The government buys all the software, hardware, and pays for any training we need to bring our skills up to date to effectively do our jobs
The government buys software licenses and hardware, but those remain the property of the government. The government does not pay for any training. That is why they pay so much - they expect us to be already trained.
government employees serve as supervisors. In fact, it’s policy in our department that government employees supervise the contractors directly.
That is either a blatant lie or a massively illegal operation.
I had to explain what I had been working on for the past year and why I deserved a raise
Don't spend that 2.6% all in one place now!
I quit a few months after I saw the numbers
You quit your six figure job as a senior software engineer because you "saw the numbers" and were offended at the waste?
When I confronted management about what I considered fraud and demanded solutions, the answer was we will not pay for training
Didn't the author say that the government paid for training?
According to the indictment, he didn't manage to overwhelm JSTOR until he hooked up a Mac too.
The next day, October 9, 2010, Swartz used both the “ghost laptop” and the “ghost macbook” to systematically and rapidly access and download an extraordinary volume of articles from JSTOR. The pace was so fast that it brought down some of JSTOR’s computer servers.
Perhaps the Acer didn't have gigabit ethernet like the Mac does. That comes in handy when you break into the wiring closet and connect directly to the switch.
That is perfectly valid C++ code. If most of your colleagues are C programmers, then it would be in your best interests to code closer to what the rest of your team would expect to see.
It is even harder than that. Resolution isn't important for science - spectral bands are. Landsat ETM+ has 8 bands, while SPOT has 4. The MODIS instrument alone on NASA's Terra and Aqua spacecraft has 36 bands. ASTER has 15 bands just for infrared.
I wonder if we could work more closely with Europe and Japan so together we'd get all the data we need without having to foot the whole bill.
We already do that. One of the key instruments on NASA's Terra satellite is Japan's ASTER. Terra is on year 11 of a 5 year mission. But Japan's funding in this area is much smaller than that of the US.
Does anyone know anything about how the US network integrates with it's foreign equivelants?
There are no foreign equivalents. There is collaboration, but US funding and capabilities dwarf those of other countries. Foreign governments do not fund much space activities other than subsidizing industry satellites, but those aren't very useful for science.
Additionally, their object-oriented structure allows for more clear code organization, making 100,000+ line programs possible to understand (look at rails, for example; hundreds of thousands of lines of code, but readable for someone without great knowledge of the codebase).
Per has been object-oriented for how many years now?
But you have one valid point. No one has ever complained that 100,000+ line Perl programs are impossible to understand.
It seems clear that SanDisk has a valid patent on slow, flaky USB flash drives. I have purchased both SanDisk products and the products of the companies they are suing. I can tell that the same, crappy technology was used in all of them. My Lexar Flash Lightening is fast, U3-free, and still going strong after more than a month. Clearly Lexar isn't using SanDisk technology.
We are running many high speed financial message processing applications. A crash for any reason (including a leak) would be very costly for us.
Leaks usually don't result in crashes unless they are severe or very long-lived. A more robust solution might be multiple, redundant, somewhat shorter-lived processes.
Lastly, I strongly dislike anything from Rational. I find them overpriced unreliable bloatware (YMMV). Purify used to be good some time ago, but those days are long gone.
IBM/Rational has bought up quite a bit of software over the years. Not all "Rational" software is equal. It is true that Purify is not going to help with an application such as yours that uses a memory pool. But for really big applications, with many developers (not all of whom are equal), Purify is just wonderful. It can, and will, track down leaks and other serious problems. When used with PureCoverage, it can give you confidence that your application doesn't, and won't ever, leak memory or crash
Coward,
I agree with most of that. Memory leaks, however, are an avoidable problem. As others have already stated, you don't have to use new/delete and pass pointers and ownership unless you don't know any better.
When I interviewed there, I only saw one native-born software engineer. Now, I'm certainly not xenophobic. I didn't mind that they all had accents. I was just disappointed that they thought that "stl::" was a valid C++ namespace. I didn't get the job, of course. Was it because I didn't have an accent or was it because I don't write linked-lists in C anymore? I'll never know.
The easy joke here is to say they would probably use VSS. But, that isn't likely. It is more likely some defense contractor would be hired to implement a version control system fit for the government. That would be something to see indeed. I am strongly in favor of the idea just for the entertainment factor.
That would be way too much data to store. ISPs are complaining about IP addresses. There is no way they would want video feeds. As long as the camera (with mic) is there it should be sufficient to discourage most crime. For the others, random sampling will eventually catch them. I am sure there will be some system to identify people you think might need additional monitoring.
Say, does your PC have a web cam? Are you sure it isn't already monitoring you? The least we can do is get better upload data rates out of this.
For all of their high-flown education initiatives (like the "$100 laptop"), they seem bent on providing information consumption devices, not tools that teach creative thinking and technological mastery.
Why are newsgroups such as this allowed to exist in the first place?
Good point! Let's get rid of them. But then, they could just use alt.slashdot.flamebait instead. Better be safe and shutdown all of usenet.
The hacker was putting trojans in a newsgroup that existed for the sole purpose of distributing child pornography, which;
That's what Mr. Anonymous said. He didn't say he wasn't distributing the virus through other channels as well (see below)
The arrested went to on his own volition;
Well, his computer did. And we know his computer was hacked via back-door trojan by someone who trolls said newsgroup.
The FBI didn't contact 1069 and have him hack others' computers; he contacted the FBI with the information;
And we know for sure that 1069 isn't an off-duty (on-duty?) FBI agent with a Turkish accent.
The FBI investigated the arrested person and discovered that not only was he in possession of child pornograph but;
And we have already establish his computer had been hacked into.
He was involved in the manufacture of it by taking photos of himself with his victim, aged 4-6;
Where did you get this? I didn't see that in TFA.
Let him rot in jail.
That'll save those kids.
Here is an alternate scenario. A clever pedophile grabs a copy of Sub7 and sends it out into spam. They phone home and he uses those hacked computers to download porn - anonymously and for free. Poor doctor notices his computer is running very slowly and installs anti-virus, which removes Sub7. Bereft of his porn, there is now an angry, but clever pedophile. He anonymously calls the feds and gets the doctor arrested. While the feds are pursing one presumably innocent man, they don't have time to track down 1069.
All we have is a known virus-writer who claims to be doing a community service. Is writing viruses now OK? What if future pedophiles get wise and stop using those groups? Maybe I should seed alt.slashdot.flamebait with my own virus. Eventually I'll find something worth reporting. That would be OK, right?
730K for $170 million? For the government, that is nothing. It is actually a pretty good price for that amount of code. It also seems like it was a pretty quick project too. And hundreds of SPRs a week before release? Not bad!
From my government contracting experience, none of this sounds that bad. Hopefully there is much more to the story that they aren't talking about. But from the examples they are using, SAIC's performance sounds distinctly "above average." It may have been a disaster, but TFA does not give us enough accurate information make that judgement.
I do not want to be lumped into "IT". I am a programmer, not IT.
Programmers do real work. IT is, more often than not, the adversary.
IT: We are taking away administrator rights. Programmer: What?
IT: If you download and install any software from the Internet, you will be fired. Programmer: What?
IT: If you need anything installed, we will install it for you. Programmer: I need X, Y, and Z installed.
IT: That software is not on the approved list Programmer: What software is on the approved list?
IT: This list is empty. Programmer: Can I at least have an editor?
IT: Windows comes with Notepad.exe. Use that.
I have a new shareware program I plan to release soon and I'm trying to decide if I should stay with shareware or go with donationware. TFA is a very important plot point for me. My primary motivation for considering donationware is the hassle of dealing with registration codes. I've done everything I can think of to make the code easier to enter. It just seems that people are unable to perform a simple copy and paste.
So, this article tells me that donationware really isn't a good idea. It also says that if I do want to stay with shareware, I will need more motivation than just a nag screen. If I am going to get hassled by people who can't enter a registration code, I might as well get paid for the effort.
Slashdot Mirror
The government buys all the software, hardware, and pays for any training we need to bring our skills up to date to effectively do our jobs
The government buys software licenses and hardware, but those remain the property of the government. The government does not pay for any training. That is why they pay so much - they expect us to be already trained.
government employees serve as supervisors. In fact, it’s policy in our department that government employees supervise the contractors directly.
That is either a blatant lie or a massively illegal operation.
I had to explain what I had been working on for the past year and why I deserved a raise
Don't spend that 2.6% all in one place now!
I quit a few months after I saw the numbers
You quit your six figure job as a senior software engineer because you "saw the numbers" and were offended at the waste?
When I confronted management about what I considered fraud and demanded solutions, the answer was we will not pay for training
Didn't the author say that the government paid for training?
Sorry Slashdotters, this is a work of fiction.
Just below the picture in question, the sizes of the two devices are clearly stated. I didn't even need Google Translate to see that.
The next day, October 9, 2010, Swartz used both the “ghost laptop” and the “ghost macbook” to systematically and rapidly access and download an extraordinary volume of articles from JSTOR. The pace was so fast that it brought down some of JSTOR’s computer servers.
Perhaps the Acer didn't have gigabit ethernet like the Mac does. That comes in handy when you break into the wiring closet and connect directly to the switch.
That is perfectly valid C++ code. If most of your colleagues are C programmers, then it would be in your best interests to code closer to what the rest of your team would expect to see.
You can run both nedit and sshfs on your Mac
It is even harder than that. Resolution isn't important for science - spectral bands are. Landsat ETM+ has 8 bands, while SPOT has 4. The MODIS instrument alone on NASA's Terra and Aqua spacecraft has 36 bands. ASTER has 15 bands just for infrared.
I wonder if we could work more closely with Europe and Japan so together we'd get all the data we need without having to foot the whole bill.
We already do that. One of the key instruments on NASA's Terra satellite is Japan's ASTER. Terra is on year 11 of a 5 year mission. But Japan's funding in this area is much smaller than that of the US.
Does anyone know anything about how the US network integrates with it's foreign equivelants?
There are no foreign equivalents. There is collaboration, but US funding and capabilities dwarf those of other countries. Foreign governments do not fund much space activities other than subsidizing industry satellites, but those aren't very useful for science.
Additionally, their object-oriented structure allows for more clear code organization, making 100,000+ line programs possible to understand (look at rails, for example; hundreds of thousands of lines of code, but readable for someone without great knowledge of the codebase).
Per has been object-oriented for how many years now? But you have one valid point. No one has ever complained that 100,000+ line Perl programs are impossible to understand.
How about another thread where twice as many people are reporting no problems with 10.4.11?
It seems clear that SanDisk has a valid patent on slow, flaky USB flash drives. I have purchased both SanDisk products and the products of the companies they are suing. I can tell that the same, crappy technology was used in all of them. My Lexar Flash Lightening is fast, U3-free, and still going strong after more than a month. Clearly Lexar isn't using SanDisk technology.
Leaks usually don't result in crashes unless they are severe or very long-lived. A more robust solution might be multiple, redundant, somewhat shorter-lived processes.
Lastly, I strongly dislike anything from Rational. I find them overpriced unreliable bloatware (YMMV). Purify used to be good some time ago, but those days are long gone.
IBM/Rational has bought up quite a bit of software over the years. Not all "Rational" software is equal. It is true that Purify is not going to help with an application such as yours that uses a memory pool. But for really big applications, with many developers (not all of whom are equal), Purify is just wonderful. It can, and will, track down leaks and other serious problems. When used with PureCoverage, it can give you confidence that your application doesn't, and won't ever, leak memory or crash
Coward, I agree with most of that. Memory leaks, however, are an avoidable problem. As others have already stated, you don't have to use new/delete and pass pointers and ownership unless you don't know any better.
You've got that right
When I interviewed there, I only saw one native-born software engineer. Now, I'm certainly not xenophobic. I didn't mind that they all had accents. I was just disappointed that they thought that "stl::" was a valid C++ namespace. I didn't get the job, of course. Was it because I didn't have an accent or was it because I don't write linked-lists in C anymore? I'll never know.
The easy joke here is to say they would probably use VSS. But, that isn't likely. It is more likely some defense contractor would be hired to implement a version control system fit for the government. That would be something to see indeed. I am strongly in favor of the idea just for the entertainment factor.
Say, does your PC have a web cam? Are you sure it isn't already monitoring you? The least we can do is get better upload data rates out of this.
Here in the US, we call that "contempt of court" and they throw you in jail until you hand over the key. Problem solved.
Bingo!
PS: I passed on my moderator points to post this!
281 comments and no link to the Captain Bananas article? Now that's obscene. http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29083
Good point! Let's get rid of them. But then, they could just use alt.slashdot.flamebait instead. Better be safe and shutdown all of usenet.
That's what Mr. Anonymous said. He didn't say he wasn't distributing the virus through other channels as well (see below)
Well, his computer did. And we know his computer was hacked via back-door trojan by someone who trolls said newsgroup.
And we know for sure that 1069 isn't an off-duty (on-duty?) FBI agent with a Turkish accent.
And we have already establish his computer had been hacked into.
Where did you get this? I didn't see that in TFA.
That'll save those kids.
Here is an alternate scenario. A clever pedophile grabs a copy of Sub7 and sends it out into spam. They phone home and he uses those hacked computers to download porn - anonymously and for free. Poor doctor notices his computer is running very slowly and installs anti-virus, which removes Sub7. Bereft of his porn, there is now an angry, but clever pedophile. He anonymously calls the feds and gets the doctor arrested. While the feds are pursing one presumably innocent man, they don't have time to track down 1069.
All we have is a known virus-writer who claims to be doing a community service. Is writing viruses now OK? What if future pedophiles get wise and stop using those groups? Maybe I should seed alt.slashdot.flamebait with my own virus. Eventually I'll find something worth reporting. That would be OK, right?
730K for $170 million? For the government, that is nothing. It is actually a pretty good price for that amount of code. It also seems like it was a pretty quick project too. And hundreds of SPRs a week before release? Not bad!
From my government contracting experience, none of this sounds that bad. Hopefully there is much more to the story that they aren't talking about. But from the examples they are using, SAIC's performance sounds distinctly "above average." It may have been a disaster, but TFA does not give us enough accurate information make that judgement.
I do not want to be lumped into "IT". I am a programmer, not IT.
Programmers do real work. IT is, more often than not, the adversary.
IT: We are taking away administrator rights.
Programmer: What?
IT: If you download and install any software from the Internet, you will be fired.
Programmer: What?
IT: If you need anything installed, we will install it for you.
Programmer: I need X, Y, and Z installed.
IT: That software is not on the approved list
Programmer: What software is on the approved list?
IT: This list is empty.
Programmer: Can I at least have an editor?
IT: Windows comes with Notepad.exe. Use that.
The above is a true story.
TFA takes up, maybe, 10% of the space on that page. The rest is all ads. I had to click the print button just to read it. That's just too much.
I have a new shareware program I plan to release soon and I'm trying to decide if I should stay with shareware or go with donationware. TFA is a very important plot point for me. My primary motivation for considering donationware is the hassle of dealing with registration codes. I've done everything I can think of to make the code easier to enter. It just seems that people are unable to perform a simple copy and paste.
So, this article tells me that donationware really isn't a good idea. It also says that if I do want to stay with shareware, I will need more motivation than just a nag screen. If I am going to get hassled by people who can't enter a registration code, I might as well get paid for the effort.