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Comment its all machine language end of the day (Score 1) 90

as someone who wrote their first program in fortran, in 1976, i have seen languages come and go, and the birth of C, Java and Python. I have seen/heard thousands of debates about which is the 'better' language, and the pros and cons. i also wrote a lot of assembly language programs in Z80, 6502 and x86. there are the 'real' programs. i am always bemused when high level language developers have no idea of a cpu instruction set, and argue among themselves about the best language. i tell them that they will be really disappointed to learn that cpu's don't care a toss about your code, compilers translate everything into machine code, and the same team who would be horrified to use a GOTO statement or equivalent, end up writing code with a lot of cpu JMP instructions. just saying.

Comment the public don't get it (Score 3, Insightful) 433

the same reason that PKI hasnt taken off anywhere with the general public: they don't get it. when it's been tried, people lose their private certs when they swap devices, and get confusede. only IT people really use it. the best way forward i think is to have the private cert on a token or somethinbg like a yubikey: plug and play PKI.

Comment most likely? most likely? (Score 2) 99

"The hackers, most likely from a well-known group that's funded by the Chinese government". people are rightly skeptical of news sources these days, this isn't helping. would it have killed you to verify the information before posting? by all means report a hack,it's good information, but let's not go crazy and promote suspicions as fact. that's how these things start. how exactly are we identifying it was a chinese government source? as in, how?

Comment vague (Score 1) 188

RSA is a cryptosystem based on an algorithm. As such, it is possible to criticize: (a) the algorithm itself (b) a particular implementation (c) examples of lazy attempts to use it. i assume the author is not claiming that finding the factors of the product of two large primes is easy, or that the algorithm is fundamentally flawed. so i think what he is really saying is...anyone?...bueller? ...actually i am not sure what his point is. but given that he has decided to write in a shock-jock advertising style, i am almost certain that he probably has one. it is true that like anything, you need to properly implement the system. but as the author points out...um...anyone?...bueller?... it's like saying that using random numbers in cryptography is "intrinsically fragile... containing countless foot-guns "; it's true that it's not trivial to generate random numbers. there are bad implementations and common faults. doesn't mean it's flawed. i will continue to use random numbers, and i will continue to mindfully use RSA.

Comment Re:It's about clear thinking, not technology (Score 1) 117

And then journalistic integrity was used for a short time so we knew articles were true. And then that went all out the window. All we need to do is maintain the concept of journalistic integrity for the internet.

journalism helped, but a newspaper could be bought at any time (murdoch, sky, fox anyone?) so trusting journalists was hit and miss for the novice. in practice we made our own judgements on which media we trusted and tended to bookmark that as our trusted source. even when reading our most trusted writer, we still need to read critically. that's my point: we should never look for the one true new source, or technical fixes; we need to have the skills to read and absorb all news critically.

Comment It's about clear thinking, not technology (Score 2) 117

Misinformation has been a problem since before humans could talk. The ancient Romans and Greeks were masters of oratory, persuasion and 'fake news'. Propaganda. Fascists, Trumps, Orwell. Technologies and Media channels will come and go. What to do? Stop complaining about the channel du jour, and learn to think clearly all by yourself. That way, if someone charming tells you to put your head in the oven, you will work out for yourself not to! It's liberating. If you don't know where to start, try reading Plato or Aristotle, or here's an excellent book: 'The Art of Thinking Clearly', by Rolf Dobelli. Or just read. Then ponder, analyze, think. But don't absorb information mindlessly and then say 'The author misled me'. You don't do it with ads, do you? Look at information as a an input, source, not as an automatic truth.

Comment different roles (Score 1) 198

an enterprise architect is violently different from a sysadmin. think skyscraper architect vs a particular carpenter on the building. an architect deals in patterns, modelling and a 5 year plan that is more aligned with business goals than with technology implementations. an EA has absolutely no need to login to production systems, and even if he were able to do, it would be evidence that no security architecture is in place. operations login to production systems, no one else. as you say, "I have been involved in a constant struggle with the core IT group over how to best run the operations.". you are seeking an operational management role, not an EA role.very different animals.

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