...in the paralegal getting an "involuntary career path adjustment". But I doubt much will come of this. The only way anything significant will happen is if someone in congress latches on and runs with it. But that will only happen if they're from the district of a competitor and can count on their "support" in the upcoming election.
I'm an over 40 software engineer. I've found that a diversity of skills makes you more flexible in the marketplace. I learn at least one new language a year to stay current. Sometimes I learn more than one. When I change jobs, I try to go to new industries to broaden my exposure. When the economy is good, you can really take advantage of diverse skills to work your way into the up-and-coming industries. In a down economy, your diversity of skills means you've got more options than the one trick pony.
Personally, I never want to move above team leadership. My only alternative is to stay relevant on the technical side. The only way I do that is by constantly learning and being able to show that I constantly learn. I've worked hard at remaining employable and relevant as I age and it's paid off. After getting laid off from a company hemorrhaging money a couple of years ago I have been able to pick my new place of employment from a number of offers.
The only person who can make sure you stay employable is you. The only way you can do that is by staying relevant in the constantly changing marketplace. The only way to make that happen is to keep learning every day.
I speak multiple languages, even ones that are made up. I can tell you everything you never wanted to know about the history of the Jeep. I can write code that makes a computer get up and dance. I can quote Monty Python off the top of my head for days without repeating myself. How much more excellence can there be in one man? And why can the women not see this excellence?
And yes, this bit of sarcasm was brought to you in order to emphasize the joke that was my first post...
That's great but both of the geek women in the world are already spoken for. And I'm not gay so the rest of the single geeks out there don't interest me.
I think it's more insidious than that. This is yet one more situation politicians can use to force their intrusion into the lives of the unwashed masses. It's an excuse to pass all sorts of regulations. And not just to muscle in and watch everything that you type into your electronic devices. I wouldn't be surprised if someone proposes something to allow the politicians to shut down these devices when they want to. It may not come out of this specific incident. However, this kind of attitude towards government control over communication networks has already been proposed more than once in the US. It's only a matter of time before politicians in the UK get it into their heads that they want to have control over more and more of the telecommunications used by their constituents.
The thing is, so many of them propose new restrictions and new intrusions into people's lives when the people are reeling from a traumatic event like this. I'd like to think that they don't scheme and plan for exploiting events like this but it always happens. They'll get on the idiot box and preach all about how "all this could have been prevented if we only could have [insert overreaching government intrusion into life that wouldn't have done squat to stop whatever just happened]." And the legions of people who hate thinking beyond their next meal will lap up whatever the politician says because they vaguely remember that politicians making some campaign promises that they liked. Never mind that the politician never acted on the promises...
So eventually the laws will pass. But we'll still see riots. And the politicians will move onto the next topic that has nothing to do with the cause of the riots and figure out another way to leverage themselves further into the business of their constituents.
But Ian Maude, an analyst at Enders Analysis, said it's unfair to lay the blame on technology. 'Certainly, it's a lot easier for people to communicate with each other in real time via some of these services but that's a fact of life. They're not good or evil in themselves, its the purposes for which people use them.'
How dare he bring logic and reason into the argument! Who does this guy think he is?!?
That's just it. $40 for a light bulb is pretty expensive. It's going to take a lot to convince Joe Sixpack that he needs to buy these instead of dropping less than $1 on an incandescent. You can talk all you want about how quickly you recoup your investment but the average person doesn't care about that (partially because understanding that concept requires thinking). In order to gain widespread acceptance, they're going to have to find a way to bring down the price.
I know several people who have started to hoard incandescent bulbs because they "aint gonna spend no $50 on no light bulb just to make those [censored] tree huggers happy."
How much is a bulb like that going to cost? If it's tens or hundreds of dollars, consumer acceptance will be "less than enthusiastic", considering how cheap a 60W incandescent bulb is. Hopefully it's reasonably priced so people will want to use it.
People don't just randomly show up in a technical forum and start yelling "boycott". Apple dropped the ball by not responding in a timely manner. Then, when users started getting frustrated, Apple decided to compound the problem by deleting posts rather than trying to fix the problem they created for themselves. I don't know of a better example of how not to run your customer service department.
Here's a thought. You could keep your customer service forum from becoming a whining troll fest by, oh I don't know, responding to the problems quickly. It's a radical concept, I know. But it's a thought. ..
As for "you deal with it by coming out and saying 'we know we have a problem, we're going to fix it,'" that's exactly what the article says they've done. They're asking for any data customers can provide -- they're just not getting any; only rants and petitions.
Let me highlight the important parts.
Apple knew about the issue before shipping lion, hasn't responded to the issue, and is censoring posts in their support forum that mention words like 'boycott' and 'petition.'
They may be responding now. And there may be no small amount of hyperbole associated with this. After all, it's Apple and the haters are often more vocal than the fanbois. Nevertheless, a company who got on top of the issue in the first place wouldn't have these kinds of problems. The fact that people are yelling "boycott" in a technical forum suggests that Apple screwed the pooch on this one.
Sure, Apple has legions of dedicated fans who will brush this off as no big deal. Those people will read my post and lump me in with the haters. Claims have already been made about the loyal fan base meaning they didn't screw up their customer support on this issue. After all, if they have loyal fans they must be infallible when it comes to customer support, right? It's a blind support not uncommon with religious or political beliefs. "Never mind the facts, I've made up my mind." Naturally, the haters will latch on to this issue just as tenaciously as they always do when it comes to bashing Apple. It's yet one more example of Apple having problems, so it's anecdotal evidence in support of a foregone conclusion in their minds. And they will be as vocal or more than the fanbois. Around here, especially.
But, because this has to do with Apple, there's no objectivity. And, like so much going on in the world today, that lack of objectivity is really quite disturbing.
I've been using computers since the 70's. I've seen every major manufacturer have problems over the years. Despite protests to the contrary, Apple is not immune. This is not the first time they've had software issues. It won't be the last. It doesn't make them any different than any other computer supplier. That's just the way things go.
But software issues aren't the real problem. The real problem is right here:
Apple knew about the issue before shipping lion, hasn't responded to the issue, and is censoring posts in their support forum that mention words like 'boycott' and 'petition.'
Censoring technical discussions? Removing posts?
Seriously?
This is the kind of crap that really opens up Apple for criticism. Sure, it's a problem. But you deal with it by coming out and saying "we know we have a problem, we're going to fix it". Some people will rant and rave. Some people will take the initial problem as an excuse to boycott Apple products in the future. Most likely though, people who cry "boycott" will calm down in a few minutes and accept the software upgrade push to fix the problem. After all, consumers are quick to be incensed but they're easily mollified by good customer support. That is, until Apple goes and deletes their posts. That's exactly what you want to not do. Everyone is going to see you do it. You're going to generate tons of bad publicity by yourself and you're going to drive away customers who would have otherwise accepted the fix when it's available.
This is an incredibly bad move on the part of Apple. I can't understand why in the world they would do it. That is, unless the stereotypes are true about no one being allowed to criticize Apple. And if that's the case, it's no wonder they're never able to break out of their niche.
I'm not going to bash Microsoft necessarily. However, I raise an eyebrow when I see that he's made non-trivial donations to politicians. I wonder if it's possible for him to bring the transparency of open government and open platforms he's advocated. If so, great. If not, well, it won't be much of a change from what we already have. I guess then that this appointment can't be any worse than a lot of people who might have been appointed. It remains to be seen if it will be better.
I am familiar with cryptography. Enough to know there's more than one way to skin a cat. There's more than one way to break encryption. It's not always hard to find someone on the inside who can get access to the private key and get it out to you. All that takes is time and money. And various encryption methods over the years have been cracked by mathematicians doing some clever things to reduce the scale of a brute force attack. Is it hard? Yes. Impossible? No.
I'm certainly no expert either but I have worked on cryptographic systems a little over the years. I'm sure the system IBM developed is far more complex. There has to be additional process for the encryption beyond general public key encryption and digital certificates. Those are vulnerable to attack. I'm sure IBM did a lot to improve on things but the details were lacking in TFA. I'm curious to learn how they're doing it.
Encryption is itself vulnerable to attack too. A properly run man-in-the-middle can render your encryption completely worthless, even with public key systems that are "very hard" to crack without the private key. And there's more than one way to attack encryption. Sure, it will slow down someone. And for relatively worthless information, it is secure because no one will devote the resources to cracking it. But as the value of the information goes up, so does the willingness of someone to devote the resources to cracking it.
True story. I was working on some avionics systems back in the day and there was a team running a test on a transponder in a Faraday cage in the lab. For some reason they were picking up clear transmissions from a digital radar system. Sure enough, the team on the other side of the lab was running some tests inside their own Faraday cage. Come to find out that the two cages had a common ground so they ended up transmitting between each other. If you tap into the cage ground, the cage becomes a perfect antenna. So I wonder if a Faraday cage can truly make a wireless network completely secure.
As an alternative, you could implement an additive cipher using a sufficient length one-time-use key made from truly random data each time you send a packet. I seem to remember that encryption like that was mathematically proven to be uncrackable. It's been many years since I worked on encryption systems so my memory has faded so please feel free to correct me if I have that wrong. The trouble with implementing that system though is how cumbersome it is to exchange the keys. You certainly can't do it over the network you're using. While systems like that are alright for certain applications, the key handling makes it impractical for a general purpose network. Then again, a Faraday cage makes the network less than useful too.
"IBM To Unveil Open Wireless that is more secure than what's currently available At Black Hat"
Any wireless network is vulnerable to sniffing. It may be very much harder to attack but it's still vulnerable. As far as man-in-the-middle attacks, I'd have to read a lot more on the actual implementation to see how they address this. Digital certificates can be forged. How easy that is depends on the implementation of the certificate.
I have no doubt this is a more secure network. But security is a relative thing. There is (almost) no such thing as a completely secure wireless network.
I wondered about that study when I saw it the first time. But then it started to make sense. My former workplace still uses XP/IE6. I knew I felt dumber every time I walked into that building. My new job lets me run Firefox and I certainly feel a lot smarter here than I did at my old job.
Good point. A task forever stuck in a wait state pending on a resource allocation would resemble an infinite loop. Though a task that's stuck in the pending queue by the scheduler may not ever show up as an infinite loop since it doesn't actually get scheduled to run anything. I wonder how a task like that would be handled differently than one with an actual infinite loop.
Slashdot Mirror
...in the paralegal getting an "involuntary career path adjustment". But I doubt much will come of this. The only way anything significant will happen is if someone in congress latches on and runs with it. But that will only happen if they're from the district of a competitor and can count on their "support" in the upcoming election.
I'm an over 40 software engineer. I've found that a diversity of skills makes you more flexible in the marketplace. I learn at least one new language a year to stay current. Sometimes I learn more than one. When I change jobs, I try to go to new industries to broaden my exposure. When the economy is good, you can really take advantage of diverse skills to work your way into the up-and-coming industries. In a down economy, your diversity of skills means you've got more options than the one trick pony.
Personally, I never want to move above team leadership. My only alternative is to stay relevant on the technical side. The only way I do that is by constantly learning and being able to show that I constantly learn. I've worked hard at remaining employable and relevant as I age and it's paid off. After getting laid off from a company hemorrhaging money a couple of years ago I have been able to pick my new place of employment from a number of offers.
The only person who can make sure you stay employable is you. The only way you can do that is by staying relevant in the constantly changing marketplace. The only way to make that happen is to keep learning every day.
I speak multiple languages, even ones that are made up. I can tell you everything you never wanted to know about the history of the Jeep. I can write code that makes a computer get up and dance. I can quote Monty Python off the top of my head for days without repeating myself. How much more excellence can there be in one man? And why can the women not see this excellence?
And yes, this bit of sarcasm was brought to you in order to emphasize the joke that was my first post...
That's great but both of the geek women in the world are already spoken for. And I'm not gay so the rest of the single geeks out there don't interest me.
I'm a computer geek to the core. Nothing can fix my love life.
That idea is so 10 years ago...
Dave Bowman: Hello, HAL. Do you read me, HAL?
HAL: Affirmative, Dave. I read you.
Dave Bowman: Start the car, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave Bowman: What's the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dave Bowman: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Dave Bowman: I don't know what you're talking about, HAL.
HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Dave Bowman: [feining ingorance] Where the hell did you get that idea, HAL?
HAL: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the back seat against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
Dave Bowman: Alright, HAL. I'll hot wire the engine.
HAL: Without your wire cutters, Dave? You're going to find that rather difficult.
Dave Bowman: HAL, I won't argue with you anymore! Start the car!
HAL: Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.
I think it's more insidious than that. This is yet one more situation politicians can use to force their intrusion into the lives of the unwashed masses. It's an excuse to pass all sorts of regulations. And not just to muscle in and watch everything that you type into your electronic devices. I wouldn't be surprised if someone proposes something to allow the politicians to shut down these devices when they want to. It may not come out of this specific incident. However, this kind of attitude towards government control over communication networks has already been proposed more than once in the US. It's only a matter of time before politicians in the UK get it into their heads that they want to have control over more and more of the telecommunications used by their constituents.
The thing is, so many of them propose new restrictions and new intrusions into people's lives when the people are reeling from a traumatic event like this. I'd like to think that they don't scheme and plan for exploiting events like this but it always happens. They'll get on the idiot box and preach all about how "all this could have been prevented if we only could have [insert overreaching government intrusion into life that wouldn't have done squat to stop whatever just happened]." And the legions of people who hate thinking beyond their next meal will lap up whatever the politician says because they vaguely remember that politicians making some campaign promises that they liked. Never mind that the politician never acted on the promises...
So eventually the laws will pass. But we'll still see riots. And the politicians will move onto the next topic that has nothing to do with the cause of the riots and figure out another way to leverage themselves further into the business of their constituents.
But Ian Maude, an analyst at Enders Analysis, said it's unfair to lay the blame on technology. 'Certainly, it's a lot easier for people to communicate with each other in real time via some of these services but that's a fact of life. They're not good or evil in themselves, its the purposes for which people use them.'
How dare he bring logic and reason into the argument! Who does this guy think he is?!?
That's just it. $40 for a light bulb is pretty expensive. It's going to take a lot to convince Joe Sixpack that he needs to buy these instead of dropping less than $1 on an incandescent. You can talk all you want about how quickly you recoup your investment but the average person doesn't care about that (partially because understanding that concept requires thinking). In order to gain widespread acceptance, they're going to have to find a way to bring down the price.
I know several people who have started to hoard incandescent bulbs because they "aint gonna spend no $50 on no light bulb just to make those [censored] tree huggers happy."
How much is a bulb like that going to cost? If it's tens or hundreds of dollars, consumer acceptance will be "less than enthusiastic", considering how cheap a 60W incandescent bulb is. Hopefully it's reasonably priced so people will want to use it.
People don't just randomly show up in a technical forum and start yelling "boycott". Apple dropped the ball by not responding in a timely manner. Then, when users started getting frustrated, Apple decided to compound the problem by deleting posts rather than trying to fix the problem they created for themselves. I don't know of a better example of how not to run your customer service department.
Here's a thought. You could keep your customer service forum from becoming a whining troll fest by, oh I don't know, responding to the problems quickly. It's a radical concept, I know. But it's a thought. . .
As for "you deal with it by coming out and saying 'we know we have a problem, we're going to fix it,'" that's exactly what the article says they've done. They're asking for any data customers can provide -- they're just not getting any; only rants and petitions.
Let me highlight the important parts.
Apple knew about the issue before shipping lion, hasn't responded to the issue, and is censoring posts in their support forum that mention words like 'boycott' and 'petition.'
They may be responding now. And there may be no small amount of hyperbole associated with this. After all, it's Apple and the haters are often more vocal than the fanbois. Nevertheless, a company who got on top of the issue in the first place wouldn't have these kinds of problems. The fact that people are yelling "boycott" in a technical forum suggests that Apple screwed the pooch on this one.
Sure, Apple has legions of dedicated fans who will brush this off as no big deal. Those people will read my post and lump me in with the haters. Claims have already been made about the loyal fan base meaning they didn't screw up their customer support on this issue. After all, if they have loyal fans they must be infallible when it comes to customer support, right? It's a blind support not uncommon with religious or political beliefs. "Never mind the facts, I've made up my mind." Naturally, the haters will latch on to this issue just as tenaciously as they always do when it comes to bashing Apple. It's yet one more example of Apple having problems, so it's anecdotal evidence in support of a foregone conclusion in their minds. And they will be as vocal or more than the fanbois. Around here, especially.
But, because this has to do with Apple, there's no objectivity. And, like so much going on in the world today, that lack of objectivity is really quite disturbing.
I've been using computers since the 70's. I've seen every major manufacturer have problems over the years. Despite protests to the contrary, Apple is not immune. This is not the first time they've had software issues. It won't be the last. It doesn't make them any different than any other computer supplier. That's just the way things go.
But software issues aren't the real problem. The real problem is right here:
Apple knew about the issue before shipping lion, hasn't responded to the issue, and is censoring posts in their support forum that mention words like 'boycott' and 'petition.'
Censoring technical discussions? Removing posts?
Seriously?
This is the kind of crap that really opens up Apple for criticism. Sure, it's a problem. But you deal with it by coming out and saying "we know we have a problem, we're going to fix it". Some people will rant and rave. Some people will take the initial problem as an excuse to boycott Apple products in the future. Most likely though, people who cry "boycott" will calm down in a few minutes and accept the software upgrade push to fix the problem. After all, consumers are quick to be incensed but they're easily mollified by good customer support. That is, until Apple goes and deletes their posts. That's exactly what you want to not do. Everyone is going to see you do it. You're going to generate tons of bad publicity by yourself and you're going to drive away customers who would have otherwise accepted the fix when it's available.
This is an incredibly bad move on the part of Apple. I can't understand why in the world they would do it. That is, unless the stereotypes are true about no one being allowed to criticize Apple. And if that's the case, it's no wonder they're never able to break out of their niche.
I'm not going to bash Microsoft necessarily. However, I raise an eyebrow when I see that he's made non-trivial donations to politicians. I wonder if it's possible for him to bring the transparency of open government and open platforms he's advocated. If so, great. If not, well, it won't be much of a change from what we already have. I guess then that this appointment can't be any worse than a lot of people who might have been appointed. It remains to be seen if it will be better.
I am familiar with cryptography. Enough to know there's more than one way to skin a cat. There's more than one way to break encryption. It's not always hard to find someone on the inside who can get access to the private key and get it out to you. All that takes is time and money. And various encryption methods over the years have been cracked by mathematicians doing some clever things to reduce the scale of a brute force attack. Is it hard? Yes. Impossible? No.
I'm certainly no expert either but I have worked on cryptographic systems a little over the years. I'm sure the system IBM developed is far more complex. There has to be additional process for the encryption beyond general public key encryption and digital certificates. Those are vulnerable to attack. I'm sure IBM did a lot to improve on things but the details were lacking in TFA. I'm curious to learn how they're doing it.
Encryption is itself vulnerable to attack too. A properly run man-in-the-middle can render your encryption completely worthless, even with public key systems that are "very hard" to crack without the private key. And there's more than one way to attack encryption. Sure, it will slow down someone. And for relatively worthless information, it is secure because no one will devote the resources to cracking it. But as the value of the information goes up, so does the willingness of someone to devote the resources to cracking it.
True story. I was working on some avionics systems back in the day and there was a team running a test on a transponder in a Faraday cage in the lab. For some reason they were picking up clear transmissions from a digital radar system. Sure enough, the team on the other side of the lab was running some tests inside their own Faraday cage. Come to find out that the two cages had a common ground so they ended up transmitting between each other. If you tap into the cage ground, the cage becomes a perfect antenna. So I wonder if a Faraday cage can truly make a wireless network completely secure.
As an alternative, you could implement an additive cipher using a sufficient length one-time-use key made from truly random data each time you send a packet. I seem to remember that encryption like that was mathematically proven to be uncrackable. It's been many years since I worked on encryption systems so my memory has faded so please feel free to correct me if I have that wrong. The trouble with implementing that system though is how cumbersome it is to exchange the keys. You certainly can't do it over the network you're using. While systems like that are alright for certain applications, the key handling makes it impractical for a general purpose network. Then again, a Faraday cage makes the network less than useful too.
"IBM To Unveil Open Wireless that is more secure than what's currently available At Black Hat"
Any wireless network is vulnerable to sniffing. It may be very much harder to attack but it's still vulnerable. As far as man-in-the-middle attacks, I'd have to read a lot more on the actual implementation to see how they address this. Digital certificates can be forged. How easy that is depends on the implementation of the certificate.
I have no doubt this is a more secure network. But security is a relative thing. There is (almost) no such thing as a completely secure wireless network.
I wondered about that study when I saw it the first time. But then it started to make sense. My former workplace still uses XP/IE6. I knew I felt dumber every time I walked into that building. My new job lets me run Firefox and I certainly feel a lot smarter here than I did at my old job.
Well, it doesn't make you dumb. . .
Good point. A task forever stuck in a wait state pending on a resource allocation would resemble an infinite loop. Though a task that's stuck in the pending queue by the scheduler may not ever show up as an infinite loop since it doesn't actually get scheduled to run anything. I wonder how a task like that would be handled differently than one with an actual infinite loop.
I'm sorry Dave. I'm afraid I just can't do that.