So what they're saying in plain English:
They hacked a computer by or near an Air Force personnel who they think is a drone pilot.
They acquired personal and personnel information.
And now they're leveraging Marketing techniques to try to make it seem like they did much more than they really did.
Ok. Good job on getting the personal information. But ya didn't come close to hopping the wire to the controls, let alone actually fly a drone.
The BEST way to learn about robotics is to study it in fictional media.
Pick up Star Trek, and study the cyborg known as Data. Pay attention to the Borg, and trace what little clues are there in their origin. Pick up Doctor Who and look at the Cybermen and Daleks, and pay attention to why the Doctor's always at war with them.
Pick up the movie "Terminator" and study the interactions the robots have.
Look at Elbot (http://elbot_e.csoica.artificial-solutions.com/), and Cleverbot, and pay attention to the similarities in the information acquisition, the discontinuities both exhibit, and the vocabularies (here: http://www.cleverbot.com/ [cleverbot.com])
Your computer, the one you are sending this request to, is a rudimentary robot. It includes peripherals which provide the computer stimulus in digitally interpreted fashion. Fictional media resources feature robotics which acts in a very predictable fashion, there's no spontaneity, the actions are guided, and there teds to be responses in reactive form to external stimulus received in highly predictable fashions.
So my advice is - before you go and get the Microsoft Robotics SDK or anyone else's interpretation of robotics, then study the core Microsoft Windows operating system at a messaging and routing perspective. Specifically: the WM_ messages and ask yourself - how are devices which 'come online' notified system wide?
What you're going to find is: software vendors have a habit of detaching you, the developer, by building in object layers and layers of abstraction away from the physical events themselves, but Windows - from the ground up - was actually built FOR robotics based on a messaging system and adoption of new peripheral devices that would be built, later, and applications developed for them once the device came online and found widespread use.
Take up Microsoft Visual Studio - C++ for a direct and easy to manage message pump and study they effects in the message pump when devices are brought online. My advice is to pull down Visual Studio 2005 or 2008, both of which Microsoft distributes as torrents if you can't afford it here: https://kat.cr/usearch/microso... [kat.cr]
Now be careful. Other languages such as Java, Python and
Now what's this all have to do with robotics?
If you study media, you understand where civilization is going and what - hardware wise - we have in store for our future. There's no 'quick and dirty' solution to robotics programming, the software is already all available out there, you just gotta learn how to learn about it and leverage it for yourself.
And thats where practice, practice, practice comes in.
And a few expenditures.You aren't gonna be able to get by this in the end.
The BEST way to learn about robotics is to study it in fictional media.
Pick up Star Trek, and study the cyborg known as Data. Pay attention to the Borg, and trace what little clues are there in their origin. Pick up Doctor Who and look at the Cybermen and Daleks, and pay attention to why the Doctor's always at war with them.
Pick up the movie "Terminator" and study the interactions the robots have.
Look at Elbot (http://elbot_e.csoica.artificial-solutions.com/), and Cleverbot, and pay attention to the similarities in the information acquisition, the discontinuities both exhibit, and the vocabularies (here: http://www.cleverbot.com/)
Your computer, the one you are sending this request to, is a rudimentary robot. It includes peripherals which provide the computer stimulus in digitally interpreted fashion. Fictional media resources feature robotics which acts in a very predictable fashion, there's no spontaneity, the actions are guided, and there teds to be responses in reactive form to external stimulus received in highly predictable fashions.
So my advice is - before you go and get the Microsoft Robotics SDK or anyone else's interpretation of robotics, then study the core Microsoft Windows operating system at a messaging and routing perspective. Specifically: the WM_ messages and ask yourself - how are devices which 'come online' notified system wide?
What you're going to find is: software vendors have a habit of detaching you, the developer, by building in object layers and layers of abstraction away from the physical events themselves, but Windows - from the ground up - was actually built FOR robotics based on a messaging system and adoption of new peripheral devices that would be built, later, and applications devel
So here's what you are confronted with:
No matter how you set up and protect your environments, source code will inevitably be available to the coders you hire. To a crafty and intelligent programmer, even if you are compartmentalizing that access. you can assert a 'need' to get to know other key areas of the system which will invariably allow you to depict and visualize an overall architecture, which can then be leveraged to get to know other areas that may present a 'black box'.
What you have is a matter of trust. No matter HOW much you protect yourself, any exposure you provide presents a threat, which speaking from personal experience, is a rocky road of paranoia I just do not advocate.
So here's my advice:
First - Hire according to culture and ethics. H1Bs, while less expensive, provide a cultural influence in their work that ripples throughout your organization. Think about it this way: The logic and reason that they bring with them which developed their culture and values is being asserted within the code they create and the products they create for your organization. This effects the mindset of those leveraging the product because the actual implementation of the rules you request in the software will always be different based on the cultural and ethical influences of those doing the development. Hire according to (a) who your target market is and (b) the culture you like to model your own company after. Put simply: Corruption will occur in your software endeavors when the corporate culture is in misalignment with the developer's culture.
Second - show a preference for full timers - people who are vested in your success - rather than consultants - who are vested in the project's success (which can come at the detriment of related projects).
Third. Create an NDA ONLY for consultants. For full timers, you gotta show trust and have this NDA relationship be implied.
Fourth. Try to isolate your core systems before introducing others into the mix. Sure, you might have a finite staff to work with and sure, this might take a few years to achieve, but DO NOT relent to corporate and stakeholder pressure to 'hurry up and produce' - DO IT RIGHT and isolate the core systems you consider proprietary and are not ready to share.
AS You isolate your systems. Objectify. Don't use reverse engineerable code such as
Finally. Find an advocate. if you're not n bed with the CEO or President, then hire a prostitute. No, just kidding (kinda)... Really though - if you're in a sizable organization, then make friends with the C and SVP level staff so they can go to bat for you and act as your defense when you're retooling your environment.
WHY? They can mitigate the risk of pressure exerted by the stake holders and other short term profiteers, and help you focus on creating a sustainable framework not just for your future, but for theirs should they decide to hold your organization and/or company for the long term.
If you're a mere manager or project manager. Quit thinking like one. YOU have the power to say no to your directors and to go direct to the CIO. Sure. you might get your butt handed to you. but people have a tendency to respect those who believe in themselves. Even if they're wrong.
As for virtualization versus working in the office.
Quit thinking so in the box. In a situation like yours you HAVE got to come up with different options rather than acting with obedience to the orders you're given.
Good luck.
Here’s the problem:
Engineers and Scientists have constructed a model of time based on it being a fluidic thing.
Time has traditionally been thought of as being a wave like function, analogizing the flow of time to the flow of a river or stream.
The concept had been simplistic: Sometimes time flowed faster and sometimes it flowed slower.
Einstein’s relativity helped predict that flow.
Accordingly, Computer Scientists have calculated GPS time based on Einstein’s relativity adjustments – erroneously.
The problem, in a nutshell, is that time is discrete, and the error detected with the GPS system is a glitch outlining the discrete nature of time.
Time is best thought of as a sequence of events happening in a predictable fashion and documented from an observer’s perspective.
In its most simplistic fashion, it is the diurnal cycle and the notation of those days through a system called a calendar.
At the atomic level, it’s the precise number of vibrations of a cesium atom which happens at a predictable rate which are then used to create the definition of a second.
For a photon, it’s the constant and highly predictable duration it takes a single photon to cover roughly 186,000 miles.
Time, you see, is a discrete passage of events, but has consistently been calculated as though it were a fluid and changing thing.
GPS Programmers actually INTRODUCED error through their calculations based on a very simple misinterpretation of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity by regarding time as an analog function of nature rather than a discrete function of events.
It’s my theory that we are seeing our first direct evidence of a holographic universe.
And that these Finnish researchers are picking up transmissions of GPS signals from alternate realities.
And the map issues Apple and Google have been plagued with are yet another example of these issues.
Let's look at the request being made of Apple from a 10,000 foot view. In today's day and age, evidence can be planted and manipulated rather easily in a digital device. In my opinion, if investigators are leveraging these devices to influence convictions in the absence of real evidence, they are doing the individual an injustice. This, to me, is shoddy detective work at best, and at worst just plain laziness.
So for whatever reason, Apple - a global company being pressured by a hundred different legal requests around the world is pushing back.
Asserting themselves as an global organization.
And saying "Do real police work and investigate the individual. This doesn't mean investigating and manipulating the companies they chose to do business with."
Why are the cultures and rules built into a company such as Apple being ripped apart and the company victimized to satisfy the demands of lazy detectives?
This sounds like click bait, to be honest, rather than a real discussion.
Here's the simple fact of the matter with so-called modern programming languages and their variants: As long as you're thinking in the box, your concepts of incremental improvement will reach a plateau and invariably flatline. I took the bait and checked out Wolfram - and here we have YET another language expressing ideas on how to mirror text, how to determine shortest routes, and to draw polygons.
How many times has this been done before? Perhaps a thousand times? Perhaps more, much more?
Scratch is decent for exemplifying logical sequences in a visual manner much like game programming engines do, but calling it a toy language is both silly and stupid. It's a visual way of relating logic to the user experience, plain and simple.
It's like when people called Visual Basic a toy language... Not only was VB responsible for teaching an entire generation of coders how to code, but it also introduced the beauty of visualizing the user and customer experience first BEFORE filling in the details behind the scenes. Visual Basic, alone is arguably what made Windows as successful as it is and influencing 'real' languages for better UI design and organization concepts.
The funny thing is. Modern 'experiences' are stripping away those advances, complicating them, and making them difficult to work with. Again.
In my opinion. The world needs a new REAL toy language that can build optimized applications on the client side without requiring a web connection, and without requiring a virtual machine to run. That and with VR on the horizon, we absolutely need a new framework for designing new 'in virtual reality' interfaces to manipulate our environments.
Personally. Brain dead endeavors such as Wolfram's are nothing but a 'me too' and please give me a few bucks plea. When the REAL innovation which need to occur and will occur is going to be with application development inside the virtual reality environments.
Can you imagine pair programming with one person inside the environment and another outside?
"It's wikipedia so it's hardly credible"
LOL! I couldn't have said it better myself! Bravo!
Now note how your comment is not +1 and the others claiming these things are credible are +1!
Do we detect a trend here?
I laugh when I see my karma's bad. It means I'm doing my job.
Great question and welcome to IT!
I have a pretty crazy history with computers which started with self assigned projects and self appointed challenges at 11 years old.
First, I bought 101 Basic Programs by David Ahl available here: http://www.atariarchives.org/b... and spent a summer typing those games into a basic interpreter running on an Atari 600xl. There were MANY games in this, which was my attraction, but the real learning came when i didn't like the game's mechanics and changed them to suit myself, with the sheer volume of tedious typing led to a lack of attention which introduced errors - and helped me actually learn the logic of the code by figuring out why it was breaking down and where.
Now to be clear, the programs you proposed are - shall we say - like watching paint dry - tremendously boring - and code doesn't have to be like this. You have a whole generation of game players who - if you simply introduced things they would be interested in - mechanics of gameplay - whether that's physics and having them draw a pixel that falls at a certain rate, or it's introducing collision detection, or it's introducing scripted dialog and response systems to the traditional 'hello world' stuff, or it's applied fractal graphics (fractals are actually quite easy to implement), or it's making logical changes in a text based adventure - games are my suggestion and advice to ANYONE teaching programming for the first time.
Optimization, in my opinion, such as fast sorting algorithms for a text search are wonderful and all, but teach the student how this is applied to the real world, and have them build a portion of a scripted response system so they understand how dialog responses work in a game and methods to make these more effective. Teach them not just the tool, but at least ONE strategy and method to apply that tool.
Now for self development, once I input all those programs... I got into practical joking.
So I taught myself how to code to create practical joke programs that made it look like a hard drive was being reformatted - a program I would place on an unsuspecting target's machine while they were at lunch. I created another practical joke to make it look like a digital computer screen had lost it's vhold. Another practical joke would periodically pop up 10 notepads on the desktop. And yet another practical joke program - chug and slug - would chew through memory or slow the system to a crawl. From there, I took up TCP/IP programming because I wanted to remotely send a friend's computer a difficult to locate message which would have his computer moo like a cow. I taught myself SMTP and POP and how to build a generic SMTP
Programming - in large part - can be one of two things: It can be a way to simply do a job - like a hammer to the carpenter - which makes programming horribly dull for most - or it can be a creative means for expression - which is what made it so much fun and lucrative for me for years.
My advice is to challenge yourself, and your students - the practice and art of having fun. Give them non destructive challenges to achieve.
Practical jokes AND games make for wonderful ways to express and to learn this skill and find yourself in great demand.
He doesn't think aliens could be capable of building something to cover a fifth of a star in a century?
Look. Being sincere here, how the pyramids was built is still considered speculation by man, as there's no direct evidence of how they were built.
So right here, on planet Earth, the same types of people - scientists - are incapable of understanding how a large structure the size of the pyramids was built a couple thousand years ago..
Personally, I think these scientists need to understand just because they cannot imagine how something is or could be done, does not mean others cannot and are actually actively doing things well beyond their comprehension...
Are some things about the universe fundamentally unknowable?
No.
But you can talk in circles all day long if that floats your boat.
- Q aka God.
There's a story of large group of transcendental meditation people spending 6 weeks in DC which caused a real life decrease in crime in 1993.
http://www.istpp.org/crime_pre...
Science, in general, seems to enjoy chasing its own tail, so for every story suggesting that thought shapes reality, for every Einstein quote 'reality is an illusion', and for every tidbit of evidence suggesting there's a holographic nature to reality....
I'm of the belief the recent "Hobbit" and Halfling oriented movies with Lord Of the Rings had a butterfly effect in reality that manifested in a real life skeleton...
And if you're familiar with backdating.
The skeleton's carbon dating was backdated 'in the holographic reality' to a time where those who enjoy chasing their tail can continue doing so.
Dice is getting a lot of crap, and I couldn't agree more.
Second. Someone mentioned "Code Complete". A wonderful suggestion. Data Insights is a wonderful book on data visualization that helps imagine code and data in different ways, which helps with the logical organization.
To add more though, from a managerial/leadership level perspective on how to create better coders and thus code (as a hands coder/manager):
1) Have your developers develop with the 80/20 rule. That is: 80% of development is analysis, design and research and 20% is implementation and testing.
2) Refactor as a regular practice? Screw this. This is a lesson in insanity. Literally. Leverage SCRUM and Agile regularly to detect and and shift coders off responsibilities they may be obsessing about with refactoring. A good rule of thumb is: a coder who's spending too much time refactoring is a bored coder.
3) If creating a product, always version, and always move forward. Once done with a version, hire outsiders from other cultures and backgrounds to create new versions of your product and kick back and watch them from the sidelines until they do something cool and new you never thought of before, then come back and redevelop from the ground up implementing both the lessons learned and new concepts and ideas.
4) Create artificial bottlenecks. Seems contrary to logic, but one of the most interesting things I have learned as a leader has been to intentionally silo certain processes - such as nightly builds - to reinforce tighter code. This reinforces better communication and an awareness of code quality when implementing.
5) Formalize code change approval paths and QA processes, and leveraging indirect communication tools such as Bugzilla for communication with QA staff and/or customers. When coders become accountable for their code publicly, they tend to code more reliably.
Now how does this all work to simplify code?
Pretty simple. Environmental stimulus for you as a coder is far more profound than most coders are aware of. Put you in a closet and you'll start thinking in one and your code will reflect that. Put you as a male around gorgeous women in a call center, and your code will come across distracted but magically will work extremely well for the call center people employees.
Most coders aren't aware there's no silver bullet for perfect development and there's no such thing as perfect code. I've been there, and fallen into the game of how many lines can you code this in with coworkers, all to find my reduced code was complete unreadable afterwards and I was screwed if I wanted to make changes to it later..
For instance, normalization for databases works well, for instance, but there's places you don't want to use it, and other points where you can over normalize and make your data unworkable. The same thing is true for source code, whether that's SQL, C#, C++, Visual Basic, or PHP with Javascript, and whether its embedded system development, or it's an application or a web UI.
So as a manager and leader, what becomes more important is keeping my coders happy and balancing that with creating an environment to optimize their coding for the customer(s), whether that's a shareholder, the person who's purchasing the product, or the wealthy investor who will buy my company in 2 years.
As a coder yourself. You become a great coder to work with when you actually start working with the manager and leader and can understand why they're making the decisions they are and help them along.
The best way to simplify your code though?
Simplify your environment. Align your environment with the goals you wish to code for. Immerse yourself.
The rest will fall in place.
I have advised everyone to remove virus protection from their system for years, for pretty simple reasons:
Every piece of software you introduce to your system creates vulnerabilities.
Pretty easy, right? But there's more to it than that.
AV protection has predictable distribution networks which, like Microsoft's update mechanisms, create a single point of entry for hackers seeking a large audience. Zero day vulnerabilities are introduced after they've been exploited at least once, and these networks provide an easy and predictable distribution network to leverage for these and find 'selected target hosts'.
Not convinced? But wait, there's more. These companies hire a great deal of hackers to begin with who's key job is to not 'find' vulnerabilities - but to create them - and then delver the fixes for the very things they create through their networks.
In a general sense, I ask people who pay AV companies money: Aren't you tired of paying protection money to these companies who are the ones introducing the very elements you're being protected against?
Whether it's AV protection, or it's insurance in any form (which I am not a fan of) - these industries in many cases create the very problems they protect us from. Now insurers have notably gotten better and fairer about this and work with the public to mitigate the risks because of backlash to the industry.
But developers of AV protection have not.
I mean. Why do you think one of the biggest suppliers of 'AV protection comes from a country where the mafia's alive and well and runs much of the country? (Kaspersky and Russia).
I'm an advocate of removing AV protection and haven't had it in years.
And I would highly advise anyone who has an IT person near them as a friend or family member do the same. And when you actually do catch a random virus, rather than paying $240 for a full year of protection you've paid for your programmer friend to come over and have a homemade steak and a beer with you.
Which do you prefer?
I can tell you what the IT guys prefer.Home cooking.
Financial reports, which the SEC and investors rely on, such as Cash Flow Statements and Balance Sheets, are infamously far from accurate as well.
But an entire industry is built up around reading these things and finding who's worthy of investing in.
I think you overestimate the poor logic in your statements.
Consumers don't blindly consume and respond to ads like Pavlov's dog responds to a bell any longer. Perhaps you do, but quit projecting your ignorance, as you clearly do not qualify as "most people."
There's a great deal of demand for CSR in the United States and the potential for creation of jobs and an industry in and of itself for people who are savvy in CSR and it's related mechanisms. Like nutritional awareness, most people who buy onto CSR could care less about the warm fuzzy as you assert when buying drinks. That's insulting. It's a way for us to get to know the world around us better and who's doing what to whom and how products reach our shelves.
My advice is to take some classes on Customer Behavior and basic Finance from edx.org or coursera.org.
You really do come across completely disrespectful which makes you seem ignorant and stupid by labeling every consumer as nothing more than sheep.
Grow up. And quit projecting your lack of caring on to an entire population.
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