Pussy Riot update

[Dr. Vincent Quin, Ph.D.]

------------------------------------------------
Three members of the Russian band Pussy Riot have spent the
last six months in prison for staging a protest against
Russian leader Vladimir Putin inside an Orthodox cathedral.
On Friday, the group was awarded the LennonOno Grant for
Peace award by the artist and activist Yoko Ono. On
Thursday, Pussy Riot also received the public backing of
Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is
currently on her first visit to the United States in more
than three decades. We’re joined by two guests who have
traveled to the United States on Pussy Riot’s behalf: Pyotr
Verzilov, husband of jailed Pussy Riot member Nadia
Tolokonnikova, and Alisa Obraztsova, lawyer’s assistant
with the band’s legal defense team. [includes rush
transcript]
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.democracynow.org/

(i haven't seen anything on CNN about pussy riot...wonder why?)
;-)

[︰ones]

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 16:38:13 -0700, in alt.war.vietnam "Dr. Vincent
Quin, Ph.D." <dr...@coldine.edu> wrote:

>i haven't seen anything on CNN about pussy riot...wonder why?

Inquiring minds *demand* to know!

Get beck to us on it as soon as you find out, OK?

[dino]

In article <mf6dnex0G_wfc_3N...@supernews.com>, Dr. Vincent Quin,
Ph.D. says...

I did. They even said it. Pussy. It was a lady. I think, Erin? I saw it
Sunday night.

[Andrew Swallow]

The Russians sent 3 of the protesting women from the group called Pussy
Riot to jail for 2 years. Other people are protesting to get them out.
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19671361>

Andrew Swallow

[Dr. Vincent Quin, Ph.D.]

snicker snicker tee hee
;-)

[Jonathan Howland]

On 09/25/2012 11:02 AM, Dr. Vincent Quin, Ph.D. wrote:
> dino wrote:
>
>> In article <mf6dnex0G_wfc_3N...@supernews.com>, Dr.
>> Vincent Quin,
>> Ph.D. says...
>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------
>>> Three members of the Russian band Pussy Riot have spent the
>>> last six months in prison for staging a protest against
>>> Russian leader Vladimir Putin inside an Orthodox cathedral.
>>> On Friday, the group was awarded the LennonOno Grant for
>>> Peace award by the artist and activist Yoko Ono. On
>>> Thursday, Pussy Riot also received the public backing of
>>> Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is
>>> currently on her first visit to the United States in more

>>> than three decades. We�re joined by two guests who have
>>> traveled to the United States on Pussy Riot�s behalf: Pyotr

>>> Verzilov, husband of jailed Pussy Riot member Nadia

>>> Tolokonnikova, and Alisa Obraztsova, lawyer�s assistant
>>> with the band�s legal defense team. [includes rush

>>> transcript]
>>> -------------------------------------------------
>>> http://www.democracynow.org/
>>>
>>> (i haven't seen anything on CNN about pussy riot...wonder why?)
>>> ;-)
>>
>>
>> I did. They even said it. Pussy. It was a lady. I think, Erin? I
>> saw it
>> Sunday night.
>
> snicker snicker tee hee
> ;-)

This is all so offensive I think we should burn somebody's embassy.

jch

[︰ones]

On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 10:59:55 +0100, in alt.war.vietnam Andrew Swallow
<am.sw...@btinternet.com> wrote:

>The Russians sent 3 of the protesting women from the group called Pussy
>Riot to jail for 2 years. Other people are protesting to get them out.
><http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19671361>
>
>Andrew Swallow

Thanks... that takes a load off my mind.

I was afraid that it was a conspiracy.

[Mark Test]

"ĄJones" wrote in message
news:ccn468p1d3itopmll...@4ax.com...

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Pussy riot...I just love saying it :)

[Eunometic]

On Sep 25, 1:36 am, "Dr. Vincent Quin, Ph.D." <d...@coldine.edu>
wrote:

> ------------------------------------------------
> Three members of the Russian band Pussy Riot have spent the
> last six months in prison for staging a protest against
> Russian leader Vladimir Putin inside an Orthodox cathedral.
> On Friday, the group was awarded the LennonOno Grant for
> Peace award by the artist and activist Yoko Ono. On
> Thursday, Pussy Riot also received the public backing of
> Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is
> currently on her first visit to the United States in more
> than three decades. We’re joined by two guests who have
> traveled to the United States on Pussy Riot’s behalf: Pyotr

> Verzilov, husband of jailed Pusy Riot member Nadia

> Tolokonnikova, and Alisa Obraztsova, lawyer’s assistant
> with the band’s legal defense team. [includes rush
> transcript]

> -------------------------------------------------http://www.democracynow.org/

>
> (i haven't seen anything on CNN about pussy riot...wonder why?)
> ;-)

The girls were idiots for doing what the did in an Orthodox Church
which is sacred and deeply revered by Russians. Next time maybe
they'll do their publicity stunt outside?

[Bill]

On Thu, 4 Oct 2012 16:21:20 -0700 (PDT), Eunometic
<euno...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:


>The girls were idiots for doing what the did in an Orthodox Church
>which is sacred and deeply revered by Russians. Next time maybe
>they'll do their publicity stunt outside?

You're joking right?

When they get out they're going to earn a fortune touring the West.

[Uncle Steve]

Perhaps. However there are others who are not quite so fortunate.
Anna Politkovskaya will not be doing any touring anytime soon.


Regards,

Uncle Steve

--
"Assholes always advertise"
-- Pat Cadigan

[Bill]

On Thu, 04 Oct 2012 20:18:32 -0400, Uncle Steve <stev...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 12:54:26AM +0100, Bill wrote:
>> On Thu, 4 Oct 2012 16:21:20 -0700 (PDT), Eunometic
>> <euno...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>>
>>
>> >The girls were idiots for doing what the did in an Orthodox Church
>> >which is sacred and deeply revered by Russians. Next time maybe
>> >they'll do their publicity stunt outside?
>>
>> You're joking right?
>>
>> When they get out they're going to earn a fortune touring the West.
>
>Perhaps. However there are others who are not quite so fortunate.
>Anna Politkovskaya will not be doing any touring anytime soon.

Politkovskaya was a highly educated journalist who knew exactly what
risks she was taking.

[Uncle Steve]

So, political murder is a "risk" which journalists in modern times
should "evaluate" before writing about "politics". Got it in one. I
suppose she ought to have learned from the lesson from Zahra Kazemi,
or even from some of her journalist countrymen who've also been
murdered in Russia in recent years. But the news is not all bad; it
seems that journalists in Mexico have recognized that they should
consult the warlords before publishing news in an irresponsible
fashion. And of course, American journalists have been playing it
safe for decades.

What point are you trying to make about contemporary journalism in
supposedly civilized societies?

[Andrew Swallow]

They will have to learn to dance in step first.

Andrew Swallow

[Keith W]

Of course 25 years ago sinsulting the church would not only have
been allowed but encouraged and as a good KGB officer
Vladimir Putin would have heartily approved of their actions.

That stalwart defender of the faith was at that time a convinced atheist
or so he said.

Keith

[Andrew Chaplin]

Andrew Swallow <am.sw...@btinternet.com> wrote in
news:HsOdnbtdYZcQ2PPN...@bt.com:

Oh, come on, Andrew! They're a punk act.
--
Andrew Chaplin
SIT MIHI GLADIUS SICUT SANCTO MARTINO
(If you're going to e-mail me, you'll have to get "yourfinger." out.)

[tutall]

On Oct 5, 1:03 am, "Keith W" <keithnospoofsple...@demon.co.uk> wrote:

> Of course 25 years ago sinsulting the church would not only have
> been allowed but encouraged and as a good KGB officer
> Vladimir Putin would have heartily approved of their actions.
>
> That stalwart defender of the faith was at that time a convinced atheist
> or so he said.

In one.

The Church has been currying favor with the State wanting to re-
instate the tried and true "Church and State" model. And currently
that means the church supports the state almost in lock-step and acts,
in Soviet terminology, as an organ of the State. So the State
reciprocated the favor in this case.

[Bill]

On Thu, 04 Oct 2012 20:45:43 -0400, Uncle Steve <stev...@gmail.com>

wrote:

>On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 01:28:25AM +0100, Bill wrote:
>> On Thu, 04 Oct 2012 20:18:32 -0400, Uncle Steve <stev...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 12:54:26AM +0100, Bill wrote:
>> >> On Thu, 4 Oct 2012 16:21:20 -0700 (PDT), Eunometic
>> >> <euno...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> >The girls were idiots for doing what the did in an Orthodox Church
>> >> >which is sacred and deeply revered by Russians. Next time maybe
>> >> >they'll do their publicity stunt outside?
>> >>
>> >> You're joking right?
>> >>
>> >> When they get out they're going to earn a fortune touring the West.
>> >
>> >Perhaps. However there are others who are not quite so fortunate.
>> >Anna Politkovskaya will not be doing any touring anytime soon.
>>
>>
>> Politkovskaya was a highly educated journalist who knew exactly what
>> risks she was taking.
>
>So, political murder is a "risk" which journalists in modern times
>should "evaluate" before writing about "politics".

Damn right it is.

In Pakistan they shoot them like rabbits...

>What point are you trying to make about contemporary journalism in
>supposedly civilized societies?

That it's a dangerous business.

[Uncle Steve]

On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 05:42:39PM +0100, Bill wrote:
> On Thu, 04 Oct 2012 20:45:43 -0400, Uncle Steve <stev...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 01:28:25AM +0100, Bill wrote:
> >> On Thu, 04 Oct 2012 20:18:32 -0400, Uncle Steve <stev...@gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> >On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 12:54:26AM +0100, Bill wrote:
> >> >> On Thu, 4 Oct 2012 16:21:20 -0700 (PDT), Eunometic
> >> >> <euno...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> >The girls were idiots for doing what the did in an Orthodox Church
> >> >> >which is sacred and deeply revered by Russians. Next time maybe
> >> >> >they'll do their publicity stunt outside?
> >> >>
> >> >> You're joking right?
> >> >>
> >> >> When they get out they're going to earn a fortune touring the West.
> >> >
> >> >Perhaps. However there are others who are not quite so fortunate.
> >> >Anna Politkovskaya will not be doing any touring anytime soon.
> >>
> >>
> >> Politkovskaya was a highly educated journalist who knew exactly what
> >> risks she was taking.
> >
> >So, political murder is a "risk" which journalists in modern times
> >should "evaluate" before writing about "politics".
>
> Damn right it is.
>
> In Pakistan they shoot them like rabbits...

At least in Canada, the only journalist executed within the last
twenty years was shot by a guy who thought the reporter was encoding
personal messages into his radio program.

Oh, there was that former newspaper(?) editor from BC who became
mentally ill, then homeless and was later beaten to death near Moss
Park in Toronto by a bunch of idiots out drinking. But such
incidents must be rather rare and arise from prosaic causes having
nothing at all to do with domestic political criticism.

Otherwise, Canadian journalists are careful to be critical of major
political problems that are invariably occurring somewhere "over there",
overseas, and so you would not expect the local gestapo to be
murdering them in elevators or running them down in the streets with
city buses.

> >What point are you trying to make about contemporary journalism in
> >supposedly civilized societies?
>
> That it's a dangerous business.

Perhaps you can tell me why Computer Programmer is a dangerous
occupation, Bill. I've got twenty+ years of experience that says it
is.


Regards,

Uncle Steve

--
My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both.
They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.
- Frederick the Great, c. 1770

[Jim Wilkins]

"Uncle Steve" <stev...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:0dfaf84feb...@gmail.com...

>
> Perhaps you can tell me why Computer Programmer is a dangerous
> occupation, Bill. I've got twenty+ years of experience that says it
> is.

> Uncle Steve

In a Massachusetts traffic survey they were found to be the most
inattentive, distracted rush-hour drivers.

[Bill]

On Fri, 05 Oct 2012 13:06:38 -0400, Uncle Steve <stev...@gmail.com>

wrote:

>On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 05:42:39PM +0100, Bill wrote:
>> On Thu, 04 Oct 2012 20:45:43 -0400, Uncle Steve <stev...@gmail.com>

>> >What point are you trying to make about contemporary journalism in
>> >supposedly civilized societies?
>>
>> That it's a dangerous business.
>
>Perhaps you can tell me why Computer Programmer is a dangerous
>occupation, Bill. I've got twenty+ years of experience that says it
>is.

If you're still programming computers over the age of about 30 you
really shouldn't be

It's a young man's game.

[Eunometic]

On Oct 5, 1:54 am, Bill <blackuse...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Oct 2012 16:21:20 -0700 (PDT), Eunometic
>

> <eunome...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> >The girls were idiots for doing what the did in an Orthodox Church
> >which is sacred and deeply revered by Russians.  Next time maybe
> >they'll do their publicity stunt outside?
>
> You're joking right?
>
> When they get out they're going to earn a fortune touring the West.

Must admit I think their band name is effective. Immagine what would
have happened if they tried a similar stunt in say the grande mosque
in mecca.

[Uncle Steve]

Interesting, but not what I was thinking of. I wonder if there is a
correlation to language specialty. As in, are C++ programmers more
likely to have accidents than Lisp or Perl programmers sort of thing,
or might it have something to do with the platform?

[Uncle Steve]

Not answering the question again, but I shouldn't be surprised. It
would be a signal for a national day of celebration if you ever
stuck to the topic for once without evasions or circumlocutions.

> It's a young man's game.

Nice myth, Bill, but nothing beats experience. Programming shops on
average may prefer youthful code-monkeys writing fractional
application bits because they're cheaper and easier to herd, but
complex applications involving, say, math and simulation work requires
serious expertise. And parallel programming is still a black art,
even with modern message-passing APIs and parallelized languages.

Nobody would ever suggest that physics or chemistry or medicine is a
young man's game, and yet computer science has more in common with
those fields than it does with Physical Education, which really is a
young man's game. I suspect you fear complexity that you do not
understand, and while you probably know as much about physics as you
do about computer science, physics is not as threatening as the
magical machine you are sitting in front of right now, and which you use to
compose your messages to Usenet on a daily basis. I don't doubt you
would prefer to make computer programmers easier to control and
survey, which would imply middling non-experts producing software that
is (relatively) easy to comprehend, analyze and subvert. The fewer
rock-star programmers, the better, eh?

You might argue that the languages change with something like a decade
frequency, obsoleting skill sets and the like, however algorithms
don't change all that much, and programming is all about the
algorithms. Certainly COBOL programmers are almost completely
obsolete, but it could be said they chose the wrong language. I
expect Java to follow the same path, just as Perl seems to be losing
out to Ruby and Python.

I'm so happy to have the opportunity to crush one of your trolls so
easily, but I would prefer if you'd stop your futile attacks on my
expertise and self-esteem and stick to addressing the content you have
so far avoided.

[Dr. Vincent Quin, Ph.D.]

Was, in your humble opinion, their civil disobedience effective?
Where, in your humble opinion, would their civil disobedience have been more effective?
Is, in your humble opinion, religion always off limits for open expressions of contempt?
If you realized you are an "establishment" nutjob, would you admit it?
;-)

[Keith W]

As a 60 year old software engineer I beg to differ.

Keith

[Keith W]

I wonder about that because the insurance companies in the UK
who are pretty clued up about risks associated with jobs do
not rate programmers as high risk

The last published list of high risk professions for car insurance I saw
was

1) mobile disco owner
2) professional footballer (apprentice)
3) diplomatic staff
4) footballer
5) nightclub owner
6) referee
7) professional footballer (Football League)
8) trader/dealer
9) student at school
10) college student living with parents

The least risky profession was airline pilot.

Keith

[Jim Wilkins]

"Keith W" <keithnosp...@demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:enIbs.91155$hg4....@fx04.am4...

I've seen suggestions that rush-hour traffic is too slow to cause
fatalities, so the casualty rate is much lower than the accident rate.
OTOH traffic is light and speeds are high late at night when the bars
close. I quit night school due to too many incidents at 11PM, like
awakening when a tire rolled off the pavement. I couldn't drink coffee
to stay awake and then get enough sleep for work the next day.

[Bill]

They wouldn't have got on the plane...

But I imagine if they did it in Westminster Abby people would have
asked when they'd be invited to give the sermon...

Some religious leaders need to grow up...

[Jim Wilkins]

"Uncle Steve" <stev...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:a7a9e7b57c...@gmail.com...

> On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 01:57:20PM -0400, Jim Wilkins wrote:

>> In a Massachusetts traffic survey they were found to be the most
>> inattentive, distracted rush-hour drivers.
>
> Interesting, but not what I was thinking of. I wonder if there is a
> correlation to language specialty. As in, are C++ programmers more
> likely to have accidents than Lisp or Perl programmers sort of
> thing,
> or might it have something to do with the platform?

> Uncle Steve

I doubt the radio announcer knew there is more than one language.

When I was programming a lot the best answers to puzzling problems
came during the morning shower and I tried to remember them while
driving in. It was LSI-11 Pascal with extensions to control automated
test equipment, if that means anything.

Perhaps the solution is for more programmers to skip showers. They
don't usually need to worry about human contact anyway.

[Bill]

On Fri, 05 Oct 2012 15:37:29 -0400, Uncle Steve <stev...@gmail.com>

wrote:

>On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 07:01:47PM +0100, Bill wrote:
>> On Fri, 05 Oct 2012 13:06:38 -0400, Uncle Steve <stev...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 05:42:39PM +0100, Bill wrote:
>> >> On Thu, 04 Oct 2012 20:45:43 -0400, Uncle Steve <stev...@gmail.com>
>>
>>
>> >> >What point are you trying to make about contemporary journalism in
>> >> >supposedly civilized societies?
>> >>
>> >> That it's a dangerous business.
>> >
>> >Perhaps you can tell me why Computer Programmer is a dangerous
>> >occupation, Bill. I've got twenty+ years of experience that says it
>> >is.
>>
>> If you're still programming computers over the age of about 30 you
>> really shouldn't be
>
>Not answering the question again, but I shouldn't be surprised. It
>would be a signal for a national day of celebration if you ever
>stuck to the topic for once without evasions or circumlocutions.

It's the truth.

I was stillw riting programs at the age of 32, but Iw as well past it
by then.

>
>> It's a young man's game.
>
>Nice myth, Bill, but nothing beats experience. Programming shops on
>average may prefer youthful code-monkeys writing fractional
>application bits because they're cheaper and easier to herd, but
>complex applications involving, say, math and simulation work requires
>serious expertise. And parallel programming is still a black art,
>even with modern message-passing APIs and parallelized languages.

Bollocks.

>Nobody would ever suggest that physics or chemistry or medicine is a
>young man's game,

Actually they invariably do.

Almost every physics and maths graduate I know says that they've done
no original work after the age of 30.

I suspect you fear complexity that you do not
>understand, and while you probably know as much about physics as you
>do about computer science, physics is not as threatening as the
>magical machine you are sitting in front of right now, and which you use to
>compose your messages to Usenet on a daily basis. I don't doubt you
>would prefer to make computer programmers easier to control and
>survey, which would imply middling non-experts producing software that
>is (relatively) easy to comprehend, analyze and subvert. The fewer
>rock-star programmers, the better, eh?

Computer programmers are easy to control.

You just pay them.

[Bill]

As a programmer who shifted to being a communications engineer, who
then made enough money to retire at 51, you're entitled to your
opinion...

[Bill]

On Fri, 5 Oct 2012 18:48:23 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
<murat...@gmail.com> wrote:

It was LSI-11 Pascal with extensions to control automated
>test equipment, if that means anything.
>

Dear God, that takes me back to about 1985...

[Jim Wilkins]

"Uncle Steve" <stev...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:a0bce8d365...@gmail.com...

>
> Nobody would ever suggest that physics or chemistry or medicine is a

> young man's game, and yet computer science ...

Not so, theoretical physicists peak in their early 20's.

Our chemistry profs advised us that as we aged we would become less
likely to investigate anomalies which could lead to breakthroughs.

Look what this inventive young man did with soap and wax:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40924/40924-h/40924-h.htm

jsw

[Paul J. Adam]

On 05/10/2012 23:48, Bill wrote:
> Almost every physics and maths graduate I know says that they've done
> no original work after the age of 30.

Must be different for engineers, I'm doing more new stuff now (at 42)
than I ever did one or two decades ago, and the (admittedly younger)
physicists on the team are breaking their own new ground.

It might be the field I'm in, mind you, you ride unfolding events or you
get binned these days...


--
He thinks too much, such men are dangerous.

[Andrew Swallow]

On 05/10/2012 22:34, Keith W wrote:
> Jim Wilkins wrote:
{snip}

>>
>> In a Massachusetts traffic survey they were found to be the most
>> inattentive, distracted rush-hour drivers.
>
> I wonder about that because the insurance companies in the UK
> who are pretty clued up about risks associated with jobs do
> not rate programmers as high risk
>
> The last published list of high risk professions for car insurance I saw
> was
>
> 1) mobile disco owner
> 2) professional footballer (apprentice)
> 3) diplomatic staff
> 4) footballer
> 5) nightclub owner
> 6) referee
> 7) professional footballer (Football League)
> 8) trader/dealer
> 9) student at school
> 10) college student living with parents
>
> The least risky profession was airline pilot.
>
> Keith
>
>

I get most of the list but what is the problem with diplomatic staff?

Andrew Swallow

[Jim Wilkins]

"Paul J. Adam" <paul....@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:k4nqpc$ljr$1...@dont-email.me...

Their work is intensively complex and intuitive. I think I got better
with age at extensively complex and formulaic problems like Windows
administration.
jsw

[Jim Wilkins]

"Andrew Swallow" <am.sw...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:-M2dne9W9toM6PLN...@bt.com...

Rockets, mortars, IEDs, the IRA.

Maybe they are rated like the probability of being killed by a meteor.
Every so many million years a big one causes a mass extinction.

[Bill]

Lots of them aren't actually diplomats?

That James Bond don't half crash a lot of cars...

[Bill]

Me too, well, up to half a decade ago anyway.

But engineers these days tend to be doing the construction stuff
rather than breaking absolutely new ground and in that sort of thing
experience counts.

[Uncle Steve]

On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 06:48:23PM -0400, Jim Wilkins wrote:
> "Uncle Steve" <stev...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:a7a9e7b57c...@gmail.com...
> > On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 01:57:20PM -0400, Jim Wilkins wrote:
>
> >> In a Massachusetts traffic survey they were found to be the most
> >> inattentive, distracted rush-hour drivers.
> >
> > Interesting, but not what I was thinking of. I wonder if there is a
> > correlation to language specialty. As in, are C++ programmers more
> > likely to have accidents than Lisp or Perl programmers sort of
> > thing,
> > or might it have something to do with the platform?
> > Uncle Steve
>
> I doubt the radio announcer knew there is more than one language.

> When I was programming a lot the best answers to puzzling problems
> came during the morning shower and I tried to remember them while
> driving in. It was LSI-11 Pascal with extensions to control automated
> test equipment, if that means anything.

Pascal with proprietary hooks probably isn't all that outre, but it
would take a suit to mandate that kind of language. But don't try to
tell me that programmers think about programming problems while
driving to the point of being distracted. Perhaps on a long, straight
road, but not in city traffic.

> Perhaps the solution is for more programmers to skip showers. They
> don't usually need to worry about human contact anyway.

The solution?

[Uncle Steve]

Very scientific, you should get a medal and a promotion for that kind
of thinking.

> I suspect you fear complexity that you do not
> >understand, and while you probably know as much about physics as you
> >do about computer science, physics is not as threatening as the
> >magical machine you are sitting in front of right now, and which you use to
> >compose your messages to Usenet on a daily basis. I don't doubt you
> >would prefer to make computer programmers easier to control and
> >survey, which would imply middling non-experts producing software that
> >is (relatively) easy to comprehend, analyze and subvert. The fewer
> >rock-star programmers, the better, eh?
>
> Computer programmers are easy to control.
>
> You just pay them.

I would assert that the currency you pay them affects the quality of
their output. Which is a dead end argument as far as you are
concerned. Coward.

[Uncle Steve]

Institutional organization might, just have some influence on the
roles of scientists involved in R&D. And one should not rule out
sociological factors. Isolating the independent variables is
necessary before sweeping conclusions may be drawn, however people
like Bill would never let methodology interfere with their beliefs.

[Jim Wilkins]

"Uncle Steve" <stev...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:d3b222bb19...@gmail.com...
> ...
> ...But don't try to

> tell me that programmers think about programming problems while
> driving to the point of being distracted. Perhaps on a long,
> straight
> road, but not in city traffic.

> Uncle Steve

The Boston MA commuter highways ARE long, nearly straight multilane
highways, with unexpected stoppages.

[Uncle Steve]

So all that's needed is to correlate that fact with the accident
statistics.

[Kerryn Offord]

The effect of being immune from prosecution ?

[Bill]

On Fri, 05 Oct 2012 20:49:33 -0400, Uncle Steve <stev...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>> Computer programmers are easy to control.
>>
>> You just pay them.
>
>I would assert that the currency you pay them affects the quality of
>their output. Which is a dead end argument as far as you are
>concerned. Coward.

My experience is that they prefer a challenging problem to loads of
money.

But you obviously prefer the cash to a challenge.

Do you work for a bank?

[Andrew Chaplin]

Andrew Swallow <am.sw...@btinternet.com> wrote in

news:-M2dne9W9toM6PLN...@bt.com:

> On 05/10/2012 22:34, Keith W wrote:
>
>> I wonder about that because the insurance companies in the UK
>> who are pretty clued up about risks associated with jobs do
>> not rate programmers as high risk
>>
>> The last published list of high risk professions for car insurance I
>> saw was
>>
>> 1) mobile disco owner
>> 2) professional footballer (apprentice)
>> 3) diplomatic staff
>> 4) footballer
>> 5) nightclub owner
>> 6) referee
>> 7) professional footballer (Football League)
>> 8) trader/dealer
>> 9) student at school
>> 10) college student living with parents
>>
>> The least risky profession was airline pilot.
>

> I get most of the list but what is the problem with diplomatic staff?

They are not necessarily sufficiently acquainted with local driving
culture and conditions. Around here, it is always a good idea to give
vehicles with CD plates a wide berth, especially when the snow flies.
--
Andrew Chaplin
SIT MIHI GLADIUS SICUT SANCTO MARTINO
(If you're going to e-mail me, you'll have to get "yourfinger." out.)

[Uncle Steve]

You just make it up as you go along. What's the matter, Bill? Is
your psychological warfare program too big to fail, or is it something
more stupid than that. You're a lot like a filthy creationist;
reality doesn't support the propositions you want to believe, so you
go about dictating reality by fiat, so your beliefs remain consistent
-- at least to a hypothetical outside observer. You and that war
criminal, Fred, are exactly alike.

There are other possibilities, too. Such as you need stolen loot to
finance off-the-books operations, such as paying bribes, hiring goons,
etc. Your fellow union buddies are counting on a never-ending supply
of billable hours, and the only way you can assure it is to
manufacture enemies who need to be surveilled, questioned, prodded,
etc. You require test subjects for your weapons and methods in a
never-ending research program, so you must groom "test subjects" who
may be subjected to your research programs and the associated
products, tested, revised, tested, proved, upgraded, tested.... etc.
ad nausea. Your own insecurities require the exploitation of
inferior persons for the purposes of cheap self-aggrandizement;
civilians provide a large pool of suitable candidates from which your
pack of "wolves" can peel away one person here, one person there,
without anyone making too much of a fuss since the frequency and
pattern of attacks seems "random" and therefore does not invite
statistical correlation. Your parents turned you all into a bunch of
stooges with zero imagination, and consequently you cannot think of
any other way of life that does not involve the uncivilized barbarity
drilled into your skulls as youth.

I could go on. I think I'm going to go with "too big to fail" with a
healthy seasoning of "all of the above".

[smharding]

I think Windows "administration" is one of those NP complete problems
in computer science isn't it?

The "Traveling Salesman", "bin packing", "Windows administration".

It's been a while since I got my Comp Sci degree, so I may be off.


SMH

[Bill]

On Sat, 06 Oct 2012 16:40:10 -0400, Uncle Steve <stev...@gmail.com>

Yep.

Droid for a bank...

Probably locked into eternal peonage for his mortgage...

[smharding]

Keith W wrote:
> Bill wrote:
>

>>On Fri, 05 Oct 2012 13:06:38 -0400, Uncle Steve <stev...@gmail.com>
>>wrote:
>>
>>

>>>On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 05:42:39PM +0100, Bill wrote:
>>>
>>>>On Thu, 04 Oct 2012 20:45:43 -0400, Uncle Steve
>>>><stev...@gmail.com>
>>
>>
>>>>>What point are you trying to make about contemporary journalism in
>>>>>supposedly civilized societies?
>>>>
>>>>That it's a dangerous business.
>>>
>>>Perhaps you can tell me why Computer Programmer is a dangerous
>>>occupation, Bill. I've got twenty+ years of experience that says it
>>>is.
>>
>>If you're still programming computers over the age of about 30 you
>>really shouldn't be
>>

>>It's a young man's game.
>
>

> As a 60 year old software engineer I beg to differ.

Well, I'm a 60 year old S/W engineer too, and I have to say, the
kids we get as interns in our company are so much more in tune
with the latest stuff (as they obviously would be).

"Stuff" of course is applications and their use. Seems to me
that the "science" isn't a whole lot different from what I'm very
familiar with, but the tools to do it are just so much more capable.

Computer Science is a really fast moving field. Hardware and
software just progress at phenomenal rates and the kids seem
to master the new stuff before the "old geezers" even know its
there!

"Big data"?? Hadoop?? Sheesh!


SMH

[smharding]

tutall wrote:
> On Oct 5, 1:03 am, "Keith W" <keithnospoofsple...@demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
>>Of course 25 years ago sinsulting the church would not only have
>>been allowed but encouraged and as a good KGB officer
>>Vladimir Putin would have heartily approved of their actions.
>>
>>That stalwart defender of the faith was at that time a convinced atheist
>>or so he said.
>
>
>
> In one.
>
> The Church has been currying favor with the State wanting to re-
> instate the tried and true "Church and State" model. And currently
> that means the church supports the state almost in lock-step and acts,
> in Soviet terminology, as an organ of the State. So the State
> reciprocated the favor in this case.

I understand the reasoning behind the stunt. But it was still
just a stunt, and undeserving of prison time.

Especially indirectly at the hands of a guy like Putin.

Surely they could have registered their opposition to the alliance
of Church and State (i.e. Putin) in a less objectionable form.

It's sort of like burning a flag. You can do it; it makes a strong
impression on many people; but it doesn't really say much, other
than you are angry with the nation/government the flag represents.

Not especially cogent political persuasion.


SMH

[Jim Wilkins]

"smharding" <smha...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:k4qb74$oqe$2...@dont-email.me...

> Jim Wilkins wrote:
>> ...
>> Their work is intensively complex and intuitive. I think I got
>> better with age at extensively complex and formulaic problems like
>> Windows administration.
>
> I think Windows "administration" is one of those NP complete
> problems
> in computer science isn't it?
>
> The "Traveling Salesman", "bin packing", "Windows administration".
>
> It's been a while since I got my Comp Sci degree, so I may be off.
> SMH

Maybe, Microsoft can't resolve some complex bugs during the life of an
Operating System.
http://download.cnet.com/Desktop-Restore-64-bit/3000-2072_4-75451992.html

Booting Windows disproves Einstein's gibe at Quantum Mechanics:
"Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting
different results"

[Uncle Steve]

You can take consolation in the fact that your provocations and
BULLSHIT are at least partially successful in killing my peace of
mind, and increasing the probability that I'll make stupid little
mistakes. Apart from the success you and your fellow parasites are
having with your never-ending billable hours.

Tell us who it was that issued your indulgence granting you unfettered
access to civilians and civilian property to use however you wish.
I'll make it easy for you and make it multiple choice:

a) You
b) Me
c) She
d) The Archbishop of Canterbury
e) The head of MI6
f) Mandate by popular referendum
g) God
h) Jesus H. Christ
i) None of the above
j) All of the above, excepting (i)
k) (a) through (d)
l) Santa Clause
m) Don't know

[Bill]

On Sat, 06 Oct 2012 20:45:46 -0400, Uncle Steve <stev...@gmail.com>

Works for a bank and is gonna get sacked soon...

Old and finished and working your way to a pension they'll never pay
you...

>Tell us who it was that issued your indulgence granting you unfettered
>access to civilians and civilian property to use however you wish.
>I'll make it easy for you and make it multiple choice:
>
>a) You
>b) Me
>c) She
>d) The Archbishop of Canterbury
>e) The head of MI6
>f) Mandate by popular referendum
>g) God
>h) Jesus H. Christ
>i) None of the above
>j) All of the above, excepting (i)
>k) (a) through (d)
>l) Santa Clause
>m) Don't know

I've told you before. I'm in the secret bunker under Buckingham
Palace.

The one which serves the really good roast baby sandwiches...

[Alistair Gunn]

In rec.aviation.military smharding twisted the electrons to say:

> Computer Science is a really fast moving field. Hardware and
> software just progress at phenomenal rates and the kids seem
> to master the new stuff before the "old geezers" even know its
> there!

Back in the year 2000, I worked for an ISP. Myself and a colleague
admin'd a bunch of NetApp Filers and used to joke "A terrabyte here, a
terrabyte there and pretty soon you're talking about real storage
space!". These days you can buy 1Tb storage for home use, and it doesn't
require half an industry standard rack-mounting cabinet to provide it!
--
These opinions might not even be mine ...
Let alone connected with my employer ...

[smharding]

Non-deterministic behavior is generally a very, very bad thing in
S/W engineering.

To expect it means you've arrived in a very strange place indeed.


SMH

[Jim Wilkins]

"smharding" <smha...@verizon.net> wrote in message

news:k4rs44$uq9$1...@dont-email.me...

> Jim Wilkins wrote:
>> "smharding" <smha...@verizon.net> wrote in message
>> news:k4qb74$oqe$2...@dont-email.me...
>>>Jim Wilkins wrote:
>> ...

>> Booting Windows disproves Einstein's gibe at Quantum Mechanics:
>> "Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but
>> expecting different results"
>
> Non-deterministic behavior is generally a very, very bad thing in
> S/W engineering.
> To expect it means you've arrived in a very strange place indeed.
> SMH

It probably is deterministic, I don't track PnP's actions when I
restore an Acronis backup onto a different brand and size hard drive,
with the USB devices rearranged. Usually the OS stabilizes after two
reboots.

Using old IDE drives that sometimes have to reallocate unreadable
blocks doesn't help.
http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-drive-defects-table.htm
S.M.A.R.T gives the reallocation count and this identifies them by
their much slower access time:
http://hddscan.com/
The defragmenter with the same name is malware.

jsw

[Andrew Chaplin]

smharding <smha...@verizon.net> wrote in news:k4qbm0$tkr$1@dont-
email.me:

Don't 60-year-old software engineers now largely direct managers of 20-
and 30-something software engineers, having completed the metamorphosis
from specialist to generalist? Either that, or they've retired like Bill,
and hire themselves out as consulting engineers when something crops up
with "legacy systems," I would wager.

[Uncle Steve]

I like it when you pretend to patronize me. It makes me feel loved.

[Bill]

On Sun, 7 Oct 2012 13:12:58 +0000 (UTC), Andrew Chaplin
<ab.ch...@yourfinger.rogers.com> wrote:

>Don't 60-year-old software engineers now largely direct managers of 20-
>and 30-something software engineers, having completed the metamorphosis
>from specialist to generalist? Either that, or they've retired like Bill,
>and hire themselves out as consulting engineers when something crops up
>with "legacy systems," I would wager.

Been asked to do that twice so far.

Not a hope.

These days the only technical stuff I do is 'appropriate technology'
in India...

And that's rapidly becoming a waste of time.

The last time I was in a village that used to need a satellite
connection for the net the local POTS company was running ADSL2 into
houses that had no running water...

[Uncle Steve]

On Sun, Oct 07, 2012 at 09:06:45AM -0400, Jim Wilkins wrote:
> "smharding" <smha...@verizon.net> wrote in message
> news:k4rs44$uq9$1...@dont-email.me...
> > Jim Wilkins wrote:
> >> "smharding" <smha...@verizon.net> wrote in message
> >> news:k4qb74$oqe$2...@dont-email.me...
> >>>Jim Wilkins wrote:
> >> ...
> >> Booting Windows disproves Einstein's gibe at Quantum Mechanics:
> >> "Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but
> >> expecting different results"
> >
> > Non-deterministic behavior is generally a very, very bad thing in
> > S/W engineering.
> > To expect it means you've arrived in a very strange place indeed.
> > SMH
>
> It probably is deterministic, I don't track PnP's actions when I
> restore an Acronis backup onto a different brand and size hard drive,
> with the USB devices rearranged. Usually the OS stabilizes after two
> reboots.
>
> Using old IDE drives that sometimes have to reallocate unreadable
> blocks doesn't help.
> http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-drive-defects-table.htm
> S.M.A.R.T gives the reallocation count and this identifies them by
> their much slower access time:

Wrong. The SMART data is logged by the drive's CPU internally in a
serial EEPROM or similar, and in the case of ancient drives, on disk
in reserved cylinders. There is software running in the drive that
translates the data from the target's native format to the format
specified in the SMART specification as it is requested by the host.
In relation to bad sectors, hard drives maintain a look-up table of
remapped sectors so they can read cylinders containing bad sectors and
the spare cylinders containing the remapped sectors, which are then
merged in a buffer before the transaction is sent back to the host.

The slower access time can be used by host software to identify
marginal areas on the platters, but doesn't, in an of itself, identify
the location of bad sectors. A drive might attempt to read a marginal
track on a platter several times before declaring a read error, and if
the retries succeed before the maximum number of retries are
attempted, no error will be reported. Bad sectors are generally
remapped only on a write operation for obvious reasons.

The specific policies in this regard are manufacturer and
model-specific. What goes on inside contemporary hard drives as
requests are processed does not generally map 1:1 to host commands,
other than that behavior is deterministic at the level of the bus
interface.

> http://hddscan.com/
> The defragmenter with the same name is malware.
>
> jsw

These days, you can't eve trust software for which the source code is
available unless you can afford to do a full security audit. And as I
wrote previously in this newsgroup, there are good reasons to suspect
commodity hardware as well. I think the NSA and your US military has
been busy these last decades making sure that they have trivial access
to everything, with an emphasis on their convenience and to hell with
security for anyone but themselves. Anti-virus software is a sick
joke.

If it comes out that they have been using such capabilities to give
technological and economic advantages to their own industrial
concerns, I'll at least be able to say I told you so. Such
collaboration won't be confined to the US, either. It will encompass
the military and security services of several "friendly" Western
nations. The fact that our militaries, police, and courts have thrown
out the law books at least in so far as they should apply to their
own personnel AS WELL AS the civilian population, really proves that
they no longer give a shit about the public, if they ever did.

[Uncle Steve]

Bill stated that he was an electrician, which probably contains as
much truth as anything else he says, i.e.: half to none.

[Bill]

On Sun, 07 Oct 2012 13:06:41 -0400, Uncle Steve <stev...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>Bill stated that he was an electrician,

Liar.

[Jim Wilkins]

"Uncle Steve" <stev...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:9376a64f17...@gmail.com...

> On Sun, Oct 07, 2012 at 09:06:45AM -0400, Jim Wilkins wrote:

>> ...

>> S.M.A.R.T gives the reallocation count and this identifies them by
>> their much slower access time:
>
> Wrong. The SMART data is logged by the drive's CPU internally in a
> serial EEPROM or similar, and in the case of ancient drives, on disk
> in reserved cylinders. There is software running in the drive that
> translates the data from the target's native format to the format
> specified in the SMART specification as it is requested by the host.
> In relation to bad sectors, hard drives maintain a look-up table of
> remapped sectors so they can read cylinders containing bad sectors
> and
> the spare cylinders containing the remapped sectors, which are then
> merged in a buffer before the transaction is sent back to the host.
>
> The slower access time can be used by host software to identify
> marginal areas on the platters, but doesn't, in an of itself,
> identify
> the location of bad sectors. A drive might attempt to read a
> marginal
> track on a platter several times before declaring a read error, and
> if
> the retries succeed before the maximum number of retries are
> attempted, no error will be reported. Bad sectors are generally
> remapped only on a write operation for obvious reasons.

Unlike the P-list, the reallocated blocks on the G-list have been
moved to spare cylinders so the head seek causes the slower access
time, similar to the random seek times that HD Tune scatter-plots. The
values I see are somewhat more than 50mS on old, slow drives, compares
to >100mS for weak areas. I've used the information only once, to
partition around a large bad area on an otherwise decent Hitachi 7K60.

HDD Scan reports the response time for each individual slow block,
apparently requested individually to avoid the uncertainty of
buffering. Somehow it also can read S.M.A.R.T data from a drive on a
USB cable.

> These days, you can't eve trust software for which the source code
> is

> available unless you can afford to do a full security audit. ...
> Uncle Steve

I don't. I maintain an updated master system on a good new drive in a
CD bay caddy and copy it to the old drives I use to browse the net and
test software. I doubt that malware on the 'sandbox' drive can migrate
backwards to a bootable DVD backup in a read-only DVD-ROM drive. XP
and 2005-vintage laptops probably aren't the prime targets of hackers
anyway.

[Uncle Steve]

P-list is a SCSIism, but I'll agree that every drive will have one
like it.

> moved to spare cylinders so the head seek causes the slower access
> time, similar to the random seek times that HD Tune scatter-plots. The
> values I see are somewhat more than 50mS on old, slow drives, compares
> to >100mS for weak areas. I've used the information only once, to
> partition around a large bad area on an otherwise decent Hitachi 7K60.

If your application is so real-time critical you ought to insist on
using a drive that doesn't have marginal/remapped areas to begin with.
Some filesystem formatting utilities will accept lists of bad blocks,
so this doesn't necessarily have to be handled at the partition level.

> HDD Scan reports the response time for each individual slow block,
> apparently requested individually to avoid the uncertainty of
> buffering. Somehow it also can read S.M.A.R.T data from a drive on a
> USB cable.

Depends on the USB->[S]ATA interface. I have seen interface
adapters that don't handle the SMART command subset and some that
will.

> > These days, you can't eve trust software for which the source code
> > is
> > available unless you can afford to do a full security audit. ...
> > Uncle Steve
>
> I don't. I maintain an updated master system on a good new drive in a
> CD bay caddy and copy it to the old drives I use to browse the net and
> test software. I doubt that malware on the 'sandbox' drive can migrate
> backwards to a bootable DVD backup in a read-only DVD-ROM drive. XP
> and 2005-vintage laptops probably aren't the prime targets of hackers
> anyway.

Yeah, but how do you verify the integrity of the software in its
original form? I am, of course, referring to factory malware. And
there is the bug/feature dichotomy that doesn't always lend itself to
trivial categorization. I have some HTTP proxy software that for some
reason will not cache certain URLs, even if the program is instructed
to "violate" the HTTP standard. The consequence is that certain
sites that gather a whole lot of profiling information about their
visitors cannot be foiled. www.drudgereport.com is one such site. Is
it coincidence that that site is structured in such a way as to foil
the aggressive forced-caching of the proxy server, or are the authors
of the software in bed with the NSA? Impossible to say with any
meaningful degree of certainty. I've not named the package as I have
not yet done sufficient analysis of the code to make strong
accusations, nevertheless the observed behavior is extremely
suspicious.

So forget malware as as layperson might conceive of it. The range and
scope of potential attacks on your computer, software, and data are
huge. And without the source code, you have no hope whatsoever of
making any determinations of security or completeness. That goes for
your applications, the operating system, and the hardware. For the
hardware, you need the VHDL code for the silicon in each chip on a
bus, as well as assurance that the chip fab is in fact laying down
the gates specified by the VHDL and nothing more.

You, and everyone else have zero assurance that you aren't running
computers that are wide-open to arbitrary penetration by the big TLAs
and their partners in organized crime. Just because you might say it
is paranoid to have those concerns is no reason to assume anything
about the security of your computer, phone, television, radios,
stereos, digital watches, or hearing-aids.

The usual counterargument is for someone to say that they aren't doing
anything wrong, so they don't have anything to fear. Well, I haven't
done anything wrong, but the government (in part) has sought to run my
life for their shitty political purposes. And they have been ruinous
to my data and electronic appliances in the process, in part because
my socio-economic isolation is more convenient to their purposes.
It's called Plutocracy, and it's not just for "Communist" countries.

[Jim Wilkins]

"Uncle Steve" <stev...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:ce3c6cc330...@gmail.com...

> On Sun, Oct 07, 2012 at 03:09:04PM -0400, Jim Wilkins wrote:
>
> P-list is a SCSIism, but I'll agree that every drive will have one
> like it.

> If your application is so real-time critical you ought to insist on
> using a drive that doesn't have marginal/remapped areas to begin
> with.
> Some filesystem formatting utilities will accept lists of bad
> blocks,
> so this doesn't necessarily have to be handled at the partition
> level.

Critical? I use this old XP laptop to browse, read e-books, argue on
newsgroups, try downloaded software, and occasionally as a honeypot.
What do you think of DevC++?

My Win 7 PC stays off line and I do my banking in person. The rule is
physical separation of secure and non-secure facilities.

>>. Somehow it also can read S.M.A.R.T data from a drive on a
>> USB cable.
>
> Depends on the USB->[S]ATA interface. I have seen interface
> adapters that don't handle the SMART command subset and some that
> will.

Apparently the problem is that S.M.A.R.T. uses SCSI commands.

> So forget malware as as layperson might conceive of it. The range
> and
> scope of potential attacks on your computer, software, and data are
> huge. And without the source code, you have no hope whatsoever of
> making any determinations of security or completeness. That goes
> for
> your applications, the operating system, and the hardware. For the
> hardware, you need the VHDL code for the silicon in each chip on a
> bus, as well as assurance that the chip fab is in fact laying down
> the gates specified by the VHDL and nothing more.
>

> Uncle Steve

Good luck with that. You compile your schematic and send it away, and
hope your test vectors adequately wring out the chip that they send
back. Even I could insert a back door combination so illogical it
would never be tried. I found an unintended one once on an Intel chip,
and another in some TI processor microcode. Both were triggered by
marginal timing and shifted the device into an unexpected state.
Finding the TI bug moved me from lab tech to a good engineering
position on a hot project.

I have designed a multiport DRAM memory controller ASIC at the gate
level and etched, photographed, traced and reverse-engineered a
digital+analog chip to reconstruct the schematic. For military Xilinx
chips I went through the entire design and verification process and
programmed them in my cipher-locked lab. Basically I did everything
that was beneath the interest level of the Ph.D.s I worked for.

That is enough on one of the many subjects I can't discuss further.

o7btBfuw

[smharding]

Andrew Chaplin wrote:

> Don't 60-year-old software engineers now largely direct managers of 20-
> and 30-something software engineers, having completed the metamorphosis
> from specialist to generalist? Either that, or they've retired like Bill,
> and hire themselves out as consulting engineers when something crops up
> with "legacy systems," I would wager.

Probably generally true.

But not in a small startup company that one very much enjoys
working in, and living in a region that has little in the way
of technical opportunity.

Even more so when one has spent the S/W Engineering phase of
one's employment trying to avoid "management" of any sort.

If I'd gone into social work, I'd probably have opportunities
galore without having to move.


SMH

[Jim Wilkins]

"smharding" <smha...@verizon.net> wrote in message

news:k4t3go$lfi$1...@dont-email.me...

>
> Even more so when one has spent the S/W Engineering phase of
> one's employment trying to avoid "management" of any sort.
>
> If I'd gone into social work, I'd probably have opportunities
> galore without having to move.
> SMH

Does that mean that S/W Engineering is 'anti-social' work??

At one job the department head put his best programmer in an
inside-locked room across from his office so she wouldn't have to cope
with anyone coming near her.

[Bill]

On Sun, 07 Oct 2012 19:33:35 -0400, smharding <smha...@verizon.net>
wrote:

>Andrew Chaplin wrote:
>
>> Don't 60-year-old software engineers now largely direct managers of 20-
>> and 30-something software engineers, having completed the metamorphosis
>> from specialist to generalist? Either that, or they've retired like Bill,
>> and hire themselves out as consulting engineers when something crops up
>> with "legacy systems," I would wager.
>
>Probably generally true.
>
>But not in a small startup company that one very much enjoys
>working in, and living in a region that has little in the way
>of technical opportunity.

Been there, done that, not fun when a recession comes around...

[Bill]

On Sun, 7 Oct 2012 20:13:23 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
<murat...@gmail.com> wrote:

>"smharding" <smha...@verizon.net> wrote in message
>news:k4t3go$lfi$1...@dont-email.me...
>>
>> Even more so when one has spent the S/W Engineering phase of
>> one's employment trying to avoid "management" of any sort.
>>
>> If I'd gone into social work, I'd probably have opportunities
>> galore without having to move.
>> SMH
>
>Does that mean that S/W Engineering is 'anti-social' work??

Software engineers tend to be a bit anti-social...

There's a touch of the 'compulsive obsessive' in most decent
engineers.

>At one job the department head put his best programmer in an
>inside-locked room across from his office so she wouldn't have to cope
>with anyone coming near her.

There nothing like being vital to the operation to get yourself an
office meant for someone two grades higher...

The trick is to look vital...

[Uncle Steve]

On Sun, Oct 07, 2012 at 07:16:47PM -0400, Jim Wilkins wrote:
> "Uncle Steve" <stev...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:ce3c6cc330...@gmail.com...
> > On Sun, Oct 07, 2012 at 03:09:04PM -0400, Jim Wilkins wrote:
> >
> > P-list is a SCSIism, but I'll agree that every drive will have one
> > like it.
>
> > If your application is so real-time critical you ought to insist on
> > using a drive that doesn't have marginal/remapped areas to begin
> > with.
> > Some filesystem formatting utilities will accept lists of bad
> > blocks,
> > so this doesn't necessarily have to be handled at the partition
> > level.
>
> Critical? I use this old XP laptop to browse, read e-books, argue on
> newsgroups, try downloaded software, and occasionally as a honeypot.

Well, in that case you don't really care about the occasional slower
response time from a marginal area on a disk. You shouldn't have
bothered with the partition workaround unless the area was bad bad.

> What do you think of DevC++?

Never heard of it. I use Linux (and rarely NetBSD) for development,
and I don't seem to need those fancy IDE tools. Syntax highlighting is
chrome for dweebs.

> My Win 7 PC stays off line and I do my banking in person. The rule is
> physical separation of secure and non-secure facilities.

That is, I hear, the standard although there are rumors suggesting
that to make a PC truly secure requires casting it in a block of
concrete and dropping it somewhere near the Mariana Trench.

> >>. Somehow it also can read S.M.A.R.T data from a drive on a
> >> USB cable.
> >
> > Depends on the USB->[S]ATA interface. I have seen interface
> > adapters that don't handle the SMART command subset and some that
> > will.
>
> Apparently the problem is that S.M.A.R.T. uses SCSI commands.

These days, the ATA protocol is similar to the SCSI protocol, with
commands that map relatively easily from one to the other. SCSI is
more mature, and you'll not likely find rare ones like the
RESERVE/RELEASE pair in the ATA version. The commands related to the
SMART functionality are simply not implemented in cheap enclosures.

> > So forget malware as as layperson might conceive of it. The range
> > and
> > scope of potential attacks on your computer, software, and data are
> > huge. And without the source code, you have no hope whatsoever of
> > making any determinations of security or completeness. That goes
> > for
> > your applications, the operating system, and the hardware. For the
> > hardware, you need the VHDL code for the silicon in each chip on a
> > bus, as well as assurance that the chip fab is in fact laying down
> > the gates specified by the VHDL and nothing more.
> >
> > Uncle Steve
>
> Good luck with that. You compile your schematic and send it away, and
> hope your test vectors adequately wring out the chip that they send
> back. Even I could insert a back door combination so illogical it
> would never be tried. I found an unintended one once on an Intel chip,
> and another in some TI processor microcode. Both were triggered by
> marginal timing and shifted the device into an unexpected state.
> Finding the TI bug moved me from lab tech to a good engineering
> position on a hot project.

The easiest attack vector to activate surreptitious hardware backdoors
involves pushing magic data on the bus that would never occur in
normal use, and which even if it did would fail to follow up with the
appropriate backdoor commands. A 802.11x chip would be an ideal
candidate as the front-end to the hypothetical UI, and would talk to
it's brother and sister chips on the PCI bus, giving our hypothetical
spooks real-time access to the physical RAM of a running system. If
systems had a small clandestine CPU added to the silicon of a
critical chip (a Z80 would be good enough to support a remote
debugger), the entire computer would be pwned to a degree that would
make script-kiddies dicks fall off.

> I have designed a multiport DRAM memory controller ASIC at the gate
> level and etched, photographed, traced and reverse-engineered a
> digital+analog chip to reconstruct the schematic. For military Xilinx
> chips I went through the entire design and verification process and
> programmed them in my cipher-locked lab. Basically I did everything
> that was beneath the interest level of the Ph.D.s I worked for.
>
> That is enough on one of the many subjects I can't discuss further.
>
> o7btBfuw

Too bad; I'm sure it would make interesting reading.

[Jim Wilkins]

"Bill" <black...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:ro8478daal4qhqeu5...@4ax.com...

>>
>>But not in a small startup company that one very much enjoys
>>working in, and living in a region that has little in the way
>>of technical opportunity.
>
> Been there, done that, not fun when a recession comes around...

Nope, but those times are also opportunities to experiment. I worked a
Renaissance Festival as the wizard who could fix anything, gas or
electric. I wish I had a photo of me hunched over a disassembled
Motorola radio on a crude wooden table in costume, or hand-forged
refrigerator door hinges. Once when the caterer missed a delivery we
descended like Vikings on a nearby supermarket to plunder all the meat
from their coolers. It was fun to play a rogueish free spirit instead
of a sober and responsible electronics lab tech.

[Bill]

Having been a re-enactor for many years I can assure you that the ONLY
role worth taking at such an event is of someone of high status with a
sword.

[Jim Wilkins]

"Bill" <black...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:a2i57852rtgitljra...@4ax.com...

> On Mon, 8 Oct 2012 07:58:43 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
> <murat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>Nope, but those times are also opportunities to experiment. I worked
>>a
>>Renaissance Festival as the wizard who could fix anything, gas or
>>electric.
>

> Having been a re-enactor for many years I can assure you that the
> ONLY
> role worth taking at such an event is of someone of high status with
> a
> sword.

We don't all need to be the center of attention. This thread has
drifted back and forth between extroverts (Pussy Riot) and introverts.

[Bill]

On Mon, 8 Oct 2012 09:28:41 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"

<murat...@gmail.com> wrote:

>"Bill" <black...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>news:a2i57852rtgitljra...@4ax.com...
>> On Mon, 8 Oct 2012 07:58:43 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
>> <murat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>Nope, but those times are also opportunities to experiment. I worked
>>>a
>>>Renaissance Festival as the wizard who could fix anything, gas or
>>>electric.
>>
>> Having been a re-enactor for many years I can assure you that the
>> ONLY
>> role worth taking at such an event is of someone of high status with
>> a
>> sword.
>
>We don't all need to be the center of attention.

I certainly don't ever wish to be that, and anyway, nobody can ever
compete with a lady in a tightly laced corset, but, well, it's nice
to be the boss...

[smharding]

Sounds like something Skinner would do (the pyschologist who
allegedly put one of his kids in a box to test his theories
of development).

S/W engineering is filled with stories with anti-social, even
psychotic, people being left to their own devices away from
co-workers. People with engineering smarts approaching genius
and social IQs of the retarded.


As long as they produce, you leave them alone. As soon as they
dont: they're gone!


SMH

[smharding]

We've had a duzy and I'm still happy with the small company work
pardigm.



SMH

[Bill]

On Mon, 08 Oct 2012 17:06:55 -0400, smharding <smha...@verizon.net>
wrote:

I spent 18 months pinging from job to job in the early 'eighties.

I was one of the few people about who could write decent machine code
that would fit on a small EPROM and had some local area network
experience.

After three redundancies in 15 months as small companies went broke
under me I was broke, homeless and sick of living out of a suitcase
and working as a contracting fireman...

All I had from 6 years at the bleeding edge of technology was a nice
car, a rented flat, some decent clothes and an expensive suitcase...

I didn't even own my furniture...

So I gave that up, took a 40% pay cut and went to work in the public
service for a time...