People develop lives and other interests. If you'd like to dedicate yourself to one thing, great. But you have an odd idea about the nature of liking what you do. Liking what you do is very different from wanting to do it all the time. The world is an interesting place with a lot of different things in it. Don't assume people that have other interests (Family, hobbies, houses, travel, leisure) aren't passionate about what they do, they've just realized that there's more to life than computers.

In fact, a good way to get burned out is to do exactly what I suspect you're doing. Working really long hours, and dedicating lots of your free time to software. Cut it out, and maybe you won't get burned out.

I think you said the words you're talking about in your anecdote. Worth and trust. Both those are earned, and can be over-valued. The developer in question shouldn't be trusted.

Not without huge advances in theoretical mathematics, no.

Cryptography relies not only on the math being correct, but the implementation as well. How sure are you that Apple implemented the random number generator properly, for instance? Maybe that 128 bit key only has 64 bits of entropy because someone screwed up. 64 bits of entropy is feasible to brute-force.

Also, only RSA relies on factoring large numbers. RSA, and other public-cryptography is only used to encrypt the key. The underlying algorithm is still generally block ciphers like AES, which aren't dependent on prime numbers.

So instead of requesting access to the data, they'll request access to installing a special update to your phone that simply transmits the encryption key.

If you trust Apple to update your software, and Apple has to do whatever the government says, there's always going to be a way for the government to get your data.

Of course, the respect you're seeking must be proportional to your actual skills, merit to the company, etc.

Hmmm.. this is the only statement I find questionable. Everything else I agree with. I think everyone deserves respect. The lowest level employee doesn't deserve to be yelled at for missing deadlines, or having a bug that's missed. That's basic human nature, and you're not entitled to it simply because you're more valuable, it's something all people need. I understand your position, but if the only way you can gain "respect" is through fear (fear you'll leave), that's still an indication of a sick organization.

Long term, you should still leave if everyone doesn't deserve respect, not just "valuable" people.

The trick is that doctors need to stop treating schizophrenics like we're sick. They need to start treating us like we're real people that just happen to have a different sense of reality.

In a sense, I sort of agree with you, in another, totally not. Depression is also another way of viewing reality. Is someone who's depressed "wrong" about concentrating on the negative aspects of living? No... but I think most people who're depressed would rather NOT be depressed. Obviously telling someone who's depressed to just "cheer up", and "things aren't that bad" isn't going to help much. But like a disease, it's an aspect of yourself you'd rather not have and aren't in total control of, and want to be "cured" of. So the disease model isn't too far from the truth. I don't see how scizophrenia is much different.

You yourself don't really like your symptoms, wouldn't you rather they be gone? So I'm not sure I really understand your point.

The same inadequate reasoning that makes people think their could be meaning to the universe is the same lack of reasoning that causes smart people to be religious.

You make the mistake of categorizing all religion into one big bin. Thinking about our place in the universe is a religious activity, but also a very human one. Deciding we have no place in the universe, or the universe has no meaning is also in that same category. By seeking to escape religion, you're only being ensared by it.

More than a legal precedent this needs solid regulations with teeth. I suspect that if you walk into whatever the Italian equivalent of Best Buy waving this judgement around and demanding a refund that they will just have security escort you out. But if refusal to even offer a Windows free machine was worthy of a fine, let alone not removing it, then windows free machines would be widely available.

I've spent some time living and working in Italy. I'd be very, very careful before I simply apply US and Canadian ideas and norms onto Italy. Italy isn't filled with big box stores. I don't know that there's an equivalent mass retailer that sells everything from PCs to appliances in Italy. Rome at least is more filled with smaller retailers rather than enormous mega-retailer stores like in the US. There's some big retailers to be sure, but there's a lot more smaller ones.

But the one thing you should be VERY wary of is applying the rule of law to Italy. The normal rules of fines, and governments imposing restrictions on things doesn't always apply. Italian courts are a mess, and regularly change verdicts. So I wouldn't just naturally expect Italian retailers to suddenly start offering Windows free machines available for sale. Italy isn't like the US, or even the rest of the EU.

$.06 is about 80 cents today. That's not free. You may think it's a minor distinction, but the truth is it's not. We know from repeated sociological studies that people treat free as a different category than something that's charged for. And if you establish the value early on as free, it's VERY hard to go back and get people to pay later on.

That's totally different than charging 80 cents in 2014 dollars. I'd also imagine that being in the military has different expectations than civilian life. It's a donation the publishers gave to the war effort. Once the war is over, nobody would expect to go back to being given cheap books anymore.

Before you go around calling people morons, you might want to learn a little about how software is horribly insecure, even when designed to be. The recent OpenSSL vulnerability is a good example.

If you think "slapping encryption, message signing, and sanity checks" is going to save you, you have a LOT to learn.

That and credit card companies are too fucking cheap to switch to chip and pin. The only reason the rest of world switched was because the companies were forced to. Not in the good old USA.
Well, you're going to start getting your (and my) wish starting around October 2015. That's the date the liability shifts. Then the liability shifts to the party implementing the least technology. So if the card issuer issues a chip and pin card, and the retailer has only swipe, the retailer is responsible for any fraud from customers with chip and pin cards. If the retailer has a chip and pin machine, but the card issuer has only swipe, then the card issuer is liable.

So essentially you're going to start seeing big retailers upgrade to chip and pin machines sometime around Oct 2015. I'm sure it'll be a slow process, with small retailers taking many years to finally upgrade. But it'll happen.

  If you are still skeptical, I invite you to go to talk to HR and ask them what it would take to get entry-level job without a degree.

Not all companies have HR gatekeepers. HR is their to filter out job requirements. If the job requirements say "Or equivelent experience", that's your ticket. If there's no HR department (the case with many smaller companies), then that barrier is gone.

Bascially, I'm calling bullshit here. I've known many people, including myself with very successful careers in IT without college degrees. Please stop applying your experience to everyone.

To me, that indicates a JAVA vulnerability, not a Linux vulnerability.

Right. Just like Nigerian 419 scams are conducted in English, so English is a vulnerability.

  For real business purposes, though, you'd be bonkers to accept bitcoins.

Bonkers like Newegg, and Dish Network? Both of which accept bitcoin.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. Yes, it has worked for years, and that's why you like it. You (we?) are now that "old generation" that I was referring to, and I'm not about to become a grumpy old admin.

Some things are basic to design. The design philosophy of Unix/Linux has nothing to do with technology, and everything to do with human beings. Technology changes, human being stay the same. I'm a developer now, and that same design philosophy is how people create good programs. It's the same human element at work.

Simple designs are really quite lauded across all of design. It's not just software. Complexity is what you get when you don't have any other choice. It's not really an old fashioned value at all. Einstein said "Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler".

Worked just fine. I also worked for vendor J, who used one big binary: rpd handles just about every routing protocol you can imagine. Is J bad and is R good? According to the market, J is doing very well, while R has been acquired and assimilated by a another company.

Well, that might be OK. From an admin perspective, what's the difference since routing is really routing. One binary is easy to deal with. If they architected the software in a sane way and devided the big binary into sane objects, it might even be easy to code as well. It makes sense because networking is networking. I just don't see the same thing being true for system services. Starting up services is ENTIRELY different from mounting a share. Why would you group those two functions together?

But really though you're judging the goodness/badness from the wrong angle. Which company is successful has zero to do with which is a better design. Success has as much to do with marketing, price, luck, branding, and golf outings as it does with the design. Deisgn is just a small part of success.

The question should be, which did YOU find easier to deal with, and which one do the software developers find easier to code and add new features to.