The exception is software. Our tools have not really changed since the 1970s. And we are still programming in C.
"Uncle" Bob Martin has some interesting things to say about that (hour-long video). Interestingly, his argument is somewhat similar to mine. When computers were new, there were no trained or qualified programmers. So the programming was done by whoever needed to and was capable. Good engineers, scientists, mathematicians - mostly of middle age, experience, seasoned, and accustomed to working in a project environment. They imposed their own discipline. Martin sees the Agile movement as an attempt to recapture those qualities.
No, all the talent is working for investment banks. Why research physics when you can get payed ten times as much elsewhere?
This actually sounds very plausible, especially as the USA has been the world centre of research since WW2. The US culture is almost uniquely focused on money, so many intelligent young people naturally gravitate to finance instead of science or engineering.
In the wild mania to praise ever-accelerating progress and steadily increasing wonderfulness, it's easy to overlook some of the good things about the past.
Many of the great discoveries and inventions, from the earliest times to the mid-20th century, were made by independent researchers. Usually gentlemen of independent means, or famous scholars patronised by monarchs or nobles.
This gave them the independence to study whatever they thought interesting. No grants, no grant applications, no having to publish 200 papers a year just to stay employed.
A friend of mine, who knows far more about science and mathematics than I ever will, once told me that even the greatest scientists and mathematicians do well to make two or three big breakthroughs in a lifetime. Just imagine what Euclid, Archimedes, Newton, Leibniz, or any of the other great pioneers would have achieved if they continually had to dance attendance on boards and heads of department, and publish monthly.
Robert A Heinlein foresaw the dead end into which science was being driven as early as 1956, and described a fictional body that was as far as possible the exact opposite of modern institutional research: the Long Range Foundation.
"We got interested in the purposes of the Long Range Foundation. Its coat of arms reads: 'Bread Cast Upon the Waters', and its charter is headed: 'Dedicated to the Welfare of our Descendants'. The charter goes on with a lot of lawyers' fog but the way the directors have interpreted it has been to spend money only on things that no government and no other corporation would touch. It wasn't enough for a proposed project to be interesting to science or socially desirable; it also had to be so horribly expensive that no one else would touch it and the prospective results had to lie so far in the future that it could not be justified to taxpayers or shareholders. To make the LRF directors light up with enthusiasm you had to suggest something that cost a billion or more [at least $10 billion today] and probably wouldn't show results for ten generations, if ever... something like how to control the weather (they're working on that) or where does your lap go when you stand up.
"The funny thing is that bread cast upon waters does come back seven hundred fold; the most preposterous projects made the LRF embarrassing amounts of money..."
"As the plane finally reaches full production, the Air Force is racing to plug holes that could allow hackers to exploit the jet's connected systems—with disastrous results".
Major fail.
Security cannot be added like a bag on the side, as an afterthought. Since Mr Mizokami evidently thinks it can (as far as one can judge from his breathless prose) it's pretty obvious he doesn't know much about software or security.
"November Snow In Texas? Experts Warn Decreased Solar Activity Will Shatter All Global Climate Models"
"Our sun has been behaving very strangely, and this unusual behavior is really starting to affect our weather patterns. There have been virtually no sunspots in 2018 as solar activity has dropped to alarmingly low levels. As a result, our atmosphere has been cooling and shrinking, and experts are warning that we are heading for a bitterly, bitterly cold winter. And even though the official start of winter is well over a month away, winter weather is already sweeping the nation. As you will see below, a giant winter storm is about to slam into the east coast, but what is happening in Texas is even more unnerving. On Wednesday morning, the temperature in San Antonio plummeted to just 23 degrees, and that absolutely shattered the old record"
Yep. I don't see the "deniers" adjusting any of their claims.
For a start, the word "denier" is wholly inappropriate and highly prejudicial. It's the kind of word commonly used by religious fanatics to describe those who do not necessarily accept their dogma.
Furthermore, those who do not necessarily accept the dogma of person-made global warming do not need to to make any claims. They are merely accepting the null hypothesis until they see conclusive proof that it is wrong.
In a real conflict, wouldn't it be fairly easy to pinpoint the location of the jamming source and direct a strike on it?
In the first place no, it wouldn't be fairly easy to pinpoint the location of the jamming source,
In the second place, "directing strikes" is what Western armed forces do when they have invaded some poor country without proper defences or weapons. "Directing strikes" against sites that may well be inside Russia itself would be an act of war; and Russian military doctrine is that direct attacks on Russia itself will be met with a nuclear response.
So if you want to be hit with an unstoppable nuclear missile, go ahead.
The answer is not to waste time and money trying to treat all the symptoms; the answer is to fix them all at once by setting a goal to reduce the world's population by 75% by the year 2100.
Washington has that well in hand. Indeed, it may well exceed that goal by a factor of 33%, any time now.
Why do people get offended when spies spy and immigration enforcement enforces immigration law?
As to the third sentence - why people get offended - you might ask those responsible for punishing alleged spies against the USA with long - including life - prison sentences, and even the death penalty. Ask the Rosenbergs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., or Robert Hansson https://www.voanews.com/a/a-13..., or many others.
The customary view is that spying is perfectly normal and OK when done by our side, but wicked and criminal when done by others to us.
Why do people get offended when spies spy and immigration enforcement enforces immigration law?
Who said anything about being offended? This thread's topic is about how "U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM)" publicly dumped "Russian government malware online".
If the topic is worth publishing, let alone discussing, there is surely an implication that it is bad for the Russian government to be creating and/or using malware.
So I thought it would provide some context for people to know that Wikileaks had dumped US government malware online over a year earlier. Moreover, some of that US government malware is designed to camouflage online activity and make it look as though it came from a different country.
Thus, for example, any apparent "Russian government malware" could possibly have been created and distributed by the CIA.
I honestly can't tell if that was meant as satire or seriously. If it was satire, you need to dial it back a little so people realise you're not in earnest.
If you're in earnest, I'm sorry I disturbed your delusions.
>History is written by the victors, not the conquered.
Sorry to rain on your parade, but actually most Roman history - especially after the Roman conquest of Greece - was written by Greeks. The Roman aristocracy spoke Greek, just as most of the Plantagenet kings of England and Russians at the court of the Tsar spoke French.
Julius Caesar's last words were not, "Et tu, Brute!" bu "Kai su, teknon" ("You too, lad?")
Well done! Of the 26 comments posted so far, yours is the only one that addresses the story and contributes intelligent insights.
Slashdot badly needs a button that takes you past the however-many-dozen irrelevant comments to the first ones that are worth reading. Attention is THE scarce resource.
This is what happens when you put a true entrapeneur, and verified job creator with business savvy and acumen, into office
That's one of the funniest things I have seen since George W Bush, of revered memory, told the world that "the trouble with the French is that they don't have a word for 'entrepreneur'".
Slashdot Mirror
The exception is software. Our tools have not really changed since the 1970s. And we are still programming in C.
"Uncle" Bob Martin has some interesting things to say about that (hour-long video). Interestingly, his argument is somewhat similar to mine. When computers were new, there were no trained or qualified programmers. So the programming was done by whoever needed to and was capable. Good engineers, scientists, mathematicians - mostly of middle age, experience, seasoned, and accustomed to working in a project environment. They imposed their own discipline. Martin sees the Agile movement as an attempt to recapture those qualities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
How does someone 'discover' a theory?
Simple: just do a lot of reading in the Library of Babel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
No, all the talent is working for investment banks. Why research physics when you can get payed ten times as much elsewhere?
This actually sounds very plausible, especially as the USA has been the world centre of research since WW2. The US culture is almost uniquely focused on money, so many intelligent young people naturally gravitate to finance instead of science or engineering.
In the wild mania to praise ever-accelerating progress and steadily increasing wonderfulness, it's easy to overlook some of the good things about the past.
Many of the great discoveries and inventions, from the earliest times to the mid-20th century, were made by independent researchers. Usually gentlemen of independent means, or famous scholars patronised by monarchs or nobles.
This gave them the independence to study whatever they thought interesting. No grants, no grant applications, no having to publish 200 papers a year just to stay employed.
A friend of mine, who knows far more about science and mathematics than I ever will, once told me that even the greatest scientists and mathematicians do well to make two or three big breakthroughs in a lifetime. Just imagine what Euclid, Archimedes, Newton, Leibniz, or any of the other great pioneers would have achieved if they continually had to dance attendance on boards and heads of department, and publish monthly.
Robert A Heinlein foresaw the dead end into which science was being driven as early as 1956, and described a fictional body that was as far as possible the exact opposite of modern institutional research: the Long Range Foundation.
"We got interested in the purposes of the Long Range Foundation. Its coat of arms reads: 'Bread Cast Upon the Waters', and its charter is headed: 'Dedicated to the Welfare of our Descendants'. The charter goes on with a lot of lawyers' fog but the way the directors have interpreted it has been to spend money only on things that no government and no other corporation would touch. It wasn't enough for a proposed project to be interesting to science or socially desirable; it also had to be so horribly expensive that no one else would touch it and the prospective results had to lie so far in the future that it could not be justified to taxpayers or shareholders. To make the LRF directors light up with enthusiasm you had to suggest something that cost a billion or more [at least $10 billion today] and probably wouldn't show results for ten generations, if ever... something like how to control the weather (they're working on that) or where does your lap go when you stand up.
"The funny thing is that bread cast upon waters does come back seven hundred fold; the most preposterous projects made the LRF embarrassing amounts of money..."
"Time for the Stars", 1956 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"As the plane finally reaches full production, the Air Force is racing to plug holes that could allow hackers to exploit the jet's connected systems—with disastrous results".
Major fail.
Security cannot be added like a bag on the side, as an afterthought. Since Mr Mizokami evidently thinks it can (as far as one can judge from his breathless prose) it's pretty obvious he doesn't know much about software or security.
The F35 contains a lot of C++ code, with very stringent coding guidelines.
That explains a lot.
I'm guessing Ada - defense contractors love that
People who want to fly and stay alive love Ada.
"November Snow In Texas? Experts Warn Decreased Solar Activity Will Shatter All Global Climate Models"
"Our sun has been behaving very strangely, and this unusual behavior is really starting to affect our weather patterns. There have been virtually no sunspots in 2018 as solar activity has dropped to alarmingly low levels. As a result, our atmosphere has been cooling and shrinking, and experts are warning that we are heading for a bitterly, bitterly cold winter. And even though the official start of winter is well over a month away, winter weather is already sweeping the nation. As you will see below, a giant winter storm is about to slam into the east coast, but what is happening in Texas is even more unnerving. On Wednesday morning, the temperature in San Antonio plummeted to just 23 degrees, and that absolutely shattered the old record"
http://theeconomiccollapseblog...
Yep. I don't see the "deniers" adjusting any of their claims.
For a start, the word "denier" is wholly inappropriate and highly prejudicial. It's the kind of word commonly used by religious fanatics to describe those who do not necessarily accept their dogma.
Furthermore, those who do not necessarily accept the dogma of person-made global warming do not need to to make any claims. They are merely accepting the null hypothesis until they see conclusive proof that it is wrong.
From TFA:
"Norway has determined that Russia was responsible for jamming GPS signals in the Kola Peninsula..."
Er, has anyone realised that the Kola Peninsula lies wholly inside Russia?
And Putin just sat back and chuckled at the stupid Americans.
Well, at least you got that right. Although, being a diplomat and a statesman, he doesn't let it show.
In a real conflict, wouldn't it be fairly easy to pinpoint the location of the jamming source and direct a strike on it?
In the first place no, it wouldn't be fairly easy to pinpoint the location of the jamming source,
In the second place, "directing strikes" is what Western armed forces do when they have invaded some poor country without proper defences or weapons. "Directing strikes" against sites that may well be inside Russia itself would be an act of war; and Russian military doctrine is that direct attacks on Russia itself will be met with a nuclear response.
So if you want to be hit with an unstoppable nuclear missile, go ahead.
The answer is not to waste time and money trying to treat all the symptoms; the answer is to fix them all at once by setting a goal to reduce the world's population by 75% by the year 2100.
Washington has that well in hand. Indeed, it may well exceed that goal by a factor of 33%, any time now.
The CIA is a US spy agency. That's their job.
Why do people get offended when spies spy and immigration enforcement enforces immigration law?
As to the third sentence - why people get offended - you might ask those responsible for punishing alleged spies against the USA with long - including life - prison sentences, and even the death penalty. Ask the Rosenbergs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., or Robert Hansson https://www.voanews.com/a/a-13..., or many others.
The customary view is that spying is perfectly normal and OK when done by our side, but wicked and criminal when done by others to us.
The CIA is a US spy agency. That's their job.
Why do people get offended when spies spy and immigration enforcement enforces immigration law?
Who said anything about being offended? This thread's topic is about how "U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM)" publicly dumped "Russian government malware online".
If the topic is worth publishing, let alone discussing, there is surely an implication that it is bad for the Russian government to be creating and/or using malware.
So I thought it would provide some context for people to know that Wikileaks had dumped US government malware online over a year earlier. Moreover, some of that US government malware is designed to camouflage online activity and make it look as though it came from a different country.
Thus, for example, any apparent "Russian government malware" could possibly have been created and distributed by the CIA.
Just saying.
"The Marble Framework - How the CIA Obfuscates and Pretends to be Someone Else"
https://viableopposition.blogs...
I honestly can't tell if that was meant as satire or seriously. If it was satire, you need to dial it back a little so people realise you're not in earnest.
If you're in earnest, I'm sorry I disturbed your delusions.
>History is written by the victors, not the conquered.
Sorry to rain on your parade, but actually most Roman history - especially after the Roman conquest of Greece - was written by Greeks. The Roman aristocracy spoke Greek, just as most of the Plantagenet kings of England and Russians at the court of the Tsar spoke French.
Julius Caesar's last words were not, "Et tu, Brute!" bu "Kai su, teknon" ("You too, lad?")
Well done! Of the 26 comments posted so far, yours is the only one that addresses the story and contributes intelligent insights.
Slashdot badly needs a button that takes you past the however-many-dozen irrelevant comments to the first ones that are worth reading. Attention is THE scarce resource.
Actually that's a course of action that would have been strongly approved of in Republican Rome.
This is what happens when you put a true entrapeneur, and verified job creator with business savvy and acumen, into office
That's one of the funniest things I have seen since George W Bush, of revered memory, told the world that "the trouble with the French is that they don't have a word for 'entrepreneur'".
From the first article:
"The last time the U.S. topped the list was 2008".
I rest my case.
I once read a review of a book about a visit to Florida. The part that caught my attention, and that I remember, was:
"Reading this book will do more to deter the reader from visiting Florida than anything except an actual visit to Florida".
Facebook is getting just like that.
You certainly are a fine advertisement for American educatiion, sir.
The managers are following the carrots and sticks which are actually applied to them like donkeys would.
That says it all, really.
For better results, a good start would be appointing managers who are smarter (and more moral) than donkeys.
If they can find any.