You know, I hate this conception that all engineers are EE/CPE types. Sure.
I'm in aerospace, which may not be a growth industry but certainly isn't one in much danger of stuff being outsourced. American companies still have the edge in experience, know-how, and institutional momentum. While Dan Goldin did his dead-level best to kill NASA, it's not quite dead yet, and between the public and private sectors there's a lot of need for know-how.
Of course, the fun thing about aerospace is that, unlike the computer world, the new hires are treated like dirt for a reason--we really don't know crap. We learn a lot of basic conceptions in school, but there's so much OJT that it's not funny. I worked for my current employer for almost three years before graduation, and I'm still way behind on the power curve.
It always amuses me, though, to watch people hit the big trends in technological fields. I'd tell a kid coming into school these days to major in civil engineering. We're going to need a lot of those folks soon, and they might as well get in while the getting's good.
Rocket racing would be an incredible spectacle... but it'll be hard to get much detail. You'll have to watch from far away for safety and perspective reasons--if you have ever been to any CART or NASCAR race, you know you just feel the cars go by you, really.
As for profit potentials, I'll agree that they exist, but at this point, no one's put up the money to make it happen. That we've seen scads of money thrown after bad business ideas in the last 25 years tells me something about the risk/reward function on private orbital flights.
Hey, when you come up with a propulsion system that has T/W > 1, let me know. Until we can get off the ground with something else, the really cool and exotic [and, yes, efficient] stuff--like ion propulsion, ram jets, et cetera--is going to be the domain of spaceflight only.
Even then, you're going to have to get that stuff up there somehow.
Too bad people are so scared of using fission to provide heat energy for conversion into propulsion [and onboard power]. That could make things really easy, actually...
Whatever. I haven't seen the FBI arrest Tom Clancy for conjuring up the idea of using a large passenger jet full of fuel as a flying bomb, so it's patently obvious that ideas in and of themselves aren't going to get you in trouble.
And if the authorities would contact me, I'll let 'em have access to every computer I use. Of course, getting mine from work may be kinda hard, as I work for a defense contractor, but whatever.
In any case, to be fair these are Engineering students and their job isn't to decide the politics of the unit.
As an engineering student myself, I disagree. I think it's our job when developing products to consider the ethical results. I think we're past the point when we just build something and hand it off to marketing.
Of course, I work in a group where we have to do a lot of self-marketing, so maybe I see things a little differently than you do.
I won't get into the liberal/socialist issue: my concern here is with the serving of alcohol to someone who's far too gone. Establishments that serve alcohol have a right and a responsibility to turn someone down if they're too far gone.
I've been asked if I was to be driving once or twice. [Every time, I had a DD. I'm crazy, not stupid.] After responding with a no, the server would then serve another one. But I have gotten a dirty look from a bartender once when ordering. I think they don't realize that I'm a bigger guy than I look and that I also hold my liquor well--but you know, I'm glad they ask. If someone did turn me down a drink, I wouldn't get hacked at all--I think I'd realize they were doing me a favor.
People identify with the fable. People don't identify with programmers [except other programmers]. It's all about knowing your audience. It's tired, but it's effective.
Seriously. Because of all the budgetary SNAFUs, Russia and other ISS partners are getting ceded a lot of crew time in order for some cash now to pay for Station components. The shell game is that we will then buy or rent the crew time back from the International Partners when the time comes to do real research on the station.
The rub is this, though: Russia [and other IP's] can gleefully tell us to go piss up a rope or pay the market rate for such services, because they can offer that crew time [as available, as trained, within reason, etc.] up to the highest commercial bidders. For example, I'm sure there's some rich fella who wouldn't mind being trained as an actual crewmember and really run things up there. He'd probably pay a pretty penny, and the IP's can flip NASA a big ol' bird until they ante up some coin.
I think the idea to be a bit insane from NASA's end--they knew this was going to be hugely expensive in the first place, and they haven't done a good job of selling Congress and the White House on increased funding. [Thanks, Clinton and Goldin, for those years of level funding, which now have NASA thinking about life support.]
Sure, NASA's done a lot of dumb things and could stand to out-source a bit of their work to return to the "promotion of useful arts and sciences", but... -sigh-
...but the frustration on my end is that the writer doesn't seem to understand the concept of Free Software fully. Hey, they understand Open Source, though, so at least that's a start.
I can only conclude by this statement that you are a victim of ignorance and prejudice on the part of those who taught you your computing skills.
That's not quite true or fair.
I work at a NASA contractor. I recognize the value of F77 [and F90] code. For example, GFSSP recently won an award for thermodynamic modeling, and it's written in FORTRAN. [I can't remember if it's F77 or F90; I'd have to ask Dr. Majumdar next time I see him.] Depending on what you're doing, FORTRAN is unbelievably powerful.
There's a reason it's still taught today. I understand those reasons, but in any case, the various levels of FORTRAN are hardly at the vanguard. It's simply the venerable, powerful number-crunching language it's always been. It has its role, and when used appropriately, it's great.
Too bad I've forgotten much of the F77 I learned...well, learned is a bad term, because my instructor was pathetic! =)
You've obviously never been around an aerospace engineering professor. They may have a Ph.D., but most of them are absolutely clueless when it comes to computing technology. I've heard more [l]user questions from them than I have from many, many others...
Ummmm, professors never design aircraft. They just teach those that may do so someday.
But the logic is clear here:
Hacker creates virus. [Purpose of virus left out as an exercise for the interested student.]
Professor gets virus via email, doesn't enact the virus.
Professor goes nuts, finds out one result of virus is document spread.
Professor, smart enough not to open file containing virus, grabs the department chairman.
Department chairman realizes implications, kicks up the chain.
Another reason not to use Microsoft products due to coding philosophy is noted. Perhaps change is made.
They didn't lose any files, but many of 'em got the virus, IIRC. That's unsurprising--it hit the corporate world around here, and their emails are in enough people's address books [heck, mine, since I have to converse with two of 'em regularly!]
Their point is this: if the virus goes beyond annoyance [maybe you have to wipe and reinstall--the department does good backups] to their research actually being sent out, a new line has been crossed.
If any virus has shown the ills of Microsoft coding philosophy, SirCam is it.
The other day, I was on the hall where a good chunk of my professors have offices. I got into a discussion with a few of them, and the gist was this:
"We've been telling folks around here for a while that we don't like Microsoft products, but because they're the de facto standard, we're forced to use them. Thank God for all the hackers that find holes and the real jerks that exploit them.
Of course, I got to wondering about that; we talk about White Hats and Black Hats, but even the Black Hats serve a purpose, if your goal is to rid the world of Microsoft. I'm not sure that it is for me--I'd be happy to use their products if they would code good stuff. [Posted from IE6 on Win2K, but only because I have to have a Windows box to do my school crap...]
But to the point, the end users are getting frustrated with all the security holes. In this case, these guys don't want their research exposed by something like SirCam, which could very easily happen. I think they'd happily go for a switch if solid interoperability with those Left Behind in the Microsoft world could exist.
And hey, remember that these are aerospace engineering professors, who aren't always at the vanguard of computing technology. I mean, I've had to do research with them using F77...
What's really nice about the new Slash is that FP is gone, and I guess it's replaced with the Nth comment number in the entirety of Slashdot. That should strike a blow for the noisemakers...
Can't wait to see the race for post N million, etc.
Hey, Taco, what about sticking a "N comments served", kinda like McDonald's, on the static front for all the noobies? Be kinda cool, and updating every 20 minutes or so shouldn't make it too much of a load on the system, no?
And a trip to the control center in Moscow. If you had to chose, what would you take?
Okay, I'm biased. I do design and systems work on stuff that actually does fly on ISS, so this doesn't nearly appeal to me. But I wouldn't go to Moscow Control to save my life. They might decide that, as an undergraduate, I work cheaper than most cosmonauts--"Slap this boy in a Soyuz, Vanya; we'll have a bake sale to pay his salary while he's up there!"
I don't know it from anywhere. But the name "George Tirebiter" is so outrageous sounding as to be ludicrous. It's obviously contrived...heck, if you want to all our nicks are. But I'm happy to post my real email address and URL here on/. Hell, I'll even inquire as to whether cafepress does dartboards and start selling dartboards with my smiling mug on 'em on IJSM if you like...=P
He doesn't even mention the other points, like trying to avoid linking to competing sites.
I'm not surprised. I don't think internet.com wants you outside "their channels". If that's their thought process, he really has nothing to apologize about...from their perspective. The anonymous LT stuff is another issue, and smells worse for them, but everyone wants to keep you inside channels.
I recognized this one fact: we [in the corporate sense] were never going to be a single source for everyone. Point to good [or bad, to suit your purposes] content and amplify [or refute, TSYP] the points made there. If you amplify it, people will go, "Gee, I want to see what Geof has to say about this ESPN.com piece. He's written on this before..." If you refute it, people will also want to see what you have to say.
Come on, you know that you [in the/. Cabal sense] wait to see who responds first to M$FT FUD, and then you read the followers-on [notably RMS, if he didn't get FP on the FUD] to see what they amplify and what they don't. It's human nature to want to find someone to agree or disagree with. If new media companies will recognize that people will want to spend more time online reading content and might--GASP--pay for it.
Yeah, I could see "George Tirebiter" being a contrivance. It's about as blaringly screaming "ignore me, I'm a mo-ron" as "Anonymous Coward". But for someone in charge to be doing it...guh.
A few years back when I worked for TOTK.com Sports, I had a fellow staff member fake some email [or so he thought] from the current President of the United States. It sounded just a bit too much like this one guy...and when I traced it out, it was him. I "fired" [in the sense that I never let him write again] him on the spot. Though we were "new media", I wasn't going to put up with pointless bullshit. Scary to think that a college sophomore [at the time] had more balls than a "major new media company" like internet.com does at present.
Oh well, I never read LT much anyway. This just assures that I never will.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, I hate this conception that all engineers are EE/CPE types. Sure. I'm in aerospace, which may not be a growth industry but certainly isn't one in much danger of stuff being outsourced. American companies still have the edge in experience, know-how, and institutional momentum. While Dan Goldin did his dead-level best to kill NASA, it's not quite dead yet, and between the public and private sectors there's a lot of need for know-how. Of course, the fun thing about aerospace is that, unlike the computer world, the new hires are treated like dirt for a reason--we really don't know crap. We learn a lot of basic conceptions in school, but there's so much OJT that it's not funny. I worked for my current employer for almost three years before graduation, and I'm still way behind on the power curve. It always amuses me, though, to watch people hit the big trends in technological fields. I'd tell a kid coming into school these days to major in civil engineering. We're going to need a lot of those folks soon, and they might as well get in while the getting's good.
Rocket racing would be an incredible spectacle ... but it'll be hard to get much detail. You'll have to watch from far away for safety and perspective reasons--if you have ever been to any CART or NASCAR race, you know you just feel the cars go by you, really.
As for profit potentials, I'll agree that they exist, but at this point, no one's put up the money to make it happen. That we've seen scads of money thrown after bad business ideas in the last 25 years tells me something about the risk/reward function on private orbital flights.
Hey, when you come up with a propulsion system that has T/W > 1, let me know. Until we can get off the ground with something else, the really cool and exotic [and, yes, efficient] stuff--like ion propulsion, ram jets, et cetera--is going to be the domain of spaceflight only. Even then, you're going to have to get that stuff up there somehow. Too bad people are so scared of using fission to provide heat energy for conversion into propulsion [and onboard power]. That could make things really easy, actually ...
Whatever. I haven't seen the FBI arrest Tom Clancy for conjuring up the idea of using a large passenger jet full of fuel as a flying bomb, so it's patently obvious that ideas in and of themselves aren't going to get you in trouble.
And if the authorities would contact me, I'll let 'em have access to every computer I use. Of course, getting mine from work may be kinda hard, as I work for a defense contractor, but whatever.
Why am I responding to an AC?
I've seen so many "patriotic" emails lately that it's obvious that the social engineering situation is ripe for the plucking.
The building was on fire prior to the collapse, and had been completely evacuated.
As an engineering student myself, I disagree. I think it's our job when developing products to consider the ethical results. I think we're past the point when we just build something and hand it off to marketing.
Of course, I work in a group where we have to do a lot of self-marketing, so maybe I see things a little differently than you do.
I won't get into the liberal/socialist issue: my concern here is with the serving of alcohol to someone who's far too gone. Establishments that serve alcohol have a right and a responsibility to turn someone down if they're too far gone.
I've been asked if I was to be driving once or twice. [Every time, I had a DD. I'm crazy, not stupid.] After responding with a no, the server would then serve another one. But I have gotten a dirty look from a bartender once when ordering. I think they don't realize that I'm a bigger guy than I look and that I also hold my liquor well--but you know, I'm glad they ask. If someone did turn me down a drink, I wouldn't get hacked at all--I think I'd realize they were doing me a favor.
People identify with the fable. People don't identify with programmers [except other programmers]. It's all about knowing your audience. It's tired, but it's effective.
Seriously. Because of all the budgetary SNAFUs, Russia and other ISS partners are getting ceded a lot of crew time in order for some cash now to pay for Station components. The shell game is that we will then buy or rent the crew time back from the International Partners when the time comes to do real research on the station.
The rub is this, though: Russia [and other IP's] can gleefully tell us to go piss up a rope or pay the market rate for such services, because they can offer that crew time [as available, as trained, within reason, etc.] up to the highest commercial bidders. For example, I'm sure there's some rich fella who wouldn't mind being trained as an actual crewmember and really run things up there. He'd probably pay a pretty penny, and the IP's can flip NASA a big ol' bird until they ante up some coin.
I think the idea to be a bit insane from NASA's end--they knew this was going to be hugely expensive in the first place, and they haven't done a good job of selling Congress and the White House on increased funding. [Thanks, Clinton and Goldin, for those years of level funding, which now have NASA thinking about life support.]
Sure, NASA's done a lot of dumb things and could stand to out-source a bit of their work to return to the "promotion of useful arts and sciences", but ... -sigh-
...but the frustration on my end is that the writer doesn't seem to understand the concept of Free Software fully. Hey, they understand Open Source, though, so at least that's a start.
That's not quite true or fair.
I work at a NASA contractor. I recognize the value of F77 [and F90] code. For example, GFSSP recently won an award for thermodynamic modeling, and it's written in FORTRAN. [I can't remember if it's F77 or F90; I'd have to ask Dr. Majumdar next time I see him.] Depending on what you're doing, FORTRAN is unbelievably powerful.
There's a reason it's still taught today. I understand those reasons, but in any case, the various levels of FORTRAN are hardly at the vanguard. It's simply the venerable, powerful number-crunching language it's always been. It has its role, and when used appropriately, it's great.
Too bad I've forgotten much of the F77 I learned...well, learned is a bad term, because my instructor was pathetic! =)
You've obviously never been around an aerospace engineering professor. They may have a Ph.D., but most of them are absolutely clueless when it comes to computing technology. I've heard more [l]user questions from them than I have from many, many others...
Ummmm, professors never design aircraft. They just teach those that may do so someday.
But the logic is clear here:
They didn't lose any files, but many of 'em got the virus, IIRC. That's unsurprising--it hit the corporate world around here, and their emails are in enough people's address books [heck, mine, since I have to converse with two of 'em regularly!]
Their point is this: if the virus goes beyond annoyance [maybe you have to wipe and reinstall--the department does good backups] to their research actually being sent out, a new line has been crossed.
If any virus has shown the ills of Microsoft coding philosophy, SirCam is it.
Actually, they are.
The other day, I was on the hall where a good chunk of my professors have offices. I got into a discussion with a few of them, and the gist was this:
Of course, I got to wondering about that; we talk about White Hats and Black Hats, but even the Black Hats serve a purpose, if your goal is to rid the world of Microsoft. I'm not sure that it is for me--I'd be happy to use their products if they would code good stuff. [Posted from IE6 on Win2K, but only because I have to have a Windows box to do my school crap...]
But to the point, the end users are getting frustrated with all the security holes. In this case, these guys don't want their research exposed by something like SirCam, which could very easily happen. I think they'd happily go for a switch if solid interoperability with those Left Behind in the Microsoft world could exist.
And hey, remember that these are aerospace engineering professors, who aren't always at the vanguard of computing technology. I mean, I've had to do research with them using F77...
Yeah, I originally reported this as a bug when testing Banjo. When my bug got closed as irrelevant, I figured it out...=)
What's really nice about the new Slash is that FP is gone, and I guess it's replaced with the Nth comment number in the entirety of Slashdot. That should strike a blow for the noisemakers...
Can't wait to see the race for post N million, etc.
Hey, Taco, what about sticking a "N comments served", kinda like McDonald's, on the static front for all the noobies? Be kinda cool, and updating every 20 minutes or so shouldn't make it too much of a load on the system, no?
...because after all, they still use very old processors on STS. Oh well, guess they'll buy from Intel [probably always have]...
Hell, I will go up there for free. As long as they bring me down, too.
Okay, I'm biased. I do design and systems work on stuff that actually does fly on ISS, so this doesn't nearly appeal to me. But I wouldn't go to Moscow Control to save my life. They might decide that, as an undergraduate, I work cheaper than most cosmonauts--"Slap this boy in a Soyuz, Vanya; we'll have a bake sale to pay his salary while he's up there!"
Just a T-shirt? I can see it:
I don't know it from anywhere. But the name "George Tirebiter" is so outrageous sounding as to be ludicrous. It's obviously contrived...heck, if you want to all our nicks are. But I'm happy to post my real email address and URL here on /. Hell, I'll even inquire as to whether cafepress does dartboards and start selling dartboards with my smiling mug on 'em on IJSM if you like...=P
With a link to my own damn URL [and hell, my own real home information in the WHOIS db]? I think not.
I'm not surprised. I don't think internet.com wants you outside "their channels". If that's their thought process, he really has nothing to apologize about...from their perspective. The anonymous LT stuff is another issue, and smells worse for them, but everyone wants to keep you inside channels.
Hell, at the new media company where I was Chief Editor, I got pressure from our Publisher not to link to stories that I commented on. That fact frustrated me greatly.
I recognized this one fact: we [in the corporate sense] were never going to be a single source for everyone. Point to good [or bad, to suit your purposes] content and amplify [or refute, TSYP] the points made there. If you amplify it, people will go, "Gee, I want to see what Geof has to say about this ESPN.com piece. He's written on this before..." If you refute it, people will also want to see what you have to say.
Come on, you know that you [in the /. Cabal sense] wait to see who responds first to M$FT FUD, and then you read the followers-on [notably RMS, if he didn't get FP on the FUD] to see what they amplify and what they don't. It's human nature to want to find someone to agree or disagree with. If new media companies will recognize that people will want to spend more time online reading content and might--GASP--pay for it.
Yeah, I could see "George Tirebiter" being a contrivance. It's about as blaringly screaming "ignore me, I'm a mo-ron" as "Anonymous Coward". But for someone in charge to be doing it...guh.
A few years back when I worked for TOTK.com Sports, I had a fellow staff member fake some email [or so he thought] from the current President of the United States. It sounded just a bit too much like this one guy...and when I traced it out, it was him. I "fired" [in the sense that I never let him write again] him on the spot. Though we were "new media", I wasn't going to put up with pointless bullshit. Scary to think that a college sophomore [at the time] had more balls than a "major new media company" like internet.com does at present.
Oh well, I never read LT much anyway. This just assures that I never will.