The taxpayers are uneducated, misinformed, actively misled, not interested, bored, apathetic, busy thinking about where the next meal comes from and who will win the next Idol.
In past those that stood up against the abuse of power were lone individuals that were thinkers and could attract the desperate masses. Where was the last time you saw something like that? You think that there will be another Lenin, Mandela, Gandhi, M.L. King, William Wallace or Robin Hood? Even if you find someone like that - what is the chance to build up a movement against powers that control all the communication and media?
You know what? When Assange published the documents he (and Wikileaks) got accused of rape. Regardless of whether he really committed rape he is now tainted in minds of many people. Once an information spreads that NSA asked RSA to do something, there is no going back. RSA is now tainted. Regardless of whether they did weakened the security on NSA's request or not. May be they did. And may be they did not. But they have no chance to prove that they did not even if they did not. It does not matter anymore whether they did or not.
IMHO, NSA is doing enormous damage to economics and trust. And there is no going back. Good job. I wonder whether there is someone in higher ranks who can recognize it and stop it and how much damage happens until then.
To put a twist on that: if releasing of the documents depends on him being alive, then there is also a number of folks/agencies/governments/countries that would be very keen on killing him in order to trigger releasing of the documents. I'm not sure that this "insurance" has no flaws.
How does it follow that the recording devices were installed by Assange? It just says that Assange/Manning had the recordings. Not that they actually planted the bugs.
A few years back I had a serious lung problem. I visited my doctor, he recognized something is wrong (though he was not sure what it was) and send me to a specialist. The specialist did an X-ray, took blood samples eventually sent me to MRI, etc. etc. He determined that the condition is serious and sent me to a specialized sanatorium/institute that specializes in lung diseases and surgeries - along with the documentation collected so far. And they did their own X-ray, blood samples, and all the other tests. (At the end I ended getting a surgery) That was the standard procedure, and IMHO the right thing to do.
Recently I've seen a lecture explaining the basics of Bayes' theorem. That was first time I've encountered it. What I took away from that is: if you test positive, you don't jump to conclusion. You get the test repeated, you get more tests, you get independent opinion,...
Why would someone demand or reject a treatment based on a single test not preformed by an expert is beyond me. But if high percentage of population is stupid enough to jump to conclusion based on single test not performed by an expert, then yes, you probably need FDA to regulate 23andMe.
It's one of those many, many problems that could be resolved by people being more educated.
Just because he works for Google, it does not mean that his views represent Google views or that he is saying what his employer wants him to say. At his age and with his history he probably could not care less what his employer wants.
if people do not feel their cause is important enough to go to jail for 24 hours
If the worst result of my arrest is just 24 hours missing from my life then it's not a problem. If it however means loss of a job, criminal record, loss of the clearance, getting on the no-fly list and my personal surveillance satellite, then I'm going to hesitate. Feel free to call me a coward.
Ah. Of course in can replaced. I did not mean to say that the company and world revolves around me. That would be a misunderstanding. What I mean is that the company cannot stay in business if there is nobody making the product that the company wants to sell. Surely company can keep going without me. But the company cannot survive without any IT people whatsoever. Not for a long time anyway ( though SCO is trying to provide a counterexample).
Re-reading the thread it seems that it took the wrong corner somewhere. I'm not talking about my personal importance for my employer. I'm talking about importance of people that understand how the IT works - especially in a company that develops and sells software. Such people are "special" because people that can and do think are "better" then people that do not. People that understand how the product (being sold) works are "better" then people that don't. People that can and do learn for life-time are "better" then those that get by with knowledge gained on a week-long training.
Now of course the word "better" can have different meanings. If the task is "fix the dripping faucet in the kitchen" then yes, a coder is useless. An engineer having an idea how the faucet is constructed is slightly better and a plumber that did it 1000 times is much better. On that task. But IT became so entrenched in our lives, that IT skills are important in many tasks. Including the tasks such as filling the taxes, accounting, marketing, sales, etc. etc. And the IT skills include learning, thinking and understanding complex processes which is useful also outside of IT.
If I still did not get my point across, then it probably means that I suck at self-advertising too;-)
I never said that a company can function without having sales, marketing, accounting, management,... . But I'm pretty sure they can't make business without me developing the product. They tried once or twice in past and either had to backtrack or I had to develop the product later anyway;-) .
I don't despise teamwork. Quite the opposite. But my team is the team of IT peers (programmers/designers/admins/DBAs/team leader). You would have to stretch the definition of "my team" too much to include sales, accounting, janitors,... That would be like including box office cashier in a baseball team. They are nice and important people but not *my team* members. Sorry. They all make the company tick. Sure. No objection to that. I just object to GP's evaluation of an IT person in the company and labeling me as an unimportant cogwheel.
Also the next level of "senior programmer" is not "company owner". I'm not good at it and it involves work that I'm not comfortable with. I have no desire to that.
In a software company (in opposite to company where the IT department mostly keeps the software running) I'm really the one who's "work makes the company work" and it is really my work that the company is selling and turning into profit.
Betty does not have to do that much thinking when it comes to taxes. Some bureaucrat comes up with a maze or rules and she is good at navigating that maze. And adapt to a change in that maze every few year/months. So what if she went to college and has a degree? Does it prove anything? Most programmers have that too. What she, and many others, can't, in opposite to programmers, is to think for herself. Analyze a problem and come up with a solution. I don't fix the printer by going to a training program for a week and learning how to fix that particular model. I solve it by looking up the blink codes, verifying the connectivity, understanding how a printer works, etc.
Sure "companies have worked without computers for centuries". Go tell a company that it can exist without cars for a week. They can go back to horses if they need some transportation. Let us know how well that works.
My boss did not work his ass off to work up from the bottom. He comes from a family that supplied him with the investment money for the startup and he got lucky by being at the right place at the right time and making the connections. He was able to do that because he is better at self-marketing. On the other hand why would I have to aim for owning the company? Is that a holly grail or something?
I don't claim that I'm a better then a bricklayer or a plumber. I'm not that elitist. I've also seen a number of bricklayers and plumbers that produce a shoddy work. And those that don't are comparatively expensive to me. That's why I fix my own faucet too. Without having any schooling on that. And it does not drip.
Management? I do have their respect. I got unusually lucky. But be sure that mostly they do not "want it to work when you present it to them" and they do not want me to "do my work right". They want it to "sort of work". Yesterday. Under the budget. They don't care how well the code is structured because they can't "sell" that to a customer and they don't get to maintain it 10 years down the road. You don't get to put that in a marketing presentation.
In my opinion, GP is absolutely right. We suck at self-marketing. That's also why the OS made by the programmers for the programmers does not have double digit desktop market penetration.
Every DLL loaded and running in a Windows machine has a purpose, and you can google it to find out what it is.
There is no magic here, and even though the code is not opensource, its fully known what just about every part
of windows is doing.
Really? Let's see the first google hit on conhost.exe. Read that and tell me what conhost.exe does. From the article it seems that it "fixes the way how the scrollbars are drawn in cmd window and why drag&drop from explorer to cmd did not work". Well either that's not true and then the purpose of conhost.exe is not known even in the most popular article talking about it, or it is true and then it explains why the battery life is so short.
a deal to kick the can down the road for four months
The whole thing would be ridiculous if it wasn't so serious. Everybody says how dangerous and disastrous it would be if USA cannot pay its debts anymore. It is obvious that USA cannot pay the debt and yet everybody is eager for USA to pass a law that allows to raise that very same debt.
Slashdot Mirror
The taxpayers are uneducated, misinformed, actively misled, not interested, bored, apathetic, busy thinking about where the next meal comes from and who will win the next Idol.
In past those that stood up against the abuse of power were lone individuals that were thinkers and could attract the desperate masses. Where was the last time you saw something like that? You think that there will be another Lenin, Mandela, Gandhi, M.L. King, William Wallace or Robin Hood? Even if you find someone like that - what is the chance to build up a movement against powers that control all the communication and media?
Can you run Windows Explorer with "Run as Administrator" ? Nope.
You know what? When Assange published the documents he (and Wikileaks) got accused of rape. Regardless of whether he really committed rape he is now tainted in minds of many people. Once an information spreads that NSA asked RSA to do something, there is no going back. RSA is now tainted. Regardless of whether they did weakened the security on NSA's request or not. May be they did. And may be they did not. But they have no chance to prove that they did not even if they did not. It does not matter anymore whether they did or not.
IMHO, NSA is doing enormous damage to economics and trust. And there is no going back. Good job. I wonder whether there is someone in higher ranks who can recognize it and stop it and how much damage happens until then.
To put a twist on that: if releasing of the documents depends on him being alive, then there is also a number of folks/agencies/governments/countries that would be very keen on killing him in order to trigger releasing of the documents. I'm not sure that this "insurance" has no flaws.
Bruce Schneier is one of the guys who all they need on the resume is the name.
Of course it belongs on /. - it shows how you can make big bucks by failing to implement an IT project.
(fp?)
A few years back I had a serious lung problem. I visited my doctor, he recognized something is wrong (though he was not sure what it was) and send me to a specialist. The specialist did an X-ray, took blood samples eventually sent me to MRI, etc. etc. He determined that the condition is serious and sent me to a specialized sanatorium/institute that specializes in lung diseases and surgeries - along with the documentation collected so far. And they did their own X-ray, blood samples, and all the other tests. (At the end I ended getting a surgery) That was the standard procedure, and IMHO the right thing to do.
Recently I've seen a lecture explaining the basics of Bayes' theorem. That was first time I've encountered it. What I took away from that is: if you test positive, you don't jump to conclusion. You get the test repeated, you get more tests, you get independent opinion, ...
Why would someone demand or reject a treatment based on a single test not preformed by an expert is beyond me. But if high percentage of population is stupid enough to jump to conclusion based on single test not performed by an expert, then yes, you probably need FDA to regulate 23andMe.
It's one of those many, many problems that could be resolved by people being more educated.
If and only if common sense prevails.
Yeah, that usually works sooo well.
Just because he works for Google, it does not mean that his views represent Google views or that he is saying what his employer wants him to say. At his age and with his history he probably could not care less what his employer wants.
What side would you want to be on in a police state?
What if a company develops and sells an extension and does not want to publish it via Google store?
Me neither. Is that something like three seashells?
If the worst result of my arrest is just 24 hours missing from my life then it's not a problem. If it however means loss of a job, criminal record, loss of the clearance, getting on the no-fly list and my personal surveillance satellite, then I'm going to hesitate. Feel free to call me a coward.
Some comedian over here once paraphrased an interview with a politician: Ask me whatever you want. I'll answer whatever I want.
Ah. Of course in can replaced. I did not mean to say that the company and world revolves around me. That would be a misunderstanding. What I mean is that the company cannot stay in business if there is nobody making the product that the company wants to sell. Surely company can keep going without me. But the company cannot survive without any IT people whatsoever. Not for a long time anyway ( though SCO is trying to provide a counterexample).
Re-reading the thread it seems that it took the wrong corner somewhere. I'm not talking about my personal importance for my employer. I'm talking about importance of people that understand how the IT works - especially in a company that develops and sells software. Such people are "special" because people that can and do think are "better" then people that do not. People that understand how the product (being sold) works are "better" then people that don't. People that can and do learn for life-time are "better" then those that get by with knowledge gained on a week-long training.
Now of course the word "better" can have different meanings. If the task is "fix the dripping faucet in the kitchen" then yes, a coder is useless. An engineer having an idea how the faucet is constructed is slightly better and a plumber that did it 1000 times is much better. On that task. But IT became so entrenched in our lives, that IT skills are important in many tasks. Including the tasks such as filling the taxes, accounting, marketing, sales, etc. etc. And the IT skills include learning, thinking and understanding complex processes which is useful also outside of IT.
If I still did not get my point across, then it probably means that I suck at self-advertising too ;-)
I never said that a company can function without having sales, marketing, accounting, management, ... . But I'm pretty sure they can't make business without me developing the product. They tried once or twice in past and either had to backtrack or I had to develop the product later anyway ;-) .
I don't despise teamwork. Quite the opposite. But my team is the team of IT peers (programmers/designers/admins/DBAs/team leader). You would have to stretch the definition of "my team" too much to include sales, accounting, janitors, ... That would be like including box office cashier in a baseball team. They are nice and important people but not *my team* members. Sorry. They all make the company tick. Sure. No objection to that. I just object to GP's evaluation of an IT person in the company and labeling me as an unimportant cogwheel.
Also the next level of "senior programmer" is not "company owner". I'm not good at it and it involves work that I'm not comfortable with. I have no desire to that.
Are you serious?
In a software company (in opposite to company where the IT department mostly keeps the software running) I'm really the one who's "work makes the company work" and it is really my work that the company is selling and turning into profit.
Betty does not have to do that much thinking when it comes to taxes. Some bureaucrat comes up with a maze or rules and she is good at navigating that maze. And adapt to a change in that maze every few year/months. So what if she went to college and has a degree? Does it prove anything? Most programmers have that too. What she, and many others, can't, in opposite to programmers, is to think for herself. Analyze a problem and come up with a solution. I don't fix the printer by going to a training program for a week and learning how to fix that particular model. I solve it by looking up the blink codes, verifying the connectivity, understanding how a printer works, etc.
Sure "companies have worked without computers for centuries". Go tell a company that it can exist without cars for a week. They can go back to horses if they need some transportation. Let us know how well that works.
My boss did not work his ass off to work up from the bottom. He comes from a family that supplied him with the investment money for the startup and he got lucky by being at the right place at the right time and making the connections. He was able to do that because he is better at self-marketing. On the other hand why would I have to aim for owning the company? Is that a holly grail or something?
I don't claim that I'm a better then a bricklayer or a plumber. I'm not that elitist. I've also seen a number of bricklayers and plumbers that produce a shoddy work. And those that don't are comparatively expensive to me. That's why I fix my own faucet too. Without having any schooling on that. And it does not drip.
Management? I do have their respect. I got unusually lucky. But be sure that mostly they do not "want it to work when you present it to them" and they do not want me to "do my work right". They want it to "sort of work". Yesterday. Under the budget. They don't care how well the code is structured because they can't "sell" that to a customer and they don't get to maintain it 10 years down the road. You don't get to put that in a marketing presentation.
In my opinion, GP is absolutely right. We suck at self-marketing. That's also why the OS made by the programmers for the programmers does not have double digit desktop market penetration.
Besides, what are they going to do about it? Attack?
Really? Let's see the first google hit on conhost.exe. Read that and tell me what conhost.exe does. From the article it seems that it "fixes the way how the scrollbars are drawn in cmd window and why drag&drop from explorer to cmd did not work". Well either that's not true and then the purpose of conhost.exe is not known even in the most popular article talking about it, or it is true and then it explains why the battery life is so short.
How does that work? "Hi, I'm John Smith and I'm legitimate researcher. Can you send me the DNA sequence please?" - something like that?
We did. The public not so much.
The whole thing would be ridiculous if it wasn't so serious. Everybody says how dangerous and disastrous it would be if USA cannot pay its debts anymore. It is obvious that USA cannot pay the debt and yet everybody is eager for USA to pass a law that allows to raise that very same debt.
Is this how it really works somewhere? Wow.