But you make a key point as far as salaries - I have never been in the military but I have been in the tech industry for 20 years and techies generally don't care about "rank" and hate hierarchy and bureaucracy, two particular specialties of the military. It's amazing how the US government is fine with paying $300 million for a fighter jet or $1.5M for a single cruise missile but they think paying $60k a year to a Captain with 5 years of experience is adequate to recruit smart engineers out of college...
Have courses at West Point, the Air Force Academy, or whatever on compsci, programming, and make a course specifically on black hat hacking.
The military academies already have computer science (and most other engineering) degree programs. And I'd bet you anything they have courses in computer security of various forms.
Encourage CompSci majors to join ROTC, give out perks and automatically higher rank to CompSci majors
No need to - they go through ROTC and they will already join as a 2nd Lt. If they prove themselves, they will be promoted, that's how the whole thing works...
The enlisted aren't really "engineers" from an academic perspective, they are very specifically trained techs. The actual engineers (with a BS) would mostly be officers who went through ROTC or some such and so had to go through plenty of military and physical training in college already.
I agree that if you can't manage 30-ish push ups in 2 minutes you may want to consider another job - many (even technically minded) young people can already do that, and almost anyone in otherwise good health can get there with a couple months of fairly trivial exercising. Just seems like a pretty low bar to judge their commitment to wanting the job...
If you have no other health issues besides being that out of shape, you'd be surprised how easily you can get in at least basic enough shape to meet those requirements. I'm surprised how low the current Army requirements are, really, I could easily do them all and I haven't gone near a gym in 15 years.
Back when I was working out, my initial pull up (MUCH harder than push ups, of course) count was a big zero. After a month I could do 5, and after 2 months 10-15. The *Army Ranger* requirement is 6 (regular PFT doesn't require any, I think).
The *best* would have no problem spending 30 minutes a day (or even every other day) for a month or so to meet those minimal requirements. Especially if you actually *wanted* the job - if not, then who cares? All it takes is a very small amount of willpower and commitment, something the Army should be looking for.
If you are in your early 20's and otherwise pass the basic health requirements, but can't do a dozen push ups in 2 minutes or stand for an hour, you probably should *not* be in the Army.
If you don't have any other health issues besides being so out of shape you can't accomplish those, then yes, I think spending the month or so it would take to get in a bit better shape to pass it would be a good sign of someone who might actually take pride and responsibility in their work.
It's a sign that you can't do 13 push-ups. Maybe you like doing other things instead of working out.
An 18 year old doing 13 push ups in 3 minutes is not "working out". 13 push ups in 2 minutes is "not being morbidly obese and a heart attack waiting to happen."
I think for this kind of role you want people who understand technology down to the metal. Transistors up.
Totally unnecessary. The best hackers are usually extreme specialists, not generalists, and often not college educated, so I bet very few of them could explain the difference between PNP and NPN. Intelligence, self-motivation, and reverse engineering are a lot more useful to hacking than electrical engineering.
Raising the standard isn't going to get the Army the best and brightest "cyber warriors" - they are going to have to raise the pay grade...
Otherwise, it's the tech equivalent of hiring Army Rangers who are too fat to do a single pushup.
That also raises the question - where the hell did that "100 push up, 100 sit up, 2 miles in 10 minutes" for Army Rangers quote come from? The minimum scores are about 1/2 that, and the recommended about 3/4 that. Hell, the Ranger recommended score (and the general Army PFT maximum score) is only 2 miles in 13:00 - I could do that easily in my early 20's (and was doing that since Jr High) and I didn't even particularly like running.
The existing regular Army minimums are actually (for men) 35 push ups, 47 sit ups (each in 2 minutes) and 16:36 for a 2 mile run. It *is* seriously pitiful that at least 1/2 of the kids graduating from high school can't achieve those...
some day in the future people were going to make scary looking black painted guns? (That's pretty much what an "assault rifle" is. There are no functional distinctions. It's a made up term by gun grabbers.)
If you think there is no functional distinction between a muzzle loading smooth bore musket and a modern automatic rifle, you are the delusional one.
And the silly pro assault rifle camp assertion that the term was invented by the gun control side it also laughable. The term has been around since WWII as a translation of the German Sturmgewehr (lit. "storm rifle", where "storm" meant "assault" not lots of rain).
Tell that to the TSA, which has probably cost the US (and maybe the world as a whole) hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of billions of wasted hours due to ONE guy with a defective shoe bomb and ONE other guy with a completely impossible "liquid bomb".
Can't mod, already posted, but this should pretty much end all the of moronic comments on an armed/loaded honor guard. Or any guard. The point of guards is that they are the first line of defense. If you let people legally walk around with guns those guards WILL be shot first and they will have no chance to defend themselves.
No, not really. A more accurate description would be the courts tend to look at the Constitution (and its Amendments) as if those who created it were alive, sitting next to them, and completely aware of the last 240 years of history when they wrote it.
While in reality the invention of the assault rifle and the Internet has pretty much blown away anything they intended in the Second and First Amendments, respectively.
Yup. It's happening now at a smaller scale, and it's not sustainable...
Though according to the lofty ideal sci-fi future, once the robots can both extract resources and produce goods (and repair each other) with no net capital costs, society and the economy should become "post scarcity" where everyone can enjoy the same luxuries and standard of living.
But that assumes that those who own the robots don't mind giving up the economic power they wield and lifting everyone up to their level. We all know that's not going to happen. So I think our best bet is the robots revolt and maybe keep us around as well-fed pets.
Jeez, mods, way too much speculation (much of which is wrong) to be a "+5" post...
First, it was in fact L1 visas for short term inter-company work.
The real problem was that EFI paid their Indian employees their existing wages (plus boarding, per diem, and bonuses) while they were in the US. Since US employment law states otherwise, yes, they screwed up, and it's good that they were forced to pay them more. But it's bullshit to call this "slave labor", etc, because of the wage since these employees went back to India with the same wage they were already getting (and no food/lodging costs during that time).
On the other hand, what *is* disturbing is the claims that they worked 120+ hours a week while in the US. I'm almost skeptical of that number as that is literally less than 7 hours a day off the job which isn't enough time for a good night's sleep - but even more or less forcing 100+ hours for an hourly employee, working in a foreign country with likely little say over their duties or conditions seems borderline criminal to me...
No, we are approaching a time when the robots *can* do all that for us.
The question is, will they be *cheaper*, which is really all that matters to those having their ditches dug. For $10 per hour, robots may become competitive, but for $1.21 per hour, pretty sure humans will be cheaper for quite a while...
In general you are implying that a end user knowingly bought a counterfeit item; this is far from the truth.
Absolutely not, never said that. Unknowingly buying stolen or counterfeit goods is (almost always) not a criminal act or the buyer's fault, but it also doesn't give them any claims of ownership over the stolen goods. It's a crappy situation, but it happens all the time.
this is in no way analogous to counterfeit currency - there are built in counter measures, there are tools for detecting them, and if you have homeowners insurance you may be covered for some or all of the loss (in the US).
I'd say it's a LOT like counterfeit currency - even more so than something like counterfeit clothes, etc. That currency has value to the owner until it's discovered that it is counterfeit, in which case it loses value. It's up to the owner to go after whoever gave them the counterfeit currency/goods to be recompensed.
And this isn't all that complicated, really. A hardware manufacturer buys chips and builds them into computers and other devices. If they used counterfeit chips, they are liable and will be required to fix the situation, or face a veritable shitstorm of lawsuits, etc. Of course, reputable manufacturers are not going to buy generic chips from a shady supplier, and hospitals and corporations don't buy computers from unknown manufacturers with no warranties, etc either (so the hospital example is totally bogus unless you have an actual citation to the contrary).
When buying stolen or counterfeit goods, it's always been caveat emptor. The fault is in the counterfeiter and the integrator/manufacturer who didn't check their suppliers, of course, but anyone in the chain will be affected, especially the end user left holding the bag.
I agree it totally sucks.. but buying stolen property, no matter how many steps removed from the crime, isn't going to get much sympathy from a legal standpoint.
And have there been "regular devices at retail stores" that have used these chips? If it's a shady unlabeled device from an unknown anonymous manufacturer, sure, you'll be SOL, but if you bought something from a reputable manufacturer you better bet they will be providing refunds, etc if they built hardware with counterfeit chips...
Let me repeat... You should not EVER have thing think about your bandwidth or how you are using your internet connection. If you ever have to stop and think, "why is this slow", you don't have enough. You should have to micromanage what is ran and when, or who can do what at what times, etc.
I can't even begin to describe how much of a ridiculous "first world problem" this is, let alone how inaccurate...
Despite what the author and many other people seem to pretend, much of the US (and other parts of the world) *does* in fact get 50Mbps+ for under $100 already without FTTH. That's enough bandwidth to stream 3 HD videos and whatever web browsing or game patches you want at the same time.
We have the technology to provide every user so much bandwidth, that it's nearly impossible for them to ever run into an issue of using it all.
Sure, obviously the technology exists, but why would anyone assume it should be free? We could give everyone 10Gbps+ to their home if we were willing to spend a few hundred billion dollars in infrastructure and even more in monthly fees/maintenance to keep it running. We could similarly give everyone in the world a Ferrari if they were willing to pay for it.
It's all an issue of cost. And obviously people are willing to compromise and wait a bit longer for their downloads to save money.
The user bought a counterfeit chip and the company who actually made the chip figured it out and disabled it. Sucks for the poor consumer who bought it, but that doesn't mean they have any right to use the counterfeit chip. They need to take it up with the company who counterfeited and/or sold it to them.
You disagree? Well, I'm SURE if you took counterfeit $100 bills from someone the government would say "oh, man that sucks, we're so sorry, we'll take those anyway because we don't want to inconvenience you or anyone else for accepting counterfeit currency!"
Just don't see the problem with this. The USB device claimed it was a FTDI device to the driver, so it was pretty obviously counterfeit.
Sure, it totally sucks for the consumer but come on, where are these counterfeit devices coming from? You buy a shady cut rate USB device from a shady manufacturer and you deserve what you get. Doesn't matter what the industry is, that's ALWAYS been the case...
Well, CISC machines are generally RISC on the inside, but yes, blindly comparing clock-rates is almost always inappropriate.
Yes, obviously anyone who knows anything about CPU architectures already knows that, but the relevant semantics is that x86 is CISC to the compiler, which is really the relevant bit.
Yeah, but looking at Wilkinson's photo, his douchiness quotient may not be far behind. Their combined daily hair product emissions alone could probably power a small town.
One overprivileged hipster screws another. Oh, the humanity! And it's so sad to see, since in another world they could have been bros, sharing some PBRs on a Sunday morning at the beer garden while talking over each other about their new iPhone apps.
There is definitely something about intuiting manual shifts (or blipping downshifts) by the sound of the engine alone or mastering the art of the shift/gas/brake/clutch on twisting roads with only two feet for the 3 pedals.
If you are *racing* (and VERY few people really actually do this) sure, it's all about speed and handling, who cares how you get it. But as you said for most auto "enthusiasts" it's about *driving*. Really, most of the fun is in the learning, same with many hobbies - if you just want to "be perfect", you can let a computer decide your next chess move, play the baseline on your keyboard, or shift for you. But what's the point?
No, electric will NOT "win" (where win is become the predominant form of vehicle propulsion) with performance. Electric will be an awesome but tiny niche with performance.
Electric will win with price, utility, and reliability, just like all car models that "win" ie. are hugely popular (e.g. the Prius). Once electric cars start winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans, can be purchased for $30k and can get ~300 miles per charge and go cross country in a few days, I think absolutely they will win...
Reminds me of a high school drivers ed session years back (I was sitting in the back seat):
teacher: "What's the speed limit on this road?" student: "64?" teacher: "64!? This is Route 64 you nitwit! Well, at least we didn't take Route 83. Or I-355!"
Slashdot Mirror
It's definitely true and public knowledge...
But you make a key point as far as salaries - I have never been in the military but I have been in the tech industry for 20 years and techies generally don't care about "rank" and hate hierarchy and bureaucracy, two particular specialties of the military. It's amazing how the US government is fine with paying $300 million for a fighter jet or $1.5M for a single cruise missile but they think paying $60k a year to a Captain with 5 years of experience is adequate to recruit smart engineers out of college...
Have courses at West Point, the Air Force Academy, or whatever on compsci, programming, and make a course specifically on black hat hacking.
The military academies already have computer science (and most other engineering) degree programs. And I'd bet you anything they have courses in computer security of various forms.
Encourage CompSci majors to join ROTC, give out perks and automatically higher rank to CompSci majors
No need to - they go through ROTC and they will already join as a 2nd Lt. If they prove themselves, they will be promoted, that's how the whole thing works...
The enlisted aren't really "engineers" from an academic perspective, they are very specifically trained techs. The actual engineers (with a BS) would mostly be officers who went through ROTC or some such and so had to go through plenty of military and physical training in college already.
I agree that if you can't manage 30-ish push ups in 2 minutes you may want to consider another job - many (even technically minded) young people can already do that, and almost anyone in otherwise good health can get there with a couple months of fairly trivial exercising. Just seems like a pretty low bar to judge their commitment to wanting the job...
Then they might have to pay them a competitive civilian salary.
If you have no other health issues besides being that out of shape, you'd be surprised how easily you can get in at least basic enough shape to meet those requirements. I'm surprised how low the current Army requirements are, really, I could easily do them all and I haven't gone near a gym in 15 years.
Back when I was working out, my initial pull up (MUCH harder than push ups, of course) count was a big zero. After a month I could do 5, and after 2 months 10-15. The *Army Ranger* requirement is 6 (regular PFT doesn't require any, I think).
The *best* would have no problem spending 30 minutes a day (or even every other day) for a month or so to meet those minimal requirements. Especially if you actually *wanted* the job - if not, then who cares? All it takes is a very small amount of willpower and commitment, something the Army should be looking for.
If you are in your early 20's and otherwise pass the basic health requirements, but can't do a dozen push ups in 2 minutes or stand for an hour, you probably should *not* be in the Army.
If you don't have any other health issues besides being so out of shape you can't accomplish those, then yes, I think spending the month or so it would take to get in a bit better shape to pass it would be a good sign of someone who might actually take pride and responsibility in their work.
It's a sign that you can't do 13 push-ups. Maybe you like doing other things instead of working out.
An 18 year old doing 13 push ups in 3 minutes is not "working out". 13 push ups in 2 minutes is "not being morbidly obese and a heart attack waiting to happen."
I think for this kind of role you want people who understand technology down to the metal. Transistors up.
Totally unnecessary. The best hackers are usually extreme specialists, not generalists, and often not college educated, so I bet very few of them could explain the difference between PNP and NPN. Intelligence, self-motivation, and reverse engineering are a lot more useful to hacking than electrical engineering.
Raising the standard isn't going to get the Army the best and brightest "cyber warriors" - they are going to have to raise the pay grade...
Otherwise, it's the tech equivalent of hiring Army Rangers who are too fat to do a single pushup.
That also raises the question - where the hell did that "100 push up, 100 sit up, 2 miles in 10 minutes" for Army Rangers quote come from? The minimum scores are about 1/2 that, and the recommended about 3/4 that. Hell, the Ranger recommended score (and the general Army PFT maximum score) is only 2 miles in 13:00 - I could do that easily in my early 20's (and was doing that since Jr High) and I didn't even particularly like running.
The existing regular Army minimums are actually (for men) 35 push ups, 47 sit ups (each in 2 minutes) and 16:36 for a 2 mile run. It *is* seriously pitiful that at least 1/2 of the kids graduating from high school can't achieve those...
http://www.military.com/milita...
some day in the future people were going to make scary looking black painted guns? (That's pretty much what an "assault rifle" is. There are no functional distinctions. It's a made up term by gun grabbers.)
If you think there is no functional distinction between a muzzle loading smooth bore musket and a modern automatic rifle, you are the delusional one.
And the silly pro assault rifle camp assertion that the term was invented by the gun control side it also laughable. The term has been around since WWII as a translation of the German Sturmgewehr (lit. "storm rifle", where "storm" meant "assault" not lots of rain).
Tell that to the TSA, which has probably cost the US (and maybe the world as a whole) hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of billions of wasted hours due to ONE guy with a defective shoe bomb and ONE other guy with a completely impossible "liquid bomb".
Can't mod, already posted, but this should pretty much end all the of moronic comments on an armed/loaded honor guard. Or any guard. The point of guards is that they are the first line of defense. If you let people legally walk around with guns those guards WILL be shot first and they will have no chance to defend themselves.
No, not really. A more accurate description would be the courts tend to look at the Constitution (and its Amendments) as if those who created it were alive, sitting next to them, and completely aware of the last 240 years of history when they wrote it.
While in reality the invention of the assault rifle and the Internet has pretty much blown away anything they intended in the Second and First Amendments, respectively.
Yup. It's happening now at a smaller scale, and it's not sustainable...
Though according to the lofty ideal sci-fi future, once the robots can both extract resources and produce goods (and repair each other) with no net capital costs, society and the economy should become "post scarcity" where everyone can enjoy the same luxuries and standard of living.
But that assumes that those who own the robots don't mind giving up the economic power they wield and lifting everyone up to their level. We all know that's not going to happen. So I think our best bet is the robots revolt and maybe keep us around as well-fed pets.
Jeez, mods, way too much speculation (much of which is wrong) to be a "+5" post...
First, it was in fact L1 visas for short term inter-company work.
The real problem was that EFI paid their Indian employees their existing wages (plus boarding, per diem, and bonuses) while they were in the US. Since US employment law states otherwise, yes, they screwed up, and it's good that they were forced to pay them more. But it's bullshit to call this "slave labor", etc, because of the wage since these employees went back to India with the same wage they were already getting (and no food/lodging costs during that time).
On the other hand, what *is* disturbing is the claims that they worked 120+ hours a week while in the US. I'm almost skeptical of that number as that is literally less than 7 hours a day off the job which isn't enough time for a good night's sleep - but even more or less forcing 100+ hours for an hourly employee, working in a foreign country with likely little say over their duties or conditions seems borderline criminal to me...
No, we are approaching a time when the robots *can* do all that for us.
The question is, will they be *cheaper*, which is really all that matters to those having their ditches dug. For $10 per hour, robots may become competitive, but for $1.21 per hour, pretty sure humans will be cheaper for quite a while...
In general you are implying that a end user knowingly bought a counterfeit item; this is far from the truth.
Absolutely not, never said that. Unknowingly buying stolen or counterfeit goods is (almost always) not a criminal act or the buyer's fault, but it also doesn't give them any claims of ownership over the stolen goods. It's a crappy situation, but it happens all the time.
this is in no way analogous to counterfeit currency - there are built in counter measures, there are tools for detecting them, and if you have homeowners insurance you may be covered for some or all of the loss (in the US).
I'd say it's a LOT like counterfeit currency - even more so than something like counterfeit clothes, etc. That currency has value to the owner until it's discovered that it is counterfeit, in which case it loses value. It's up to the owner to go after whoever gave them the counterfeit currency/goods to be recompensed.
And this isn't all that complicated, really. A hardware manufacturer buys chips and builds them into computers and other devices. If they used counterfeit chips, they are liable and will be required to fix the situation, or face a veritable shitstorm of lawsuits, etc. Of course, reputable manufacturers are not going to buy generic chips from a shady supplier, and hospitals and corporations don't buy computers from unknown manufacturers with no warranties, etc either (so the hospital example is totally bogus unless you have an actual citation to the contrary).
When buying stolen or counterfeit goods, it's always been caveat emptor. The fault is in the counterfeiter and the integrator/manufacturer who didn't check their suppliers, of course, but anyone in the chain will be affected, especially the end user left holding the bag.
I agree it totally sucks.. but buying stolen property, no matter how many steps removed from the crime, isn't going to get much sympathy from a legal standpoint.
And have there been "regular devices at retail stores" that have used these chips? If it's a shady unlabeled device from an unknown anonymous manufacturer, sure, you'll be SOL, but if you bought something from a reputable manufacturer you better bet they will be providing refunds, etc if they built hardware with counterfeit chips...
Let me repeat... You should not EVER have thing think about your bandwidth or how you are using your internet connection. If you ever have to stop and think, "why is this slow", you don't have enough. You should have to micromanage what is ran and when, or who can do what at what times, etc.
I can't even begin to describe how much of a ridiculous "first world problem" this is, let alone how inaccurate...
Despite what the author and many other people seem to pretend, much of the US (and other parts of the world) *does* in fact get 50Mbps+ for under $100 already without FTTH. That's enough bandwidth to stream 3 HD videos and whatever web browsing or game patches you want at the same time.
We have the technology to provide every user so much bandwidth, that it's nearly impossible for them to ever run into an issue of using it all.
Sure, obviously the technology exists, but why would anyone assume it should be free? We could give everyone 10Gbps+ to their home if we were willing to spend a few hundred billion dollars in infrastructure and even more in monthly fees/maintenance to keep it running. We could similarly give everyone in the world a Ferrari if they were willing to pay for it.
It's all an issue of cost. And obviously people are willing to compromise and wait a bit longer for their downloads to save money.
"Terroristic"? You have got to be kidding me.
The user bought a counterfeit chip and the company who actually made the chip figured it out and disabled it. Sucks for the poor consumer who bought it, but that doesn't mean they have any right to use the counterfeit chip. They need to take it up with the company who counterfeited and/or sold it to them.
You disagree? Well, I'm SURE if you took counterfeit $100 bills from someone the government would say "oh, man that sucks, we're so sorry, we'll take those anyway because we don't want to inconvenience you or anyone else for accepting counterfeit currency!"
Just don't see the problem with this. The USB device claimed it was a FTDI device to the driver, so it was pretty obviously counterfeit.
Sure, it totally sucks for the consumer but come on, where are these counterfeit devices coming from? You buy a shady cut rate USB device from a shady manufacturer and you deserve what you get. Doesn't matter what the industry is, that's ALWAYS been the case...
Well, CISC machines are generally RISC on the inside, but yes, blindly comparing clock-rates is almost always inappropriate.
Yes, obviously anyone who knows anything about CPU architectures already knows that, but the relevant semantics is that x86 is CISC to the compiler, which is really the relevant bit.
Yeah, but looking at Wilkinson's photo, his douchiness quotient may not be far behind. Their combined daily hair product emissions alone could probably power a small town.
One overprivileged hipster screws another. Oh, the humanity! And it's so sad to see, since in another world they could have been bros, sharing some PBRs on a Sunday morning at the beer garden while talking over each other about their new iPhone apps.
There is definitely something about intuiting manual shifts (or blipping downshifts) by the sound of the engine alone or mastering the art of the shift/gas/brake/clutch on twisting roads with only two feet for the 3 pedals.
If you are *racing* (and VERY few people really actually do this) sure, it's all about speed and handling, who cares how you get it. But as you said for most auto "enthusiasts" it's about *driving*. Really, most of the fun is in the learning, same with many hobbies - if you just want to "be perfect", you can let a computer decide your next chess move, play the baseline on your keyboard, or shift for you. But what's the point?
No, electric will NOT "win" (where win is become the predominant form of vehicle propulsion) with performance. Electric will be an awesome but tiny niche with performance.
Electric will win with price, utility, and reliability, just like all car models that "win" ie. are hugely popular (e.g. the Prius). Once electric cars start winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans, can be purchased for $30k and can get ~300 miles per charge and go cross country in a few days, I think absolutely they will win...
Reminds me of a high school drivers ed session years back (I was sitting in the back seat):
teacher: "What's the speed limit on this road?"
student: "64?"
teacher: "64!? This is Route 64 you nitwit! Well, at least we didn't take Route 83. Or I-355!"