I'm starting to really think that we're making a mistake putting full-fledged computers in everything we build. They allow for an amazing array of features, but it makes fully understanding our machines much more difficult. Security problems like this one are inevitable.
A dumb analog xerox machine is pretty easy to understand, and one that runs on a microcontroller and a few KB of ram (if that) isn't much harder. But who but the most dedicated hacker has any real idea about what is going on inside a modern Xerox. It *might* not have any undocumented "features," but you have no way of knowing. Security has gone from being a matter of applied common sense to involving a large amount of blind trust in these manufacturers.
It's a symptom of a larger issue though. We're rapidly getting away from having a society where a well educated and technically minded person can understand the actual inner workings of the technology they interact with every day. The tradeoff might be worth it, I'm not a luddite. But we should remember that we are entering into a new kind of relationship with our machines,
Man, forget about emergency rescue. A launch to the moon isn't something you can just do in a few days. If you're going to the moon, just pray that everything goes according to plan.
I think everyone is missing the point as to why the space program has faltered.
In the late 50s, missile technology was very primitive compared to where it is now. Sputnik meant that Russia had good enough missiles to hit a somewhat precise location in the US. We had to respond.
Developing the first ICBMs was enormously complicated. Space research developed a lot of technology that would be used to wipe Moscow off the map.
Today, missiles are very well developed and the private aerospace industry can largely handle the research without the help of a government agency (though certainly not without government money). Nasa is no longer contributing (as much) technology to the military, and what it does is mainly things like GPS, which can be done with existing space technology or even private launches.
To a Senator, the space program serves no purpose and aside from being a sweet deal for some states' economies, benefits no voter directly. And while the space program still has some fans, they aren't numerous enough to swing any election.
Frankly, what NASA needs most is a consistent and predictable budget, a director who won't change jobs when the president leaves office, and hands off from Washington. If they could set a policy and stick to it, we wouldn't be in this mess.
That's not entirely true. There is no two party system in congressional elections, but there very much is a two party system for electing the president, unless you're fine with the senate choosing your presidents for you.
The fact that you need a majority and not a plurality of electoral votes to win the presidency means that a situation where there were 3 parties each getting roughly a third of the vote would result in presidents never being chosen by popular election.
Now, political precedent and tradition can be almost as important as written law. For over a century and a half, there were no term limits on the president, but because Washington had served only two terms, nobody else ran for a third term until FDR.
Similarly, a tradition could be established in the Senate that the Senate always goes with the plurality candidate, and that would effectively give us a multi-party system. Of course, I can't see modern senators voting across party lines to decide who sits in the White House, but it could be done.
"There are plenty of companies out there that had a scary-cool product or technology, something transformational, but missed something along the way: misjudged the market, misjudged their capital needs, rushed a buggy product to market, etc. Don't hear much from those companies anymore."
Move to a city with a lot of IT. Take ANY job, even if it's Geek Squad. Start networking like crazy, join a LUG, attend conferences and talks, put yourself out there. The vast majority of all jobs are not given to a resume on a stack. Meet people.
Just to be pedantic, I don't think COBOL was a systems language. It was for business logic. Back in those days systems programming was straight assembly.
There hasn't been a successful new systems programming language since the introduction of C++ almost thirty years ago. Programming language technology has advanced a great deal since then. A new systems language is a very big deal, and Google is playing very fair and open with it.
Because Earth orbit is not zero gravity, it's freefall. Moving into a wider orbit takes thrust to counteract Earth's gravity, which is still considerable.
It's a privilege if you own a TV station or a tourism business. It's a privilege if you particularly care about competitive skiing. If you're just a citizen trying to get on with your life, it can be a very inconvenient couple of weeks, and cities often lose millions of tax dollars hosting the olympics.
Natural Gas is only halfway green. It burns clean, but you're still taking stored CO2 and putting it in the air. It's good for things like mercury, but it doesn't do squat for global warming.
Re:And the zombification of our children continues
on
The Wi-Fi On the Bus
·
· Score: 1
I don't think todays kids are learning to deal with boredom very well.
Lack of hardship may be a common trait among slashdot posters and the less than half of americans who go to college, but don't doubt that there's still a great amount of hardship going around and a whole lot of people still live in dire poverty.
I know you may find this hard to believe, but just because you and the people you know are more successful than the people you knew when you were a kid, doesn't mean that tens of millions don't still live in dire poverty.
If you're writing GUI programs, implementing business logic, accessing databases, and doing many of the workaday tasks of the grunts of the technology world, you don't need much math. Plenty of people have become very good professional developers with neither a degree in math or computer science.
However, mathy programming is (to some people) more fun, and if you angle yourself correctly, it's harder and a more rare skill set, so you can get more money. Knowing math is also pretty important if you want to become a professor of computer science, which if you care more about vacation time and benefits than salary, is one of the sweetest gigs going.
Combinatorics, probability, linear algebra, and graph theory are probably the most applicable to the widest range of problems. I'd put combinatorics at the top of the list, since it's going to be used to figure out the time and space complexity of any complicated data structure or algorithm. If you want to do anything with peer to peer software or networking, then graph theory is more or less essential. Linear algebra is all over any simulation of physics (games, control software for vehicles, pretty much anything with some sort of sensor or motor) as well as finance (there is mad money in financial computing, not as much as two years ago, but still a lot). Probability is good for figuring out things like hash collisions, average performance of algorithms.
Number theory is used almost exclusively for crytography. Which is an awesome thing to work with. The NSA has a lot of good jobs if you're cool with that morally.
If it was 30 years ago and more programming jobs required the actual manipulation of 1s and 0s, then boolean algebra and discrete math would be at the top of the list. They still do if you want to work with embedded systems, compilers, or anything under the umbrella of EE/CS.
Numerical computing (like if you wanted to build MATLAB) uses all sorts of math, and I'm sure there's someone somewhere simulating quantum physics who's up to their neck in Abstract Algebra (which is a fascinating subject if you've got the stomach for some tough proofs)
There's probably not much undergraduate math that ISN'T useful for writing code in some problem domain or another.
If you want a good book on the kind of very useful computer math that isn't taught to undergrads nearly enough, check out Hacker's Delight by Henry Warren. It's a beautiful little book that will come in very handy if you ever need to write efficient C or assembly. And if you dig it then dive into the insanity mandala that is Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm starting to really think that we're making a mistake putting full-fledged computers in everything we build. They allow for an amazing array of features, but it makes fully understanding our machines much more difficult. Security problems like this one are inevitable.
A dumb analog xerox machine is pretty easy to understand, and one that runs on a microcontroller and a few KB of ram (if that) isn't much harder. But who but the most dedicated hacker has any real idea about what is going on inside a modern Xerox. It *might* not have any undocumented "features," but you have no way of knowing. Security has gone from being a matter of applied common sense to involving a large amount of blind trust in these manufacturers.
It's a symptom of a larger issue though. We're rapidly getting away from having a society where a well educated and technically minded person can understand the actual inner workings of the technology they interact with every day. The tradeoff might be worth it, I'm not a luddite. But we should remember that we are entering into a new kind of relationship with our machines,
Man, forget about emergency rescue. A launch to the moon isn't something you can just do in a few days. If you're going to the moon, just pray that everything goes according to plan.
As long as they don't change the naked-eye appearance of the moon (no Target or AT&T logo, please) then yes, absolutely.
I think everyone is missing the point as to why the space program has faltered.
In the late 50s, missile technology was very primitive compared to where it is now. Sputnik meant that Russia had good enough missiles to hit a somewhat precise location in the US. We had to respond.
Developing the first ICBMs was enormously complicated. Space research developed a lot of technology that would be used to wipe Moscow off the map.
Today, missiles are very well developed and the private aerospace industry can largely handle the research without the help of a government agency (though certainly not without government money). Nasa is no longer contributing (as much) technology to the military, and what it does is mainly things like GPS, which can be done with existing space technology or even private launches.
To a Senator, the space program serves no purpose and aside from being a sweet deal for some states' economies, benefits no voter directly. And while the space program still has some fans, they aren't numerous enough to swing any election.
Frankly, what NASA needs most is a consistent and predictable budget, a director who won't change jobs when the president leaves office, and hands off from Washington. If they could set a policy and stick to it, we wouldn't be in this mess.
That's not entirely true. There is no two party system in congressional elections, but there very much is a two party system for electing the president, unless you're fine with the senate choosing your presidents for you.
The fact that you need a majority and not a plurality of electoral votes to win the presidency means that a situation where there were 3 parties each getting roughly a third of the vote would result in presidents never being chosen by popular election.
Now, political precedent and tradition can be almost as important as written law. For over a century and a half, there were no term limits on the president, but because Washington had served only two terms, nobody else ran for a third term until FDR.
Similarly, a tradition could be established in the Senate that the Senate always goes with the plurality candidate, and that would effectively give us a multi-party system. Of course, I can't see modern senators voting across party lines to decide who sits in the White House, but it could be done.
Oh my God, this is sad.
Computers are really bad for a lot of people. Get outside and interact with actual people in the sunlight.
"There are plenty of companies out there that had a scary-cool product or technology, something transformational, but missed something along the way: misjudged the market, misjudged their capital needs, rushed a buggy product to market, etc. Don't hear much from those companies anymore."
No, I still read about Sony pretty often.
Move to a city with a lot of IT. Take ANY job, even if it's Geek Squad. Start networking like crazy, join a LUG, attend conferences and talks, put yourself out there. The vast majority of all jobs are not given to a resume on a stack. Meet people.
VRML was never used. For anything. How is this going to be different? What's the application? Javascript games?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6lzEhoXads
What do you mean? We make car analogies all the damn time.
Just to be pedantic, I don't think COBOL was a systems language. It was for business logic. Back in those days systems programming was straight assembly.
Oh whatever, this is news.
There hasn't been a successful new systems programming language since the introduction of C++ almost thirty years ago. Programming language technology has advanced a great deal since then. A new systems language is a very big deal, and Google is playing very fair and open with it.
Quit bitching.
Too bad scenes of someone typing furiously at a computer are boring as hell.
Why not just maneuver out of the way like in that ridiculous Air Force commercial?
Because Earth orbit is not zero gravity, it's freefall. Moving into a wider orbit takes thrust to counteract Earth's gravity, which is still considerable.
It's a privilege if you own a TV station or a tourism business. It's a privilege if you particularly care about competitive skiing. If you're just a citizen trying to get on with your life, it can be a very inconvenient couple of weeks, and cities often lose millions of tax dollars hosting the olympics.
Natural Gas is only halfway green. It burns clean, but you're still taking stored CO2 and putting it in the air. It's good for things like mercury, but it doesn't do squat for global warming.
I don't think todays kids are learning to deal with boredom very well.
Nothing like the hypnotic effects of glowing rectangles to lull the children into a dull trance.
Lack of hardship may be a common trait among slashdot posters and the less than half of americans who go to college, but don't doubt that there's still a great amount of hardship going around and a whole lot of people still live in dire poverty.
I know you may find this hard to believe, but just because you and the people you know are more successful than the people you knew when you were a kid, doesn't mean that tens of millions don't still live in dire poverty.
Keep fighting the good fight, sir.
I find this much inferior to just making things a public utility. If you want to have the government guarantee a public service, why pussyfoot around?
If you're writing GUI programs, implementing business logic, accessing databases, and doing many of the workaday tasks of the grunts of the technology world, you don't need much math. Plenty of people have become very good professional developers with neither a degree in math or computer science.
However, mathy programming is (to some people) more fun, and if you angle yourself correctly, it's harder and a more rare skill set, so you can get more money. Knowing math is also pretty important if you want to become a professor of computer science, which if you care more about vacation time and benefits than salary, is one of the sweetest gigs going.
Combinatorics, probability, linear algebra, and graph theory are probably the most applicable to the widest range of problems. I'd put combinatorics at the top of the list, since it's going to be used to figure out the time and space complexity of any complicated data structure or algorithm. If you want to do anything with peer to peer software or networking, then graph theory is more or less essential. Linear algebra is all over any simulation of physics (games, control software for vehicles, pretty much anything with some sort of sensor or motor) as well as finance (there is mad money in financial computing, not as much as two years ago, but still a lot). Probability is good for figuring out things like hash collisions, average performance of algorithms.
Number theory is used almost exclusively for crytography. Which is an awesome thing to work with. The NSA has a lot of good jobs if you're cool with that morally.
If it was 30 years ago and more programming jobs required the actual manipulation of 1s and 0s, then boolean algebra and discrete math would be at the top of the list. They still do if you want to work with embedded systems, compilers, or anything under the umbrella of EE/CS.
Numerical computing (like if you wanted to build MATLAB) uses all sorts of math, and I'm sure there's someone somewhere simulating quantum physics who's up to their neck in Abstract Algebra (which is a fascinating subject if you've got the stomach for some tough proofs)
There's probably not much undergraduate math that ISN'T useful for writing code in some problem domain or another.
If you want a good book on the kind of very useful computer math that isn't taught to undergrads nearly enough, check out Hacker's Delight by Henry Warren. It's a beautiful little book that will come in very handy if you ever need to write efficient C or assembly. And if you dig it then dive into the insanity mandala that is Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming.