The solution to politicized scientific issues is to look at the consensus of the experts, plus any dissenting experts. In this case, pretty much every expert says one thing, and the dissenters are not climate experts. Seems mighty clear and apolitical to me.
Gaileo and Copernicus might have something to say about expert consensus. The seminal study that has led to the claim of a "97 percent consensus" on human-caused climate change was by Skeptical Science and John Cook (https://skepticalscience.com/97-percent-consensus-cook-et-al-2013.html). Sounds impressive, but read their own methodology. They basically Googled for "climate change" and "global warming." Cook's team then looked at the abstracts, and if they concluded the paper expressed an opinion, one way or the other, the placed them in the respective category. Well, it is not that 11,640 of those abstracts agreed it was climate change. No, first off they found about only 4,000 expressed an opinion. Of those, yes, 97 percent said there was climate change and it was man-made. However, they ignored the silent majority that did not weigh in on the matter.
The problem is this topic is so politicized - as is evidenced even in the commentary here - that any data comes with baggage. The earth is in a constant state of climate change based on any number of issues. We humans, burning fossil fuels might have some impact, but the earth flies around the sun in an elliptical orbit at 1,100 mph, wobbling all along the way. Our solar system speeds around the Milky Way at nearly 515,000 mph, and the Milky Way moves at an astounding (and approximate) 1.3 million mph through the universe. The sun we travel around expands about an inch per year, and by most measurements has been warming; still to date we can't explain all our global warming based on the warming of the sun. Our blue marble "currently" decides to flip its polarity every 200,000 to 300,000 years. How many times it has happened in its 4.5 billion life we can't be sure, but it has been plenty. So too have been the earthquakes, eruptions and other geologic events that impact land and air. Modeling climate change is a massive undertaking.I mean if we can't even measure the distance of a marathon correctly (Milwaukee), should we so readily and vehemently go at each other's throats based on models of an infinitely more complex problem? Listen, the problem isn't that we need to save the earth. It will be fine up until the sun swallows it whole. The problem is saving the humans. In that regard it doesn't matter if we are getting hotter, colder, more extreme, etc. What matters is weather kills. We need to build better and smarter. You know what else kills? Fossil fuels. They don't get a long with our biology. Here's another thing that kills: poverty. So the trick is affordable, clean energy and development. It's not that hard to do. Crap, we built the Hoover Dam, didn't we? And that was 80 years ago. In this day and age it should be a cake walk. But Nooooo. Thanks to our major political parties who would readily fight over length of a yard stick, we're missing the train out of Ignoreland.
To the contrary, Essential is anything but a niche market. The phone and as well as the corporate direction is to eliminate vendor lock-in in the consumer marketplace. The goal is a system that speaks the variety of protocols used in the home today and to avoid the mandatory bloatware or limits that OEMs build into their products.
Sure, the phone is fighting for space in a saturated market. The phone is remarkably stable, quality and clean. As the market is proving, however, consumers would rather spend their money on the equivalent of digital jewelry. The Essential is bland by today's standard. It doesn't do anything new. It just does the basics very well, and we have yet to see that be marketable attribute in consumer electronics.
I don't think Google does this out of the goodness of their heart. This basically allows them to intercept all marketing email and then perform their own analytics on it, denying the opportunity for the original marketers to do it. Google, like Facebook, and every other absurdly valued "tech" company out there, is in the business of data collection. When it comes to invasion of privacy, they are far more the disease than the cure.
On the issue of plain-text vs HTML email, it is not a debate, it is a litmus test. If you send HTML email or insist or reading in that format, you simply don't know enough about email to use it responsibly. Sorry, I know that is harsh, but there is no good reason to send or read HTML email. Meanwhile, in addition to privacy issues, you have spam ones (tracking pixels let the spammers know you are a live email), the phishing ones (HTML obfuscates the true target of links or origin of images), and malware ones (HTML email will automatically load certain attachments that may contain executable code) all facilitated by HTML email.
Exactly. Folks, Google didn't do this out of the goodness of their heart. They started doing this because it know allows them to all the HTML-based tracking info. If you want to market to a Gmail user, you have to play/pay by Gmail's rules. The real answer if you want privacy and to be a good netizen, plain-text only and stay away Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.
Google proxies images including tracking ones/web beacons in HTML email. In short, they scan the HTML, any images they fetch via their proxy servers and then when you open your email, it gets loaded from Google, not the originally intended server. Hence, if you send email to a Gmail account and include a tracking image, it will always show as opened (because Google retrieved the image) regardless of whether you opened it. However only Google will know whether you really opened it. Thus, privacy is a relative thing with Google and it has essentially put itself in a position to be the master of all tracking images.
Listen, Facebook is full of crap as is the entirety of social media. Where is the surprise there? These things don't exist free of charge because Zuckerberg and the like are still in their dorm rooms trying to get dates. They exist because they are trying to be advertisers' Holy Grail. It's been that way since we started writing on papyrus. Big deal the Russian bought some ads on Facebook and followed them up with posts, etc. You don't think big (and even little) business does that every day? And come on. Whatever the Russians dreamed up is nothing compared to the mud that has flung between the two major parties for decades. Please, everyone stop your whining about how it's the Russians fault or Facebook's that we are all brainwashed. It's our fault. We're idiots, too stupid or too lazy to realize we have no one to blame but ourselves for buying (figuratively and literally) the crap that we do.
I'd counter that Windows has limitations of its own, mostly revolving around anti-piracy. Compare the ability to image, move, convert Linux installations vs. Windows. If you image Windows, and then encounter some kind of hardware failure (the point of imaging a system to begin with), you can face any number of hoops to jump through. Yes, there may be limits in software and hardware compatibility, but it is a bit of generalization to suggest these limits inhibit workplace productivity more with Linux than Windows. Windows remains easy to implement as most PCs come with it installed and configured to work seamlessly with hardware. But if it fails, it fails miserably compared to Linux. I think the mere fact that Munich is targeting a 2020 switchover - a full technology generation away under Moore's Law - I think reveals that this is more a political decision than a technical one.
"Microsoft is increasingly competing with Google apps, yet they consistently play to their weaknesses in doing so."
Excellent observation. I think the history of Microsoft has been that it has always been behind the curve. It has bought as a way of bridging that gap, and may be an excellent business school case study in that regard. However, as a technology company or innovator, Microsoft hasn't succeeded. I think that is what you are seeing as it continues to try to find an identity.
Actually, the origin of the term "zero day" was just that - how many days a particular piece of software had been available. It came from the days when "warez" could be found for download. Obviously, the zero days were most prized since they were new releases. How the term has been appropriated, misused and confused since is another thing. It would be far more accurate and informative to refer to something as an "unpatched vulnerability" rather than jargon that is either poorly understood or spawns debate. Similarly, it is not an "unknown vulnerability" (maybe it was an unpatched one, but obviously someone knew about it for there to be both an exploit written for it and a patch). Then, we have the leap that because the malware was found in a document with a Russian name (translated to English as "Project.doc" that it must be "Government hackers" (What government? And can we please start calling spies, thieves, vandals, perverts by their rightful nouns and not "hackers?") targeting the Russians.
First two things:
1) Whatever language you teach to an 8 year old will be archaic by the time they reach the workforce
2) As computing power increases, we are moving beyond higher languages, gravitating toward pseudo code. As analogy look at what has happened in the world of Web development. You have the designers and interface folks who drive the development even though behind them are tools or people doing the more technical translation. Similarly, the programmers of the tomorrow may be more software designers (as opposed to developers). Behind them may be p-code compilers written by much more narrowly focused programmers.
I think if you are trying to figure out how to teach kids to program, teach them first how to problem solve in a logical. Where programming breaks from most human thought is that essentially computers work in a binary environment (it is either a hot dog or not a hot dog). I liken programming to trying to teach kids law. As integral as it may be to our lives, it is built upon many critical thinking skills that take years to develop. Thought games can teach programming without ever touching a computer. 20 Questions and variations on that are simple, fun, and competitive games perfect for a young classroom.
The challenge of teaching real programming to an 8 year old is very few of them can even reasonably grasp natural language grammar. How can you expect kids to tolerate learning the far-less flexible grammars of programming when most grow exasperated with typical English grammar even though it is far more loose? I'd say if you want to go in that direction, start them with simple HTML. That might wet their whistle for more involved exercises (still well short of genuine programming) but far less frustrating. There is a reason why elementary schools focus on creative writing more than grammar and spelling. Focusing on the latter too early will stifle the kids. Similarly throwing kids into real programming too early may stifle many future developers.
The market will correct once the courts start permitting businesses and individuals to sue on the grounds of negligence. This remedied problems in the auto industry fairly quickly. If an automaker is liable for the safety errors in its vehicles, then software manufacturers should be liable for their shoddy programming.
As much as this is off-topic, I think the record shows Nixon brought an end to the war by removing the bombing halt that had been imposed by Johnson. Most notably, the Linebacker II campaign, which allowed sustained bombing of the north and Hanoi, brought the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table. We ended up with a peace treaty, the release of POWs, and the survival of South Vietnam - which was essentially our main reason for being there. Now, not long after, we have Nixon resigning in the midst of the Watergate scandal, Congress passing the Case-Church amendment, and then, an opportunistic North Vietnam invading the south again, knowing (or at least making a safe bet) that given Watergate and Case-Church, the U.S. wouldn't come back to Southeast Asia despite the pleas of the South or Nixon's successor (Ford). If you want to couch this as Democrats vs. Republicans, so be it, but consider this: Six presidents (three Democrat, three Republican) and 13 Secretaries of Defense served in their capacities between the First Indochina War (precursor to Second Indochina War, aka the Vietnam Conflict) and the fall of Saigon. Of those six presidents, three came to office through succession. Nearly every major event in the war came near a presidential transition (how is that foreign opportunism?).
Agree that the US is on the hook morally and perhaps financially for any ill coming from the NSA spy tools that have fallen into the wrong hands, but you have a redundancy on your hands suggesting "moron IT people" who failed to patch their systems are to blame, too. The faulty decision was not failure to patch; it was adopting a vulnerable and frequently attacked OS to begin with. If someone driving a car with no brakes, no seatbelts, and low pressure in one tire, gets into an accident, do you say the problem was they failed to inflate the tire?
Teaching code to kids makes as much sense as teaching them law. Good coding requires a comprehension of several fundamentals. You can't jump over these basics. What you first need to develop in kids is critical thinking and problem solving skills. Marry that with an understanding of logic and basic concepts like variables, arrays and loops, and maybe by the time kids get to high school they have the fundamentals to write functional software. Sure, if a kid wants to jump in on this earlier, super, but thinking coding is an elementary (not an advanced) skill is the mistake here.
Most malware attacks can be described based on platform and vector of attack. From what has been described here, I am going to guess (because it is not specified) that we are talking a Windows OS running on (likely) an x86/x86-64 architecture with some version of PowerPoint and PowerShell installed. The vector is malicious file that you have to copy/download, open, and hover. Ninety-nine percent of all malware is limited is limited by platform just due the nature of vulnerabilities and the code it takes to exploit it. And of that 99 percent, 95 percent (at least) targets one platform in particular (Windows on x86-64). Leaving out or downplaying these details would be like the Weather Channel using the New Orleans forecast to describe weather threats throughout the country.
The problem isn't society's command of "science;" It is society's command of logic. You have people on all sides of an argument relying on the fallacy of "appeal to authority" to make a case: "Well scientists say...."
The controversy over whether to run Windows update or not misses the larger point. If you choose to buy a car with a deplorable safety record, despite its expense, then sure, by all means follow the recall notices and bring the car to the dealer every week to get the latest problem fixed. But suggesting Windows update is the "smart" move is like suggesting the same car owners are brilliant for wearing their seatbelt while driving their risk laden vehicles. The smart thing is just don't use a product with an horrendous security record.
"I believe I gathered my skills and knowledge through insatiable curiosity of all things technology as a child." The road to modern technology was paved by people who saw a problem and hacked together a solution. It relied on a combination of curiosity, innovation and collaboration that had been present for generations. Whether you are talking Ely Cotton, Henry Ford, Vinton Cerf or Tim Berners-Lee, the ability to take knowledge and then apply in a different and practical way is something gained through a combination of education, experience and fearlessness. The last two of those three, however, we have pushed from modern education. Not only are kids judged by standardized tests, entire school districts and states are. The risk of a wrong oval is far too great! Similarly, academics have turned toward recitation of knowledge rather than experiencing it. With limited exception, auto shop, wood shop, and the like have been replaced, and athletics have been marginalized to the point where the peak age of participation the US (at least) is age 12. How can we expect adults to engage in the bargain of innovation - to risk failure, multiple times even, in order to succeed - if we never give them those chances as youth? For the modern company, if you are looking for those skill sets, you have to broaden your search when hiring. Look for the engineer that welds on the side (and doesn't just do everything in CAD). Seek out older employees who may have started in very different professions - those are your problem solvers.
As an Enigmail user, I have to disagree. I've found it relatively easy to implement. Similarly on a Web interface, there are ample extensions for implementing public key encryption. The problem is a lack of good encryption education. Unfortunately, people either try to educate too much or don't try at all. Just as people need to understand "lock the door" and not the intricacies of a 5-pin tumbler lock, we don't need to drown people in the the math of cryptography as much as the importance of a having keys and "locking" sensitive data.
The full value of HTTPS is only realized with a third-party certificate that authenticates the server's identity. Without the third-party cert, sure, you have encryption, and you can be confident that when submitting info like your credentials or a credit card it can't be sniffed. However, you cannot be confident - without the cert - that you know to whom you are submitting that data. Instead of a thief robbing you on the way to the bank; they just convince you their hideout is the bank. As to why put your entire site under HTTPS and a cert, an attacker can intercept an HTTP request and send back their own forged content. Whether this is a script, image, text, hyperlink etc. It's analogous to locking your door but leaving a window open somewhere.
Complaining about Microsoft is like complaining about partisan politics in the U.S. We'll deride the two-party system just as we will lash out a MS, but when it comes decision making time, most of us get in line like lemmings.
First, we have a multi-level, multi-branch government. For example, the Congressional Budget Office isn't going to disappear simply because a sitting president wants to pretend to turn a surplus.
Second while on the surface data may change (e.g. the unemployment rate) the reason for that change typically is noted. This is like any other piece of data or news. It has context. The fact that Americans have been conditioned to read only 145 characters and then snarkly comment TL;DR, is not the fault of government or data providers but lazy readers. Stupidity is a choice.
Third, while government always has been subject to spin, no one is unraveling the First Amendment and the laws that support it. Again, truth and clarity are out there. It just takes more time to find them because there is more noise now as everyone is a publisher.
I say "threatens" is a great word. Sure it is commentary, but all one needs to do is look at the Dyn DNS incident to recognize the potential for harm out there. Undoubtedly the design of the things will encourage, if not require, Internet connectivity to work. That's the way of the world today as it gives manufacturers much more insight into you the consumer. Even if not connected to your network, having all these WiFi clients out there, looking to lock onto any potential network, is a botnet waiting to happen.
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The solution to politicized scientific issues is to look at the consensus of the experts, plus any dissenting experts. In this case, pretty much every expert says one thing, and the dissenters are not climate experts. Seems mighty clear and apolitical to me.
Gaileo and Copernicus might have something to say about expert consensus. The seminal study that has led to the claim of a "97 percent consensus" on human-caused climate change was by Skeptical Science and John Cook (https://skepticalscience.com/97-percent-consensus-cook-et-al-2013.html). Sounds impressive, but read their own methodology. They basically Googled for "climate change" and "global warming." Cook's team then looked at the abstracts, and if they concluded the paper expressed an opinion, one way or the other, the placed them in the respective category. Well, it is not that 11,640 of those abstracts agreed it was climate change. No, first off they found about only 4,000 expressed an opinion. Of those, yes, 97 percent said there was climate change and it was man-made. However, they ignored the silent majority that did not weigh in on the matter.
The problem is this topic is so politicized - as is evidenced even in the commentary here - that any data comes with baggage. The earth is in a constant state of climate change based on any number of issues. We humans, burning fossil fuels might have some impact, but the earth flies around the sun in an elliptical orbit at 1,100 mph, wobbling all along the way. Our solar system speeds around the Milky Way at nearly 515,000 mph, and the Milky Way moves at an astounding (and approximate) 1.3 million mph through the universe. The sun we travel around expands about an inch per year, and by most measurements has been warming; still to date we can't explain all our global warming based on the warming of the sun. Our blue marble "currently" decides to flip its polarity every 200,000 to 300,000 years. How many times it has happened in its 4.5 billion life we can't be sure, but it has been plenty. So too have been the earthquakes, eruptions and other geologic events that impact land and air. Modeling climate change is a massive undertaking.I mean if we can't even measure the distance of a marathon correctly (Milwaukee), should we so readily and vehemently go at each other's throats based on models of an infinitely more complex problem? Listen, the problem isn't that we need to save the earth. It will be fine up until the sun swallows it whole. The problem is saving the humans. In that regard it doesn't matter if we are getting hotter, colder, more extreme, etc. What matters is weather kills. We need to build better and smarter. You know what else kills? Fossil fuels. They don't get a long with our biology. Here's another thing that kills: poverty. So the trick is affordable, clean energy and development. It's not that hard to do. Crap, we built the Hoover Dam, didn't we? And that was 80 years ago. In this day and age it should be a cake walk. But Nooooo. Thanks to our major political parties who would readily fight over length of a yard stick, we're missing the train out of Ignoreland.
To the contrary, Essential is anything but a niche market. The phone and as well as the corporate direction is to eliminate vendor lock-in in the consumer marketplace. The goal is a system that speaks the variety of protocols used in the home today and to avoid the mandatory bloatware or limits that OEMs build into their products. Sure, the phone is fighting for space in a saturated market. The phone is remarkably stable, quality and clean. As the market is proving, however, consumers would rather spend their money on the equivalent of digital jewelry. The Essential is bland by today's standard. It doesn't do anything new. It just does the basics very well, and we have yet to see that be marketable attribute in consumer electronics.
I don't think Google does this out of the goodness of their heart. This basically allows them to intercept all marketing email and then perform their own analytics on it, denying the opportunity for the original marketers to do it. Google, like Facebook, and every other absurdly valued "tech" company out there, is in the business of data collection. When it comes to invasion of privacy, they are far more the disease than the cure.
On the issue of plain-text vs HTML email, it is not a debate, it is a litmus test. If you send HTML email or insist or reading in that format, you simply don't know enough about email to use it responsibly. Sorry, I know that is harsh, but there is no good reason to send or read HTML email. Meanwhile, in addition to privacy issues, you have spam ones (tracking pixels let the spammers know you are a live email), the phishing ones (HTML obfuscates the true target of links or origin of images), and malware ones (HTML email will automatically load certain attachments that may contain executable code) all facilitated by HTML email.
Exactly. Folks, Google didn't do this out of the goodness of their heart. They started doing this because it know allows them to all the HTML-based tracking info. If you want to market to a Gmail user, you have to play/pay by Gmail's rules. The real answer if you want privacy and to be a good netizen, plain-text only and stay away Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.
Google proxies images including tracking ones/web beacons in HTML email. In short, they scan the HTML, any images they fetch via their proxy servers and then when you open your email, it gets loaded from Google, not the originally intended server. Hence, if you send email to a Gmail account and include a tracking image, it will always show as opened (because Google retrieved the image) regardless of whether you opened it. However only Google will know whether you really opened it. Thus, privacy is a relative thing with Google and it has essentially put itself in a position to be the master of all tracking images.
Listen, Facebook is full of crap as is the entirety of social media. Where is the surprise there? These things don't exist free of charge because Zuckerberg and the like are still in their dorm rooms trying to get dates. They exist because they are trying to be advertisers' Holy Grail. It's been that way since we started writing on papyrus. Big deal the Russian bought some ads on Facebook and followed them up with posts, etc. You don't think big (and even little) business does that every day? And come on. Whatever the Russians dreamed up is nothing compared to the mud that has flung between the two major parties for decades. Please, everyone stop your whining about how it's the Russians fault or Facebook's that we are all brainwashed. It's our fault. We're idiots, too stupid or too lazy to realize we have no one to blame but ourselves for buying (figuratively and literally) the crap that we do.
I'd counter that Windows has limitations of its own, mostly revolving around anti-piracy. Compare the ability to image, move, convert Linux installations vs. Windows. If you image Windows, and then encounter some kind of hardware failure (the point of imaging a system to begin with), you can face any number of hoops to jump through. Yes, there may be limits in software and hardware compatibility, but it is a bit of generalization to suggest these limits inhibit workplace productivity more with Linux than Windows. Windows remains easy to implement as most PCs come with it installed and configured to work seamlessly with hardware. But if it fails, it fails miserably compared to Linux. I think the mere fact that Munich is targeting a 2020 switchover - a full technology generation away under Moore's Law - I think reveals that this is more a political decision than a technical one.
"Microsoft is increasingly competing with Google apps, yet they consistently play to their weaknesses in doing so." Excellent observation. I think the history of Microsoft has been that it has always been behind the curve. It has bought as a way of bridging that gap, and may be an excellent business school case study in that regard. However, as a technology company or innovator, Microsoft hasn't succeeded. I think that is what you are seeing as it continues to try to find an identity.
Actually, the origin of the term "zero day" was just that - how many days a particular piece of software had been available. It came from the days when "warez" could be found for download. Obviously, the zero days were most prized since they were new releases. How the term has been appropriated, misused and confused since is another thing. It would be far more accurate and informative to refer to something as an "unpatched vulnerability" rather than jargon that is either poorly understood or spawns debate. Similarly, it is not an "unknown vulnerability" (maybe it was an unpatched one, but obviously someone knew about it for there to be both an exploit written for it and a patch). Then, we have the leap that because the malware was found in a document with a Russian name (translated to English as "Project.doc" that it must be "Government hackers" (What government? And can we please start calling spies, thieves, vandals, perverts by their rightful nouns and not "hackers?") targeting the Russians.
First two things: 1) Whatever language you teach to an 8 year old will be archaic by the time they reach the workforce 2) As computing power increases, we are moving beyond higher languages, gravitating toward pseudo code. As analogy look at what has happened in the world of Web development. You have the designers and interface folks who drive the development even though behind them are tools or people doing the more technical translation. Similarly, the programmers of the tomorrow may be more software designers (as opposed to developers). Behind them may be p-code compilers written by much more narrowly focused programmers. I think if you are trying to figure out how to teach kids to program, teach them first how to problem solve in a logical. Where programming breaks from most human thought is that essentially computers work in a binary environment (it is either a hot dog or not a hot dog). I liken programming to trying to teach kids law. As integral as it may be to our lives, it is built upon many critical thinking skills that take years to develop. Thought games can teach programming without ever touching a computer. 20 Questions and variations on that are simple, fun, and competitive games perfect for a young classroom. The challenge of teaching real programming to an 8 year old is very few of them can even reasonably grasp natural language grammar. How can you expect kids to tolerate learning the far-less flexible grammars of programming when most grow exasperated with typical English grammar even though it is far more loose? I'd say if you want to go in that direction, start them with simple HTML. That might wet their whistle for more involved exercises (still well short of genuine programming) but far less frustrating. There is a reason why elementary schools focus on creative writing more than grammar and spelling. Focusing on the latter too early will stifle the kids. Similarly throwing kids into real programming too early may stifle many future developers.
The market will correct once the courts start permitting businesses and individuals to sue on the grounds of negligence. This remedied problems in the auto industry fairly quickly. If an automaker is liable for the safety errors in its vehicles, then software manufacturers should be liable for their shoddy programming.
As much as this is off-topic, I think the record shows Nixon brought an end to the war by removing the bombing halt that had been imposed by Johnson. Most notably, the Linebacker II campaign, which allowed sustained bombing of the north and Hanoi, brought the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table. We ended up with a peace treaty, the release of POWs, and the survival of South Vietnam - which was essentially our main reason for being there. Now, not long after, we have Nixon resigning in the midst of the Watergate scandal, Congress passing the Case-Church amendment, and then, an opportunistic North Vietnam invading the south again, knowing (or at least making a safe bet) that given Watergate and Case-Church, the U.S. wouldn't come back to Southeast Asia despite the pleas of the South or Nixon's successor (Ford). If you want to couch this as Democrats vs. Republicans, so be it, but consider this: Six presidents (three Democrat, three Republican) and 13 Secretaries of Defense served in their capacities between the First Indochina War (precursor to Second Indochina War, aka the Vietnam Conflict) and the fall of Saigon. Of those six presidents, three came to office through succession. Nearly every major event in the war came near a presidential transition (how is that foreign opportunism?).
Agree that the US is on the hook morally and perhaps financially for any ill coming from the NSA spy tools that have fallen into the wrong hands, but you have a redundancy on your hands suggesting "moron IT people" who failed to patch their systems are to blame, too. The faulty decision was not failure to patch; it was adopting a vulnerable and frequently attacked OS to begin with. If someone driving a car with no brakes, no seatbelts, and low pressure in one tire, gets into an accident, do you say the problem was they failed to inflate the tire?
Teaching code to kids makes as much sense as teaching them law. Good coding requires a comprehension of several fundamentals. You can't jump over these basics. What you first need to develop in kids is critical thinking and problem solving skills. Marry that with an understanding of logic and basic concepts like variables, arrays and loops, and maybe by the time kids get to high school they have the fundamentals to write functional software. Sure, if a kid wants to jump in on this earlier, super, but thinking coding is an elementary (not an advanced) skill is the mistake here.
Most malware attacks can be described based on platform and vector of attack. From what has been described here, I am going to guess (because it is not specified) that we are talking a Windows OS running on (likely) an x86/x86-64 architecture with some version of PowerPoint and PowerShell installed. The vector is malicious file that you have to copy/download, open, and hover. Ninety-nine percent of all malware is limited is limited by platform just due the nature of vulnerabilities and the code it takes to exploit it. And of that 99 percent, 95 percent (at least) targets one platform in particular (Windows on x86-64). Leaving out or downplaying these details would be like the Weather Channel using the New Orleans forecast to describe weather threats throughout the country.
The problem isn't society's command of "science;" It is society's command of logic. You have people on all sides of an argument relying on the fallacy of "appeal to authority" to make a case: "Well scientists say ...."
The controversy over whether to run Windows update or not misses the larger point. If you choose to buy a car with a deplorable safety record, despite its expense, then sure, by all means follow the recall notices and bring the car to the dealer every week to get the latest problem fixed. But suggesting Windows update is the "smart" move is like suggesting the same car owners are brilliant for wearing their seatbelt while driving their risk laden vehicles. The smart thing is just don't use a product with an horrendous security record.
"I believe I gathered my skills and knowledge through insatiable curiosity of all things technology as a child." The road to modern technology was paved by people who saw a problem and hacked together a solution. It relied on a combination of curiosity, innovation and collaboration that had been present for generations. Whether you are talking Ely Cotton, Henry Ford, Vinton Cerf or Tim Berners-Lee, the ability to take knowledge and then apply in a different and practical way is something gained through a combination of education, experience and fearlessness. The last two of those three, however, we have pushed from modern education. Not only are kids judged by standardized tests, entire school districts and states are. The risk of a wrong oval is far too great! Similarly, academics have turned toward recitation of knowledge rather than experiencing it. With limited exception, auto shop, wood shop, and the like have been replaced, and athletics have been marginalized to the point where the peak age of participation the US (at least) is age 12. How can we expect adults to engage in the bargain of innovation - to risk failure, multiple times even, in order to succeed - if we never give them those chances as youth? For the modern company, if you are looking for those skill sets, you have to broaden your search when hiring. Look for the engineer that welds on the side (and doesn't just do everything in CAD). Seek out older employees who may have started in very different professions - those are your problem solvers.
As an Enigmail user, I have to disagree. I've found it relatively easy to implement. Similarly on a Web interface, there are ample extensions for implementing public key encryption. The problem is a lack of good encryption education. Unfortunately, people either try to educate too much or don't try at all. Just as people need to understand "lock the door" and not the intricacies of a 5-pin tumbler lock, we don't need to drown people in the the math of cryptography as much as the importance of a having keys and "locking" sensitive data.
The full value of HTTPS is only realized with a third-party certificate that authenticates the server's identity. Without the third-party cert, sure, you have encryption, and you can be confident that when submitting info like your credentials or a credit card it can't be sniffed. However, you cannot be confident - without the cert - that you know to whom you are submitting that data. Instead of a thief robbing you on the way to the bank; they just convince you their hideout is the bank. As to why put your entire site under HTTPS and a cert, an attacker can intercept an HTTP request and send back their own forged content. Whether this is a script, image, text, hyperlink etc. It's analogous to locking your door but leaving a window open somewhere.
Complaining about Microsoft is like complaining about partisan politics in the U.S. We'll deride the two-party system just as we will lash out a MS, but when it comes decision making time, most of us get in line like lemmings.
First, we have a multi-level, multi-branch government. For example, the Congressional Budget Office isn't going to disappear simply because a sitting president wants to pretend to turn a surplus. Second while on the surface data may change (e.g. the unemployment rate) the reason for that change typically is noted. This is like any other piece of data or news. It has context. The fact that Americans have been conditioned to read only 145 characters and then snarkly comment TL;DR, is not the fault of government or data providers but lazy readers. Stupidity is a choice. Third, while government always has been subject to spin, no one is unraveling the First Amendment and the laws that support it. Again, truth and clarity are out there. It just takes more time to find them because there is more noise now as everyone is a publisher.
I say "threatens" is a great word. Sure it is commentary, but all one needs to do is look at the Dyn DNS incident to recognize the potential for harm out there. Undoubtedly the design of the things will encourage, if not require, Internet connectivity to work. That's the way of the world today as it gives manufacturers much more insight into you the consumer. Even if not connected to your network, having all these WiFi clients out there, looking to lock onto any potential network, is a botnet waiting to happen.