48 hours is tad bit tight. However, I've turned things around in a similar amount of time.
But, the old adage is true: you get what you pay for:
Granted, 48 hours is tight, but possible if you know the root cause, *and* the customer is willing to forego the usual QA process before delivery. It doesn't mean that you don't do QA, but rather, that you do it later and patch the patch, if necessary. In most corporations, this means that if the customer doesn't complain, QA doesn't get done for these "extra-special" releases.
Four to five weeks for 20Mloc is probably about average. As a general rule, a good team will average about 1 week per department the fix has to go through: field team -> engineering (fix) -> department review -> QA review -> ship. However, in some organizations, particularly the smaller ones, defects can get turned around in 1 to 2 weeks, especially if the customer works directly with the engineer/developer, and the developer is authorized to make releases to the customer. Be aware that your customers may have dealt with such organizations in the past.
20Mloc is not really that big, provided that the project and code was well-organized from the beginning and the original developers are still on staff. But, if this is not the case, or you have a large developer base, where no one is actually an expert on the systems, or subsystems, you can add about a 50% overhead to your turnaround time. If the original developers are no longer there, add 100%.
If you don't know the root cause of the problem, you can't promise anything, and you need to inform the customer of this - you simply can't make any guarantees because you don't know the scope of the problem. Once the root cause has been identified, a 48 hour deadline is still tight, but is long enough to allow the key developer to build and do some rudimentary testing of the fix. Should the customer choose to accept it at this point (and you *must* make the point that it is their choice), they must be willing to forego the normal QA process, and should sign a statement of understanding to that effect.
When faced with unreasonable deadlines in the past, I usually voice my opinion once, and just do the best I can. Your higher-ups are probably already quite stressed at this point, and adding stress to the situation doesn't do anything for your career or theirs. Rather, if you make the point that you're doing the impossible, you might just have a little bit more bargaining power when it comes time for raises.
But on the flip side of the coin, if management doesn't learn, and you find yourself constantly asked to do the impossible, you might want to consider employment elsewhere...
A firewall won't do you any good when the intruders are already on your network!. Someone is apparently oblivious to the fact that tanks communicate with radio networks, and anyone within broadcast range can become a part of the network. Having a firewall won't do you any good, security wise. Having an encrypted network, OTOH, will.
While communication security is important to the armed forces, I wouldn't trust any of the contractors in the article to do it correctly. Mentioning "firewalls" and "viruses" and other computer security buzzwords only goes to show that the vendor doesn't truly understand tactical security. You don't want a firewall, you want:
The ability to deny any and all unauthorised persons from connecting to your network in the first place. Here's a hint: don't connect a tank to the internet. Closed networks are good, tactically speaking.
Secrecy: you don't even want the enemy to know you have a network. Your communication infrastructure (i.e. radio and ground links) shouldn't even be detectable to the enemy. Even if the enemy can't decipher your communications, the fact that there's an increase or decrease in them gives away valuable intel. You don't want that.
Reliability: You want a communication infrastructure that works anywhere and everywhere, all the time. IP networks are far to easily subject to DOS attacks to be considered for tactical applications. (That is, without heavy modifications.)
I know, I know, they're trying to sell a product. But the first rule of advertising is give the impression that you at least know what you're talking about. Or perhaps they're counting on government officials to be generally ignorant of the manner in which technology works...
Why did they file in Marshall, Texas, when neither Google, nor Northeastern is headquartered there?
Why did they wait 10 years to sue, when even the lawyer figured out that Google likely infringed? If infringement is that obvious, you would have thought that the inventor would have figured it out a long time ago.
Why aren't they suing the likes of Yahoo, Ask, etc... who likely use similar technology?
Surely decades of floppy-carried virii should have convinced them of what a frigging stupid idea that is?
You assume that Microsoft is capable of learning from their mistakes.
If Microsoft was capable of learning, they would be able to produce secure and reliable software. Does it really surprise you that a company which consistently replicates their past mistakes in new and innovate ways would pass up an opportunity to further compromise security in the name of convenience? It doesn't surprise me.
I got to work on some *really* cool embedded multimedia applications. I'm one of the few developers at my current employer who has experience writing code for video hardware. How many developers get to build the software for an mp3 player, or a personal video player, from the OS up?
When I left, I wanted to keep working with the technology, but found that my non-compete prevented me from even offering advice to my former customers. I still can't discuss the techniques I used for doing some of the video processing. I had to leave the field completely. What I work on now is nowhere nearly as exciting as what I was doing (though the hours are more sane!)
If you think the job you're taking is going to fulfill your creative itch for writing code, it's not necessarily a bad thing. Or, if you have no creativity outside of work, no ambition except to make money, it's not a bad thing. Or if you can find another outlet for your creativity - such as woodworking, beer brewing, etc... it might not be a bad thing.
That said, any place which does really innovative, creative, or ground breaking work outside of academia is going to require a fairly tight non-disclosure and non-compete contract. The business end of things wants to be able to continue to profit from your work even after you've left the company. If you don't like the terms, you can try to get them changed (and I would, if I were you - with a lawyer's assistance), or you can go to work for an IT shop which does simple, run-of-the-mill work and doesn't require a non-compete or non-disclosure agreement.
And incidentally, FWIW, I too, thought that many of the vague clauses in my contract wouldn't be enforceable, only to be later informed by an attorney that they were. Though I'm not a lawyer, a good rule of thumb is this: when signing a contract, think of the interpretation most favorable to the other party - if you don't like it, get the contract changed.
One of the fundamental tenets of good cryptography is that if you can't see the algorithm, then it is not secure. That means all of the algorithm, including the RNG, if you use one. If you can't cryptanalyze it, you can't make any judgements about security. The fact that the Windows RNG is closed source and proprietary automatically excludes it from use in cryptographic functionality, and I'm quite surprised to discover that it is actually being used this way. (Actually, I'm not surprised; I'm surprised that some people consider it secure.)
And after the various faults with RNGs in the past on UNIX and Mainframes, I'm surprised that anyone is so naive as to believe that Windows had a good one. Microsoft's past history is so poor that only the most naive of programmers would assume that their RNG could be used for security purposes. It might be fine for simulations and gaming purposes, but that's it.
Considering that any cryptographer worth a Google search would know that almost all PRNG's have been broken, I'm wondering why anyone is making an issue of this; I thought all cryptographers just assumed that the host OS RNG is insecure by default. Or could it be that we have a lot more naive Windows developers than previously thought?
A peer reviewed journal for geeks. What we need is to take the same approach to the peer reviewed scientific journals. Currently, they leech off the authors, and turn around and charge exorbitant fees to the readers to boot!
Example: Just today, I needed some information on a relatively esoteric mathematical topic: maximal count linear feedback shift registers. I'm interested in relatively fast ways of finding dense polynomials, without doing the brute force try and see approach. However, most of the articles returned by Google were either to simple - they just discussed the general theory - or they were pay to view. Not only is the abstract uninformative, I have to pay in advance to read, which means that even if I should fork over the exorbitant fee, I might still end up with an article which reveals little more than Wikipedia. To folks like me, who do need this knowledge for professional work, even the peer-reviewed articles are worthless to me if I have to pay for them in advance, without a preview. I can't help but wonder how someone supposedly well-versed in math can't figure out the economics of publishing: that if they pay to have their article published, and the publisher charges readers a fee, that their article isn't likely to be read by anyone of consequence. Because I do professional work in this field, such an article would be of great interest to me; however, those who go the pay-to-publish route literally work themselves into obscurity.
Honestly, I don't understand why the prestigious research institutions don't offer their grant-funded research for free. Rather than publish in a little-read, expensive, journal, they could publish on the net and let advertising pay their editorial costs. Instead of hiring experts, articles could be rated by experts across the world, using digital signatures to verify the authenticity of not just the author, but the moderator as well. Readers could choose articles for reading based on their endorsements by recognized authorities in the field, rather than the selections of a few ivory-tower types.
Some might say that top research journals must be pay-to-publish in order to retain editors who are experts in their field. However, this argument doesn't really hold that much weight in light of the Alan Sokal Affair in which a peer-reviewed journal published rubbish that was easily recognizable as rubbish to even the most casual reader.
Interestingly, names like Schneier, Daemen, etc... are well known because their work is widely available, without a fee. I can't help but wonder if paying to publish in one of these peer-reviewed journals actually does anyone any good - because they are generally ignored by both industry and the public at large.
But apparently the government isn't using theirs. The Bush administration renewed the student visas for the dead 9/11 terrorists.
They knew that these guys were in the country before 9/11. And incredibly, they even renewed their visas after 9/11. Call it administrative oversight, but if the government is so clueless that they re-issue a visa to a known, dead terrorist, what else could they screw up?!
Think about that for a while. The same government that can't tell a terrorist from a student trusts the FBI with assault weapons. If anything, they should have less information, not more, if only to limit the amount of damage they can do.
The Bush administration has consistently denied responsibility and thwarted attempts at accountability for the executive branch at all levels. If they weren't doing anything wrong, what do they have to hide?
Even Ted Kennedy made it onto the no-fly list.
This is the same administration which supports torture. Do I really have to spell out how dangerous this is in light of the above?
The biggest fault I find with the Left is that they lack a spine. It seems the Democrats have officially become the Party of Hate. They hate Bush, and cry fowl over all of the civil liberties he's trampled upon, yet rely on the Republicans to actually change anything. In case you didn't notice, it took a Republican (John McCain) to call the President on the carpet over the whole torture thing. Sure, the Left is willing to hate Bush, but they're content to let him do as he pleases! What betrayal!
Anyway, the excesses of the Bush administration are going to be cured by the next Republican President. Sure, the liberals whine about lost liberties, but (sadly) only the Republicans have the spine to actually step up and do something about it.
Sorry, didn't mean to get trolled like that, but freedom isn't exclusive to the Left, you know. Some of us conservatives believe in it too.
Granted, there might be some benefits to a unified ID across the 50 states, but combating terrorism isn't one of them. Instead, we should be asking if the other so-called benefits are worth the privacy invation and expansion of the Federal government that this program would entail.
Exactly why are my Federal tax dollars being used for this sort of thing, when it seems perfectly clear that my state government is already perfectly capable of issuing ID? The implications that someone is a terrorist if they can't produce the "satisfactory" identification document is a Constitutional problem, not a law enforcement issue.
Besides, what would an elderly father in law - who can't legally drive - do? Should he really be denied seeing his daughter married because he can't produce the ID to board a plane? This bill assumes (incorrectly) that everyone has an ID. That's not the way it's supposed to work.
Gets paid a lot more than you do to be an expert salesman, lawyer, accountant, business exec, etc...
If they knew computers the way you did:
They'd be more focused on the computer, and less on getting their job done, and hence, less effective as an employee, and
Techs would have to get a real job. Probably something in accounting, law, sales, etc... hence:
Clueless users save techs from having to do the jobs that would bore them to tears.
IBM made a killing with their consultants because they pushed the "mystery and magic" aspect of computers to the average person. Rather than trying to get their customers to understand the computer, they sold them on the notion of buying technical support - everything from hardware maintainence plans to expensive consultants. And businesses, which wanted to focus their talents on the things they did best, rather than becoming computer specialists, bought the whole thing, hook, line, and sinker.
Instead of berating others for what they don't know, recognize that your knowledge is useful and valuable. Just as you wouldn't think of going to court without a lawyer, an *average* person recognizes the limits of their knowledge and (hopefully) knows enough to contact tech support when they don't understand something. Now if techs could just get paid like lawyers do...
After all, if logic and thinking was so easy everyone could do it, would any./ers have jobs?
A terrorist attack with nuclear weapons is certain. The question is no longer whether such an attack could be carried out by terrorists, but when,"
Schaeuble told the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper in September.[emphasis added]
If the attack is so certain, why haven't we arrested the terrorist(s)? Which is more likely:
The terrorists have already acquired nuclear weapons, know how to detonate them, and are simply biding their time (Osama on vacation?!), or
There hasn't been a terrorist nuclear attack because the terrorists haven't been able to acquire a nuclear weapon, don't know how to detonate it, or they're all interned in Guantanamo or elsewhere.
Fearmongering for personal political gain only detracts from the real issues surrounding terrorism. You know, things like:
The most successful terrorism investigations have involved regular, old-fashioned police work.
The 9/11 terrorists all had valid ID's.
The violations of human rights and common dignity brought about in the name of combating terrorism.
The inability of torture to actually produce usable intelligence, not to mention the moral and ethical dilemnas surrounding it.
The difficulty of stemming the tide of new terrorist recruits when combating terrorism with military tactics.
The moral dilemna of shifting the fight over terrorism to third world countries with no prior history of supporting terrorism.
The Constitutional dilemna of summarily denying rights to an entire class of people by allowing the Justice Department to arbitrarily reclassify their status from "enemy combatant" to "unlawful combatant".
The military dilemna of the United States violation of the Geneva convention in the prosecution of the "War on Terror".
The political dilemna of power seizure by the executive branch made possible by informal declarations of war on concepts and ideas, rather than actual enemies.
Instead of responding to goons like this, we should instead focus on the fact that other law enforcement officials have been able to conduct successful terrorism investigations without resorting to devices such as these.
How do you answer someone who claims to have seen God? Or another who claims that God has spoken to him?
You can't prove one way or another what someone else has perceived. Our society has condemned men to death on the eyewitness testimony of only a handful of witnesses; yet those who claim contact with God throughout history are innumerable. If our justice system believes eyewitness testimony is good enough for life-and-death decisions, why isn't it good enough for the atheist?
I say this because even though you might be an atheist yourself, might never have seen God, or anything even that would suggest his existence, this doesn't mean that others have not. Rather than dismissing a believer, you should be open to the possibility that they have chanced upon something you haven't. Before you ask for proof, first ask yourself how you - or anyone - could prove that they had seen anything, let alone God. Sometimes, the only thing you can evaluate is the trustworthiness of the witness. And religion, Christianity in particular, has a lot of trustworthy witnesses.
And as for the burden of proof, the notion of God's existence isn't new - it's as old as written history itself. So it's not really shifting the burden of proof to ask for a justification of atheism, because God's existence is pretty well documented.
But let's not forget that the existence or non-existence of God can't be proven with either scientific or logical methods.
To take the first one first: Science relies on observable, repeatable phenomenon. Since the notion of God which we're trying to prove is sentient and conscious, it is impossible to say what God will or won't do in any given situation. You simply can't design a valid scientific experiment which would prove or disprove the existence of God.
And the logical proof of God's existence is even more problematic. In order to prove something exists, you must first define it fully. To fully define a being of infinite intelligence and wisdom is beyond the capability of a being of finite intelligence and wisdom. Thus, nothing of finite intelligence and wisdom could even accomplish the first step of a proof of God's existence - that is, a full definition of his being.
Science and philosophy are very useful tools in the hands of those who recognize the limits of each. However, all too many atheists derive their personal beliefs about the world based solely on philosophy and science, seemingly ignorant of the limitations of both. Yet this inability of their cherished disciplines to address the question of God doesn't keep them from demanding that believers "prove" God's existence, or attempt to show it empirically. As if science or philosophy could do such a thing.
While not empirically provable, it does seem rather odd that the notion of a higher power is common to all major cultures throughout history. I'm kind of curious how an atheist would explain away this fact, were it not for a God:
Do they really expect us to believe that all of humanity that came before them were collective idiots?
Do they think we should have to prove what each generation since Adam has come to accept as true?
Doesn't it occur to them that if they aren't seeing what everyone else around them is seeing/perceiving, perhaps it is they who have the vision/perception problem?
Okay, I realize those sound like trollish questions, but I'm more interested in really knowing than in starting a flame war. Because if you deny the existence of God, you've got to have a pretty good explanation for how Mankind got fooled for nearly 4 millenia. If God doesn't exist, he's the longest running joke in the universe!
And to quote an atheist, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." I expect you to provide more than just the usual conjecture about the evolution of the brain or primitive politics, etc...
He shouldn't have retracted the paper. If the paper contained errors, he should have corrected them and resubmitted it.
Because he retracted it, some other grad student in science could present the same hypothesis, and get well into his program before realizing his fault. If the paper had been corrected, rather than retracted, the aforementioned scenario would be less likely.
Society's collective memory of what doesn't work keeps us from repeating the same failed experiments over and over, and expedites the actual discovery process. Too bad the paper's author didn't realize that he's probably doing more harm than good by retracting the paper.
Ford Deluxe Option package A: Assorted Squeaks and Rattles.
Interestingly, 1995 was the last year Ford offered Deluxe Option package A as a standalone option. Subsequent years included bundled option packages such as:
1998 - 2001 Firestone crash-and-burn tire blowout package. Originally marketed with the James Bond Edition Explorer.
1989 - 1999 Red Hot Mustang - this option gave drivers that "classic car" experience by causing their engine to overheat in heavy traffic on hot afternoons. Commonly bundled with the vapor-lock simulator - which meant that your Mustang wouldn't start after it had overheated.
2003 - 2007 Ford 500 - special layoff package. For an extra premium, you could buy one of the Ford 500's made in the Chicago plant after they announced the plant closure. Assorted miscellaneous problems come standard.
The interesting thing is that I engineered some of the cool gadgets which are in production overseas. Strangely, no domestic company is interested in marketing them here.
If root beer is not (widely) available in Japan, it is because the Japanese don't like root beer -- not because they can't afford it, or don't know where to get it.
And likewise, if I can't get a sub-notebook computer (think Palm Foleo form factor) here in the US, it's because joe-sixpack can't seem to find a use for it. Regardless of how much I would like to have a notebook computer with QWERTY keyboard that fits in my pocket (and doesn't cost as much as a server!), I can't get one. Palm cancelled the Foleo, and the US history of such devices is abysmal (think HP Jornada).
The problem is that unlike beer, where I can get a good microbrew, or even brew my own (I do), I have to accept the electronics equivalent of Budweiser when it comes to technology. And the reason? Because:
The effort of producing a subnotebook is beyond the resources of a single engineer working in his basement in his spare time, and,
US manufacturers could care less about anything that won't sell at least a hundred million units.
So yes, there is a US market for the cool tech the Japanese have; the problem is that Corporate America dictates what the rest of us get to buy. After all, why would you produce something that would sell a million units when, for the same engineering effort, you could sell 100 million? Why would any investor invest in a subnotebook project when the same dollars would produce much higher revenues in the PC/laptop market?
So, this is apparently a 2 bit machine, with each bit representing 3 states. That's 9 possible states total.
If this is correct, then I - or any other hobbyist - should be able to build this Turing machine with a few flip flops and LEDs. And supposedly, could use such a machine to emulate any other computer. What I'm wondering, though, is how practical such a machine would be.
As the neocon mantra goes, "if you're not doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?".
revealing the findings could damage the public's confidence in airlines and affect airline profits.
This is why it is bad: because they are putting the profits of the airlines above the safety of the passengers. If it really wasn't that bad, why would they be hiding it from the public?
The interesting thing is that if NASA had just quietly released this, no one would have bothered to notice. But the fact that they aren't releasing it suggests that the problem really is worse than the report suggests, and that the powers that be don't want the issue investigated any further.
Using Windows is not a barrier to knowing how computers work.
Um, apparently Redmond disagrees with you:
It hides OS files by default. So even if you want to know how your system works, the nanny OS reminds you that you shouldn't be looking in that folder.
It hides extensions by default. Yes, I've met Windows users who don't even know what an extension is, thanks to Microsoft.
It installs device drivers automatically, and hides their existence from the user.
It seems that Redmond's design philosophy is that a computer user shouldn't understand how their system works - they should just use it. Which is fine until something goes wrong, at which point the average user calls tech support at $150 an hour to clean out their registry and do a virus scan.
Sure, clearing these hurdles is relatively easy for a technical user, but they effectively keep the average user in the dark as to how their system works. And that causes all kinds of problems.
And yes, this was the point of the whole 'intuitive, easy to user' marketing blitz by Redmond - Windows was supposedly cheaper because even someone who didn't know anything about computers could use it. Problem was, someone who didn't understand computers couldn't fix them, and the early versions of Windows crashed often.
Sure, you can secure Windows. You can also make Linux run Windows programs. If you're willing to put in the effort, I suppose you could run a web server on a C64 (Hey! Some people have!)
But the point is that it's a lot more practical to just buy a Mac if you're a non-technical user. You get ease of use, with none of the security and stability problems of Windows.
And if you are technical, and are going to put in the effort to learn a system in depth, why would you pick Windows? If you learn Linux, you can transfer that knowledge to working on UNIX systems, and the usefulness of your knowledge isn't subject to the capricious actions of a convicted felon (Microsoft). Sure, you could secure Windows, but every time Redmond releases another version, your knowledge becomes obsolete.
But there are a few additional points about Windows:
Windows has at least one - if not two or three - orders of magnitude more security vulnerabilities than Linux or Mac. This alone suggests that the problem of Windows security is much greater than that of Linux or Mac security, regardless of the reason.
A Windows system requires constant patching to remain relatively secure, and even so, there's always a small window of opportunity when even fully patched systems are vulnerable. (i.e, the time between the black hats discovering the exploit and the time white hats find it; and the time between notification and the time Microsoft is able to issue an update). Even though you are fully patched, your system still contains vulnerabilities yet undiscovered by the security researchers, but known to black hats.
Constant patching is not a viable option for most companies which must test patches for interoperability. In many cases, a company's own internal testing takes longer than it takes hackers to publish an exploit for the vulnerability. In such cases, their machines are never truly secure, even though they patch constantly.
You don't have the source code, so you can't audit it. Given that Microsoft was recently caught modifying files on their customers' computers without their consent, this is very troubling. You can't trust Microsoft to do what they say they will, nor can you verify they are.
You don't control what gets turned on by default, and sometimes a major, required component of Windows has security flaws (Blaster, anyone?). With UNIX like system, you can simply strip the box down to the bare minimum to achieve greater security.
Windows has a maze of interdependencies which often means that you simply cannot uninstall a problematic part of the OS. Take IE for example - though it can technically be uninstalled, it is required by even the most basic OS functions, which means that removing it is not a realistic option for the end user. Yet it continues to be a wellspring of security problems, made even worse by the fact that it isn't practical to run a system without it.
So sure, you can make Windows relatively secure, compared to other Windows boxes. But for the same amount of effort, you could secure a Linux machine to a much greater degree, and have a stable, trustworthy system as well. Sure, neither system is perfect, but for the effort you expend, you get a much better system by installing Linux or buying a Mac.
And I suppose a slashdot post wouldn't be complete without some anecdotal evidence. In the 10 years that I've been in the industry, every single one of my Windows using relatives have needed me to recover one of their crashed/unstable/unusably slow Windows systems. In fact, prior to XP, I had only met one person who both ran Windows and had not had it crash on them. And yet, even though Apple commands about 10% of the market, I have only once been asked if I could recover an Apple computer. And even then, it took only about 1/2 hour, and the guy didn't lose any of his data (he tried to update OS X, and botched it, but even then, he still was able to reco
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48 hours is tad bit tight. However, I've turned things around in a similar amount of time.
But, the old adage is true: you get what you pay for:
When faced with unreasonable deadlines in the past, I usually voice my opinion once, and just do the best I can. Your higher-ups are probably already quite stressed at this point, and adding stress to the situation doesn't do anything for your career or theirs. Rather, if you make the point that you're doing the impossible, you might just have a little bit more bargaining power when it comes time for raises.
But on the flip side of the coin, if management doesn't learn, and you find yourself constantly asked to do the impossible, you might want to consider employment elsewhere...
Once again, this is just product placement.
A firewall won't do you any good when the intruders are already on your network!. Someone is apparently oblivious to the fact that tanks communicate with radio networks, and anyone within broadcast range can become a part of the network. Having a firewall won't do you any good, security wise. Having an encrypted network, OTOH, will.
While communication security is important to the armed forces, I wouldn't trust any of the contractors in the article to do it correctly. Mentioning "firewalls" and "viruses" and other computer security buzzwords only goes to show that the vendor doesn't truly understand tactical security. You don't want a firewall, you want:
I know, I know, they're trying to sell a product. But the first rule of advertising is give the impression that you at least know what you're talking about. Or perhaps they're counting on government officials to be generally ignorant of the manner in which technology works...
Surely decades of floppy-carried virii should have convinced them of what a frigging stupid idea that is?
You assume that Microsoft is capable of learning from their mistakes.
If Microsoft was capable of learning, they would be able to produce secure and reliable software. Does it really surprise you that a company which consistently replicates their past mistakes in new and innovate ways would pass up an opportunity to further compromise security in the name of convenience? It doesn't surprise me.
One worse than that... But,
I got to work on some *really* cool embedded multimedia applications. I'm one of the few developers at my current employer who has experience writing code for video hardware. How many developers get to build the software for an mp3 player, or a personal video player, from the OS up?
When I left, I wanted to keep working with the technology, but found that my non-compete prevented me from even offering advice to my former customers. I still can't discuss the techniques I used for doing some of the video processing. I had to leave the field completely. What I work on now is nowhere nearly as exciting as what I was doing (though the hours are more sane!)
If you think the job you're taking is going to fulfill your creative itch for writing code, it's not necessarily a bad thing. Or, if you have no creativity outside of work, no ambition except to make money, it's not a bad thing. Or if you can find another outlet for your creativity - such as woodworking, beer brewing, etc... it might not be a bad thing.
That said, any place which does really innovative, creative, or ground breaking work outside of academia is going to require a fairly tight non-disclosure and non-compete contract. The business end of things wants to be able to continue to profit from your work even after you've left the company. If you don't like the terms, you can try to get them changed (and I would, if I were you - with a lawyer's assistance), or you can go to work for an IT shop which does simple, run-of-the-mill work and doesn't require a non-compete or non-disclosure agreement.
And incidentally, FWIW, I too, thought that many of the vague clauses in my contract wouldn't be enforceable, only to be later informed by an attorney that they were. Though I'm not a lawyer, a good rule of thumb is this: when signing a contract, think of the interpretation most favorable to the other party - if you don't like it, get the contract changed.
One of the fundamental tenets of good cryptography is that if you can't see the algorithm, then it is not secure. That means all of the algorithm, including the RNG, if you use one. If you can't cryptanalyze it, you can't make any judgements about security. The fact that the Windows RNG is closed source and proprietary automatically excludes it from use in cryptographic functionality, and I'm quite surprised to discover that it is actually being used this way. (Actually, I'm not surprised; I'm surprised that some people consider it secure.)
And after the various faults with RNGs in the past on UNIX and Mainframes, I'm surprised that anyone is so naive as to believe that Windows had a good one. Microsoft's past history is so poor that only the most naive of programmers would assume that their RNG could be used for security purposes. It might be fine for simulations and gaming purposes, but that's it.
Considering that any cryptographer worth a Google search would know that almost all PRNG's have been broken, I'm wondering why anyone is making an issue of this; I thought all cryptographers just assumed that the host OS RNG is insecure by default. Or could it be that we have a lot more naive Windows developers than previously thought?
It's even kind of surreal, knowing that Red Hat 6.0 was released in 1999. I still have a copy of the original Red Hat 5.x release from 1998.
I realize it's a different product and all, but it's kind of weird that this sounds like 1998 all over again.
Won't someone think of the children!
Um, oh... wait - that's strangely appropriate...
A peer reviewed journal for geeks. What we need is to take the same approach to the peer reviewed scientific journals. Currently, they leech off the authors, and turn around and charge exorbitant fees to the readers to boot!
Example: Just today, I needed some information on a relatively esoteric mathematical topic: maximal count linear feedback shift registers. I'm interested in relatively fast ways of finding dense polynomials, without doing the brute force try and see approach. However, most of the articles returned by Google were either to simple - they just discussed the general theory - or they were pay to view. Not only is the abstract uninformative, I have to pay in advance to read, which means that even if I should fork over the exorbitant fee, I might still end up with an article which reveals little more than Wikipedia. To folks like me, who do need this knowledge for professional work, even the peer-reviewed articles are worthless to me if I have to pay for them in advance, without a preview. I can't help but wonder how someone supposedly well-versed in math can't figure out the economics of publishing: that if they pay to have their article published, and the publisher charges readers a fee, that their article isn't likely to be read by anyone of consequence. Because I do professional work in this field, such an article would be of great interest to me; however, those who go the pay-to-publish route literally work themselves into obscurity.
Honestly, I don't understand why the prestigious research institutions don't offer their grant-funded research for free. Rather than publish in a little-read, expensive, journal, they could publish on the net and let advertising pay their editorial costs. Instead of hiring experts, articles could be rated by experts across the world, using digital signatures to verify the authenticity of not just the author, but the moderator as well. Readers could choose articles for reading based on their endorsements by recognized authorities in the field, rather than the selections of a few ivory-tower types.
Some might say that top research journals must be pay-to-publish in order to retain editors who are experts in their field. However, this argument doesn't really hold that much weight in light of the Alan Sokal Affair in which a peer-reviewed journal published rubbish that was easily recognizable as rubbish to even the most casual reader.
Interestingly, names like Schneier, Daemen, etc... are well known because their work is widely available, without a fee. I can't help but wonder if paying to publish in one of these peer-reviewed journals actually does anyone any good - because they are generally ignored by both industry and the public at large.
But apparently the government isn't using theirs. The Bush administration renewed the student visas for the dead 9/11 terrorists.
They knew that these guys were in the country before 9/11. And incredibly, they even renewed their visas after 9/11. Call it administrative oversight, but if the government is so clueless that they re-issue a visa to a known, dead terrorist, what else could they screw up?!
Think about that for a while. The same government that can't tell a terrorist from a student trusts the FBI with assault weapons. If anything, they should have less information, not more, if only to limit the amount of damage they can do.
The biggest fault I find with the Left is that they lack a spine. It seems the Democrats have officially become the Party of Hate. They hate Bush, and cry fowl over all of the civil liberties he's trampled upon, yet rely on the Republicans to actually change anything. In case you didn't notice, it took a Republican (John McCain) to call the President on the carpet over the whole torture thing. Sure, the Left is willing to hate Bush, but they're content to let him do as he pleases! What betrayal!
Anyway, the excesses of the Bush administration are going to be cured by the next Republican President. Sure, the liberals whine about lost liberties, but (sadly) only the Republicans have the spine to actually step up and do something about it.
Sorry, didn't mean to get trolled like that, but freedom isn't exclusive to the Left, you know. Some of us conservatives believe in it too.
That all of the 9/11 terrorists had valid ID's
Granted, there might be some benefits to a unified ID across the 50 states, but combating terrorism isn't one of them. Instead, we should be asking if the other so-called benefits are worth the privacy invation and expansion of the Federal government that this program would entail.
Exactly why are my Federal tax dollars being used for this sort of thing, when it seems perfectly clear that my state government is already perfectly capable of issuing ID? The implications that someone is a terrorist if they can't produce the "satisfactory" identification document is a Constitutional problem, not a law enforcement issue.
Besides, what would an elderly father in law - who can't legally drive - do? Should he really be denied seeing his daughter married because he can't produce the ID to board a plane? This bill assumes (incorrectly) that everyone has an ID. That's not the way it's supposed to work.
Gets paid a lot more than you do to be an expert salesman, lawyer, accountant, business exec, etc...
If they knew computers the way you did:
IBM made a killing with their consultants because they pushed the "mystery and magic" aspect of computers to the average person. Rather than trying to get their customers to understand the computer, they sold them on the notion of buying technical support - everything from hardware maintainence plans to expensive consultants. And businesses, which wanted to focus their talents on the things they did best, rather than becoming computer specialists, bought the whole thing, hook, line, and sinker.
Instead of berating others for what they don't know, recognize that your knowledge is useful and valuable. Just as you wouldn't think of going to court without a lawyer, an *average* person recognizes the limits of their knowledge and (hopefully) knows enough to contact tech support when they don't understand something. Now if techs could just get paid like lawyers do...
After all, if logic and thinking was so easy everyone could do it, would any ./ers have jobs?
A terrorist attack with nuclear weapons is certain. The question is no longer whether such an attack could be carried out by terrorists, but when," Schaeuble told the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper in September.[emphasis added]
If the attack is so certain, why haven't we arrested the terrorist(s)? Which is more likely:
Fearmongering for personal political gain only detracts from the real issues surrounding terrorism. You know, things like:
Instead of responding to goons like this, we should instead focus on the fact that other law enforcement officials have been able to conduct successful terrorism investigations without resorting to devices such as these.
How do you answer someone who claims to have seen God? Or another who claims that God has spoken to him?
You can't prove one way or another what someone else has perceived. Our society has condemned men to death on the eyewitness testimony of only a handful of witnesses; yet those who claim contact with God throughout history are innumerable. If our justice system believes eyewitness testimony is good enough for life-and-death decisions, why isn't it good enough for the atheist?
I say this because even though you might be an atheist yourself, might never have seen God, or anything even that would suggest his existence, this doesn't mean that others have not. Rather than dismissing a believer, you should be open to the possibility that they have chanced upon something you haven't. Before you ask for proof, first ask yourself how you - or anyone - could prove that they had seen anything, let alone God. Sometimes, the only thing you can evaluate is the trustworthiness of the witness. And religion, Christianity in particular, has a lot of trustworthy witnesses.
And as for the burden of proof, the notion of God's existence isn't new - it's as old as written history itself. So it's not really shifting the burden of proof to ask for a justification of atheism, because God's existence is pretty well documented.
But let's not forget that the existence or non-existence of God can't be proven with either scientific or logical methods.
To take the first one first: Science relies on observable, repeatable phenomenon. Since the notion of God which we're trying to prove is sentient and conscious, it is impossible to say what God will or won't do in any given situation. You simply can't design a valid scientific experiment which would prove or disprove the existence of God.
And the logical proof of God's existence is even more problematic. In order to prove something exists, you must first define it fully. To fully define a being of infinite intelligence and wisdom is beyond the capability of a being of finite intelligence and wisdom. Thus, nothing of finite intelligence and wisdom could even accomplish the first step of a proof of God's existence - that is, a full definition of his being.
Science and philosophy are very useful tools in the hands of those who recognize the limits of each. However, all too many atheists derive their personal beliefs about the world based solely on philosophy and science, seemingly ignorant of the limitations of both. Yet this inability of their cherished disciplines to address the question of God doesn't keep them from demanding that believers "prove" God's existence, or attempt to show it empirically. As if science or philosophy could do such a thing.
While not empirically provable, it does seem rather odd that the notion of a higher power is common to all major cultures throughout history. I'm kind of curious how an atheist would explain away this fact, were it not for a God:
Okay, I realize those sound like trollish questions, but I'm more interested in really knowing than in starting a flame war. Because if you deny the existence of God, you've got to have a pretty good explanation for how Mankind got fooled for nearly 4 millenia. If God doesn't exist, he's the longest running joke in the universe!
And to quote an atheist, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." I expect you to provide more than just the usual conjecture about the evolution of the brain or primitive politics, etc...
He shouldn't have retracted the paper. If the paper contained errors, he should have corrected them and resubmitted it.
Because he retracted it, some other grad student in science could present the same hypothesis, and get well into his program before realizing his fault. If the paper had been corrected, rather than retracted, the aforementioned scenario would be less likely.
Society's collective memory of what doesn't work keeps us from repeating the same failed experiments over and over, and expedites the actual discovery process. Too bad the paper's author didn't realize that he's probably doing more harm than good by retracting the paper.
Had disconnected 13,000 users, he'd be in jail.
A corporate executive does it, and gets off scott free.
Ford Deluxe Option package A: Assorted Squeaks and Rattles.
Interestingly, 1995 was the last year Ford offered Deluxe Option package A as a standalone option. Subsequent years included bundled option packages such as:
When it could just as easily be done here?
The interesting thing is that I engineered some of the cool gadgets which are in production overseas. Strangely, no domestic company is interested in marketing them here.
65,000-feet flight, which is definitely better than a Taurus...
Heck, I'm surprised a Taurus can go 12 miles without a breakdown...
Because we all know that FORD stands for Found On Road Dead.
(Ducks!)
Thanks, folks, I'll be here all day...
If root beer is not (widely) available in Japan, it is because the Japanese don't like root beer -- not because they can't afford it, or don't know where to get it.
And likewise, if I can't get a sub-notebook computer (think Palm Foleo form factor) here in the US, it's because joe-sixpack can't seem to find a use for it. Regardless of how much I would like to have a notebook computer with QWERTY keyboard that fits in my pocket (and doesn't cost as much as a server!), I can't get one. Palm cancelled the Foleo, and the US history of such devices is abysmal (think HP Jornada).
The problem is that unlike beer, where I can get a good microbrew, or even brew my own (I do), I have to accept the electronics equivalent of Budweiser when it comes to technology. And the reason? Because:
So yes, there is a US market for the cool tech the Japanese have; the problem is that Corporate America dictates what the rest of us get to buy. After all, why would you produce something that would sell a million units when, for the same engineering effort, you could sell 100 million? Why would any investor invest in a subnotebook project when the same dollars would produce much higher revenues in the PC/laptop market?
The free market doesn't cure all ills.
So, this is apparently a 2 bit machine, with each bit representing 3 states. That's 9 possible states total.
If this is correct, then I - or any other hobbyist - should be able to build this Turing machine with a few flip flops and LEDs. And supposedly, could use such a machine to emulate any other computer. What I'm wondering, though, is how practical such a machine would be.
As the neocon mantra goes, "if you're not doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?".
revealing the findings could damage the public's confidence in airlines and affect airline profits.
This is why it is bad: because they are putting the profits of the airlines above the safety of the passengers. If it really wasn't that bad, why would they be hiding it from the public?
The interesting thing is that if NASA had just quietly released this, no one would have bothered to notice. But the fact that they aren't releasing it suggests that the problem really is worse than the report suggests, and that the powers that be don't want the issue investigated any further.
Using Windows is not a barrier to knowing how computers work.
Um, apparently Redmond disagrees with you:
It seems that Redmond's design philosophy is that a computer user shouldn't understand how their system works - they should just use it. Which is fine until something goes wrong, at which point the average user calls tech support at $150 an hour to clean out their registry and do a virus scan.
Sure, clearing these hurdles is relatively easy for a technical user, but they effectively keep the average user in the dark as to how their system works. And that causes all kinds of problems.
And yes, this was the point of the whole 'intuitive, easy to user' marketing blitz by Redmond - Windows was supposedly cheaper because even someone who didn't know anything about computers could use it. Problem was, someone who didn't understand computers couldn't fix them, and the early versions of Windows crashed often.
Sure, you can secure Windows. You can also make Linux run Windows programs. If you're willing to put in the effort, I suppose you could run a web server on a C64 (Hey! Some people have!)
But the point is that it's a lot more practical to just buy a Mac if you're a non-technical user. You get ease of use, with none of the security and stability problems of Windows.
And if you are technical, and are going to put in the effort to learn a system in depth, why would you pick Windows? If you learn Linux, you can transfer that knowledge to working on UNIX systems, and the usefulness of your knowledge isn't subject to the capricious actions of a convicted felon (Microsoft). Sure, you could secure Windows, but every time Redmond releases another version, your knowledge becomes obsolete.
But there are a few additional points about Windows:
So sure, you can make Windows relatively secure, compared to other Windows boxes. But for the same amount of effort, you could secure a Linux machine to a much greater degree, and have a stable, trustworthy system as well. Sure, neither system is perfect, but for the effort you expend, you get a much better system by installing Linux or buying a Mac.
And I suppose a slashdot post wouldn't be complete without some anecdotal evidence. In the 10 years that I've been in the industry, every single one of my Windows using relatives have needed me to recover one of their crashed/unstable/unusably slow Windows systems. In fact, prior to XP, I had only met one person who both ran Windows and had not had it crash on them. And yet, even though Apple commands about 10% of the market, I have only once been asked if I could recover an Apple computer. And even then, it took only about 1/2 hour, and the guy didn't lose any of his data (he tried to update OS X, and botched it, but even then, he still was able to reco