Computer hacking is just one way to reclaim self-sufficiency.
It's been my experience that hackers are fiercely self-reliant. Not only do they resent being micro-managed at the office, they hate being "consumers". They hate depending on others, because they are, by nature, distrustful.
All hackers I know embody the "if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself" mentality. This is why they learn to code, for when the system fails them. This is why they learn to defend themselves, for when the system fails them. This is why they learn to hunt/make food and basic essencials of life, for when the system fails them.
Hackers are, in very many ways, survivalists, adapted for the "Information Age".
The fact that you posted as AC not withstanding, I do know something about it.
I've worked on software that manages and monitors nuclear plants. The risk of failure on that is at least an order of magnitude greater than the crash of a single jet. The critical systems were all treated as I described.
Try to realize that some people out there know what they're talking about better than you do. It makes you look less stupid.
Software crashes because it's complex, yes, but that's just part of it.
Jets are complex too. So is the Space Shuttle. Cruise ships. CARS are pretty complex.
While all these things do suffer catastrophic failure from time to time, it is far from the norm. Defective cars get recalled. Space shuttles ALL get grounded at the mere possibility of defect.
If Q/A as stringent as this was applied to software, Microsoft - and in fact most of the software industry - would be out of business. Can you imagine a Windows recall?
There is software out there that does not fail. Mind-bendingly complex software of the sort that "drives mere mortals mad" to boot. It is tested and retested, through all possible situations - not just the "likely 80%" of them. It is proved correct, and then verified again.
COTS software is crap because neither the market nor the regulatory forces (such as they are, but that's a separate discussion) do not require it to be. Nor could they.
A 747 Jumbo costs a whole lot, and while much of that cost is in the manufacture of the "big and complex thing" that it is, a significant chunk of that cost is also due to the design process, the testing, the modeling and simulation of it.
Software is easy to scale, everyone can have a copy of the product once one is built. Cake. But spread out the cost of an error free design - tested to exhaustion, passed through V&V and so on, and you have a completely different market landscape with which to contend.
Consumers, in the COTS context, don't mind "planned obsolescence" in their software. The current state of things proves this. People would rather have pretty features on a flaky system, than a solid system.
That's the plot - ooops, sorry - and you won't have to wait until Fall and spend $8.50 to see Revolutions.
My theory is a little different. Remember the Dungeons & Dragons movie, which was crap, unless you viewed it as the imaginary experience of a 13 year old boy and girl, playing AD&D.
Well, that's the Matrix trilogy, only with 16 year olds, playing Shadowrun.
To take the purists point of view, the global market for Computer Science PhD's is roughly as large as the global market for supercomputers.
I'm not begrudging our friend his Philosophy degree. I'm claiming that it isn't something of competitive value to an employer - especially in someone just entering the workforce.
After reading this thread, I am under the impression that our friend here made his choice of secondary degree after viewing Roadhouse.
Philosophy is an interesting and rewarding field, but thinking it will differentiate you from other job hunters is a grievious error. Nobody wants to pay good money to a person who has demonstrated the ability to sit around, read, think, and write documents expressing beliefs and opinions.
Employers want people who demonstrate an ability to get things done, and that takes applied skills of some sort. Physics, math, hell even graphic design. Philosophy, in the work place (in my experience) is like knowledge of BASIC - you just can't expect to be taken seriously after you admit to actually spending time and money on formally learning it.
Most people I know have an interest in philosophy, sure, and many have read more on the subject than most Phil curricula require - but their degrees are in things that are obviously useful. Not that Philosophy is useless, but the drones in HR don't see its value, and middle managers don't like dealing with people whose resumes make them seem all sorts of "edumacated".
Enterprise jumped the shark with the first instance of time travel. I mean, come on, there's not tribble one in sight, and they're already helping to preserve the "temporal prime directive"?
Methinks Berman is actually some State University student's attempt at passing the Turing test. Trek, as it stands, could be written by a few hundred lines of Perl.
As a franchise, Trek jumped the shark in the first season of Voyager. "Get that cheese to sick-bay!" was prophecy. Even back then the writers knew the show's plot was in need of intensive care.
Having lived in Eastern Europe around the time the USSR began to implode, I'll tell you in no uncertain terms, if we'd had guns, it would have fallen much, much sooner than it did.
The ability to organize is one thing, the means to do something once organized, something else entirely.
Yes, peaceful things can be done by the organized, but teeth and claws help. Without these, it takes generations.
Look at Iraq.
30 years of Hussein, ended in three weeks of armed conflict.
Americans have never, not since the Civil War, had to actually fight for their very survival. Sure, peaceful protest looks perfectly viable from an over-stuffed arm-chair. But, when peaceful resistance means that maybe your children, or maybe your children's children, will achieve what you're trying to bring about, you'd trade your life for the chance to see change within your own lifetime.
Remeber also that it took armed conflict, not peaceful resistance, to create the United States in the first place.
No sane person, and no large group of people, chooses to resort to violence. By the time one is at a point where one is willing to take up arms against an oppressor, reason, logic, civilization really, have all failed.
Having the right to the means of fighting the system built into the very definition of the system is a stroke of brilliance in the way America works.
Bah! Ivy schools wouldn't put restrictive quotas on GMers. Think about it...
To have a GM kid, you have to have money. In order to afford Ivy League schools, you have to have money. If you have money, and want the best for your kid, not only will you send them to Ivy, you'll tweak them in utero to give them every advantage possible. It's human nature to mess with nature.
The only possible Ivy backlash would be in eligibility for academic scholarship, and even this is questionable.
After all, consider sports scholarships. Great athletes bring more money into the school then their "scholarship" costs the school. If this were not true, it would not be done, because like it or not, in America, education is Big Business.
So, if Johnny GM can slam-dunk better than Bobby Mundane, Johhny gets the free ride, because Johnny brings in the cash.
Same with Suzie the GM Braniac. She'll get a free ride too, provided that she agrees to take on a research program along side Johnny's athletic commitment.
1. Lure GM kids in with free diplomas 2. Get GM kids to commit to Ivy interests 3. PROFIT!
As for the parents of the mundane kids, well, fuck them. They do not have the evolutionary advantage needed to be a burr for more than one generation as it is.
Slashdot Mirror
Computer hacking is just one way to reclaim self-sufficiency.
It's been my experience that hackers are fiercely self-reliant. Not only do they resent being micro-managed at the office, they hate being "consumers". They hate depending on others, because they are, by nature, distrustful.
All hackers I know embody the "if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself" mentality. This is why they learn to code, for when the system fails them. This is why they learn to defend themselves, for when the system fails them. This is why they learn to hunt/make food and basic essencials of life, for when the system fails them.
Hackers are, in very many ways, survivalists, adapted for the "Information Age".
... but it needs to be said.
Slashdot needs a "-1: Pompous Arse" category.
The fact that you posted as AC not withstanding, I do know something about it.
I've worked on software that manages and monitors nuclear plants. The risk of failure on that is at least an order of magnitude greater than the crash of a single jet. The critical systems were all treated as I described.
Try to realize that some people out there know what they're talking about better than you do.
It makes you look less stupid.
Software crashes because it's complex, yes, but that's just part of it.
Jets are complex too. So is the Space Shuttle. Cruise ships. CARS are pretty complex.
While all these things do suffer catastrophic failure from time to time, it is far from the norm. Defective cars get recalled. Space shuttles ALL get grounded at the mere possibility of defect.
If Q/A as stringent as this was applied to software, Microsoft - and in fact most of the software industry - would be out of business. Can you imagine a Windows recall?
There is software out there that does not fail. Mind-bendingly complex software of the sort that "drives mere mortals mad" to boot. It is tested and retested, through all possible situations - not just the "likely 80%" of them. It is proved correct, and then verified again.
COTS software is crap because neither the market nor the regulatory forces (such as they are, but that's a separate discussion) do not require it to be. Nor could they.
A 747 Jumbo costs a whole lot, and while much of that cost is in the manufacture of the "big and complex thing" that it is, a significant chunk of that cost is also due to the design process, the testing, the modeling and simulation of it.
Software is easy to scale, everyone can have a copy of the product once one is built. Cake. But spread out the cost of an error free design - tested to exhaustion, passed through V&V and so on, and you have a completely different market landscape with which to contend.
Consumers, in the COTS context, don't mind "planned obsolescence" in their software. The current state of things proves this. People would rather have pretty features on a flaky system, than a solid system.
I have an uncle who stroked out. He's a vegetable!
Damn! You use a 50% margin of error as an argument against "couple quadzillion"??
If you didn't have a "5" already, I'd rate you "+1: Funny"!
That's the plot - ooops, sorry - and you won't have to wait until Fall and spend $8.50 to see Revolutions.
My theory is a little different. Remember the Dungeons & Dragons movie, which was crap, unless you viewed it as the imaginary experience of a 13 year old boy and girl, playing AD&D.
Well, that's the Matrix trilogy, only with 16 year olds, playing Shadowrun.
Damned spoilers!
This spoils nothing but the first film.
The statute of limitation on spoliers runs out once the film shows up at Blockbuster.
Seriously, to think that that barely-pubescent Avril wanna-be is a babe?? Keerist man! Just go back to your Perl code and pr0n, you freak!
Obviously, the error is division related.
Then there is learning for the sake of learning, and R&D efforts, and ego, and all the other reasons - many of which pay better than teaching.
And never mind the fact that you actually only truly need a Master's to be a Professor. Tenure, granted, no go sans the PhD, but still.
To take the purists point of view, the global market for Computer Science PhD's is roughly as large as the global market for supercomputers.
I'm not begrudging our friend his Philosophy degree. I'm claiming that it isn't something of competitive value to an employer - especially in someone just entering the workforce.
After reading this thread, I am under the impression that our friend here made his choice of secondary degree after viewing Roadhouse.
Philosophy is an interesting and rewarding field, but thinking it will differentiate you from other job hunters is a grievious error. Nobody wants to pay good money to a person who has demonstrated the ability to sit around, read, think, and write documents expressing beliefs and opinions.
Employers want people who demonstrate an ability to get things done, and that takes applied skills of some sort. Physics, math, hell even graphic design. Philosophy, in the work place (in my experience) is like knowledge of BASIC - you just can't expect to be taken seriously after you admit to actually spending time and money on formally learning it.
Most people I know have an interest in philosophy, sure, and many have read more on the subject than most Phil curricula require - but their degrees are in things that are obviously useful. Not that Philosophy is useless, but the drones in HR don't see its value, and middle managers don't like dealing with people whose resumes make them seem all sorts of "edumacated".
Philosophy credentials are a liability, IMO.
And the argument still remains unbased. Where is the counter-example to the original hypothesis that you found so laughable?
Yes, ad hominem really makes your point.
Enterprise jumped the shark with the first instance of time travel. I mean, come on, there's not tribble one in sight, and they're already helping to preserve the "temporal prime directive"?
Methinks Berman is actually some State University student's attempt at passing the Turing test. Trek, as it stands, could be written by a few hundred lines of Perl.
As a franchise, Trek jumped the shark in the first season of Voyager. "Get that cheese to sick-bay!" was prophecy. Even back then the writers knew the show's plot was in need of intensive care.
Is there a counter-example you would like to share with the rest of the class?
Google: "Babylon 5 is better than Star Trek" 22 hits.
Google: "Star Trek is better than Babylon 5" 6 hits.
The Oracle has spoken!
Step up and get your shackles then?
;)
Oh wait, we have credit cards. We don't need chains.
Having lived in Eastern Europe around the time the USSR began to implode, I'll tell you in no uncertain terms, if we'd had guns, it would have fallen much, much sooner than it did.
The ability to organize is one thing, the means to do something once organized, something else entirely.
Yes, peaceful things can be done by the organized, but teeth and claws help. Without these, it takes generations.
Look at Iraq.
30 years of Hussein, ended in three weeks of armed conflict.
Americans have never, not since the Civil War, had to actually fight for their very survival. Sure, peaceful protest looks perfectly viable from an over-stuffed arm-chair. But, when peaceful resistance means that maybe your children, or maybe your children's children, will achieve what you're trying to bring about, you'd trade your life for the chance to see change within your own lifetime.
Remeber also that it took armed conflict, not peaceful resistance, to create the United States in the first place.
No sane person, and no large group of people, chooses to resort to violence. By the time one is at a point where one is willing to take up arms against an oppressor, reason, logic, civilization really, have all failed.
Having the right to the means of fighting the system built into the very definition of the system is a stroke of brilliance in the way America works.
Which is exactly why the Second Amendment is critical. It allows We The People to enforce the First Amendment, and the rest as well.
Bah! Ivy schools wouldn't put restrictive quotas on GMers. Think about it...
To have a GM kid, you have to have money. In order to afford Ivy League schools, you have to have money. If you have money, and want the best for your kid, not only will you send them to Ivy, you'll tweak them in utero to give them every advantage possible. It's human nature to mess with nature.
The only possible Ivy backlash would be in eligibility for academic scholarship, and even this is questionable.
After all, consider sports scholarships. Great athletes bring more money into the school then their "scholarship" costs the school. If this were not true, it would not be done, because like it or not, in America, education is Big Business.
So, if Johnny GM can slam-dunk better than Bobby Mundane, Johhny gets the free ride, because Johnny brings in the cash.
Same with Suzie the GM Braniac. She'll get a free ride too, provided that she agrees to take on a research program along side Johnny's athletic commitment.
1. Lure GM kids in with free diplomas
2. Get GM kids to commit to Ivy interests
3. PROFIT!
As for the parents of the mundane kids, well, fuck them. They do not have the evolutionary advantage needed to be a burr for more than one generation as it is.
Sounds like a crappy way to spend your time.
We can take a page from the Walt Disney playbook, and just hope one gets invented in the future.
However, the government/corporate complex reserves the right to make sure you can only do so in an 8'x6' room, for the rest of your life.