I do the same. Or, if I want to guarantee a quick end to the conversation I wax poetic about how it's applied mathematics where all those algebraic, geometric, and analytic techniques everyone learns in grade school are extended to apply to things like airline reservations and sub-atomic particle modeling. This quickly puts an end to that line of questioning. (Unless, of course, you're talking to a nerd then you can both wax poetic about applied mathematics all night long.)
I've got decades of F'ing adapters cluttering up the place. I could probably produce a handful of SCSI-Parallel adapters and old TokenRing terminators if you wanted them. I don't need another dozen USB adapters in desk drawers and bag pockets.
As a professional software engineer, I have never looked at the side of my MacBook Pro and wished it had fewer ways for me to connect something. Never have I complained about a few millimeters lost to an rarely used SD card slot or Firewire port. I know that eventually a customer is going to hand me an SD card or old external hard drive and I'll be thankful I can just plug in and have it work. "Professional" machines have to be able to do anything when needed. If Apple removes _THE_MOST_USED_ port for connecting miscellaneous peripherals then these machines no longer deserve the moniker "Professional". The only complaint I've ever had about USB ports is that I don't have enough! (And don't get me started on never-there-when-you-need-them dongles and adapters.)
Not in my experience. I maintain and continue to develop several apps that are largely indifferent to the JVM version. In most cases there is a minimum necessary version and very rarely does an update change behavior at all. Those times that updates have forced code changes, they've always been minimally intrusive. Furthermore, to safeguard against update screwiness, just package your own favorite version of the JRE with your app; something that can't be done with.NET's system-wide deployment.
As a real honest to god software developer for the past twenty years and having worked with just about every language and environment one might care to name, I can say that the prevailing sentiment amongst myself and my peers is that we're tired of all the platform/language headaches. From our perspective, there's little compelling reason to write in anything other than Java. As requirements; speed, efficiency, frugal resource usage, etc. pale in comparison to needing maintainable, reusable, run-anywhere code. Time and again we've had to rewrite engineering models, data services, etc just because their old code wouldn't fit in to whatever system was being put together. There are certainly specialty problems where absolute efficiency is of paramount importance, but I'd be weary of short-term gains at the cost of long-term maintainability.
(For the similar reasons, this is why we favor open-source tools. I've written millions of lines of code that can no longer be run because some crucial third-party component's license expired a decade ago.)
Wait a minute! You two expect us to believe you were über-1337 using linux on floppies, but both of you have six digit slashdot IDs. I call shenanigans.;)
Remember that nature doesn't seem to have infinite precision. Rather its precision is bounded by the Plank scales. Pi, for exemple, need only be computed to a precision adequate to describe circular circumfrence down to the Plank length. Yes, that's fantastically small, but it is a finite limit.
True, but they broke the first rule right out of the gate: never let someone else pack your bags.
As I understand it, the teams were handed a group of fully loaded virtual machines and told to put them on their network and then secure and defend them. No admin in their right mind would ever do this if they're at all concerned with security.
The 'rootkit' mentioned in the article apparently was an executable present on the VMs at the start and not found until its network traffic was sniffed. Kudos to them for finding it, but on a network built for security it would have never been there in the first place.
As a rule, you always start clean and install only what's necessary to provide whatever services are needed. When a security compromise is found, you wipe the system clean and start over.
But, all of this discussion is a bit irrelevant since this was ultimately not an exercise in building secure networks, but rather an exercise in watching how defenders of an insecure network will respond to a series of attacks.
Less about language, more about scheduling
on
The Return of Ada
·
· Score: 1
Speaking from my own experience as a software "engineer" working on defense contracts for the last decade, I would say their success on this project is more likely due to proper scheduling/budgeting than whatever tools the developers used. More often than not, when estimating schedules and costs for software projects managers and developers both tend to focus on code implementation time and forget about thorough design, testing, and rework time. Add to that the nearly inevitable requirements changes that occur over the life of a project and you have a disaster waiting to happen.
In my time I've seen several projects succeed and several projects fail. Those that succeeded always began with a robust and flexible design that would allow for growth and changes down the line. Those that failed were often rushed to implementation with just enough design to get the job done, then struggled to keep up with customers' changing requirements. I've seen every major programming language, development environment, operating system, and tool du jour used on both sides of the succeed/fail fence and never once did it make a bit of difference to the success or failure of the project. Personally, I'd be much more interested in seeing this project's WBS than hearing about how Ada may or may not have helped.
(As a parenthetical side note, there is definitely a dis-incentive to succeed in that those contracts that get dragged out year after year struggling to appease the customer continue to get funding while a successful project's funding ends when it's scheduled to end, leaving the development team looking for more work.)
Let me recommend that you see Episode III. In my opinion Ep.III *is* the prequel to IV, V, & VI. Toss I & II, forget they ever happened. Like you, I had little desire to see it after I & II, so we skipped it in the theatre, waited a long time after it came out on DVD. When we finally sat down and watched it I was so pleasantly surprised I wanted to start it over from the beginning.
Now, that's not to say that Lucas can direct. On the contrary, the acting was stiff and dry in places, but the story was enough to push this one along despite Lucas' bumbling.
Anyway, give it a chance, you may be surprised. ~~galen~~
I love what you're saying and I agree with you fully. However, you need to clean up your grammar. Simple errors like mixing up then/than or write/right shoot holes in your credibility.
Takes this as constructive criticism, and not grammar-nazi-ing. The content of your message is good, but don't blow it with poor delivery.
I'm right there with you. Musician & music lover with lots of loud music in headphones as a child means I've had a low-grade Tinnitus as long as I can remember so it doesn't really bother me.
In spite of the constant white noise generated by my ears, I am still a super sensitive hearer. TVs drive me batty. I can tell when one is on anywhere in the house as soon as I walk through the door.
Another thing I've noticed is that since (as a programmer) I'm surrounded most of the day by 5-7 PCs worth of fan noise my ears seem to echo that noise for hours after. Add that to the nearly constant sound of AC/Heating systems I find I'm perpetually bathed in a wash of white noise. It'd be interesting to get a sound meter and find out how loud it actually is.
Give 'em a break. They're only 1st Lvl. Full memorization isn't a requisite until at least 3rd Lvl. Of course, it varies by class: Wizards must not only have it memorized, but must also pronounce every line perfectly while fighters really just need to know the proper technique for attacking a castle with a sword and how to dodge flying trojan bunnies.
That's my dad's only complaint with his Mini. First they hide the power button in the back, then they basically make it flush with the case so it's difficult for fingers to feel out. Bit of a design flub there.
After one of those office birthday parties my officemate stashed a slice of the cake on a shelf. There it sat for over a year just getting harder & drier. No mold, of course. Before finally tossing it, we were convinced that you could probably re-hydrate it and not be able to tell the difference. Maybe steam it back to life.
What do they make that stuff out of? Sugar & low-grade plastic? Ick.
Agreed, considering that most clueless users I've encountered don't even know what a Service Pack is, why they'd want it, or where they'd get it. Then let's assume they learn all of the above and magically become well informed. You want me to do what? Download this huge service pack over my dial-up? You've got to be kidding.
Read that again. The 2.5kW refers to the power drawn by 168 of the processors working as a cluster. Presumably you could divide 2.5kW by 84 to get the power consumption of a pair of them.
Slashdot Mirror
I do the same. Or, if I want to guarantee a quick end to the conversation I wax poetic about how it's applied mathematics where all those algebraic, geometric, and analytic techniques everyone learns in grade school are extended to apply to things like airline reservations and sub-atomic particle modeling. This quickly puts an end to that line of questioning. (Unless, of course, you're talking to a nerd then you can both wax poetic about applied mathematics all night long.)
I've got decades of F'ing adapters cluttering up the place. I could probably produce a handful of SCSI-Parallel adapters and old TokenRing terminators if you wanted them. I don't need another dozen USB adapters in desk drawers and bag pockets.
As a professional software engineer, I have never looked at the side of my MacBook Pro and wished it had fewer ways for me to connect something. Never have I complained about a few millimeters lost to an rarely used SD card slot or Firewire port. I know that eventually a customer is going to hand me an SD card or old external hard drive and I'll be thankful I can just plug in and have it work. "Professional" machines have to be able to do anything when needed. If Apple removes _THE_MOST_USED_ port for connecting miscellaneous peripherals then these machines no longer deserve the moniker "Professional". The only complaint I've ever had about USB ports is that I don't have enough! (And don't get me started on never-there-when-you-need-them dongles and adapters.)
GRC.com is hardly "some random website." Steve Gibson is one of the most well respected computer security gurus around.
Not in my experience. I maintain and continue to develop several apps that are largely indifferent to the JVM version. In most cases there is a minimum necessary version and very rarely does an update change behavior at all. Those times that updates have forced code changes, they've always been minimally intrusive. Furthermore, to safeguard against update screwiness, just package your own favorite version of the JRE with your app; something that can't be done with .NET's system-wide deployment.
As a real honest to god software developer for the past twenty years and having worked with just about every language and environment one might care to name, I can say that the prevailing sentiment amongst myself and my peers is that we're tired of all the platform/language headaches. From our perspective, there's little compelling reason to write in anything other than Java. As requirements; speed, efficiency, frugal resource usage, etc. pale in comparison to needing maintainable, reusable, run-anywhere code. Time and again we've had to rewrite engineering models, data services, etc just because their old code wouldn't fit in to whatever system was being put together. There are certainly specialty problems where absolute efficiency is of paramount importance, but I'd be weary of short-term gains at the cost of long-term maintainability.
(For the similar reasons, this is why we favor open-source tools. I've written millions of lines of code that can no longer be run because some crucial third-party component's license expired a decade ago.)
Wait a minute! You two expect us to believe you were über-1337 using linux on floppies, but both of you have six digit slashdot IDs. I call shenanigans. ;)
Remember that nature doesn't seem to have infinite precision. Rather its precision is bounded by the Plank scales. Pi, for exemple, need only be computed to a precision adequate to describe circular circumfrence down to the Plank length.
Yes, that's fantastically small, but it is a finite limit.
True, but they broke the first rule right out of the gate: never let someone else pack your bags.
As I understand it, the teams were handed a group of fully loaded virtual machines and told to put them on their network and then secure and defend them. No admin in their right mind would ever do this if they're at all concerned with security.
The 'rootkit' mentioned in the article apparently was an executable present on the VMs at the start and not found until its network traffic was sniffed. Kudos to them for finding it, but on a network built for security it would have never been there in the first place.
As a rule, you always start clean and install only what's necessary to provide whatever services are needed. When a security compromise is found, you wipe the system clean and start over.
But, all of this discussion is a bit irrelevant since this was ultimately not an exercise in building secure networks, but rather an exercise in watching how defenders of an insecure network will respond to a series of attacks.
Damn him and his +2 Circlet of Level-Headedness!
Speaking from my own experience as a software "engineer" working on defense contracts for the last decade, I would say their success on this project is more likely due to proper scheduling/budgeting than whatever tools the developers used. More often than not, when estimating schedules and costs for software projects managers and developers both tend to focus on code implementation time and forget about thorough design, testing, and rework time. Add to that the nearly inevitable requirements changes that occur over the life of a project and you have a disaster waiting to happen.
In my time I've seen several projects succeed and several projects fail. Those that succeeded always began with a robust and flexible design that would allow for growth and changes down the line. Those that failed were often rushed to implementation with just enough design to get the job done, then struggled to keep up with customers' changing requirements. I've seen every major programming language, development environment, operating system, and tool du jour used on both sides of the succeed/fail fence and never once did it make a bit of difference to the success or failure of the project. Personally, I'd be much more interested in seeing this project's WBS than hearing about how Ada may or may not have helped.
(As a parenthetical side note, there is definitely a dis-incentive to succeed in that those contracts that get dragged out year after year struggling to appease the customer continue to get funding while a successful project's funding ends when it's scheduled to end, leaving the development team looking for more work.)
Let me recommend that you see Episode III. In my opinion Ep.III *is* the prequel to IV, V, & VI. Toss I & II, forget they ever happened. Like you, I had little desire to see it after I & II, so we skipped it in the theatre, waited a long time after it came out on DVD. When we finally sat down and watched it I was so pleasantly surprised I wanted to start it over from the beginning.
Now, that's not to say that Lucas can direct. On the contrary, the acting was stiff and dry in places, but the story was enough to push this one along despite Lucas' bumbling.
Anyway, give it a chance, you may be surprised.
~~galen~~
You keep your nuts under the couch? How odd.
Ha! Of course, I cared enough to leave a typo in my own post. What was that about 'judge not...'? Love it.
~~galen~~
I love what you're saying and I agree with you fully. However, you need to clean up your grammar. Simple errors like mixing up then/than or write/right shoot holes in your credibility.
Takes this as constructive criticism, and not grammar-nazi-ing. The content of your message is good, but don't blow it with poor delivery.
~~galen~~
I'm right there with you. Musician & music lover with lots of loud music in headphones as a child means I've had a low-grade Tinnitus as long as I can remember so it doesn't really bother me.
In spite of the constant white noise generated by my ears, I am still a super sensitive hearer. TVs drive me batty. I can tell when one is on anywhere in the house as soon as I walk through the door.
Another thing I've noticed is that since (as a programmer) I'm surrounded most of the day by 5-7 PCs worth of fan noise my ears seem to echo that noise for hours after. Add that to the nearly constant sound of AC/Heating systems I find I'm perpetually bathed in a wash of white noise. It'd be interesting to get a sound meter and find out how loud it actually is.
~~galen~~
You better slap up some links to smaller sized images. That server is already getting bogged down.
Wake me up when all of those Victoria Secret catalogues we get are printed on e-paper with full motion video.
Give 'em a break. They're only 1st Lvl. Full memorization isn't a requisite until at least 3rd Lvl. Of course, it varies by class: Wizards must not only have it memorized, but must also pronounce every line perfectly while fighters really just need to know the proper technique for attacking a castle with a sword and how to dodge flying trojan bunnies.
~~galen~~
And the software engineer refused to do anything until a second or third fire had started arguing that if the bug's not repeatable...
Ack! It's the Repeating Decimal of the Beast! The end is nigh!
That's my dad's only complaint with his Mini. First they hide the power button in the back, then they basically make it flush with the case so it's difficult for fingers to feel out. Bit of a design flub there.
~~galen~~
After one of those office birthday parties my officemate stashed a slice of the cake on a shelf. There it sat for over a year just getting harder & drier. No mold, of course. Before finally tossing it, we were convinced that you could probably re-hydrate it and not be able to tell the difference. Maybe steam it back to life.
What do they make that stuff out of? Sugar & low-grade plastic? Ick.
Agreed, considering that most clueless users I've encountered don't even know what a Service Pack is, why they'd want it, or where they'd get it. Then let's assume they learn all of the above and magically become well informed. You want me to do what? Download this huge service pack over my dial-up? You've got to be kidding.
Read that again. The 2.5kW refers to the power drawn by 168 of the processors working as a cluster. Presumably you could divide 2.5kW by 84 to get the power consumption of a pair of them.