Let me first say that my wife is a high school history teacher, so I have some sort of an insight into the teachers' mindset here.
Granted, having to grade ~100 essays is not the most pleasant way to spend a weekend. My wife hates doing it, much the same way I hate having to spend the same time working on my code. But she does it because *that's her job*! A teacher that uses some software to grade the essays because they are too busy to do the work themselves is (in my opinion) not a good teacher. Period.
Kids need to write a lot. The only way to become comfortable with expressing oneself with the written word is by practice. Many of the essays my wife gives these students are not onerous to grade because she isn't looking for 5 "magic words" that indicate they've read the textbook (or, more to the point, copied the textbook). Instead, she is looking for well constructed essays that come from having to organize one's thoughts and write them in a concise format. This can be analyzed with a cursory reading. However, when the point of the assignment is to have done careful research, that's what the bulk of the grade is based on, and what she spends the most time evaluating.
And most importantly, she makes sure the amount of time she spends grading the work is proportional to the importance of the assignment. If the assignment is a position paper worth 10 points, she isn't going to spend 15 minutes reading each paper. She'll check to make sure the paper is cogent and meets the guidelines she's laid out. But if the assignment is a 10 page analytical paper worth 200 points, she's going to spend a lot of time on each one, because it's going to be an important part of the kids' final grade.
The kids aren't stupid. If they realize that the teacher isn't taking their work seriously, then the kids won't put serious effort into their work.
Think of it like this - if your boss didn't take the time to give you a fair review of your work, would you be willing to put forth extra effort for your boss? It's not a matter of "modern pedagogical theory," it's about human interaction, pure and simple.
And "grading software" is just a symptom of the breakdown in interpersonal interactions endemic to our society
OK, first off, it seems to me that the author of the Jane's article is treating the Internet to be "a big complicated thing," without examination, neither giving any true insight into its capabilities nor its drawbacks.
To lead in, I will repeat a truism: If a computer is connected to the internet, it is not secure. End of story. Someone *will* find a hole to sneak in, eventually. The question then becomes one of speed. Who can find the security hole or exploit first, the defenders or the attackers?
A cyberterrorist would probably sacrifice large portions of his/her anatomy to have the talent to crack the systems of a rival agency. In addition to the intelligence this might gain them, there would be a psychological effect, both for their own organization and against the victim's organization.
To defend against these attacks, governmental antiterrorist and intelligence agencies can centralize to some extent, providing data choke points to make such efforts more difficult. Underground terrorist organizations do not have this luxury. By centralizing geographically, they create a risk of discovery by the authorities.
The author of the article semi-correctly states "... particularly in the age of the Internet when terrorist operatives can be dispersed geographically yet are able to communicate with each other by using their own secured communications networks." I do, however, question the phrase "secured communications network." If the author means a truly separate network, then he is not referring to the Internet, per se. Such infrastructure would require a significant resources on the part of the terrorist agency or agencies. If, however, the author was referring to virtual private networks, or encrypted communication on the Internet, this is something different. Due to the nature of TCP/IP, even encrypted packets can be traced from source to destination. The existence of semi-anonymous mail services, such as Hotmail, make this effort somewhat more difficult, since the number of steps to be traced increases. For example, the tracing of a person via packet sniffing would require the discovery of the mail service's IP address, the IP addresses from which the mail service received the messages, and the phone number from which the computer assigned the aforementioned IP addresses connected.
This can be summarized in the following way. The existence of the Internet and cheap, easily obtainable encryption software gives any terrorist group superior C3 capabilities. This advantage is offset by the nature of the Internet. A counter-terrorist organization, simply by knowing of the existence of the terrorist group and its use of the internet, can monitor the activity level and rough geographic limits to the groups activity. The factor that determines the effectiveness of either side in this case is the understanding the strengths and limitations of the utility of the Internet.
The previous analysis covers organization vs. organization on the Internet. What, then, of opportunities for a terrorist organization to "bring down or attack vital systems," as Jane's editor phrased it.
The answer to that question, it seems to me, lies in the definition of "vital systems." The most common answer to that questions nowadays includes the power distribution system and the financial networks that drive our economy. I would be surprised if, given the attention this has been getting, these systems haven't been "hardened" with nice firewalls, VPNs. etc. Such measures will defeat all but the most sophisticated intruders, assuming they are installed and configured correctly (this is not trivial!) and that the systems are not vulnerable to "on-site" tampering.
If you consider vital systems to include the federal government's email servers, you are talking about a different set of problems. There is probably nothing that can currently be done to protect these systems from "anti-productivity" attacks, such as mail-flooding or virus dissemination, short of measures that would also limit their utility. This can be done if the loss of utility due to the attacks is higher than the loss of utility from defensive measures.
My intuition of the problem is that the issue of the vulnerability of vital systems is limited to denial of internet resources. This may not be a trivial issue in a few years, given our current propensity to "dot-com" everything that moves. The ability of cyberterrorism to disrupt "real world" services at this point in time seems limited, but could grow if the dependence upon the shared resources of the Internet grows without a commensurate increase in awareness of security issues.
One could almost write a book on this. I'm surprised someone hasn't. The issue isn't one on which you can just throw a report together. I would suggest that Jane's consider contracting a group of network security professionals to consult with on this article. By consulting three or four exceptionally qualified people, a more comprehensive study could be done that would be more useful than a broad brush type of article.
I think modularity is going to be essential to future code development for several reasons.
First, to paraphrase Daniel's post, modularity allows developers to work asynchronously in a geographically dispersed environment. This is vital not only to traditional open source projects, but also to projects (open & closed source!) in the "business" world. As telecommuting and "remote officing" become the standard, rather than the exception, the efficiency of having a codebase broken down in more easily managed chunks becomes more desirable
Second, having modular software components makes design of modular *hardware* components easier. This becomes vital as we "farm out" tasks to specialised devices that the CPU previously handled. ASICs (application specific integrated circuits) are typically much cheaper than CPUs; using them to take load off the processor (assuming the software works properly!) makes a lot of sense.
Third, (and not so well thought out) I think that code complexity is not a linear function of the size of the code base. My feeling is that a modular code of N lines (N large) with a well defined interface is not nearly as complex as a non-modular program with N lines. I think someone academic has talked about this at some point but I don't really remember the reference. In any case, this is the other side of the equation from my first point. Modularity makes the time spent by developers more efficiently used both from the point of view of the actual mechanics of development AND the point of view of the "learning curve" associated with maintaining, modifying and extending the code.
It can be argued that it is in a company's best interest to maintain a high degree of openness when the Internet is involved. Alienating "netizens" can be a lot more dangerous than alienating a traditional customer base, due to the high degree of empowerment the average netizen has. The fellows at the Cluetrain Manifesto (www.cluetrain.com) figured this out. Their basic premise is that the concept of "company" in the wired world is largely a artificial barrier between consumers and employees (who also happen to be consumers), and that savvy companies will leverage the natural desire for communciation between these groups.
This is why many companies have decided that selling individual user details, rather than aggregate data, is not prudent. The companies that don't "get it" will slowly, but surely, disappear.
In regards to the "clear and enforced policies" about return of merchandise, etc., I would direct you to today's Wall Street Journal editorial page. There is an interesting article there about Land's End's refund/return policy, and how Germany is forcing them to not advertise it to keep German companies from having to compete with it. This is a classic example of why government regulation of commerce, net- or traditional, should be handled as laissez-faire as possible!
And Thurow?
Thurow has also recently predicted a coming recession in the economy of the U.S., arguing basically that recession was "built-in" to the economy.
Perhaps what is "built-in" is Thurow's narcissism - I haven't heard much from him in recent years...
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Granted, having to grade ~100 essays is not the most pleasant way to spend a weekend. My wife hates doing it, much the same way I hate having to spend the same time working on my code. But she does it because *that's her job*! A teacher that uses some software to grade the essays because they are too busy to do the work themselves is (in my opinion) not a good teacher. Period.
Kids need to write a lot. The only way to become comfortable with expressing oneself with the written word is by practice. Many of the essays my wife gives these students are not onerous to grade because she isn't looking for 5 "magic words" that indicate they've read the textbook (or, more to the point, copied the textbook). Instead, she is looking for well constructed essays that come from having to organize one's thoughts and write them in a concise format. This can be analyzed with a cursory reading. However, when the point of the assignment is to have done careful research, that's what the bulk of the grade is based on, and what she spends the most time evaluating.
And most importantly, she makes sure the amount of time she spends grading the work is proportional to the importance of the assignment. If the assignment is a position paper worth 10 points, she isn't going to spend 15 minutes reading each paper. She'll check to make sure the paper is cogent and meets the guidelines she's laid out. But if the assignment is a 10 page analytical paper worth 200 points, she's going to spend a lot of time on each one, because it's going to be an important part of the kids' final grade.
The kids aren't stupid. If they realize that the teacher isn't taking their work seriously, then the kids won't put serious effort into their work.
Think of it like this - if your boss didn't take the time to give you a fair review of your work, would you be willing to put forth extra effort for your boss? It's not a matter of "modern pedagogical theory," it's about human interaction, pure and simple.
And "grading software" is just a symptom of the breakdown in interpersonal interactions endemic to our society
To lead in, I will repeat a truism: If a computer is connected to the internet, it is not secure. End of story. Someone *will* find a hole to sneak in, eventually. The question then becomes one of speed. Who can find the security hole or exploit first, the defenders or the attackers?
A cyberterrorist would probably sacrifice large portions of his/her anatomy to have the talent to crack the systems of a rival agency. In addition to the intelligence this might gain them, there would be a psychological effect, both for their own organization and against the victim's organization.
To defend against these attacks, governmental antiterrorist and intelligence agencies can centralize to some extent, providing data choke points to make such efforts more difficult. Underground terrorist organizations do not have this luxury. By centralizing geographically, they create a risk of discovery by the authorities.
The author of the article semi-correctly states "... particularly in the age of the Internet when terrorist operatives can be dispersed geographically yet are able to communicate with each other by using their own secured communications networks." I do, however, question the phrase "secured communications network." If the author means a truly separate network, then he is not referring to the Internet, per se. Such infrastructure would require a significant resources on the part of the terrorist agency or agencies. If, however, the author was referring to virtual private networks, or encrypted communication on the Internet, this is something different. Due to the nature of TCP/IP, even encrypted packets can be traced from source to destination. The existence of semi-anonymous mail services, such as Hotmail, make this effort somewhat more difficult, since the number of steps to be traced increases. For example, the tracing of a person via packet sniffing would require the discovery of the mail service's IP address, the IP addresses from which the mail service received the messages, and the phone number from which the computer assigned the aforementioned IP addresses connected.
This can be summarized in the following way. The existence of the Internet and cheap, easily obtainable encryption software gives any terrorist group superior C3 capabilities. This advantage is offset by the nature of the Internet. A counter-terrorist organization, simply by knowing of the existence of the terrorist group and its use of the internet, can monitor the activity level and rough geographic limits to the groups activity. The factor that determines the effectiveness of either side in this case is the understanding the strengths and limitations of the utility of the Internet.
The previous analysis covers organization vs. organization on the Internet. What, then, of opportunities for a terrorist organization to "bring down or attack vital systems," as Jane's editor phrased it.
The answer to that question, it seems to me, lies in the definition of "vital systems." The most common answer to that questions nowadays includes the power distribution system and the financial networks that drive our economy. I would be surprised if, given the attention this has been getting, these systems haven't been "hardened" with nice firewalls, VPNs. etc. Such measures will defeat all but the most sophisticated intruders, assuming they are installed and configured correctly (this is not trivial!) and that the systems are not vulnerable to "on-site" tampering.
If you consider vital systems to include the federal government's email servers, you are talking about a different set of problems. There is probably nothing that can currently be done to protect these systems from "anti-productivity" attacks, such as mail-flooding or virus dissemination, short of measures that would also limit their utility. This can be done if the loss of utility due to the attacks is higher than the loss of utility from defensive measures.
My intuition of the problem is that the issue of the vulnerability of vital systems is limited to denial of internet resources. This may not be a trivial issue in a few years, given our current propensity to "dot-com" everything that moves. The ability of cyberterrorism to disrupt "real world" services at this point in time seems limited, but could grow if the dependence upon the shared resources of the Internet grows without a commensurate increase in awareness of security issues.
One could almost write a book on this. I'm surprised someone hasn't. The issue isn't one on which you can just throw a report together. I would suggest that Jane's consider contracting a group of network security professionals to consult with on this article. By consulting three or four exceptionally qualified people, a more comprehensive study could be done that would be more useful than a broad brush type of article.
First, to paraphrase Daniel's post, modularity allows developers to work asynchronously in a geographically dispersed environment. This is vital not only to traditional open source projects, but also to projects (open & closed source!) in the "business" world. As telecommuting and "remote officing" become the standard, rather than the exception, the efficiency of having a codebase broken down in more easily managed chunks becomes more desirable
Second, having modular software components makes design of modular *hardware* components easier. This becomes vital as we "farm out" tasks to specialised devices that the CPU previously handled. ASICs (application specific integrated circuits) are typically much cheaper than CPUs; using them to take load off the processor (assuming the software works properly!) makes a lot of sense.
Third, (and not so well thought out) I think that code complexity is not a linear function of the size of the code base. My feeling is that a modular code of N lines (N large) with a well defined interface is not nearly as complex as a non-modular program with N lines. I think someone academic has talked about this at some point but I don't really remember the reference. In any case, this is the other side of the equation from my first point. Modularity makes the time spent by developers more efficiently used both from the point of view of the actual mechanics of development AND the point of view of the "learning curve" associated with maintaining, modifying and extending the code.
This is why many companies have decided that selling individual user details, rather than aggregate data, is not prudent. The companies that don't "get it" will slowly, but surely, disappear.
In regards to the "clear and enforced policies" about return of merchandise, etc., I would direct you to today's Wall Street Journal editorial page. There is an interesting article there about Land's End's refund/return policy, and how Germany is forcing them to not advertise it to keep German companies from having to compete with it. This is a classic example of why government regulation of commerce, net- or traditional, should be handled as laissez-faire as possible!
And Thurow?
Thurow has also recently predicted a coming recession in the economy of the U.S., arguing basically that recession was "built-in" to the economy.
Perhaps what is "built-in" is Thurow's narcissism - I haven't heard much from him in recent years...