead.
