William Penn believed that the democratic framework he was proposing for Pennsylvania, instituted 105 years before the US Constitution, would only work if there was a literate and informed society. This is one of the reasons that the early Quakers emphasized education in the new colony. A century later Ben Franklin and others in the city of Philadelphia had the same concerns which led them to widen the educational opportunities beyond the just the wealthy. Other framers of the constitution were also concerned about what would happen if an uneducated, uninformed public dominated the electoral process (which didn't prevent many of them from using lies and slander to their own ends).
Now we have a society that has an apparent 99% literacy rate (I got that number from a website, so it must be accurate). Sadly, for the most part, Americans are not taught how to think about what they have read. We have a president-elect that spends his time on Twitter denouncing those who disagree with him (or with his VP-elect). There is doubt about such things as Climate Change in spite of overwhelming evidence. We may have a 99% literacy rate, but we have only an 11% critical thinking rate (I made that number up, but, if you doubt the figure, I'm sure I could come up with some fake data to support it). In many ways, Penn's worst fears have been realized.
We will never be about to stop fake news, misinformation, lies, slander, and propaganda. Beside the fact that attempts to silence free speech (even silly or dangerous free speech) is a perilous precedence, attacking the supply side of the problem will likely have negligible effect.
Focusing on the demand side by teaching our children how to think about what they read will not be easy, especially as we have to deal with so much literacy disparity in our country as it is, but it is the only effective solution. If we are unwilling or unable to do this, then it is best be prepared for the worst.
Whether or not Hillary lost because of hacked emails or whether it was Russia, some other "nation-state" or just some kid somewhere, at least there was some exposure of behind the scenes dealing. To think that such dealing was unusual, or unique to Hillary or Clintons is a bit naive. That doesn't make what is probably SOP in politics acceptable.
What really bothers me is that no one has hacked documents from Trumps financial empire. There are lots of evidence of conflicts in interest in areas of workers' safety, minimum wage, unions, immigration, corporate tax law, non-profit reporting and transparency laws, nepotism laws, banking and financial regulation, separation of church and state, etc. All of that doesn't even begin to describe Trump's international business interests which conflict with the US Diplomatic interests.
Trump's track record suggests that he's never done anything that didn't benefit himself or his children. Regardless of his promises or politics, this is a concern, because in the end we have to ask ourselves if his interests are really our interests, even if we agree with what he says.
If hacking the DNC, & etc to expose corruption there was beneficial, then, especially now, it is important for hackers to get to work and find Trumps tax returns, contracts, his non-profit foundation dealings, etc. The trickle of evidence that responsible media have been able to obtain suggests massive ongoing conflicts of interests and possible illegal activities. Perhaps Russia, some "nation-state", or just some kid somewhere can help us get at the truth here.
For a spec to be that good it's got to be written to the same precision as a computer program.
So just write the fucking code.
The spec is as much for the customer as for the programmer. It defines goals, not how to reach those goals. But, yes, it can take as much work as actually writing the code. Your solution is actually not a bad one if the problem is small, but it doesn't scale well to larger projections.
The problem comes in when the customer wants to do an update, extension, or major fix. Someone else comes in and your code is a mess because you were focused on a happy customer and delivering something that worked well enough at the time for less cost.
In the long run, your lack of method cost the customer more (or they had to go without the update, extension, major fix) because it takes too much time to figure out the code, or it is just better to redo it all from scratch.
1. Customer changes as the project goes along and the importance gets kicked up the chain in customer's hierarchy, or, the VP loses interest and kicks the project down the chain wherein the project is suddenly confronted with reality.
2. Once a demo/prototype is running, the customer says, "That's great, but it has to do x as well."
Both problems are we called the Moving Target problem which can be solved by spending a lot of time up front specifying the scope and specifics. Too often this portion is done badly by salespeople trying to close the deal and move on to their next victim. Deadlines are established with too vague an understanding of what the target is, and project managers are left with an impossible task which they solve by compromising in the aforementioned areas--especially in hiring sub-par coders just to meet a deadline.
True dat. Incompetence is by far the biggest problem. All the other problems stem from that. The cycle is reinforced by all those things mentioned above, but especially the educational system which insists on releasing hordes of code eating locusts every year and on managers who keep on hiring them in spite of all the evidence that it is a bad idea.
No sure way to avoid this, but here's some ideas that have helped me (could be just my style and not for everyone).
1) Give applicant code samples of some complexity and ask them what it does. A decent coder will be able to tell you. A better than decent coder will be interested in making improvements or ask questions of why it was done this way and not that way.
2) If you can, hire early and get the coders working on prototypes even before project is fully defined.
3) It is difficult to let a middling coder go in the middle of a project, but do it anyway. It will save in the long run.
4) Try to keep on good terms with your A & A+ coders and rehire them for future projects.
5) Keep stats on how much your top coders are saving the customer, rather, how much poor coders cost the customer and delay the project. Use that information to insist on top pay for top people. It is better to have fewer well treated highly competent coders than many who will introduce more problems into the process.
6) Pair up experienced A & A+ coders with less experienced, but teachable, younger ones. Usually the best want to work with the best and enjoy sharing their knowledge. The inexperienced, but bright and teachable, will respond.
7) This will be controversial: focus on self-taught, or work-experienced taught, and avoid university and, especially, tech school taught. It is smart for the best to take classes, but the formal "computer science" education tends to turn out really fucked up programmers, and it is hard to undo that conditioning.
Let's go back to local time. Have the day start at sunrise. Noon is when the Sun crosses the meridian. The day ends at sunset. What happens at night, stays at night.
Yes. With GPS, your house, your phone, your laptop, your refrigerator, could all sync to when the sun is directly overhead like the old days. Meet at noon for lunch? Simple: calculate when noon is at your meeting place, adjust for the time difference of your local noon, add in a further adjustment for travel time. I'm sure it will all work just fine.
When the railroads pushed for time zones so they could schedule their trains, it put a burden on all of us. Instead, let's embrace the chaos!
Nearly everybody is awake at sunset, but not so with sunrise.
In order to get your 30min of light at the end of the day, you have to get up earlier in the morning anyway. This makes no sense. The day doesn't get longer just because you moved the clocks back.
... it's about the children going to school in the dark. Won't you people think of the children!
Easily solved: shorter school days so they leave and get home when it's light. To make up the time, make 'em go to school in summer so they don't forget everything and we have to spend half a year teaching them the same thing all over again, which bores those who haven't forgotten, so they cut class and start fires in the library trash cans which makes all the fire alarms go off and everyone goes outside which gives us, er, them a chance to escape school and smoke weed and generally cause trouble throughout the community.
It's not great for science, but standard measurements are great for life.
I drink a 12oz bottle of Coke when I wake up every morning which is, hold on... 1.5c. Does that fall in the "just want to drink something" or "thirsty" category? Sometimes I buy my coke in 2 liter bottles which I then pour into my glass which holds about 10oz which is not enough, so I often pour myself another 4-8oz (probably with a median of around 7oz). When I'm traveling, I buy the 1 liter size bottles which is equivalent to how many 10oz glasses? How many 2 liter bottles would I need to buy if I wanted my 14-18oz dose every morning for a week?
There are 12mg of caffeine in 12oz of coke. How much in 10oz glass? How much in a 2 liter bottle?
There are 33mg of sugar in 12oz of coke. How much is in 10oz glass? How many teaspoons is that in 2 liter? Is it more or less than I put in my tea?
Makes me feel I'm doing grade school arithmetic again. I could look it all up easily enough, but I'm too lazy. Perhaps I need more caffeine and sugar to give me the energy.
Perhaps I should just stop drinking Coke, but where's the fun in that?
Conclusion: standard measurements are not always great for life, just familiar, though often confusing.
What other way is scientifically valid to justify science than some variation of material return? If scientists had to eat their own dog food and justify their work by the same methods and ideals they conduct research by, what would remain?
Humans like to hear cool sounds in interesting pleasing patterns which we call music. It has no "material value," yet we pay for it because it makes us feel and think things. Same goes for art in all its forms. We like fictional stories--sometimes really silly, unrealistic ones.
We are also curious. We like to know stuff. That is what science does.
Sometimes music, art, stories, and knowing stuff helps us in our daily lives, but if everything must have obvious "material value" before we go into the recording studio, take up the paint brush, start typing, or head into the lab, then our lives will be seriously degraded.
What other way is scientifically valid to justify science than some variation of material return?
Curiosity is a scientifically confirmed human trait. Knowledge, for it's own sake, is valuable to us. That is a scientifically valid justification for funding.
I think rather the problem is that there's too much public funding.... But why fund your own research (or get a rich patron) when governments have taken over the niche?
I would dispute that governments have taken over the niche. The technology we're using that makes this dialog possible is the result of a combination of government funding/sponsorship/regulation, private enterprise, and lots of people who pioneered and made their findings and technology free for the public. Walter Isaacson lays this out nicely in The Innovators. My point is that if all the money for scientific research is concentrated in and dominated by the for-profit-only-or-forget-it mentality, we miss two-thirds of the synergy that needs to happen for significant advancement. Applied science requires a basic science foundation--someone has got to be willing to fund and do the basic science first.
Even if the basic science never leads to application, it is still valuable for its own sake. It is just how we humans are.
Perhaps you should read the entire article before jumping to this conclusion. The traffic was peculiarly NOT random "from everywhere, including Russia, China, etc..." The traffic was almost exclusively between these two servers. Also, the amount traffic increased/decreased with campaign events. The traffic stopped when Alfa Bank became aware of the New York Times investigation. The server was renamed and traffic resumed directly from Alfa Bank. There's more, but I can't quote or refer to all the strange coincidences here. That's why you need to actually read it even though it is long and will take up a few minutes of your time.
Maybe more money isn't going to fix a problem that wasn't due to level of funding in the first place?
That was sorta my point. Of course, that doesn't mean more money wouldn't help.
I was responding to a false either-or often put forth when it comes to resources which contrasts the current-limited vs the unrealistic-unlimited. The argument ignores the limited-but-sufficient possibility and the limited-but-differently-applied possibility.
The "how much" component to funding is not the only thing to consider. It may be more important to consider why we invest in the first place. There are some benefits of the current science-as-profit-sector culture, but there is also mounting evidence that this culture might be hurting both science and humanity more than helps.
My somewhat educated intuition leans toward the theory that scientists try to justify funding in terms of material return. Perhaps we do ourselves, and humanity, a disservice in the long run.
The obvious rebuttal is that we don't have infinite resources to throw against the unknown and never have.
There is a lot of room between severely limited resources and unlimited resources. Sufficient resources is doable in many cases if we had the will to invest in the future as a society instead of leaving the funding of science to profiteers.
I'll also point out that scientific progress has always had near future application and it remains foolish to ignore that.
Where did you get that idea? I worked for a foundation that was funded in large part by donors who believed in basic science research. The foundation continues, but papers published 40 years ago are still cited by others that have moved from the basic to the applied. There has always been this aspect in science. It is not only desired, basic science is required.
I would like to see an historical survey, but it seems as if many major discoveries were made serendipitously by men and women with the freedom to follow their curiosity in pursuit of knowledge.
Instead of investing in projects, perhaps it would be better to invest in people--all the more so as resources become more limited (which is a whole 'nother subject).
was impressed by how much he was able to demonstrate through nothing but rigorous qualitative experimentation.
My Aunt Erma can telepathically communicate with her cat. Through rigorous qualitative experimentation, I have determined she can call her cat to her just using her mental powers. At least, it seems that way, perhaps more than 50% of the time. Maybe it just happens occasionally. No need to run the numbers, though. Without all those bothersome "statistics," I can tell you that Aunt Erma's cat telepathy is a sure thing because when the cat come and curls up on her lap, Aunt Erma says, "You heard me calling you, didn't you, you wonderful little fur ball."
Good observation and imagination are critical to the scientific process, but they are just the beginning.
Clobbering reality with statistics is what you do when you don't have a theory to work with.
It's kind of un-scientific, but it puts all that equipment to 'good use.'
Right. Statistical analysis has been useless in physics, why should we expect any better when applied to biology?
Of course, some people actually think science is about determining probability in order to predict the future. Those in the know understand science is about making up cool facts that others can believe without evidence, like religion. We don't need even one math, so the idea of maths is just silly.
(Sometimes I wish Slashdot had a desightful rating.)
But I fear IoT manufacturers are going to make all the same, old mistakes that PCs went though over the past decade or so, instead of gleaming the hard-won knowledge of best security practices.
Enough PC users demanded greater security because they saw a negative impact on performance. If DVR performance is not degraded, then not many will notice or care enough to spend a few extra dollars for the security.
Verizon is continually attempting to sell me more bandwidth and higher performing equipment (router, DVR). They rarely even mention security in their pitch. They'll first sell me upgrades to accommodate the malware overhead. I expect that they'll start playing up the security angle when they think they can make more money from doing so. Now I wonder if it is not in their financial best interests to downplay the security threat and sell the performance upgrades.
I thought they named it Whitch because it uses fhloats on whater and dhuck thyping.
Little know fact: It was originally just WITCH which stood for Witchy Information TechnoCrap Hack. wHitch is the so called "Hell" fork which used a special 13 character keyboard composed of those symbols you see in occult movies.
Both names were given because the code sometimes did not execute as expected probably due to weird unexplained forces. Wait. That pretty much applies to most code regardless of language. Never mind.
They're not classified as malware because maintaining clear and firm definitions is a good thing. Malware is software that actively tries to harm the user (steal from them, hold their data for ransom, etc., take over their machine for arbitrary future badness, etc.). Showing ads or directing the user to a different -- but still effective -- search engine, etc., are bad, but they're a lesser form of badness, and it makes sense to me to give them a different name.
But, maybe I'm just pedantic. Well, no maybe about it. I also dislike it when people mix up trojans, viruses and worms. They're different things and have distinct names for a reason, damnit!
That is your definition of Malware. Many consider ad injectors and browser hijackers as damaging, so they also fall under the malware definition. System utilities than run in the background and interrupt, slow, or compromise my work day is damaging. Anti-virus software that pops up every 5 minutes and costs me several days and many reboots to remove is damaging. Something that does not work the way in which it was designed to work is damaged.
Generally speaking, if we buy a product expecting it perform to certain specifications, and then that performance is in way compromised, we consider it damaged and will exchange it for a working copy or our money back. When it comes to our computers and other devices, we just live with it.
I agree that we shouldn't confused trojans, viruses, and worms. That doesn't mean that we should let other "unwanted software" slide. It is unwanted for the reason that it compromises the behavior/performance of our tools. Hence it is malware (i.e. bad software).
A weed is any plant that I don't want. Malware is any software that gets in my way.
Slashdot Mirror
William Penn believed that the democratic framework he was proposing for Pennsylvania, instituted 105 years before the US Constitution, would only work if there was a literate and informed society. This is one of the reasons that the early Quakers emphasized education in the new colony. A century later Ben Franklin and others in the city of Philadelphia had the same concerns which led them to widen the educational opportunities beyond the just the wealthy. Other framers of the constitution were also concerned about what would happen if an uneducated, uninformed public dominated the electoral process (which didn't prevent many of them from using lies and slander to their own ends).
Now we have a society that has an apparent 99% literacy rate (I got that number from a website, so it must be accurate). Sadly, for the most part, Americans are not taught how to think about what they have read. We have a president-elect that spends his time on Twitter denouncing those who disagree with him (or with his VP-elect). There is doubt about such things as Climate Change in spite of overwhelming evidence. We may have a 99% literacy rate, but we have only an 11% critical thinking rate (I made that number up, but, if you doubt the figure, I'm sure I could come up with some fake data to support it). In many ways, Penn's worst fears have been realized.
We will never be about to stop fake news, misinformation, lies, slander, and propaganda. Beside the fact that attempts to silence free speech (even silly or dangerous free speech) is a perilous precedence, attacking the supply side of the problem will likely have negligible effect.
Focusing on the demand side by teaching our children how to think about what they read will not be easy, especially as we have to deal with so much literacy disparity in our country as it is, but it is the only effective solution. If we are unwilling or unable to do this, then it is best be prepared for the worst.
Whether or not Hillary lost because of hacked emails or whether it was Russia, some other "nation-state" or just some kid somewhere, at least there was some exposure of behind the scenes dealing. To think that such dealing was unusual, or unique to Hillary or Clintons is a bit naive. That doesn't make what is probably SOP in politics acceptable.
What really bothers me is that no one has hacked documents from Trumps financial empire. There are lots of evidence of conflicts in interest in areas of workers' safety, minimum wage, unions, immigration, corporate tax law, non-profit reporting and transparency laws, nepotism laws, banking and financial regulation, separation of church and state, etc. All of that doesn't even begin to describe Trump's international business interests which conflict with the US Diplomatic interests.
Trump's track record suggests that he's never done anything that didn't benefit himself or his children. Regardless of his promises or politics, this is a concern, because in the end we have to ask ourselves if his interests are really our interests, even if we agree with what he says.
If hacking the DNC, & etc to expose corruption there was beneficial, then, especially now, it is important for hackers to get to work and find Trumps tax returns, contracts, his non-profit foundation dealings, etc. The trickle of evidence that responsible media have been able to obtain suggests massive ongoing conflicts of interests and possible illegal activities. Perhaps Russia, some "nation-state", or just some kid somewhere can help us get at the truth here.
For a spec to be that good it's got to be written to the same precision as a computer program.
So just write the fucking code.
The spec is as much for the customer as for the programmer. It defines goals, not how to reach those goals. But, yes, it can take as much work as actually writing the code. Your solution is actually not a bad one if the problem is small, but it doesn't scale well to larger projections.
Agreed, up to a point.
The problem comes in when the customer wants to do an update, extension, or major fix. Someone else comes in and your code is a mess because you were focused on a happy customer and delivering something that worked well enough at the time for less cost.
In the long run, your lack of method cost the customer more (or they had to go without the update, extension, major fix) because it takes too much time to figure out the code, or it is just better to redo it all from scratch.
This is often compounded by:
1. Customer changes as the project goes along and the importance gets kicked up the chain in customer's hierarchy, or, the VP loses interest and kicks the project down the chain wherein the project is suddenly confronted with reality.
2. Once a demo/prototype is running, the customer says, "That's great, but it has to do x as well."
Both problems are we called the Moving Target problem which can be solved by spending a lot of time up front specifying the scope and specifics. Too often this portion is done badly by salespeople trying to close the deal and move on to their next victim. Deadlines are established with too vague an understanding of what the target is, and project managers are left with an impossible task which they solve by compromising in the aforementioned areas--especially in hiring sub-par coders just to meet a deadline.
True dat. Incompetence is by far the biggest problem. All the other problems stem from that. The cycle is reinforced by all those things mentioned above, but especially the educational system which insists on releasing hordes of code eating locusts every year and on managers who keep on hiring them in spite of all the evidence that it is a bad idea.
No sure way to avoid this, but here's some ideas that have helped me (could be just my style and not for everyone).
1) Give applicant code samples of some complexity and ask them what it does. A decent coder will be able to tell you. A better than decent coder will be interested in making improvements or ask questions of why it was done this way and not that way.
2) If you can, hire early and get the coders working on prototypes even before project is fully defined.
3) It is difficult to let a middling coder go in the middle of a project, but do it anyway. It will save in the long run.
4) Try to keep on good terms with your A & A+ coders and rehire them for future projects.
5) Keep stats on how much your top coders are saving the customer, rather, how much poor coders cost the customer and delay the project. Use that information to insist on top pay for top people. It is better to have fewer well treated highly competent coders than many who will introduce more problems into the process.
6) Pair up experienced A & A+ coders with less experienced, but teachable, younger ones. Usually the best want to work with the best and enjoy sharing their knowledge. The inexperienced, but bright and teachable, will respond.
7) This will be controversial: focus on self-taught, or work-experienced taught, and avoid university and, especially, tech school taught. It is smart for the best to take classes, but the formal "computer science" education tends to turn out really fucked up programmers, and it is hard to undo that conditioning.
Let's go back to local time. Have the day start at sunrise. Noon is when the Sun crosses the meridian. The day ends at sunset. What happens at night, stays at night.
Yes. With GPS, your house, your phone, your laptop, your refrigerator, could all sync to when the sun is directly overhead like the old days. Meet at noon for lunch? Simple: calculate when noon is at your meeting place, adjust for the time difference of your local noon, add in a further adjustment for travel time. I'm sure it will all work just fine.
When the railroads pushed for time zones so they could schedule their trains, it put a burden on all of us. Instead, let's embrace the chaos!
Nearly everybody is awake at sunset, but not so with sunrise.
In order to get your 30min of light at the end of the day, you have to get up earlier in the morning anyway. This makes no sense. The day doesn't get longer just because you moved the clocks back.
... it's about the children going to school in the dark. Won't you people think of the children!
Easily solved: shorter school days so they leave and get home when it's light. To make up the time, make 'em go to school in summer so they don't forget everything and we have to spend half a year teaching them the same thing all over again, which bores those who haven't forgotten, so they cut class and start fires in the library trash cans which makes all the fire alarms go off and everyone goes outside which gives us, er, them a chance to escape school and smoke weed and generally cause trouble throughout the community.
(Mom, I never did any of that stuff. I swear.)
It's not great for science, but standard measurements are great for life.
I drink a 12oz bottle of Coke when I wake up every morning which is, hold on... 1.5c. Does that fall in the "just want to drink something" or "thirsty" category? Sometimes I buy my coke in 2 liter bottles which I then pour into my glass which holds about 10oz which is not enough, so I often pour myself another 4-8oz (probably with a median of around 7oz). When I'm traveling, I buy the 1 liter size bottles which is equivalent to how many 10oz glasses? How many 2 liter bottles would I need to buy if I wanted my 14-18oz dose every morning for a week?
There are 12mg of caffeine in 12oz of coke. How much in 10oz glass? How much in a 2 liter bottle?
There are 33mg of sugar in 12oz of coke. How much is in 10oz glass? How many teaspoons is that in 2 liter? Is it more or less than I put in my tea?
Makes me feel I'm doing grade school arithmetic again. I could look it all up easily enough, but I'm too lazy. Perhaps I need more caffeine and sugar to give me the energy.
Perhaps I should just stop drinking Coke, but where's the fun in that?
Conclusion: standard measurements are not always great for life, just familiar, though often confusing.
What other way is scientifically valid to justify science than some variation of material return? If scientists had to eat their own dog food and justify their work by the same methods and ideals they conduct research by, what would remain?
Humans like to hear cool sounds in interesting pleasing patterns which we call music. It has no "material value," yet we pay for it because it makes us feel and think things. Same goes for art in all its forms. We like fictional stories--sometimes really silly, unrealistic ones.
We are also curious. We like to know stuff. That is what science does.
Sometimes music, art, stories, and knowing stuff helps us in our daily lives, but if everything must have obvious "material value" before we go into the recording studio, take up the paint brush, start typing, or head into the lab, then our lives will be seriously degraded.
What other way is scientifically valid to justify science than some variation of material return?
Curiosity is a scientifically confirmed human trait. Knowledge, for it's own sake, is valuable to us. That is a scientifically valid justification for funding.
I think rather the problem is that there's too much public funding.... But why fund your own research (or get a rich patron) when governments have taken over the niche?
I would dispute that governments have taken over the niche. The technology we're using that makes this dialog possible is the result of a combination of government funding/sponsorship/regulation, private enterprise, and lots of people who pioneered and made their findings and technology free for the public. Walter Isaacson lays this out nicely in The Innovators. My point is that if all the money for scientific research is concentrated in and dominated by the for-profit-only-or-forget-it mentality, we miss two-thirds of the synergy that needs to happen for significant advancement. Applied science requires a basic science foundation--someone has got to be willing to fund and do the basic science first.
Even if the basic science never leads to application, it is still valuable for its own sake. It is just how we humans are.
Perhaps you should read the entire article before jumping to this conclusion. The traffic was peculiarly NOT random "from everywhere, including Russia, China, etc..." The traffic was almost exclusively between these two servers. Also, the amount traffic increased/decreased with campaign events. The traffic stopped when Alfa Bank became aware of the New York Times investigation. The server was renamed and traffic resumed directly from Alfa Bank. There's more, but I can't quote or refer to all the strange coincidences here. That's why you need to actually read it even though it is long and will take up a few minutes of your time.
Maybe more money isn't going to fix a problem that wasn't due to level of funding in the first place?
That was sorta my point. Of course, that doesn't mean more money wouldn't help.
I was responding to a false either-or often put forth when it comes to resources which contrasts the current-limited vs the unrealistic-unlimited. The argument ignores the limited-but-sufficient possibility and the limited-but-differently-applied possibility.
The "how much" component to funding is not the only thing to consider. It may be more important to consider why we invest in the first place. There are some benefits of the current science-as-profit-sector culture, but there is also mounting evidence that this culture might be hurting both science and humanity more than helps.
My somewhat educated intuition leans toward the theory that scientists try to justify funding in terms of material return. Perhaps we do ourselves, and humanity, a disservice in the long run.
The obvious rebuttal is that we don't have infinite resources to throw against the unknown and never have.
There is a lot of room between severely limited resources and unlimited resources. Sufficient resources is doable in many cases if we had the will to invest in the future as a society instead of leaving the funding of science to profiteers.
I'll also point out that scientific progress has always had near future application and it remains foolish to ignore that.
Where did you get that idea? I worked for a foundation that was funded in large part by donors who believed in basic science research. The foundation continues, but papers published 40 years ago are still cited by others that have moved from the basic to the applied. There has always been this aspect in science. It is not only desired, basic science is required.
I would like to see an historical survey, but it seems as if many major discoveries were made serendipitously by men and women with the freedom to follow their curiosity in pursuit of knowledge.
Instead of investing in projects, perhaps it would be better to invest in people--all the more so as resources become more limited (which is a whole 'nother subject).
It is actually the Russians attempting to protect The Donald from himself.
In a sense, that is true unless there is an attack, for example, on DynDNS which target, well, dynect.net domains in which case you're screwed.
was impressed by how much he was able to demonstrate through nothing but rigorous qualitative experimentation.
My Aunt Erma can telepathically communicate with her cat. Through rigorous qualitative experimentation, I have determined she can call her cat to her just using her mental powers. At least, it seems that way, perhaps more than 50% of the time. Maybe it just happens occasionally. No need to run the numbers, though. Without all those bothersome "statistics," I can tell you that Aunt Erma's cat telepathy is a sure thing because when the cat come and curls up on her lap, Aunt Erma says, "You heard me calling you, didn't you, you wonderful little fur ball."
Good observation and imagination are critical to the scientific process, but they are just the beginning.
Clobbering reality with statistics is what you do when you don't have a theory to work with.
It's kind of un-scientific, but it puts all that equipment to 'good use.'
Right. Statistical analysis has been useless in physics, why should we expect any better when applied to biology?
Of course, some people actually think science is about determining probability in order to predict the future. Those in the know understand science is about making up cool facts that others can believe without evidence, like religion. We don't need even one math, so the idea of maths is just silly.
(Sometimes I wish Slashdot had a desightful rating.)
But I fear IoT manufacturers are going to make all the same, old mistakes that PCs went though over the past decade or so, instead of gleaming the hard-won knowledge of best security practices.
Enough PC users demanded greater security because they saw a negative impact on performance. If DVR performance is not degraded, then not many will notice or care enough to spend a few extra dollars for the security.
Verizon is continually attempting to sell me more bandwidth and higher performing equipment (router, DVR). They rarely even mention security in their pitch. They'll first sell me upgrades to accommodate the malware overhead. I expect that they'll start playing up the security angle when they think they can make more money from doing so. Now I wonder if it is not in their financial best interests to downplay the security threat and sell the performance upgrades.
Programming is not just an intellectual exercise. You have to actually make stuff.
Shit.
I thought they named it Whitch because it uses fhloats on whater and dhuck thyping.
Little know fact: It was originally just WITCH which stood for Witchy Information TechnoCrap Hack. wHitch is the so called "Hell" fork which used a special 13 character keyboard composed of those symbols you see in occult movies.
Both names were given because the code sometimes did not execute as expected probably due to weird unexplained forces. Wait. That pretty much applies to most code regardless of language. Never mind.
Resistance is futile, but who cares? Just entertain us.
I didn't quite catch that. Sorry.
They're not classified as malware because maintaining clear and firm definitions is a good thing. Malware is software that actively tries to harm the user (steal from them, hold their data for ransom, etc., take over their machine for arbitrary future badness, etc.). Showing ads or directing the user to a different -- but still effective -- search engine, etc., are bad, but they're a lesser form of badness, and it makes sense to me to give them a different name.
But, maybe I'm just pedantic. Well, no maybe about it. I also dislike it when people mix up trojans, viruses and worms. They're different things and have distinct names for a reason, damnit!
That is your definition of Malware. Many consider ad injectors and browser hijackers as damaging, so they also fall under the malware definition. System utilities than run in the background and interrupt, slow, or compromise my work day is damaging. Anti-virus software that pops up every 5 minutes and costs me several days and many reboots to remove is damaging. Something that does not work the way in which it was designed to work is damaged.
Generally speaking, if we buy a product expecting it perform to certain specifications, and then that performance is in way compromised, we consider it damaged and will exchange it for a working copy or our money back. When it comes to our computers and other devices, we just live with it.
I agree that we shouldn't confused trojans, viruses, and worms. That doesn't mean that we should let other "unwanted software" slide. It is unwanted for the reason that it compromises the behavior/performance of our tools. Hence it is malware (i.e. bad software).
A weed is any plant that I don't want. Malware is any software that gets in my way.