I don't exactly understand how decrying Federal budget largesse when it comes to NASA is "on topic" where decrying Federal budget largesse when it comes to defense spending or social spending is not.

The F-35 is wholly unnecessary and spectacularly expensive. That seems very on-topic to me.

Because it's incredibly unlikely to ever have a nice design ready to go for future plans when Congress cuts funding. *cough* (Saturn I-B / Skylab)

I guess I don't see how this is different from the Saturn 1-B launch vehicle that was only used to launch a manned capsule once (Apollo 7) until the rest of the Saturn V launches were cancelled, and they used the surplus 1-Bs for Skylab crew launches.

Sometimes it's perfectly fine to have a purpose-specific launcher for early flights needed to test stuff. Would we have the same people grousing about using too big of a rocket to just fly crew modules in orbit if they skipped the smaller SLS variant? "Ermahgherd, they're launching hardware capable of going to the moon when they're only going to LEO! What a waste! etc."

Well, for one thing, the equal protection clause is part of the 14th Amendment, and has nothing to do with the Founding Fathers, as it was ratified in the 1860s or thereabouts - about a century after the Founding Fathers did their thing.

But why would that matter, just because it invalidates your whole statement?

+1

Not to be sexist, but most women prefer jobs that include more interaction with people and less time spent in solo problem solving, so it's not terribly surprising that she does't love coding. This isn't to say there aren't women who really like coding, or even introverted women who find working with people all day to be unpleasant. There are all kinds... but on average my observation is that women prefer more human interaction.

So, assuming that your wife falls into that category, there are lots of roles in and around software development that are more people-focused. Project management requires an additional set of skills, both people skills and management skills, but it's eminently learnable, and having a technical background is very valuable -- as long as it doesn't cause her to second-guess what the developers are telling her (always a risk with PMs, and even more with those whose technical background is shallower than they think it is. There's a tendency to assume that everything they don't know how to do is easy.)

Business Analyst is another good one. It, again, requires some additional skills she probably doesn't have but can learn. Industry knowledge tends to be important, but most companies are okay with analysts learning that context on the job. She also needs to learn how to gather and document requirements. A technical background is useful there because good requirements need quite a bit more precision than most non-technical people are used to. There's also a risk; formerly-technical BAs have a tendency to overspecify. An important skill for this role which isn't so easy to learn is writing. Good BAs are excellent writers, able to concisely and accurately boil complex issues down to simple statements.

Another option that might be excellent if she can swing it is Systems or Application Architect. Companies generally want experienced, senior developers to move into these roles, but smart but less-experienced people can do it as well. Architects take the business requirements and convert them into high-level technical plans/architectures. Architects tend to spend less time interacting with people than PMs or BAs, but still quite a bit since they provide the primary interface between the technical and business teams. Architects need to have good technical skills and good "taste", meaning a good feel for what sorts of structures are easy to build, easy to maintain and flexible, and for how to intelligently trade those issues off. They also need to be good at translating technical issues into language the business people can understand. Honestly I expect that your wife probably doesn't have the depth of experience needed to make a good architect, but I thought I'd throw it out.

Another that might be good if she's a good writer and enjoys writing is technical writing. Good tech writers have greater need for writing skill than they do technical skill, but the latter is very valuable because it enables them to more quickly and accurately understand the information that needs to be documented.

In smaller companies a lot of these roles get mixed and combined with other business roles, so another good option is to look for a position that isn't necessarily directly related to software development, but could benefit from having a deeply IT-literate person.

Finally, the option that I've long thought I'd take if I ever got tired of writing code is the law. It's a lot of additional training, but I think there is a deep and growing need for attorneys who understand technology. This is especially true in the areas of patent and copyright law, but I think it applies in many areas. Of course, the law may not have any attraction whatsoever for your wife.

Whatever, I'd really encourage her to take the time to figure out what she wants to do, and do that, rather than settling for something she doesn't really like. We so much of our lives working that it's really a waste to spend it doing something we don't like.

This is completely untrue. The electorate is pretty divided, and whether you can find a majority depends which poll you look at, and which week. The fact is that there is a significant part of the electorate that thinks bulk surveillance is fine because they have nothing to hide and it keeps us safe. That they're wrong on both counts doesn't change their opinion, or their votes

And yet they passed the USA Freedom Act which, although better than the PATRIOT Act, still authorizes way too much surveillance. And in the process they failed to do anything to curtail article 702 of the FISA, which is the basis for the FISA court's ruling -- as was completely predictable before passage of USA Freedom. The argument is that while article 702 authorizes only surveillance of foreign people, the court considers it perfectly reasonable for the NSA to hoover up ALL the data and then figure out later what they can and cannot look at. This all comes back to the NSA's choice to define "collect" as "look at", since the law hadn't defined the term.

Congress had a perfect opportunity to define "collect" as "collect", and chose not to.

The problem is fundamentally the electorate, which isn't sufficiently convinced that bulk data collection is a bad thing. If 80% of the voters wanted it shut down, enough to make it a major election issue, it would be shut down. But as is Congress knows that with a slim majority (at best) concerned about data collection, if they shut it down and then Something Bad happened the voters would turn on them like a rabid dog.

The system isn't perfect, but it is basically working as intended. We just need to convince more of our fellow Americans that surveillance is bad.

No, but this particular comparison is. Besides all of the stuff s2n doesn't provide, s2n actually uses OpenSSL's libcrypto to provide the implementations of all of its crypto algorithm. A useful comparison could be made between OpenSSL's TLS layer and s2n, with some caveats listing the TLS features s2n doesn't provide.

Note that none of this means that s2n doesn't have value. If you don't need the other OpenSSL features, it's a lot less code to audit.

I was quite pleased with the level. I actually expected either something very pedantic or something so easy that I would have a little weep.

If anything the main problem that I have is that I have met CS grads who might not do so well on that exam. I am not saying it is too hard but that the aforementioned CS grads sucked.

For some reason I have always had two problems with IPv6. One is that it offers me as an end user exactly nothing terribly tangible. Yes yes I know of the whole running out of addresses stuff but I have never contacted a server host who said, "Sorry we are out of addresses." My ISP has never said, "Sorry no more customers we are out of addresses." So why should the average user even give a crap.

The other thing that I have found is that without exception those who I have met who are pushing IPv6 remind me nearly perfectly (and in many cases were) the same Y2K people who told us that the world was going to end. They are grade A assholes. Thus it instantly makes me suspect that IPv6 has hidden surprises buried in it that will piss me off. So paternalistic shit that is "good for me" but in reality somehow allows some asshole admin to fuck up my traffic because his traffic has a higher priority or some such bullshit.

So my prediction is that when all is said and done there will never be IPv6 but someone is going to come up with IPG2 (Generation 2) that is chock a block full of things that we all want. Things where we will be happy to demand that our ISPs make the leap, things that get us out there to buy new networking gear.

IPv6 will basically become XHTML. Some will argue that this is impossible but WEP was pretty much tossed into the trash and everyone was onboard with the new things like WPA in a heartbeat. Not because it satiated the black heart of some pedantic network admin but because it was actually better.

I currently have a web radio transceiver front panel application that works on Linux, Windows, MacOS, Android, Amazon Kindle Fire, under Chrome, Firefox, or Opera. No porting, no software installation. See blog.algoram.com for details of what I'm writing.

The one unsupported popular platform? iOS, because Safari doesn't have the function used to acquire the microphone in the web audio API (and perhaps doesn't have other parts of that API), and Apple insists on handicapping other browsers by forcing them to use Apple's rendering engine.

I don't have any answer other than "don't buy iOS until they fix it".

There are private security personnel with miniguns? Are they accepting applications? I don't actually want the job, I just want to go through training and shoot the guns.

Ultimately, it's still a violation of the NEC. You can run low voltage signaling through high voltage conduits, provided proper wiring, but standard CAT6 and its endpoints is not rated for that. Is it going to cause any practical problems in residential wiring? Assuming you're using shielded and properly grounded CAT6, probably not, but you may run into trouble if you have to file an insurance claim or try to sell the property.

Not "commercial flights as we know them", just "commercial flights, period". Commercial aviation only exists because it exists as it does. You mandate solar power, and now you've mandated aircraft that are no faster than wheeled vehicles. Transportation would shift back to those vastly cheaper wheeled vehicles, and commercial aviation would all but go away.