As an admin/IT manager, what I'd like to see is:

1. Meaningful, specific error/log messages when something goes wrong.

Do this.

And make the error reports unique. No more "an unexpected error has occurred". Even "purple-monkey-dishwasher" is better than that. Make it easy for your users to report real problems to your developers. And that means making each error unique enough that the developers can search the code for it.

And have someone spend some time sorting through your forums (make sure you have forums) who can move threads and messages around while still maintaining the links to them. So someone with a "purple-monkey-dishwasher" error can see the other posts about that WITHOUT having to dig through unrelated "vitamin-can-hook" errors. Sortable by version. And by date.

Whether you agree with the politics of a particular site or not, the easiest solution is just to not enable posting graphics.

If someone wants to make an offensive graphic and host it somewhere, fine. But why would anyone running a controversial site allow posting such?

Imagine /. with goatse images.

Are things easier than they used to be? Perhaps for they basic system administration tasks.

But those have never been where the bulk of time and budget go.

They could be if you did not know what you were doing. Like I suspect the author of TFA did not know.

From TFA:

Where we once walked on tightropes every day doing basic server maintenance, we are now afforded nearly instant undo buttons, as snapshots of virtual servers allow us to roll back server updates and changes with a click.

If he's talking about a production system then he's an idiot.

If he's talking about a test system then what does it matter? The time spent running the tests was a lot longer than the time spent restoring a system if any of those tests failed.

And finally:

Within the course of a decade or so, we saw networking technology progress from 10Base-2 to 10Base-T, to 100Base-T to Gigabit Ethernet. Each leap required systemic changes in the data center and in the corporate network.

WTF is 10Base-2 doing there? I haven't seen that since the mid-90's. Meanwhile, every PC that I've seen in the last 10 years has had built-in gigabit Ethernet.

If he wants to talk about hardware then he needs to talk about thing like Cisco Nexus. And even that is not "new".

And, as you pointed out, the PROGRAMMING aspects always lag way behind the physical aspects. And writing good code is as difficult today as it has ever been.

Many people would be happy to increase their typing speed from 75 wpm to say 150 wpm.

Except that they'd have to put in a LOT of hours training on those systems to get that increase.

And for most of them, the majority of time is spent thinking about what to type.

As a senior engineer today, ... those I got 15 years ago ...

That's because you are now holding the position of a senior engineer with 15 years of experience.

Look at what someone who is just starting needs to know. How much different is it than what you needed to know when you started 15 years ago?

What's not modern about using assembler where it's appropriate to do so?

Because it is InfoWorld. Seriously.

Here's item # 3.

Developer tool No. 3: Libraries

Do you remember the first time you used a library? But they're new because programmers 5 years ago did not have libraries.

It gets better:

Developer tool No. 4: APIs

Yeah. That's a radical new concept there.

Fuck it.

Developer tool No. 6: Browsers

Tonight we're gonna party like it's 1995.

And, finally:

The work involved in telling computers what to do is markedly different than it was even five years ago, and it's quite possible that any Rip Van Winkle-like developer who slept through the past 10 years would be unable to function in the today's computing world.

No it is not. Not they would not. Windows XP was released in 2001 and there are still people using it. That's 13 years ago.

InfoWorld sucks.

Scientifically, it is OK to say that race is meaningless as a classification system while still accepting that traits are heritable.

And that is (excuse the capitalization) because VISIBLE PHYSICAL TRAITS ARE NOT SUFFICIENT FOR DEFINING "RACE".

Yet everyone who wants to talk about "race" usually resorts to visible physical characteristics.

Race X has visible physical characteristic A.
Race Y has visible physical characteristic B.
What happens when those races mix? What race is the baby?

This is not how real scientists react to the proposal of a false theory.

Yes it is because that "false theory" is being published as a book AND because it claims to cite those scientists.

Thus it is implying that those scientists support that "false theory".

And since the "false theory" is racist, it is implying that those scientists who are implied as supporting that "false theory" are also racist.

So a public condemnation of the "false theory" and the author and the work is entirely reasonable.

The simple answer is that there is no simple answer.

There is one simple answer.

People (on average) are less afraid of things that they are FAMILIAR with and that they FEEL they have more control over. So people are comfortable driving to the airport but worry about the flight.

People are scared of "terrorists" killing them but are, statistically, more likely to be killed by someone in their own family.

So the scariest thing would be someone that you don't know who is planning to kill you or your child for a reason you don't understand.

But the reality is that if you're living in the USofA and you're white then you will die from the food you've chosen to eat and the exercise that you've chosen to skip. But since you have control over that (I'll start tomorrow) and it's familiar you won't worry about it.

If you pick your "benchmark group" well enough and find people with similiar brainwaves/traits then this still solves their problem nicely.

Only if you redefine the "problem" to be "find people like these people".

And that's been solved for hundreds of years. Just look at the CxO's and Boards of Directors for the major corporations.

The problem is that these are the worst people for "national defense". Look at their track record.

You might not have actually picked the "smartest" people but you picked the people that are most likely to do what you want and succeed where you want them to succeed so I don't see this as being a problem if you can really predict future performance.

That is the problem. You cannot "predict future performance" because you're basing the selection criteria on other traits. Such as being born into X family or marrying into Y family.

It works only for as long as the families do not change and the economic/political situation does not change. See Marie Antoinette.

Too often I see stupid mistakes (that are known mistakes) implemented because someone higher in the hierarchy or with more social clout pushed for it.

We don't follow the "best" idea. We don't follow the "smartest" people.

We do stupid things over and over and over because we are still social animals.

Even if they could find the 10 smartest people in the nation, they would still tell them to implement the same, stupid "solutions". And if those 10 people argued against the stupidity ... well then ... the test must be flawed. Those could not be the smartest.

Now find me people who:
a. will agree with me
b. will agree on who the scapegoat is for when it fails
c. will not argue with me
d. we will call those people the "smartest" ones

I prefer the term "professionally disinterested".

If it is NOT evidence of a crime then you ignore it. Or you use that knowledge to avoid finding out anything more about the topic.

If you have any questions then you bring those questions to HR.

What's so horrible about The Hobbit?

The book? Nothing. It's a decent story. I like it.

But if you're talking about the movie trilogy then there's a problem. It isn't "The Hobbit". It's a movie that wants to be "tolkienesque" and uses names and scenes that Tolkien had used in his stories. The same as the "I, Robot" movie was with Asimov's stories.

Look at the page count in The Lord of the Rings. Then compare it to the page count in The Hobbit.

Now compare the run time of the movies. Either LoTR got butchered or The Hobbit was puffed up with standard Hollywood hero crap.

I'm skipping it because I do not want ANOTHER generic Hollywood cliche driven green-screen-spectacle-fest.

Extremophile

I'm thinking more along the lines of "Life that will use radio signals (or similar) to communicate in such a way that we have a chance of detecting them without either of us leaving our solar systems".

But that's a bit wordy.

Of course I am postulating that a hacker can break it.

No. You are postulating that a hacker that can break it WOULD TURN TO CRIME INSTEAD OF MAKING $150,000+ A YEAR WORKING FOR A COMPANY THAT MANUFACTURES THOSE CARS.

Why would the car be the only computer in human creation immune to hacking you completely absurd asshat?

No one except you has claimed that.

I'm saying that the skills needed to crack that system are very rare AND very valuable IN LEGITIMATE BUSINESS SETTINGS.

So WHY would someone who could make a lot of money LEGALLY use those very rare skills in a crime? Why would that person WANT to become a criminal?