Totally agree. I've worked with a few physicists along the way. They won't admit it, but they are basically electrical engineers only missing a semester or two. They make fine engineers, willing to read a datasheet and have great attention to detail.

If they gave you an office, then everyone else will ask for one. It is a lot easier to keep individual salaries secret.

Aspiring managers absolutely should be attending meetings, volunteer efforts, etc. on their own time to develop leadership skills.

Surgeons and police officers are well-trained, but it is not usually considered creative work. On the job training is designed into the curriculum. In some cases, a surgeon may be innovative and develop new surgical techniques. In those cases, yes, they are basically operating on their own time. It is either pro-bono work or a teaching hospital, and the patient is willing to take a chance on a non-standard treatment.

  Programming is creative work. Every problem is a new experience requiring a unique solution by a combination of past experience and knowledge, while incorporating fundamentals of science and math. Building this base is not necessarily well covered in school. Unfortunately, many curricula are eliminating internships and apprenticeships.

True. Systems that actually matter use leased-lines (or the digital equivalent.) Anything is possible, but the hackability is way less likely compared to the internet.

But there is the PHB factor trying to avoid that cost, or just wants to be able to log-in from home.

Exactly. I just don't get it, why does the media and actual government agencies equate 'cyber warfare' to actual weapons? It isn't remotely the same thing. Even the most organized state-sponsored cyber attack is basically just targeting design flaws in information systems. Real weapons target people and property that are actually difficult to protect from physical damage. It costs hundreds of billions of dollars per year to design, build, and staff military equipment. Actual warfare is absolute appalling hell, a cyber attack at its worst would be a degradation of some business systems that operate over the public internet. Any critical systems like military, banking, power grid, industrial networks, etc. essentially operate out-of-band. And if they don't, then they should be held to a higher standard. Yes, it would cost money, but not nearly military-level cost. So maybe some retail commerce would be inconvenienced, but what specifically would be damaged by a cyber attack?

I don't usually respond to AC's, but get a grip. Jeez.

Yes, I'm approaching middle age; own my house; have wife, kid, etc.

My career doesn't revolve around commodity computing hardware, I actually do work with a lot of discrete components for actual embedded electronic products.

You are never too old for toys. You can always learn something by playing. This nostalgia _is_ important, because it served me well. I hope future generations have something equally good even if it happens to be new and different. I'm not sure smartphones, social media, and inexpensive gaming rigs are that thing.

Being a skeptic is good, but a denialist is a different thing; removed from reality.

Yes, the 'science is settled' camp about climate change is definitely deserving of criticism. Real science is always open to _honest_ review with provable data, not just contrarian opinions. But my point is this article didn't demonstrate any significant science publications that contradict the majority of PHD's who are publishing about climate change.

Yes, exactly. I stated 'science' as in the systematic process of testable ideas and critical review of publications. Anything else is just marketing.

Yes, 100% agree. I just wonder if people were saying the same thing 50, or 100 years ago. Is this history repeating itself, or something unique to the technological revolution of the 20th century?

Yes, taxes absolutely are a socialistic method of distributing costs that seem important to other people. I'm not willing to live in a third-world existence surrounded by people who can't afford to individually bear the costs of school at the time their kids are of school age. If you want your kid to go to private school, that is your choice. But the taxes you pay are not for your kid, it is for everyone regardless of how many kids you have.

And yes you do have the right to elect people making these rules, have a smaller taxable property, or move to a different town.

That seems to be the dilemma at a lot of places these days, even the front-runners like Best Buy, Target, etc. Newsflash to CEOs: if I go to your store's website to do research on your products then you need to make it easy and obvious what you have locally _today_. Ship to store is just a waste of everybody's time - I'm going elsewhere online at that point. If I'm in the store physically, you need to have the selection of products people want.

Very true. As a kid in the '80s, I really enjoyed Radio Shack. It was more than just a store. It was a culture. They had the battery club, the cheesy comic book, store catalog, toys, science kits, DIY audio parts for your car or home, anything radio, various loose parts for electronics projects. We were fighting the Soviets and science education was a priority. There was no internet to turn to. If you were patient, you could mail order the part you needed or rummage through a local surplus store. But Radio Shack had it on the shelf for $0.99 - even if that happened to be 500% markup. It was worth it.

Yeah exactly, his cynicism is off the charts (and misplaced)

Science did not tell us to avoid natural fats in our diet, it was the: USDA, FDA, AMA, etc. etc. It was government and industry associations, sensational journalists who won't or can't deal with basic stats, not scientists. On the contrary, there is a body of scientific works that are basically saying 'told you so.'

The jump to connecting this to climate change had zero supporting evidence in this article. If there was a pattern of provable deceit by a majority of scientists, then show it...

I agree, this seems to be a fine art that has been lost no matter what language was used. Putty is the only significant program that I know of that doesn't require a huge install. Heck, even MinGW got complicated along the way somewhere. You can't even install a printer driver under 100 MB anymore.

Exactly. This is not an apology. I read TFA. Somehow, they want to put the horse back in the barn. There was a time that they had a mission to develop technology that was useful to US government agencies, industry, banking interests, etc. I truly respect people who were doing honest work at securing US interests. But there is just no going back, all that work is forever tainted.