Children in high school, for example, often do not.
And they shouldn't (unless they work part so that they can buy their own shit.) Parents and/or schools are the ones to provide equipment for them.
"I already bought you a tablet/smartphone/game console. Why do you need a computer too? Do I look like I'm made of money?"
1) So? What does this has to do with hardware manufacturers (notice that this is the 4th time that I'm asking this question, which so far goes conveniently unanswered)
2) Nice how you ignore the possibility of a HS kid going to work part-time and buy his own shit, which many kids (really good and smarts kids) do btw. What's the point of rallying for content creation rights (which are not rights, but nice-to-haves) if you conveniently ignore the life-long benefits of working part-time and buying your own stuff (both acts supplementing education) from as early as legally possible?
content creation, which is only an edge case of the much general case of content usage.
The fact that this is the case, the fact that the industrialized world has become a consumer culture as opposed to a participatory culture, is my primary complaint. But I'm willing to drop my complaint about this particular tablet the moment that I know that it has "Unknown sources".
Hmmmm, ok? Your content creation activity seemed to have had a glitch in the quoting function. BTW, don't bother replying if you cannot answer (or are unwilling to answer) the questions that I have presented to you and which so far remain conveniently unanswered.
Don't rally for logically-shaky principles if you lack the principle of addressing counter-arguments. That's just being a hypocrite.
they upgrade their equipment when/if they do make the leap to something more than what they do now.
Provided they have the money to make such a leap.
Which is not a hardware manufacturer's problem. Seriously, it is not not unless a particular manufacturer's target audience happens to be low-income people with creation of creativity opportunities (no pun intended) for them being a focal point of its business plans.
Unless you have been living under a rock, the following should be self evident. Tables and high-end smart phones (Android or iOS or otherwise) are targeted towards a market with a particular income pattern and education level: a college student that is dirt poor, but has no priorities other than his/her own education and gadgetry, or a middle-class person that can afford one. The are not for the family household or members of a family living at the poverty line or below... and chances are, creativity of media and artistic expression are not among their priorities.
Children in high school, for example, often do not.
And they shouldn't (unless they work part so that they can buy their own shit.) Parents and/or schools are the ones to provide equipment for them.
So do the working poor who bought a tablet for the family because it was cheaper than a PC.
Nice hypothetical. Look at your hypothetical poor working man for example, and imagine that he indeed buys a PC. What do you think that person buys that PC for? For his and his family content creation or for content consumption? In fact, remove the income bracket, and that question is also applicable to most people regardless of income situation.
Most people who own or have access to a PC, poor, middle class or rich, they consume content, they do not create (not unless you count "sending an e-mail" as content creation). So the general case, with the tablet factor removed, remains that people in general do not aspire to climb from consumption to creation.
Moreover, for those who do, guess what? The majority are happy-go-lucky doing content creating via FB or with their online photo albums, or tweeting or a blog (an activity blog or online diary), at most, any of which can be done with either a low-end PC or even an smartphone.
That is the general case when it comes to content creation, which is only an edge case of the much general case of content usage.
More importantly, it suffices for most people. And guess what?
It.
Is.
Ok.
For those who want more, those who want to from consumption to not just creation, but creation above a certain level of sophistication... get the equipment. It's like anything. Artistic creation costs money. Training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or Ballet costs money. Traveling costs money. Bodybuilding and figure/fitness competition costs money. And so on and so on. It is not a for-profit org's mandate to do social engineering and change that.
Moreover, you are simply presenting a solution looking for a problem since for most people, content consumption satisfies their needs. Even for the poor, here and in 3rd developed countries, what matters is to get content to them. Sophisticated content creation is not a must-have.
People aspiring to climb from consumption to creation should be savvy enough to get equipment that enables them to do so
For one thing, how can people necessarily know one or two years in advance that they want to start creating?
1) That's their problem, not Amazon's.
2) They'd do the same way many other people (or businesses) have done successfully in the past - they upgrade their equipment when/if they do make the leap to something more than what they do now. That is, you don't spend on shit unless you need it or you have a reasonable expectation of needing it within an equally reasonable time frame.
instead of getting equipment such as this which is not intended for that purpose.
Exactly, it is not intended for *that* purpose. So, don't fucking get it for *that* purpose, and instead get equipment intended for *that* purpose (now if you need it now, or later if you need it later.)
Really, don't get shit for something other than what it is intended to. It's not rocket science, it's just plain financial 101 common sense.
The idea is to be able to start creating with what you already own.
That is *your* idea, your opinion. And opinions are like emotions. They are not necessarily facts or statements of truth. You are simply projecting your own technophilic biases onto the general population. Don't.
For a site supposedly geared for geeks, some of its posters have an embarrassing lack of logical skills.
Perhaps they're bitching that it's yet another device that can act as a roadblock for people who want to climb from consumption to creation.
I have a hack saw and its getting in my way from cutting through a 6x6 </sarcasm>.
People aspiring to climb from consumption to creation should be savvy enough to get equipment that enables them to do so instead of getting equipment such as this which is not intended for that purpose. Fascinating idea, I know!
Can you quote the precise piece of the PATRIOT act that deals specifically with this, and that will get the MiB to show to my house if I'm building such a device? I'm not a fan of the act, but I think you are attributing an interpretation to it that simply does not follow even in the paranoid sense.
*Specific* passages? -- Have you *ever* read any law? There are barely ever any *specific* passages in laws...
Anyway, Patriot Act Title II, sections 201, 202, 204, 209, 210, 211 are the relevant passages.
Section 201 deals with the government powers for intercepting communication related to terrorism. Section 202 deals with similar powers but in the context of computer fraud. How do section 201 and 202 that prevent me from building a TS-capable communication device? How are these two sections relevant to the discussion at hand?
Section 204 deals with limitations on communication interceptions (including electronic communication) by a party other than authorized government agencies. This is no way precludes me from building a TS-capable communication device. It precludes me from using such a device for intercepting electronic communication, and in fact the capacity to handle a TS-level communication does not imply a capacity to intercept at that level or at any level. Communication != interception. So please explain to me how this section prevents from building a TS-capable communication device? How is this section relevant to the discussion at hand?
Same questions regarding section 209, 210 and 211. According to you maybe I haven't read the memo (and by following your post line of logic, you have). So please illuminate me on how these sections prevent me from building the artifact in question.
Just because you copy/paste section numbers do not magically turn your hand-waving into a fact. Maybe you are right and my interpretation is wrong, but so far, you have done a poor job in presenting facts (facts, not opinions) that either demonstrate your point, or at least provide reasonable premises from which to deduce your point as a logical conclusion.
I'm not saying that the issue is crystal-clear or that the "MiB" could use the PATRIOT act to *rightfully and constitutionally* force you to implement a backdoor. I've just said that someone might have a long talk with you as the implementor of a voice encryption device, not that the threats you will hear in this talk are water-proof up til the Supreme Court. The legal issues are complicated, they e.g. depend on whether the maker of the secure communications device is also classified as a communications provider.
Uh, there is nothing preventing a US citizen or legal resident from creating a device that can handle information at different security levels, even TS.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. Officially, yes, you may by now create a phone that does secure voice encryption without any backdoor or key escrow. Some data-channel apps out there claim to do that. But if you implement such an app on your own, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody had a long talk with you...
Don't forget that there is the PATRIOT act -- as long as it is in place no US-made encryption device can be considered secure.
Can you quote the precise piece of the PATRIOT act that deals specifically with this, and that will get the MiB to show to my house if I'm building such a device? I'm not a fan of the act, but I think you are attributing an interpretation to it that simply does not follow even in the paranoid sense.
How can they ask for something like this after doing everything in their power to ensure something like this can't be created?.
Uh, there is nothing preventing a US citizen or legal resident from creating a device that can handle information at different security levels, even TS. You are prevented (and rightly so) from having one already created *for them*, or to create a device that circumvent *their* information handling. But there is nothing that prevents you from creating one from scratch, even a more powerful (though it would be unlikely that you can market one of such from-scratch devices to them after building it outside of their specs.)
Long story short: any technical preventions by NSA are for those not in the NSA.
Well, sure Mr. NSA, we can cobble together a secure phone for you...we'll just throw in an encryption / decryption chip and a process that prompts for a password every 5 minutes. And your agents will hate it, it will become compromised (journalists are so irresponsible), and it will become a waste of tax-payer money.
That's a bit of a non-sequitur as building such a device takes a little bit more than just cobbling an encryption/decryption chip. I'm not necessarily sure where you are going with this (beyond mere rhetoric.)
Did I mention it won't be secure? But don't worry; someone will tell you it can be done, and you'll pay them a lot of money, only to realize they lied.
Uh, again, overt simplification of how these things are commissioned and built. No one can just go and say "it can be done" as such high-risk projects will be first assessed for viability by someone like MITRE for example. I mean, the NSA has an army of Ph.Ds in Mathematics, Computer Science and Computer/Electrical engineering with work experience in cryptanalysis, algorithms, VLSI, SoC and network hardware and communication protocols (both practical and theoretical) as well as defense contractors that build things like f* missiles, radar systems, jammers, and other incredibly complex shit like that.
I could be wrong, but I could bet just surely that you are over estimating your understanding on this issue (and under estimating theirs.) Don't let that stop your rhetoric, though;)
"Troy Lange might work for one of the more secretive spy agencies in the United States, but he is happy to talk about his work. He is the NSA's mobility mission manager and he has been tasked with creating a smartphone that is secure enough to allow government personnel who deal with highly sensitive information to take their work on the road. At present, the U.S. Government has secure cellphones, they use the government's Secret Internet Protocol Router Network. The problem is that they can only communicate with other devices that are plugged into the network and their use is restricted to top-secret level communications. Lange wants a smartphone that is inter-operable and presumably trusted to deal with even more sensitive information. Lange said that he wanted to see his secure smartphone reach beyond the NSA – ultimately to reach every 'every employee in the Defense Department, intelligence community and across government.'"
More sensitive than TS? Maybe the article is poorly referring to handling of less sensitive data at the secret level, or beyond that, configuration of the device to handle (or refuse to handle) information transfer at a particular security clearance according to context (keys, location, clearance at each end point, whatever) as opposed to just TS-level information.
Or maybe the article is trying (again poorly) to refer to compartmentalization. That is, the device not only has a notion of TS, but also of compartments (and can handle/refuse to handle information according to applicable compartments at the TS level.)
Unless I'm missing something here, as presented in the article, that sentence makes no sense.
Yes, there is rushed development and then there is long delayed development where somehow they can't figure it out and someone decides to launch it just to get it out of the door. Like say, a shuttle launch. No matter what the engineers say.
Boeing has killed a lot of people with stupid design flaws and cost cuttings, most aircraft companies have. Lets wait a bit to see if this will be a turkey or an eagle.
Statistics for comparison, per aircraft manufacture please.
Certainly not for undergrad degrees, a few courses maybe, but not the entire curriculum. For graduate degrees and graduate certificates (specially those geared towards professionals with a certain number of years of experience), online coursework is a viable alternative (talking from personal experience with UND, WPI, and UC Berkeley).
... should be tied with performance measurements meeting certain baselines - reduce waste (not the same as reducing cost), or increase profits by % - that are established at the time of hiring instead of being given wholesome at the exit door. Then again, I might as well wait for pigs to fly.
"I'm a soon-to-be Master's graduate from a public university majoring in computer science — with all that CS entails. Of course, it's come time to start job hunting, and while there are a few actual CS-type jobs around, I've noticed that a few IT jobs would be substantially more convenient for me personally. But this leads me to the question (assuming they would hire me, of course) — would having IT experience hurt my job prospects down the road? Would future employers see that and be less likely to hire me — or pigeon-hole me into IT?"
As a CS-grad who has also done IT (and by that I think you mean "IT Support" as opposed to "IT/Enterprise Computing/Software Development"), if you get a gig in IT, make sure that it is a tier II or tier III type - the type dealing with actual server/dba/network configuration, administration and troubleshooting. Having that type of first-hand knowledge will prove valuable for most CS-work that you do down the road (too many CS grads down know how to root cause (or even account for) server/network-related problems when they develop enterprise/distributed systems (with hilarious consequences.)
On the other hand, a tier I type of IT support job is the type that gets calls from people requesting help with their PC-integrated cup holder, and you'll be eating a bullet in no time.
Having said that, and also from my own first hand experience, you run the risk of getting pigeonhole into the "IT-can-admin,IT-can't-program" stereotype. Make sure that when you do IT work, you do programming (a lot). Use Python, Groovy or Ruby or Haskell or Lua for your administrative shell scripts as opposed to simply shell scripts + perl. Sounds a little bit overkill, but you *need* this, to both keep your practice, and also to put it in your resume (to demonstrate that you have been programming.) BTW, if you do this, make sure to take one language and stick to it - nothing worse for a poor employer to find itself with a bestiary of admin scripts written in 4-5 different languages. In a nutshell, pursue your programming practice on the job in an ethical, professional way that benefits both you and your employer.
Also, while you do IT, keep your eyes on what's going on out there in terms of software development. Things change very quickly and you can find yourself obsolete rather fast if you are not proactive with your career development.
OTH, if you end up liking it, why not, specially if you get a chance to do paid overtime. If you do this, though, be ready to have your cell on with you at all times, getting level 2 or 3 calls from Bangalore, Buenos Aires or Panang at 3am:P
> "A guy who walked on the moon thinks manned space flight is a good idea. Full story at 11."
I love how fat, worthless, lazy fucks like you sit around and judge somebody who chased a dream and made something of themselves.
So what happens to the rest of his post (a whole paragraph)? Are you going to comment on the points he made, or are you simply going to quote him out of context while building up a strawman?
And what happens when the language has some traction and Google gets all protective about it?
If you're using a language that doesn't come out of Academia and FOSS it's your own damn fault if the vendor makes decisions that screw you.
Could you please mention to me a technology, not just a language, but technology, that comes out of Academia and FOSS, which provides everything that the JVM provides (administrative APIs, remote debugging, extensive ecosystem, a established, well-documented component architecture, architectures and API for web development, distributed component development, message-oriented middleware API, APIs for relational and non-relational persistence, integrated WS, REST and XML-RPC apis, APIs for distributed transactions, an architecture and APIs for EAI, one of the best JIT technologies, management extensions), an ever growing ecosystem of interoperable programming languages running on top of it?
The only thing coming close is the Erlang VM, which has a better track record for fault-tolerant systems and which possesses many of the things I mentioned above... but not all. Beyond that, the third contender is the.NET CLR. And none of these are from Academia and only one of them (Erlang) is FOSS (even though it was Ericsson's proprietary technology for the first 12 years of its life.)
So unless you can mention one product out of Academia and FOSS than can competitively match any of these three (and in particular the JVM) in a manner that is integrated and without much stove-piping, you are just doing hand-waving.
And low, on that fateful day, a million junior web designers did cry out in horror at the violation of most sacrosanct of scripts.
Don't insult junior web designers. Junior does not imply incompetent/stupid web designer/developer, and only the later would rely on an external party to host its most crucial content (a fundamental javascript framework) without any type of SLA.
To anyone reading this: If you don't have a SLA protecting an asset hosted somewhere else, get that shit replicated and hosted locally in your own environment. For those who don't get this, please turn your geek card and consider a career change into finger painting or something.
Serves JavaWebStart coders right for relying on third-party, online systems.
In that vein, one can consider what would happen if Google suddenly stopped hosting JQuery: about half of the javascript-using websites in the world would stop working.:)
And they would deserve to die. Who the f* other than the stupidest of all would code their systems depending on google hosting of jquery? That shit (and similar shit) must always be replicated and hosted by the application's environment itself.
Much as I love java, doing serial port comms with it sounds downright painful. I'd be using c/c++ for that if at all possible (and not through JNI;p).
It's not that bad. I actually used it myself for a java implementation of the DNP3 protocol stack. Not that it was my choice (it was in the contract that we had to use Java). But javax.comm is not a bad alternative. It is certainly not painful. At least that's how I remember when I last used it 11 years ago.
Not only that, after acquisition by Oracle, most competent engineers just leave. The pay is bad, you have to deal with a shitload of non-productive bureaucracy and end up working with mostly incompetent engineers which are more worried avoiding work than actually accomplishing something.
There are a few good teams around, but they don't last long. The borg eventually normalizes them.
Is this for a fact or just hearsay? Don't worry, it's a rhetorical question.
Yes, plenty of them. But then again many of them require you to have more skills than a mouth-breathing java weenie.
What is a java weenie? Seriously, I never understand these ACs posting about X-tech weenie this, Y-tech weenie that, but who can't sum up some demonstrable experience that show they are not tech weenies themselves. Seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
Children in high school, for example, often do not.
And they shouldn't (unless they work part so that they can buy their own shit.) Parents and/or schools are the ones to provide equipment for them.
"I already bought you a tablet/smartphone/game console. Why do you need a computer too? Do I look like I'm made of money?"
1) So? What does this has to do with hardware manufacturers (notice that this is the 4th time that I'm asking this question, which so far goes conveniently unanswered)
2) Nice how you ignore the possibility of a HS kid going to work part-time and buy his own shit, which many kids (really good and smarts kids) do btw. What's the point of rallying for content creation rights (which are not rights, but nice-to-haves) if you conveniently ignore the life-long benefits of working part-time and buying your own stuff (both acts supplementing education) from as early as legally possible?
content creation, which is only an edge case of the much general case of content usage.
The fact that this is the case, the fact that the industrialized world has become a consumer culture as opposed to a participatory culture, is my primary complaint. But I'm willing to drop my complaint about this particular tablet the moment that I know that it has "Unknown sources".
Hmmmm, ok? Your content creation activity seemed to have had a glitch in the quoting function. BTW, don't bother replying if you cannot answer (or are unwilling to answer) the questions that I have presented to you and which so far remain conveniently unanswered.
Don't rally for logically-shaky principles if you lack the principle of addressing counter-arguments. That's just being a hypocrite.
... and other tablet manufacturers. Selling at a lost, though always a risk, can be an acceptable maneuver.
the guy who wrote the article is an idiot.
you are the idiot.
yes lets throw millions of dollars to recreate the wheel cuz web os fanboys are our target market. idiot.
NERD RAGE, NERD FIGHT!!!! Somebody call Jerry Springer. Move out midgets and hookers, nerds are in da house!
they upgrade their equipment when/if they do make the leap to something more than what they do now.
Provided they have the money to make such a leap.
Which is not a hardware manufacturer's problem. Seriously, it is not not unless a particular manufacturer's target audience happens to be low-income people with creation of creativity opportunities (no pun intended) for them being a focal point of its business plans.
Unless you have been living under a rock, the following should be self evident. Tables and high-end smart phones (Android or iOS or otherwise) are targeted towards a market with a particular income pattern and education level: a college student that is dirt poor, but has no priorities other than his/her own education and gadgetry, or a middle-class person that can afford one. The are not for the family household or members of a family living at the poverty line or below... and chances are, creativity of media and artistic expression are not among their priorities.
Children in high school, for example, often do not.
And they shouldn't (unless they work part so that they can buy their own shit.) Parents and/or schools are the ones to provide equipment for them.
So do the working poor who bought a tablet for the family because it was cheaper than a PC.
Nice hypothetical. Look at your hypothetical poor working man for example, and imagine that he indeed buys a PC. What do you think that person buys that PC for? For his and his family content creation or for content consumption? In fact, remove the income bracket, and that question is also applicable to most people regardless of income situation.
Most people who own or have access to a PC, poor, middle class or rich, they consume content, they do not create (not unless you count "sending an e-mail" as content creation). So the general case, with the tablet factor removed, remains that people in general do not aspire to climb from consumption to creation.
Moreover, for those who do, guess what? The majority are happy-go-lucky doing content creating via FB or with their online photo albums, or tweeting or a blog (an activity blog or online diary), at most, any of which can be done with either a low-end PC or even an smartphone.
That is the general case when it comes to content creation, which is only an edge case of the much general case of content usage.
More importantly, it suffices for most people. And guess what?
It.
Is.
Ok.
For those who want more, those who want to from consumption to not just creation, but creation above a certain level of sophistication... get the equipment. It's like anything. Artistic creation costs money. Training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or Ballet costs money. Traveling costs money. Bodybuilding and figure/fitness competition costs money. And so on and so on. It is not a for-profit org's mandate to do social engineering and change that.
Moreover, you are simply presenting a solution looking for a problem since for most people, content consumption satisfies their needs. Even for the poor, here and in 3rd developed countries, what matters is to get content to them. Sophisticated content creation is not a must-have.
Stop projecting.
I don't understand why my Nook doesn't come with a built-in theremin. What if I want to make some music?!
My vizio tablet doesn't have a toilet? How am I to take a shit on it?
People aspiring to climb from consumption to creation should be savvy enough to get equipment that enables them to do so
For one thing, how can people necessarily know one or two years in advance that they want to start creating?
1) That's their problem, not Amazon's.
2) They'd do the same way many other people (or businesses) have done successfully in the past - they upgrade their equipment when/if they do make the leap to something more than what they do now. That is, you don't spend on shit unless you need it or you have a reasonable expectation of needing it within an equally reasonable time frame.
instead of getting equipment such as this which is not intended for that purpose.
Exactly, it is not intended for *that* purpose. So, don't fucking get it for *that* purpose, and instead get equipment intended for *that* purpose (now if you need it now, or later if you need it later.)
Really, don't get shit for something other than what it is intended to. It's not rocket science, it's just plain financial 101 common sense.
The idea is to be able to start creating with what you already own.
That is *your* idea, your opinion. And opinions are like emotions. They are not necessarily facts or statements of truth. You are simply projecting your own technophilic biases onto the general population. Don't.
For a site supposedly geared for geeks, some of its posters have an embarrassing lack of logical skills.
Perhaps they're bitching that it's yet another device that can act as a roadblock for people who want to climb from consumption to creation.
I have a hack saw and its getting in my way from cutting through a 6x6 </sarcasm>.
People aspiring to climb from consumption to creation should be savvy enough to get equipment that enables them to do so instead of getting equipment such as this which is not intended for that purpose. Fascinating idea, I know!
Can you quote the precise piece of the PATRIOT act that deals specifically with this, and that will get the MiB to show to my house if I'm building such a device? I'm not a fan of the act, but I think you are attributing an interpretation to it that simply does not follow even in the paranoid sense.
*Specific* passages? -- Have you *ever* read any law? There are barely ever any *specific* passages in laws...
Anyway, Patriot Act Title II, sections 201, 202, 204, 209, 210, 211 are the relevant passages.
Section 201 deals with the government powers for intercepting communication related to terrorism. Section 202 deals with similar powers but in the context of computer fraud. How do section 201 and 202 that prevent me from building a TS-capable communication device? How are these two sections relevant to the discussion at hand?
Section 204 deals with limitations on communication interceptions (including electronic communication) by a party other than authorized government agencies. This is no way precludes me from building a TS-capable communication device. It precludes me from using such a device for intercepting electronic communication, and in fact the capacity to handle a TS-level communication does not imply a capacity to intercept at that level or at any level. Communication != interception. So please explain to me how this section prevents from building a TS-capable communication device? How is this section relevant to the discussion at hand?
Same questions regarding section 209, 210 and 211. According to you maybe I haven't read the memo (and by following your post line of logic, you have). So please illuminate me on how these sections prevent me from building the artifact in question.
Just because you copy/paste section numbers do not magically turn your hand-waving into a fact. Maybe you are right and my interpretation is wrong, but so far, you have done a poor job in presenting facts (facts, not opinions) that either demonstrate your point, or at least provide reasonable premises from which to deduce your point as a logical conclusion.
I'm not saying that the issue is crystal-clear or that the "MiB" could use the PATRIOT act to *rightfully and constitutionally* force you to implement a backdoor. I've just said that someone might have a long talk with you as the implementor of a voice encryption device, not that the threats you will hear in this talk are water-proof up til the Supreme Court. The legal issues are complicated, they e.g. depend on whether the maker of the secure communications device is also classified as a communications provider.
Uh, there is nothing preventing a US citizen or legal resident from creating a device that can handle information at different security levels, even TS.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. Officially, yes, you may by now create a phone that does secure voice encryption without any backdoor or key escrow. Some data-channel apps out there claim to do that. But if you implement such an app on your own, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody had a long talk with you...
Don't forget that there is the PATRIOT act -- as long as it is in place no US-made encryption device can be considered secure.
Can you quote the precise piece of the PATRIOT act that deals specifically with this, and that will get the MiB to show to my house if I'm building such a device? I'm not a fan of the act, but I think you are attributing an interpretation to it that simply does not follow even in the paranoid sense.
*facepalms*
How can they ask for something like this after doing everything in their power to ensure something like this can't be created?.
Uh, there is nothing preventing a US citizen or legal resident from creating a device that can handle information at different security levels, even TS. You are prevented (and rightly so) from having one already created *for them*, or to create a device that circumvent *their* information handling. But there is nothing that prevents you from creating one from scratch, even a more powerful (though it would be unlikely that you can market one of such from-scratch devices to them after building it outside of their specs.)
Long story short: any technical preventions by NSA are for those not in the NSA.
Well, sure Mr. NSA, we can cobble together a secure phone for you...we'll just throw in an encryption / decryption chip and a process that prompts for a password every 5 minutes. And your agents will hate it, it will become compromised (journalists are so irresponsible), and it will become a waste of tax-payer money.
That's a bit of a non-sequitur as building such a device takes a little bit more than just cobbling an encryption/decryption chip. I'm not necessarily sure where you are going with this (beyond mere rhetoric.)
Did I mention it won't be secure? But don't worry; someone will tell you it can be done, and you'll pay them a lot of money, only to realize they lied.
Uh, again, overt simplification of how these things are commissioned and built. No one can just go and say "it can be done" as such high-risk projects will be first assessed for viability by someone like MITRE for example. I mean, the NSA has an army of Ph.Ds in Mathematics, Computer Science and Computer/Electrical engineering with work experience in cryptanalysis, algorithms, VLSI, SoC and network hardware and communication protocols (both practical and theoretical) as well as defense contractors that build things like f* missiles, radar systems, jammers, and other incredibly complex shit like that.
I could be wrong, but I could bet just surely that you are over estimating your understanding on this issue (and under estimating theirs.) Don't let that stop your rhetoric, though ;)
"Troy Lange might work for one of the more secretive spy agencies in the United States, but he is happy to talk about his work. He is the NSA's mobility mission manager and he has been tasked with creating a smartphone that is secure enough to allow government personnel who deal with highly sensitive information to take their work on the road. At present, the U.S. Government has secure cellphones, they use the government's Secret Internet Protocol Router Network. The problem is that they can only communicate with other devices that are plugged into the network and their use is restricted to top-secret level communications. Lange wants a smartphone that is inter-operable and presumably trusted to deal with even more sensitive information. Lange said that he wanted to see his secure smartphone reach beyond the NSA – ultimately to reach every 'every employee in the Defense Department, intelligence community and across government.'"
More sensitive than TS? Maybe the article is poorly referring to handling of less sensitive data at the secret level, or beyond that, configuration of the device to handle (or refuse to handle) information transfer at a particular security clearance according to context (keys, location, clearance at each end point, whatever) as opposed to just TS-level information.
Or maybe the article is trying (again poorly) to refer to compartmentalization. That is, the device not only has a notion of TS, but also of compartments (and can handle/refuse to handle information according to applicable compartments at the TS level.)
Unless I'm missing something here, as presented in the article, that sentence makes no sense.
Yes, there is rushed development and then there is long delayed development where somehow they can't figure it out and someone decides to launch it just to get it out of the door. Like say, a shuttle launch. No matter what the engineers say.
Boeing has killed a lot of people with stupid design flaws and cost cuttings, most aircraft companies have. Lets wait a bit to see if this will be a turkey or an eagle.
Statistics for comparison, per aircraft manufacture please.
Certainly not for undergrad degrees, a few courses maybe, but not the entire curriculum. For graduate degrees and graduate certificates (specially those geared towards professionals with a certain number of years of experience), online coursework is a viable alternative (talking from personal experience with UND, WPI, and UC Berkeley).
... should be tied with performance measurements meeting certain baselines - reduce waste (not the same as reducing cost), or increase profits by % - that are established at the time of hiring instead of being given wholesome at the exit door. Then again, I might as well wait for pigs to fly.
"I'm a soon-to-be Master's graduate from a public university majoring in computer science — with all that CS entails. Of course, it's come time to start job hunting, and while there are a few actual CS-type jobs around, I've noticed that a few IT jobs would be substantially more convenient for me personally. But this leads me to the question (assuming they would hire me, of course) — would having IT experience hurt my job prospects down the road? Would future employers see that and be less likely to hire me — or pigeon-hole me into IT?"
As a CS-grad who has also done IT (and by that I think you mean "IT Support" as opposed to "IT/Enterprise Computing/Software Development"), if you get a gig in IT, make sure that it is a tier II or tier III type - the type dealing with actual server/dba/network configuration, administration and troubleshooting. Having that type of first-hand knowledge will prove valuable for most CS-work that you do down the road (too many CS grads down know how to root cause (or even account for) server/network-related problems when they develop enterprise/distributed systems (with hilarious consequences.)
On the other hand, a tier I type of IT support job is the type that gets calls from people requesting help with their PC-integrated cup holder, and you'll be eating a bullet in no time.
Having said that, and also from my own first hand experience, you run the risk of getting pigeonhole into the "IT-can-admin,IT-can't-program" stereotype. Make sure that when you do IT work, you do programming (a lot). Use Python, Groovy or Ruby or Haskell or Lua for your administrative shell scripts as opposed to simply shell scripts + perl. Sounds a little bit overkill, but you *need* this, to both keep your practice, and also to put it in your resume (to demonstrate that you have been programming.) BTW, if you do this, make sure to take one language and stick to it - nothing worse for a poor employer to find itself with a bestiary of admin scripts written in 4-5 different languages. In a nutshell, pursue your programming practice on the job in an ethical, professional way that benefits both you and your employer.
Also, while you do IT, keep your eyes on what's going on out there in terms of software development. Things change very quickly and you can find yourself obsolete rather fast if you are not proactive with your career development.
OTH, if you end up liking it, why not, specially if you get a chance to do paid overtime. If you do this, though, be ready to have your cell on with you at all times, getting level 2 or 3 calls from Bangalore, Buenos Aires or Panang at 3am :P
Seriously, is there a problem with this feature?
> "A guy who walked on the moon thinks manned space flight is a good idea. Full story at 11."
I love how fat, worthless, lazy fucks like you sit around and judge somebody who chased a dream and made something of themselves.
So what happens to the rest of his post (a whole paragraph)? Are you going to comment on the points he made, or are you simply going to quote him out of context while building up a strawman?
Basically America committed suicide.
So the root problem is due to ethnic diversification?
And what happens when the language has some traction and Google gets all protective about it? If you're using a language that doesn't come out of Academia and FOSS it's your own damn fault if the vendor makes decisions that screw you.
Could you please mention to me a technology, not just a language, but technology, that comes out of Academia and FOSS, which provides everything that the JVM provides (administrative APIs, remote debugging, extensive ecosystem, a established, well-documented component architecture, architectures and API for web development, distributed component development, message-oriented middleware API, APIs for relational and non-relational persistence, integrated WS, REST and XML-RPC apis, APIs for distributed transactions, an architecture and APIs for EAI, one of the best JIT technologies, management extensions), an ever growing ecosystem of interoperable programming languages running on top of it?
The only thing coming close is the Erlang VM, which has a better track record for fault-tolerant systems and which possesses many of the things I mentioned above... but not all. Beyond that, the third contender is the .NET CLR. And none of these are from Academia and only one of them (Erlang) is FOSS (even though it was Ericsson's proprietary technology for the first 12 years of its life.)
So unless you can mention one product out of Academia and FOSS than can competitively match any of these three (and in particular the JVM) in a manner that is integrated and without much stove-piping, you are just doing hand-waving.
Yes, Google hosts jQuery.
jQuery is a 100kByte large JavaScript.
If you build a website or service using jQuery you add that 100kByte script to your codebase and don't outsource it to Google.
That will also prevent potential problems with your (shitty) code because the file hosted at Google was updated with a newer version of jQuery.
But I agree there are many Developers who are just stupid... and replaceable.
It's hard to replace stupid when we are drowning in a sea of stupid :/
And low, on that fateful day, a million junior web designers did cry out in horror at the violation of most sacrosanct of scripts.
Don't insult junior web designers. Junior does not imply incompetent/stupid web designer/developer, and only the later would rely on an external party to host its most crucial content (a fundamental javascript framework) without any type of SLA.
To anyone reading this: If you don't have a SLA protecting an asset hosted somewhere else, get that shit replicated and hosted locally in your own environment. For those who don't get this, please turn your geek card and consider a career change into finger painting or something.
Serves JavaWebStart coders right for relying on third-party, online systems.
In that vein, one can consider what would happen if Google suddenly stopped hosting JQuery: about half of the javascript-using websites in the world would stop working. :)
And they would deserve to die. Who the f* other than the stupidest of all would code their systems depending on google hosting of jquery? That shit (and similar shit) must always be replicated and hosted by the application's environment itself.
Much as I love java, doing serial port comms with it sounds downright painful. I'd be using c/c++ for that if at all possible (and not through JNI ;p).
It's not that bad. I actually used it myself for a java implementation of the DNP3 protocol stack. Not that it was my choice (it was in the contract that we had to use Java). But javax.comm is not a bad alternative. It is certainly not painful. At least that's how I remember when I last used it 11 years ago.
Not only that, after acquisition by Oracle, most competent engineers just leave. The pay is bad, you have to deal with a shitload of non-productive bureaucracy and end up working with mostly incompetent engineers which are more worried avoiding work than actually accomplishing something. There are a few good teams around, but they don't last long. The borg eventually normalizes them.
Is this for a fact or just hearsay? Don't worry, it's a rhetorical question.
Yes, plenty of them. But then again many of them require you to have more skills than a mouth-breathing java weenie.
What is a java weenie? Seriously, I never understand these ACs posting about X-tech weenie this, Y-tech weenie that, but who can't sum up some demonstrable experience that show they are not tech weenies themselves. Seriously.