Her entire educational trajectory is in fields related to geophysics, but apparently she learned programming on the side. Her professional experience does sound interesting. Google contacted her four times for interviews, but decided each time not to hire her.
Even if it's true, how do you prove something like this? Younger programmers will, on average, have different qualifications. Younger programmers are less interested, on average, in quality of life issues.
"Heath applied for a job in 2011, when he was 60, and was denied employment even though he said he was perfectly qualified for the software engineering position and was deemed 'a great candidate' by a recruiter."
I'm sure agism exists - heck, it may even have been a factor in this case. But: what a recruiter tells you, or what you think of your own qualifications means exactly zip. Sounds to me more like someone is looking for a get-rich-quick retirement package, not least because this suit is based on a job application from 5 years ago (in 2011).
It seems likely that this is Robert Heath's LinkedIn page. I can't be sure, but I doubt there are too many people with that name, living in Florida, who are older Software Engineers. If his information is up-to-date (or at least was up-to-date in 2011), he is working with Java 5 (Java 6 was released in 2006, and we are now looking at Java 9). He apparently maintained the backend of web sites that import information in XML, and then present this information using standard web technologies. Nothing wrong with any of that, but nothing special about it either.
Or, of course, the US could overhaul it's ridiculous justice system. Start by eliminating the "War on Drugs". MJ should be legal. People addicted to hard drugs need help, not jail. If they could get their fixes under controlled conditions, you would the dealers and smugglers out of business, and the addicts themselves wouldn't need to steal to finance their habits. This would do more to eliminate crime than any thing else.
Second, stop trying to be "tough on crime". Mandatory, multi-year sentences for first-time offenders, for non-violent crimes. Everything is a felony, and far too many things are federal felonies. Just as an example: attempt to get some Marijuana across the Mexican border, any amount at all - even if it's your first offense, the minimum sentence is 10 years.
Then one could go after all of the other low-hanging fruit: other stuff that shouldn't be illegal. Lying to a federal officer (Martha Stewart). Improperly packed lobster tails. Taking home an Indian arrowhead you find at a public camping ground. Picking up a feather you found on the ground. And on, and on...
"pornography...equates violence toward women and children with sex"
Sounds like the FBI ought to have a look at what's on his computer. He's been a bad boy./snark
Seriously, pornography is a lot more obtainable that it used to be. No more sneaking around with magazines, today's teens just type in a couple of well-know internet addresses. Society will adapt; largely has already adapted. It really does sound like the guy is having trouble himself, and is projecting his personal problems onto everyone else.
Related: Some people here are calling for a ban on laser tag, apparently because they think kids are going to start shooting random people.
Unless someone is seriously mentally ill, they do not mix up fiction and reality. Not when it comes to video games, not when it comes to porn, not when it comes to laser tag.
"...they've been killed off because, while nicely profitable, they weren't enough of a 'growth opportunity' to be of interest to the private equity guys"
And this is what an MBA will get you: stupid, short-term thinking. I've seen too much of this. "What are your growth projections?". If you answer: "We're a stable, profitable business, we don't expect to grow" the MBA look at you like you just died. Weird. What it is about "stable" and "profitable" that they don't understand? It's not a quick buck. Instead of flipping houses, they want to flip companies. This adds nothing of value to the economy - in fact, it's counterproductive - but it's like gambling: an adrenaline rush and a chance at riches.
Or the marketing equivalent: "What is your USP? How are you build your brand?". If you answer: "We have a high quality product and loyal customers", they look at you like something unpleasant a dog might roll in. They don't want to hear about good products and satisfied customers. No, they want to hear about social media campaigns and rebranding initiatives.
The sad thing is that these people manage to move on to the next company, and escape the blame before the corpse of the previous victim hits the ground.
- Privacy Shield make companies offer certain guarantees for the way they handle data, and adds a lot of bureaucratic requirements. However, companies are allowed to "self-certify" their compliance. The compliance requirements will be overwhelming for small companies, while the big one will be able to blow them off.
However, the big problem was, frankly, the US government. On this topic:
- Privacy Shield requires "written assurances that government access to EU personal data for national security purposes is subject to clear conditions, limitations, and active oversight." Those assurances would make uncomfortable toilet paper, but won't be good for anything else. "Bulk surveillance" of EU citizens is also still allowed, as long as the US government considers it "necessary and proportionate". Gee golly whiz, I can't wait for the US government to declare it's own spying "unnecessary".
- Oh, and wow: "EU citizens concerned about potential breaches of these binding commitments by the U.S. government can now refer their concerns to a newly appointed Privacy Shield Ombudsman". Who will pat you on the head, and tell you to go be a good little lemming.
The only way to prevent US abuse of data on European citizens is to prohibit the transfer to US servers in the first place. Microsoft has actually done something laudable here: They have set up an Azure data center in Germany, and subcontracted control of this data center to a German company. Theoretically, Microsoft has no access to data in that data center, except through the German company - which would obviously be directly subject to German privacy regulations. That's an excellent solution, if it really is implemented that way.
I don't know about SF, but in most cities there are plenty of charities and shelters, almost no one has to be homeless.
The problem with handing someone a free apartment is: the place will be trashed and then abandoned. They will pee in the corners, set fire to the kitchen, leave the windows open in the rain, and then wander off to the bridge they used to live under.
They aren't capable of living independently in a home. Some of them don't even want to.
"Developers don't know much about deploying and systems administrators don't know much about how the code is supposed to work."
That's the problem. DevOps was never a solution, but more the term used by companies that were searching for a solution. Lots of studies done, probably lots of consultants got paid - but an actual solution that was better than what people had been doing for years anyway? Never seen one yet...
For what it's worth, the Daily Mail article has a picture of the buoy. Referencing the USCG guide that you mentioned, this is a "special aid" buoy that indicates "special areas or features"; in general, they mark dangers and should not be approached.
In the picture, there are no visible markings on the buoy. The power plant claims that there is a sign "stay back 100 feet" - if that were true, it would have to be readable from 100 feet, and would definitely be visible in the pic. Still, you aren't supposed to approach these buoys, much less moor your boat to them.
Then diving down and entering an unknown pipe? Especially when you are just offshore from a huge power plant? This absolutely is deserving of a Darwin award. This guy is lucky to be alive. He's now trying to be lucky twice: suing the plant for his own idiocy, hoping to win a million or two. I hope he has to pay attorney's fees.
I was going to use my mod points, but there are too many good comments (and plenty of modders anyway).
However, one point no one seems to have made yet: TFA seems to worry that, without Alg2, you won't get a college degree, and the world will be denied the next talented sports writer or EMT.
To me, a better question is: Why in the world would you expect a sports writer or an EMT to have a college degree? Those are both fields that require a certain amount of training, but a college degree seems to be the wrong kind. What is it with the US (this is very US oriented), that everyone is expected to go to college? The simple fact is that most people don't (or shouldn't) need a college degree for their careers. And by forcing everyone to go, you only water down the contents of a college education, so that everyone can pass.
Also: I agree with the Ms. Goldstein's husband: you require high school students to do math for the same reason you require them to read Shakespeare. High school is a generalist education that should expose students to an essential broad cross section of academic and cultural studies.
Finally, Ms. Goldstein hits on a key problem with math education in the USA: "American teachers, especially those in the elementary grades, have taken few math courses themselves, and often actively dislike the subject." Might just make it hard to learn...
I entered an ambiguous search term: "cute chicks", figuring a child-friendly search engine would probably show me pics of fuzzy baby chickens:
- It's either broken or incredibly slow. I waited...and waited...and waited... What is it, do the editors manually answer every query?
- I went to KidzSearch, which is also powered by Google Safe Search, entered the same term, and there are simply zero results. Zero?
- Enter the same term in Google Safe Search, and the top five results are baby chickens. So the search term works.
Ok, so I was trying to trick them, so let's try something ordinary: "puppies". Still zero results, even though Google Safe Search has zillions. Same result, i.e., nothing happened. I guess it's kid-safe if you never return any results. Boring, but safe...
- - - - -
Update: I tried refreshing the page, with the search term "puppies". This time I got a clear message "looks like your query contained some bad words." Bad puppies, bad! Somebody whack this site with a rolled up newspaper.
Mr. Jackthreads says that he pays senior developers $200k. Does anyone actually believe him? In Switzerland, where IT jobs are hard to fill, a good salary for a senior developer might reach at $150k. It's probably about the same in Silicon Valley - and in both cases, that's because the cost of living is pretty high. I want to see his accounts, because I don't believe he pays any of his developers that kind of salary. He's lying, and no one had the guts to call him on it.
Reading their piece, they sound like they are lawyers looking for a client, like they want to take Canonical to court over this. One likes to think that anyone who defends OSS must be on the side of the light, but I note that the Conservancy sued companies using Busybox over the objections of at least some of the copyright holders. This quote is kind of interesting:
"But that didn't stop them from creating a self-funding legal machine where they never found any actual useful code that should have gone upstream, but they still demanded $15k or so in legal fees each time so they could go sue the next company."
For those who didn't RTFA, the core of the question is this: Is a Linux distro that contains a ZFS module a combined product, derived from Linux and/or ZFS? Or are they two independent items that happen to be delivered in the same package. The Conservancy states "we have yet to encounter a Linux module that — when distributed in binary form — did not, in our view, yield combined work with Linux", and then they go on to say that the intend to "exhaust every diplomatic option...before seeking resolution from the courts".
Only: nobody is asking them to take anyone to court. If Oracle doesn't like this (they are the primary holder of ZFS copyrights), I'm sure they have their own lawyers. So WTF is going on here? Instead of a patent troll, maybe we have a GPL troll?
"...cannot be upgraded to SSL in a practical manner"
Um, why would that be? I'm having trouble imagining.
Once upon a time, getting an SSL certificate cost $100 or so; installing an SSL certificate was a pain. Still, for any sort of web server with commercial intent, the costs and effort were negligible. I manage a site for a very small company, and it has used SSL for years. Ok, maybe it wasn't worth it for a hobbyist site.
As of a couple of months ago, with LetsEncrypt, the excuses are all gone. For the company I mentioned, I moved to LetsEncrypt this year. Even though the project is still officially in beta, getting and installing the certificate was totally painless - completely automatic. It was also free, as in beer. What possible reason is there, not to put SSL on every web server out there?
Ok, two reality checks:
- LetsEncrypt does not yet have an automatic renewal process. They believe in short-lived certificates, and at the moment that means that you have to manually renew your certificates every 3 months. That problem should be resolved in the next couple of months.
- Likely, many shared-hosting ISPs are not yet set up for LetsEncrypt. Some may even resist, because they make money selling SSL certs. A bit of market pressure should solve that problem, and likely will by the end of 2016.
Encrypt everything: your internet connection, your hard disks, your cat, everything. Not only for your own security, but also as your small contribution to the fight against overreaching governments.
For simple procedural stuff, do exercises off of Project Euler.
Then move on to games. These can start simple, for example, writing a poker or blackjack program that runs in the console. Then move up to simple graphical games. Put together a simple framework they can use, to get them started. Or take an existing framework, but it's really better to roll your own: it will be a lot smaller, because it is focused on the exercises you want to do, and you will understand it better as well.
This sounds a lot worse than it is. New chips will continue working just fine with older versions of Windows.
All CPUs have a set of flags that software can query, to find out exactly what features they support. The only consequence of this decision is that any new features or instruction-set extensions will not be used by older Windows versions. The impact on your average user will be precisely zero.
Really? Every time some punk sends a stupid email, you're going to shut down an entire city?
First, there is no reason to take this stuff seriously. US deaths by terrorism is still in the ballpark of people dying of lightning strikes. If you insist on taking it seriously, give a 10% annual bonus to any teacher with a concealed carry license plus appropriate training. Problem solved.
Haven't heard of that, but I might take a look if you have a link.
Without seeing a specific implementation, I have trouble imagining what the advantage could be. Determining whether a key exists, or whether a stored value is null are both simple conditions to write. Why clutter it up with an unnecessary class?
I recently ran into a similar example in Java, where Java 8 has introduce the class java.util.Optional. This is used by certain other Java 8 classes as a return type.
What does Optional do? It provides an object that contains an object. If that inner object is null, the method isPresent() returns fall. So now, instead of:
if (widget != null) { widget.doSomething())... }
You can write
if (optional.isPresent()) { widget = optional.get(); widget.doSomething())... }
Of course, if you don't quite trust the class giving you the Optional, you get to write
This serves no useful purpose, except to make code more complex. Stupid, stupid, stupid...
The claim, of course, is that this marvelous class is designed to work with lambdas. The thing is, lambdas themselves are an idiocy in Java. Lambda expressions are inherent in purely functional languages, but they are semantically out of place in a declarative language.
sent a letter to top education lawmakers in the House and Senate
K-12 education isn't a federal program, even if the Dept. of Education is a busybody. K-12 education works best when managed at the local level.
insisting that computer science "must" be added to the list of "core academic subjects"
Core subjects K-12 would be things like math, english, history and basic science.
[insisting that] states be given resources to improve STEM education programs.
Money grows on federal trees? Federal funding is lets the camel's nose into the tent. Once the states are used to having that "free money", the feds can demand anything they want. Like Michelle Obama's idiotic ideas on school nutrition. How about eliminating all federal educational involvement, instead?
"Computer science is marginalized throughout K-12 education,"
Because it isn't a core subject, nor should it be.
"We need to improve access for all students, particularly groups who have traditionally been underrepresented."
It's the usual regulatory overenthusiasm. Basically trying to criminalize perfectly ordinary actions that might lead to actual criminal actions.
You can be penalized for emitting interference in a regulated frequency, or for using a regulated frequency for some other purpose. That is correct, and it is all that is necessary. Whether I my device is interfering because it is a cheap piece of crap, or because it is broken, or because I have flashed it - the reason doesn't matter, the result does. On the other side: if my device isn't interfering, there is no reason for the FCC to care how much I paid for it, whether it is in working condition, or whether I have flashed new firmware.
The bureaucrats need to justify their petty little empires, so they seek new regulations to write.
This is like a "pre-crime" unit: If you flash new firmware, you might be doing so with the intent to misuse spectrum. It's no different from stupid crimes like "structuring" that aren't actually (in a sensible world) crimes at all. They may, in rare cases, be evidence that a crime has been, or will be committed. That is no reason to make them illegal in and of themselves. Did you know that European eggs are illegal in the US, and vice versa? It would be perfectly fine to stick with "don't poison your customer", but that's too simple, and doesn't require enough bureaucrats. So in each case, over-eager bureaucrats have dictated a particular egg-cleaning method, and the two contradict each other.
tl;dr: The FCC needs to concentrate on its actual job. Maybe they should downsize by about 90%, so that they don't have time for dumb ideas.
Slashdot Mirror
The LinkedIn page for Cheryl Ann Fillekes, which only includes her education. Here is her professional experience from a different site. She is also suing Google for not hiring her as a programmer.
Her entire educational trajectory is in fields related to geophysics, but apparently she learned programming on the side. Her professional experience does sound interesting. Google contacted her four times for interviews, but decided each time not to hire her.
Even if it's true, how do you prove something like this? Younger programmers will, on average, have different qualifications. Younger programmers are less interested, on average, in quality of life issues.
"Heath applied for a job in 2011, when he was 60, and was denied employment even though he said he was perfectly qualified for the software engineering position and was deemed 'a great candidate' by a recruiter."
I'm sure agism exists - heck, it may even have been a factor in this case. But: what a recruiter tells you, or what you think of your own qualifications means exactly zip. Sounds to me more like someone is looking for a get-rich-quick retirement package, not least because this suit is based on a job application from 5 years ago (in 2011).
It seems likely that this is Robert Heath's LinkedIn page. I can't be sure, but I doubt there are too many people with that name, living in Florida, who are older Software Engineers. If his information is up-to-date (or at least was up-to-date in 2011), he is working with Java 5 (Java 6 was released in 2006, and we are now looking at Java 9). He apparently maintained the backend of web sites that import information in XML, and then present this information using standard web technologies. Nothing wrong with any of that, but nothing special about it either.
Or, of course, the US could overhaul it's ridiculous justice system. Start by eliminating the "War on Drugs". MJ should be legal. People addicted to hard drugs need help, not jail. If they could get their fixes under controlled conditions, you would the dealers and smugglers out of business, and the addicts themselves wouldn't need to steal to finance their habits. This would do more to eliminate crime than any thing else.
Second, stop trying to be "tough on crime". Mandatory, multi-year sentences for first-time offenders, for non-violent crimes. Everything is a felony, and far too many things are federal felonies. Just as an example: attempt to get some Marijuana across the Mexican border, any amount at all - even if it's your first offense, the minimum sentence is 10 years.
Then one could go after all of the other low-hanging fruit: other stuff that shouldn't be illegal. Lying to a federal officer (Martha Stewart).
Improperly packed lobster tails. Taking home an Indian arrowhead you find at a public camping ground. Picking up a feather you found on the ground. And on, and on...
Really, it's no wonder the jails are overcrowded.
"pornography...equates violence toward women and children with sex"
Sounds like the FBI ought to have a look at what's on his computer. He's been a bad boy. /snark
Seriously, pornography is a lot more obtainable that it used to be. No more sneaking around with magazines, today's teens just type in a couple of well-know internet addresses. Society will adapt; largely has already adapted. It really does sound like the guy is having trouble himself, and is projecting his personal problems onto everyone else.
Related: Some people here are calling for a ban on laser tag, apparently because they think kids are going to start shooting random people.
Unless someone is seriously mentally ill, they do not mix up fiction and reality. Not when it comes to video games, not when it comes to porn, not when it comes to laser tag.
"...they've been killed off because, while nicely profitable, they weren't enough of a 'growth opportunity' to be of interest to the private equity guys"
And this is what an MBA will get you: stupid, short-term thinking. I've seen too much of this. "What are your growth projections?". If you answer: "We're a stable, profitable business, we don't expect to grow" the MBA look at you like you just died. Weird. What it is about "stable" and "profitable" that they don't understand? It's not a quick buck. Instead of flipping houses, they want to flip companies. This adds nothing of value to the economy - in fact, it's counterproductive - but it's like gambling: an adrenaline rush and a chance at riches.
Or the marketing equivalent: "What is your USP? How are you build your brand?". If you answer: "We have a high quality product and loyal customers", they look at you like something unpleasant a dog might roll in. They don't want to hear about good products and satisfied customers. No, they want to hear about social media campaigns and rebranding initiatives.
The sad thing is that these people manage to move on to the next company, and escape the blame before the corpse of the previous victim hits the ground.
Of course, it's a joke:
- Privacy Shield make companies offer certain guarantees for the way they handle data, and adds a lot of bureaucratic requirements. However, companies are allowed to "self-certify" their compliance. The compliance requirements will be overwhelming for small companies, while the big one will be able to blow them off.
However, the big problem was, frankly, the US government. On this topic:
- Privacy Shield requires "written assurances that government access to EU personal data for national security purposes is subject to clear conditions, limitations, and active oversight." Those assurances would make uncomfortable toilet paper, but won't be good for anything else. "Bulk surveillance" of EU citizens is also still allowed, as long as the US government considers it "necessary and proportionate". Gee golly whiz, I can't wait for the US government to declare it's own spying "unnecessary".
- Oh, and wow: "EU citizens concerned about potential breaches of these binding commitments by the U.S. government can now refer their concerns to a newly appointed Privacy Shield Ombudsman". Who will pat you on the head, and tell you to go be a good little lemming.
The only way to prevent US abuse of data on European citizens is to prohibit the transfer to US servers in the first place. Microsoft has actually done something laudable here: They have set up an Azure data center in Germany, and subcontracted control of this data center to a German company. Theoretically, Microsoft has no access to data in that data center, except through the German company - which would obviously be directly subject to German privacy regulations. That's an excellent solution, if it really is implemented that way.
I don't know about SF, but in most cities there are plenty of charities and shelters, almost no one has to be homeless.
The problem with handing someone a free apartment is: the place will be trashed and then abandoned. They will pee in the corners, set fire to the kitchen, leave the windows open in the rain, and then wander off to the bridge they used to live under.
They aren't capable of living independently in a home. Some of them don't even want to.
"Developers don't know much about deploying and systems administrators don't know much about how the code is supposed to work."
That's the problem. DevOps was never a solution, but more the term used by companies that were searching for a solution. Lots of studies done, probably lots of consultants got paid - but an actual solution that was better than what people had been doing for years anyway? Never seen one yet...
Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.
For what it's worth, the Daily Mail article has a picture of the buoy. Referencing the USCG guide that you mentioned, this is a "special aid" buoy that indicates "special areas or features"; in general, they mark dangers and should not be approached.
In the picture, there are no visible markings on the buoy. The power plant claims that there is a sign "stay back 100 feet" - if that were true, it would have to be readable from 100 feet, and would definitely be visible in the pic. Still, you aren't supposed to approach these buoys, much less moor your boat to them.
Then diving down and entering an unknown pipe? Especially when you are just offshore from a huge power plant? This absolutely is deserving of a Darwin award. This guy is lucky to be alive. He's now trying to be lucky twice: suing the plant for his own idiocy, hoping to win a million or two. I hope he has to pay attorney's fees.
I was going to use my mod points, but there are too many good comments (and plenty of modders anyway).
However, one point no one seems to have made yet: TFA seems to worry that, without Alg2, you won't get a college degree, and the world will be denied the next talented sports writer or EMT.
To me, a better question is: Why in the world would you expect a sports writer or an EMT to have a college degree? Those are both fields that require a certain amount of training, but a college degree seems to be the wrong kind. What is it with the US (this is very US oriented), that everyone is expected to go to college? The simple fact is that most people don't (or shouldn't) need a college degree for their careers. And by forcing everyone to go, you only water down the contents of a college education, so that everyone can pass.
Also: I agree with the Ms. Goldstein's husband: you require high school students to do math for the same reason you require them to read Shakespeare. High school is a generalist education that should expose students to an essential broad cross section of academic and cultural studies.
Finally, Ms. Goldstein hits on a key problem with math education in the USA: "American teachers, especially those in the elementary grades, have taken few math courses themselves, and often actively dislike the subject." Might just make it hard to learn...
I entered an ambiguous search term: "cute chicks", figuring a child-friendly search engine would probably show me pics of fuzzy baby chickens:
- It's either broken or incredibly slow. I waited...and waited...and waited... What is it, do the editors manually answer every query?
- I went to KidzSearch, which is also powered by Google Safe Search, entered the same term, and there are simply zero results. Zero?
- Enter the same term in Google Safe Search, and the top five results are baby chickens. So the search term works.
Ok, so I was trying to trick them, so let's try something ordinary: "puppies". Still zero results, even though Google Safe Search has zillions. Same result, i.e., nothing happened. I guess it's kid-safe if you never return any results. Boring, but safe...
- - - - -
Update: I tried refreshing the page, with the search term "puppies". This time I got a clear message "looks like your query contained some bad words." Bad puppies, bad! Somebody whack this site with a rolled up newspaper.
Mr. Jackthreads says that he pays senior developers $200k. Does anyone actually believe him? In Switzerland, where IT jobs are hard to fill, a good salary for a senior developer might reach at $150k. It's probably about the same in Silicon Valley - and in both cases, that's because the cost of living is pretty high. I want to see his accounts, because I don't believe he pays any of his developers that kind of salary. He's lying, and no one had the guts to call him on it.
Reading their piece, they sound like they are lawyers looking for a client, like they want to take Canonical to court over this. One likes to think that anyone who defends OSS must be on the side of the light, but I note that the Conservancy sued companies using Busybox over the objections of at least some of the copyright holders. This quote is kind of interesting:
"But that didn't stop them from creating a self-funding legal machine where they never found any actual useful code that should have gone upstream, but they still demanded $15k or so in legal fees each time so they could go sue the next company."
For those who didn't RTFA, the core of the question is this: Is a Linux distro that contains a ZFS module a combined product, derived from Linux and/or ZFS? Or are they two independent items that happen to be delivered in the same package. The Conservancy states "we have yet to encounter a Linux module that — when distributed in binary form — did not, in our view, yield combined work with Linux", and then they go on to say that the intend to "exhaust every diplomatic option...before seeking resolution from the courts".
Only: nobody is asking them to take anyone to court. If Oracle doesn't like this (they are the primary holder of ZFS copyrights), I'm sure they have their own lawyers. So WTF is going on here? Instead of a patent troll, maybe we have a GPL troll?
Great, yet another federal bureaucracy (actually, two) to get in the way and generally screw things up.
Really, it's just another way to feed taxpayer funds to political friends, all under a "feel good" title.
"...cannot be upgraded to SSL in a practical manner"
Um, why would that be? I'm having trouble imagining.
Once upon a time, getting an SSL certificate cost $100 or so; installing an SSL certificate was a pain. Still, for any sort of web server with commercial intent, the costs and effort were negligible. I manage a site for a very small company, and it has used SSL for years. Ok, maybe it wasn't worth it for a hobbyist site.
As of a couple of months ago, with LetsEncrypt, the excuses are all gone. For the company I mentioned, I moved to LetsEncrypt this year. Even though the project is still officially in beta, getting and installing the certificate was totally painless - completely automatic. It was also free, as in beer. What possible reason is there, not to put SSL on every web server out there?
Ok, two reality checks:
- LetsEncrypt does not yet have an automatic renewal process. They believe in short-lived certificates, and at the moment that means that you have to manually renew your certificates every 3 months. That problem should be resolved in the next couple of months.
- Likely, many shared-hosting ISPs are not yet set up for LetsEncrypt. Some may even resist, because they make money selling SSL certs. A bit of market pressure should solve that problem, and likely will by the end of 2016.
Encrypt everything: your internet connection, your hard disks, your cat, everything. Not only for your own security, but also as your small contribution to the fight against overreaching governments.
Abolish the TSA. Use the savings to give anyone with a concealed carry license a discount if they carry on their flight.
You'll have more security, and shorter lines at the airports.
For simple procedural stuff, do exercises off of Project Euler.
Then move on to games. These can start simple, for example, writing a poker or blackjack program that runs in the console. Then move up to simple graphical games. Put together a simple framework they can use, to get them started. Or take an existing framework, but it's really better to roll your own: it will be a lot smaller, because it is focused on the exercises you want to do, and you will understand it better as well.
This sounds a lot worse than it is. New chips will continue working just fine with older versions of Windows.
All CPUs have a set of flags that software can query, to find out exactly what features they support. The only consequence of this decision is that any new features or instruction-set extensions will not be used by older Windows versions. The impact on your average user will be precisely zero.
Authorities in New York City said they received the same threat but quickly concluded that it was a hoax.
Really? Every time some punk sends a stupid email, you're going to shut down an entire city?
First, there is no reason to take this stuff seriously. US deaths by terrorism is still in the ballpark of people dying of lightning strikes. If you insist on taking it seriously, give a 10% annual bonus to any teacher with a concealed carry license plus appropriate training. Problem solved.
...but what a load of hogwash. Today, we are one entire degree warmer than "pre-industrial temperatures", which they define as around 1850. Coincidental, I'm sure, that the "Little Ice Age" ended around 1850, meaning that they could hardly have picked a colder point in time. I should certainly hope that we are warmer than that! The Little Ice Age saw the largest glacier extents for thousands of years, devastating many communities as they were inexorably covered with ice.
Note, also, the temperature graph in that article - a lot more than one degree drop from temperatures a couple of centuries before, which brings us to the next point. They label today's temperature range as "uncharted territory", despite the fact that the planet was almost certainly warmer than this during the Medieval Warm Period, and before that during the Roman Climate Optimum.
The rest of the TFA is all about beating the panic-drum.
Haven't heard of that, but I might take a look if you have a link.
Without seeing a specific implementation, I have trouble imagining what the advantage could be. Determining whether a key exists, or whether a stored value is null are both simple conditions to write. Why clutter it up with an unnecessary class?
KICC = Keep it Complicated and Crappy
I recently ran into a similar example in Java, where Java 8 has introduce the class java.util.Optional. This is used by certain other Java 8 classes as a return type.
What does Optional do? It provides an object that contains an object. If that inner object is null, the method isPresent() returns fall. So now, instead of:
if (widget != null) { widget.doSomething()) ... }
You can write
if (optional.isPresent()) { widget = optional.get(); widget.doSomething()) ... }
Of course, if you don't quite trust the class giving you the Optional, you get to write
if (optional != null && optional.isPresent()) { widget = optional.get(); widget.doSomething()) ... }
This serves no useful purpose, except to make code more complex. Stupid, stupid, stupid...
The claim, of course, is that this marvelous class is designed to work with lambdas. The thing is, lambdas themselves are an idiocy in Java. Lambda expressions are inherent in purely functional languages, but they are semantically out of place in a declarative language.
sent a letter to top education lawmakers in the House and Senate
K-12 education isn't a federal program, even if the Dept. of Education is a busybody. K-12 education works best when managed at the local level.
insisting that computer science "must" be added to the list of "core academic subjects"
Core subjects K-12 would be things like math, english, history and basic science.
[insisting that] states be given resources to improve STEM education programs.
Money grows on federal trees? Federal funding is lets the camel's nose into the tent. Once the states are used to having that "free money", the feds can demand anything they want. Like Michelle Obama's idiotic ideas on school nutrition. How about eliminating all federal educational involvement, instead?
"Computer science is marginalized throughout K-12 education,"
Because it isn't a core subject, nor should it be.
"We need to improve access for all students, particularly groups who have traditionally been underrepresented."
Why?
It's the usual regulatory overenthusiasm. Basically trying to criminalize perfectly ordinary actions that might lead to actual criminal actions.
You can be penalized for emitting interference in a regulated frequency, or for using a regulated frequency for some other purpose. That is correct, and it is all that is necessary. Whether I my device is interfering because it is a cheap piece of crap, or because it is broken, or because I have flashed it - the reason doesn't matter, the result does. On the other side: if my device isn't interfering, there is no reason for the FCC to care how much I paid for it, whether it is in working condition, or whether I have flashed new firmware.
The bureaucrats need to justify their petty little empires, so they seek new regulations to write.
This is like a "pre-crime" unit: If you flash new firmware, you might be doing so with the intent to misuse spectrum. It's no different from stupid crimes like "structuring" that aren't actually (in a sensible world) crimes at all. They may, in rare cases, be evidence that a crime has been, or will be committed. That is no reason to make them illegal in and of themselves. Did you know that European eggs are illegal in the US, and vice versa? It would be perfectly fine to stick with "don't poison your customer", but that's too simple, and doesn't require enough bureaucrats. So in each case, over-eager bureaucrats have dictated a particular egg-cleaning method, and the two contradict each other.
tl;dr: The FCC needs to concentrate on its actual job. Maybe they should downsize by about 90%, so that they don't have time for dumb ideas.