They're still dog fighting. There's even an educable show about this. Some of that included the last Iraq war.

...except they haven't "wasted a trillion dollars". The trillion dollar figure is for the cost of the plane for it's entire lifetime including the 20 or 30 so years from today it's supposed to remain operational.

Meh. When I was an undergrad, you really needed to understand netmasks if you wanted to set up a network for multiplayer games. Now, it's much easier (although Windows makes it stupidly hard to create an ad-hoc WiFi network. No idea how people think it's ready for the desktop), and you can do a lot without caring. I can't remember the last time I needed to know about them.

The point of this is not to enforce it, it's so that you can justify doing the right thing to management in the name of standards compliance.

My guess is that it's one of those "while we're at it..." things. I'm pretty sure that by the time that standard gets finally heeded by the majority, SHA1 can safely be considered "too weak for human consumption"...

It is the DE FACTO standard if you at least care a tiny little bit about security.

RFC or not.

Only the very lowest levels of programming as a profession are so simple that you can get away with being a completely untrained bricklayer. Once you actually get to the point of building anything remotely interesting, ideas you would have been exposed to in academia quickly become relevant.

Even in the more interesting skilled skilled trades you can't get away from "academic" instruction of some kind.

Not true. Go back and re-read the GPL. You are required to release your code under a license that places no more restrictions on it than the GPL. You must also license the combined work under the GPL. It is, however, completely fine to take a few files of GPL'd code, combine them with some BSDL'd code files (as long as those files are not a derived work of the GPL'd code) and ship the resulting program under the GPL. If someone else takes only the BSDL'd files for use in another project then they are not bound by the GPL.

There are two ways in which the GPL is 'viral'. The first is that you cannot change the license of something that you do not own, so any derived works retain the copyright and license of the original. The second is that the GPL is a distribution license and, if you wish to retain the right to distribute it, then you must not distribute it in a way that does not pass on the freedoms listed in the license (meaning that the combined work must grant all of the permissions as the GPL'd parts).

Micromanaging manboys with brains clogged with hubris? That's basically the dictionary description of manager.

Management, and even more so management theories, need to take the human factor into consideration. Every time you get to hear some bullshit "how to manage" story, you can't help but sit back and wonder whether they ever heard of something called human nature.

Generally management and management theories treat humans like some kind of fungible mass. Like any human is identical to anyone else. Sadly, humans are not. By no means. What's worse is that managers think that everyone under their "control" thinks the same and has the same preferences and aversions, and, wht's worse, the same preferences and aversions THEY have themselves. This leads to such bullshit experiences like a manager who enjoys mountain climbing taking his team on a mountain climbing team building event and considers it some great treat while the office talk during the week before is "how do I shoot myself in the foot so it doesn't cause lasting damage but ensures I don't have to go".

And rest assured, it will build team. It will unite the team against management.

Of course the week after productivity will slump and the manager will wonder why, after all he took them on a great experience that invigorates him.

You know, I know, but managers don't. Personally I think it's a bit of the good old "people think as they are" mentality, and hence they consider everyone a trained monkey whose experience is worthless, so they can be replaced by someone cheaper any time.

With the only reason they themselves can't being that they'd have to be the ones doing it.

Some skills (actually, most of the ones worth having) take time to practice to actually be useful. Something that can't be done when the skill is needed NOW.

For reference, see Cobol programmers and their salaries in the years before y2k.

Well, it sounds like management is heaps easier to do and a lot less work...

Remind me why again it's also much better paid?

I'm pretty sure there's a gay joke in there somewhere, but maybe I'm not tasteless enough to find it.