A group of psychologists has found that their collective gambling—with real money—predicted the outcome of attempts at replicating experimental results better than their own expert guesses.
That might work for something like psych, where few results are reproducible - or even where few "experiments" are re-tried. However, I doubt that the real world reflects the wishes of some profs with a penchant for a flutter and too much free time.
Now if they could apply quantum mechanics to the problem, instead of gambling, there might be some interesting results.
The guy who said this seems to be disconnected from the "maker" world. Amateurs make stuff in the full knowledge that it would be cheaper and faster to buy a ready-made pruduct that would (probably) have more features, be more reliable, DEFINITELY have a better quality enclosure and in all likelyhood be smaller, too.
But that's not the point. Amateurs make stuff: electronics and software because they like it. They know that there are alternatives that are better but there's no fun in that. There's no satisfaction in the knowledge that something is your own work, possibly your own design and in the true spirit of ameteur-ism, completely undocumented and an utter mystery to anyone else who would ever try to work out what it does, or how it does it.
With respect to the remote weapons operators, using drones and unmanned vehicles to "fight" a war doesn't count as warfare. The reason is that the country persuing this route has no skin in the fight. It is not risking its own people (while putting the population: military and civilian, of the target state at risk).
The other aspect of proper warfare is occupation. Without that, an attack is merely destruction of either people or property. It might achieve a certain, intended, goal - especially for a domestic audience baying for blood. But as a long term, inter-country conflict, without an occupation to produce long-term changes in the mindset of the "enemy" population, it fails.
The kids don't know much English and speak a local language called Odiya. There aren't any technical publications/resources in Odiya. Poor internet connectivity. No computer experts on the school staff.
Before you go anywhere near trying to find a technical solution, it is imperative you write a single sentence to say what direct, measurable, benefit will arise from this venture. Preferably a benefit to the children taking part, rather than imparting a nice warm feeling of having "helped" to the educators.
If that turns out to be a stumper, you really need to stand back and think of a different question - one that you CAN answer, before talking about languages, OS's, games and all that technical gibberish.
The most important (or widespread) languages that nobody ever hears about are assembly and microcode. They are everywhere and are almost completely invisible. I would suggest that PIC assembly code is probably the one that we could least do without, today.
He will not be able to get to a level where his technical expertise matches the coders. However he should (already) be able to listen and understand the business-orientated aspects of the issues put before him. It is probably worth his while becoming conversant with the basic workings, limitations and abilities of the platforms the startup is using, but any more would not be a good use of his time. You might as well require the coders talk accountancy.
For example, he should probably be aware, that no: you can't keep expanding the power of a computer indefinitely. Nor is a cloud solution always the best, cheapest and most reliable. He should probably be told that creating software is (still) basically a hit and miss exercise and that a great programmer does not make a great GUI creator or a great technical designer.
However, he should be brought up to speed on the need for designing in security and that testing, while a large cost in terms of developer time, is an even larger cost if not done. Give him a copy of The Mythical Man Month which should be right up his street.
The release claims a long list of changes: new versions of this and that.
But nowhere on the release page does it make any mention of what that means to the end user. If I run this, or upgrade from release 1, what will I be able to do, that I couldn't do before?. I don't care about features and versions or rolling this-that-or-the-other. What I need to know is why should I spent time and effort getting it, installing it and using it?
Since the announcement makes no mention, it would not be unreasonable to assume there aren't any actual, end-user, benefits. Or they'd be headlining the piece, right?
If you want an array of seismic sensors, build one. If you want an inter-continental data network, build that. Don't try to hack the one to do the job of the other.
The problem is not about the phone getting hacked, it's about what exposure that gives you. If you don't have any information on the phone that leads back to the owner, their finances, their location or that gateways into a network that does - then who cares? There would be nothing usable that a hacker (and from what I have read hackers are like dragons: those people who want to see them will do so, they may even exist - but are probably an incorrect explanation for something more mundane, and are useful for scaring gullible people and children, but with sensible precautions and the right medication they simply don't exist for ordinary people doing everyday things)... that a hacker... would want or could use.
The report tells us that most developers make less than $500 / month. This is clearly not a sustainable income (except in a few countries) so we must suppose that these developers are not in it as a way of making a living. They must have some other means of earning a crust if they aren't still living with one or more parents.
This puts the majority of developers into the "hobbyist" category. They like to write "code" and if someone pays them a small amount in addition to the fun they get then that's a nice bonus. But that's all it is.
But from the users' perspective, it also means there is no security in the product they use (or buy - even if it's 0.99 ), since these hobby-programmers could easily lose interest, get girlfriends, choose not to fix bugs or provide any level of support that doesn't line up with their hacking / coding motivation. So while these apps cost less than it does to get a kid to mow your lawn, it would appear that they should be considered "disposable".
This time it WILL work! The mantra of the developer.
So is it that difficult to translate the same ethos into business: this time I will make it big! Whether there is any cold, hard, lying involved or whether the person touting for a VC payout truly believes what they are saying - that doesn't matter. A VC would have to be a particular kind of fool to be dragged in by the enthusiasm or "irrational exuberance" (to use a term that described the financial crash) and to simply hand out megabucks because one particular presenter waved their arms about more than another. You'd kinda hope the VC people would know the market, assess the chances of success, weigh the probability of failure and then - cautiously - extend a small seed-corn payment to see if there was any chance of success.
But since the VCs are often playing with other people's money, they probably don't care - and are as guilty of promoting their on successes and masking their own failures as the businesses they finance are.
Rocketry developed rapidly during WW2, after which everyone "borrowed" the German developments - and their scientists. If there is a parallel with quantum computing, it would seem likely that no real progress will be made until some sort of conflict (either in the real world or cyberspace) breaks out and some dramatic development takes place. After which the losers will "give" their technological developments to the winners. The winners will then play around with it, make it just about usable (if still incredibly inefficient) and call that "good enough" for the next 50 years.
It will only be after that when some commercial outfits start to get their hands on QC, that we'll start to see some innovation, progress and actual low-cost applications.
Or maybe it'll be like planes: 60 years from wooden biplanes to the Jumbo Jet and a few more to Concorde. Then it'll grind to a halt.
Using the same password everywhere and/or spreading your security thin across a thousand different web services
Let's face it. Those "thousands of different web services" don't amount to shit. There are probably only a handful that contain any *valuable* information about the user: such as your online banking, online tax returns, the very few sites that a person of sound mind would trust with storing their credit card details (e.g, PayPal, Amazon).
But apart from that, most web sites, like forums - and even Facebook (you don't really give them actual personal information - do you? ) contain nothing of any value. So why not use the same 6 character password that you've been using for 20 or 30 years? Even if someone does crack it, nobody here is important enough for anything of any consequence to happen.
shrinking mass spectrometry technology used in traditional lab settings into a device small enough to fit in the palm of your hand
Surely this device has nothing whatsoever to do with a mass-spec? It doesn't appear to use any of the techniques that a mass spectrometer does (even if it produces results to the non-technical consumer that appear similar) and to use the term sends a misleading message.
Maybe I should buy a whistle and re-badge it as a "sonic screwdriver"?
Why would the lights go out or the servers go down?
Because admins insist on doing upgrades over the weekends. Upgrades they aren't competent to do, or that they haven't properly planned for, or that they haven't allowed enough time for, or that don't work the way they should.
It's not common, but it does happen that ATMs are down, occasionally.
Never make the mistake of thinking of "Europe" as a single entity. It isn't.
While it's true that in London the buses no longer take cash (you'll need an Oyster card) that's not the case everywhere - not even everywhere in England. But in many parts of most European countries (yes, Europe isn't even a single country) cash is very much king and it's wrong to assume that a credit card will be universally accepted. Many restaurants outside of cities in lots of countries won't take plastic. So it's wise to have enough cash to cover a transaction, even if you do expect to pay with a card.
And no doubt in a few years we'll be hearing about a "revolutionary" new type of rocket that can not only take people and cargo to LEO, but can glide back down again and after an extreme amount of maintenance, be partially re-used.
homeworking jobs? Is it better to demand it from the get-go
I doubt there's a company in the land that would recruit an unknown, straight off the street, give them a salaried post and let them work 100% from home.
For a start, there's no guarantee you wouldn't just goof around for the 6 months or so it would take for them to realise you're a lazy freeloader and then go through the process of firing you (sacking people in the UK and the rest of Europe is a long-drawn out process: employees have rights). Second, they'd have to install a load of kit in your house which would take time and you'd also have little or no "induction" into the company, your boss, the goals and culture.
So on the occasions where I have worked for places that do have home working: either as perk for trusted employees or as a cost-saving measure for the one that seriously messed up its estate management, it's not something you go "demanding" and definitely not from the start - or "get-go" in your language.
Finally, home working has many, many disadvantages. Apart from being isolated, you become an invisible part of the team - and therefore disposable. You never interact with your work-mates and never get to hear "grapevine" stuff, like where the promotion opportunities are. Neither does your boss "see" you, so you never bond and can easily get passed over for pay rises or interesting projects. Some people also find they instead of working, they spend all day with their face in the fridge and pile on the pounds.
high-quality research much more expensive to do, so there is less of it
Good. Fewer polls means fewer people trying to intrude on my time. I don't know why pollsters think they have a right to rudely cold-call people and take up their time - without giving anything back. But it does seem that more and more people are becoming resistant to their interruptions.
If fewer polls means less punditry and less time talking about inconsequential "what-ifs" on TV in the seemingly years long run up to elections, then that can only be a good thing for viewers and all us ordinary people. Sadly the demise of political polls seems to have been taken over by equally pointless and even more trivial time spent debating what political whimsy happens to be trending on Twitter. I guess the political programmes will always find ways to fill up their hours with mindless banter.
In a modern data center you would be able to shutdown the servers not used for a longer period and restart them automatically when the load rises.
Many businesses that rely on servers (i.e. all of them) will be running hot standby systems - ones that can automatically take load if there's a hardware failure or software problem.
One major (world-ranked) international company I consulted at was legally required to have 100% failover capacity - so it was inevitable that they would automatically have 50% of their production servers performing no functions - except for the twice a year when they were "flipped" just to make sure that each set of servers worked as expected.
Although the source paper does specify physical "zombie" servers, if you need failover VMs, the same basis is applied there, too.
So if any one country arbitrarily gives itself the right to globally police the internet, decide what should be allowed, prosecute (according to it's national laws) content it deems unlawful, and punish people - even people in other countries - for things that happen on it, then every other country cannot be denied.
Whatever format you dump it in, it's unlikely that your successor will bother reading through it. Either they will be skilled up in whatever it is you were doing and will spend the first few weeks slagging off your name for not leaving any coherent documentation (a not unreasonable option: look! all he left was a pile of emails! It'll take months to make head or tail of all that crap!), or the company will recruit someone who hasn't a clue and will re-invent the basic functions. Or (more likely) your company will dump the whole thing and realise that there are other ways of doing what you did. Ways that are both supportable and easy to recruit people to do.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you wear the same clothes every day that were in your license photo?
My clothes aren't religious symbols - an outward expression of my beliefs. Your argument fails.
Plus, you never know when you're going to need to strain some spaghetti.
A group of psychologists has found that their collective gambling—with real money—predicted the outcome of attempts at replicating experimental results better than their own expert guesses.
That might work for something like psych, where few results are reproducible - or even where few "experiments" are re-tried. However, I doubt that the real world reflects the wishes of some profs with a penchant for a flutter and too much free time.
Now if they could apply quantum mechanics to the problem, instead of gambling, there might be some interesting results.
neither country would conduct or knowingly support the theft of intellectual property.
So both countries have developed networks of patsies and the necessary levels of plausible deniability.
No-one actually thinks they will stop, do they?
The guy who said this seems to be disconnected from the "maker" world. Amateurs make stuff in the full knowledge that it would be cheaper and faster to buy a ready-made pruduct that would (probably) have more features, be more reliable, DEFINITELY have a better quality enclosure and in all likelyhood be smaller, too.
But that's not the point. Amateurs make stuff: electronics and software because they like it. They know that there are alternatives that are better but there's no fun in that. There's no satisfaction in the knowledge that something is your own work, possibly your own design and in the true spirit of ameteur-ism, completely undocumented and an utter mystery to anyone else who would ever try to work out what it does, or how it does it.
The other aspect of proper warfare is occupation. Without that, an attack is merely destruction of either people or property. It might achieve a certain, intended, goal - especially for a domestic audience baying for blood. But as a long term, inter-country conflict, without an occupation to produce long-term changes in the mindset of the "enemy" population, it fails.
The kids don't know much English and speak a local language called Odiya. There aren't any technical publications/resources in Odiya. Poor internet connectivity. No computer experts on the school staff.
Before you go anywhere near trying to find a technical solution, it is imperative you write a single sentence to say what direct, measurable, benefit will arise from this venture. Preferably a benefit to the children taking part, rather than imparting a nice warm feeling of having "helped" to the educators.
If that turns out to be a stumper, you really need to stand back and think of a different question - one that you CAN answer, before talking about languages, OS's, games and all that technical gibberish.
The most important (or widespread) languages that nobody ever hears about are assembly and microcode. They are everywhere and are almost completely invisible. I would suggest that PIC assembly code is probably the one that we could least do without, today.
He will not be able to get to a level where his technical expertise matches the coders. However he should (already) be able to listen and understand the business-orientated aspects of the issues put before him. It is probably worth his while becoming conversant with the basic workings, limitations and abilities of the platforms the startup is using, but any more would not be a good use of his time. You might as well require the coders talk accountancy.
For example, he should probably be aware, that no: you can't keep expanding the power of a computer indefinitely. Nor is a cloud solution always the best, cheapest and most reliable. He should probably be told that creating software is (still) basically a hit and miss exercise and that a great programmer does not make a great GUI creator or a great technical designer.
However, he should be brought up to speed on the need for designing in security and that testing, while a large cost in terms of developer time, is an even larger cost if not done. Give him a copy of The Mythical Man Month which should be right up his street.
The release claims a long list of changes: new versions of this and that.
But nowhere on the release page does it make any mention of what that means to the end user. If I run this, or upgrade from release 1, what will I be able to do, that I couldn't do before?. I don't care about features and versions or rolling this-that-or-the-other. What I need to know is why should I spent time and effort getting it, installing it and using it?
Since the announcement makes no mention, it would not be unreasonable to assume there aren't any actual, end-user, benefits. Or they'd be headlining the piece, right?
If you want an array of seismic sensors, build one. If you want an inter-continental data network, build that. Don't try to hack the one to do the job of the other.
Sensible advice.
The problem is not about the phone getting hacked, it's about what exposure that gives you. If you don't have any information on the phone that leads back to the owner, their finances, their location or that gateways into a network that does - then who cares? There would be nothing usable that a hacker (and from what I have read hackers are like dragons: those people who want to see them will do so, they may even exist - but are probably an incorrect explanation for something more mundane, and are useful for scaring gullible people and children, but with sensible precautions and the right medication they simply don't exist for ordinary people doing everyday things) ... that a hacker ... would want or could use.
The report tells us that most developers make less than $500 / month. This is clearly not a sustainable income (except in a few countries) so we must suppose that these developers are not in it as a way of making a living. They must have some other means of earning a crust if they aren't still living with one or more parents.
This puts the majority of developers into the "hobbyist" category. They like to write "code" and if someone pays them a small amount in addition to the fun they get then that's a nice bonus. But that's all it is.
But from the users' perspective, it also means there is no security in the product they use (or buy - even if it's 0.99 ), since these hobby-programmers could easily lose interest, get girlfriends, choose not to fix bugs or provide any level of support that doesn't line up with their hacking / coding motivation. So while these apps cost less than it does to get a kid to mow your lawn, it would appear that they should be considered "disposable".
This time it WILL work! The mantra of the developer.
So is it that difficult to translate the same ethos into business: this time I will make it big! Whether there is any cold, hard, lying involved or whether the person touting for a VC payout truly believes what they are saying - that doesn't matter. A VC would have to be a particular kind of fool to be dragged in by the enthusiasm or "irrational exuberance" (to use a term that described the financial crash) and to simply hand out megabucks because one particular presenter waved their arms about more than another. You'd kinda hope the VC people would know the market, assess the chances of success, weigh the probability of failure and then - cautiously - extend a small seed-corn payment to see if there was any chance of success.
But since the VCs are often playing with other people's money, they probably don't care - and are as guilty of promoting their on successes and masking their own failures as the businesses they finance are.
It will only be after that when some commercial outfits start to get their hands on QC, that we'll start to see some innovation, progress and actual low-cost applications.
Or maybe it'll be like planes: 60 years from wooden biplanes to the Jumbo Jet and a few more to Concorde. Then it'll grind to a halt.
Using the same password everywhere and/or spreading your security thin across a thousand different web services
Let's face it. Those "thousands of different web services" don't amount to shit. There are probably only a handful that contain any *valuable* information about the user: such as your online banking, online tax returns, the very few sites that a person of sound mind would trust with storing their credit card details (e.g, PayPal, Amazon). But apart from that, most web sites, like forums - and even Facebook (you don't really give them actual personal information - do you? ) contain nothing of any value. So why not use the same 6 character password that you've been using for 20 or 30 years? Even if someone does crack it, nobody here is important enough for anything of any consequence to happen.
shrinking mass spectrometry technology used in traditional lab settings into a device small enough to fit in the palm of your hand
Surely this device has nothing whatsoever to do with a mass-spec? It doesn't appear to use any of the techniques that a mass spectrometer does (even if it produces results to the non-technical consumer that appear similar) and to use the term sends a misleading message.
Maybe I should buy a whistle and re-badge it as a "sonic screwdriver"?
Why would the lights go out or the servers go down?
Because admins insist on doing upgrades over the weekends. Upgrades they aren't competent to do, or that they haven't properly planned for, or that they haven't allowed enough time for, or that don't work the way they should.
It's not common, but it does happen that ATMs are down, occasionally.
While it's true that in London the buses no longer take cash (you'll need an Oyster card) that's not the case everywhere - not even everywhere in England. But in many parts of most European countries (yes, Europe isn't even a single country) cash is very much king and it's wrong to assume that a credit card will be universally accepted. Many restaurants outside of cities in lots of countries won't take plastic. So it's wise to have enough cash to cover a transaction, even if you do expect to pay with a card.
And no doubt in a few years we'll be hearing about a "revolutionary" new type of rocket that can not only take people and cargo to LEO, but can glide back down again and after an extreme amount of maintenance, be partially re-used.
homeworking jobs? Is it better to demand it from the get-go
I doubt there's a company in the land that would recruit an unknown, straight off the street, give them a salaried post and let them work 100% from home.
For a start, there's no guarantee you wouldn't just goof around for the 6 months or so it would take for them to realise you're a lazy freeloader and then go through the process of firing you (sacking people in the UK and the rest of Europe is a long-drawn out process: employees have rights). Second, they'd have to install a load of kit in your house which would take time and you'd also have little or no "induction" into the company, your boss, the goals and culture.
So on the occasions where I have worked for places that do have home working: either as perk for trusted employees or as a cost-saving measure for the one that seriously messed up its estate management, it's not something you go "demanding" and definitely not from the start - or "get-go" in your language.
Finally, home working has many, many disadvantages. Apart from being isolated, you become an invisible part of the team - and therefore disposable. You never interact with your work-mates and never get to hear "grapevine" stuff, like where the promotion opportunities are. Neither does your boss "see" you, so you never bond and can easily get passed over for pay rises or interesting projects. Some people also find they instead of working, they spend all day with their face in the fridge and pile on the pounds.
high-quality research much more expensive to do, so there is less of it
Good. Fewer polls means fewer people trying to intrude on my time. I don't know why pollsters think they have a right to rudely cold-call people and take up their time - without giving anything back. But it does seem that more and more people are becoming resistant to their interruptions.
If fewer polls means less punditry and less time talking about inconsequential "what-ifs" on TV in the seemingly years long run up to elections, then that can only be a good thing for viewers and all us ordinary people. Sadly the demise of political polls seems to have been taken over by equally pointless and even more trivial time spent debating what political whimsy happens to be trending on Twitter. I guess the political programmes will always find ways to fill up their hours with mindless banter.
In a modern data center you would be able to shutdown the servers not used for a longer period and restart them automatically when the load rises.
Many businesses that rely on servers (i.e. all of them) will be running hot standby systems - ones that can automatically take load if there's a hardware failure or software problem.
One major (world-ranked) international company I consulted at was legally required to have 100% failover capacity - so it was inevitable that they would automatically have 50% of their production servers performing no functions - except for the twice a year when they were "flipped" just to make sure that each set of servers worked as expected.
Although the source paper does specify physical "zombie" servers, if you need failover VMs, the same basis is applied there, too.
So if any one country arbitrarily gives itself the right to globally police the internet, decide what should be allowed, prosecute (according to it's national laws) content it deems unlawful, and punish people - even people in other countries - for things that happen on it, then every other country cannot be denied.
Whatever format you dump it in, it's unlikely that your successor will bother reading through it. Either they will be skilled up in whatever it is you were doing and will spend the first few weeks slagging off your name for not leaving any coherent documentation (a not unreasonable option: look! all he left was a pile of emails! It'll take months to make head or tail of all that crap!), or the company will recruit someone who hasn't a clue and will re-invent the basic functions. Or (more likely) your company will dump the whole thing and realise that there are other ways of doing what you did. Ways that are both supportable and easy to recruit people to do.