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Comment subpoena timing doesn't matter (Score 1) 676

At least in 2 jobs I've worked the lawyers came before a lawsuit and said it reasonable to expect a subpoena in the future so we need to preserve a copy of EVERY email/file/paper/whatever TODAY (the day the the lawyer found out). Once you suspect something could be legal evidence in the future you are knowingly destroying evidence. You may not be thrown in jail, but the other side can tell the jury to assume the worst in what you destroyed - and the court can just say "it's your fault for destroying the things you say prove your innocence. Too bad for you."

Unless she is dumber than than any republican on the planet thinks, she had reason to believe that Congress would want to see the emails (not the courts but still a legal issue where subpoenas, perjury, etc apply). And if she was "too busy" to understand what was happening her lawyers, who were involved in selecting emails to delete, certainly know. And they decided to allow her to destroy evidence rather than risk having the emails exposed.

Even if there was not a single email that implicated her in anything illegal or anything that Congress was even interested in, it was "destroying evidence". They can't be used to show her innocence - some questions cannot be resolved either way because of the choice she (intentionally) made.

Comment godaddy if you know what you're doing (Score 1) 295

Their admin tools can be slow at times but have always worked. I've managed 5-10 domains at a time for over a decade - some with hosting at godaddy and some at other places. If I need to add service quick it's always been easy (e.g. a client decides they need godaddy's email blaster today or I decide they need a CMS set up for something they just decided to do this weekend).

Support has been 50/50 the few times I or my client has needed to contact them so it helps if you know what you're doing with domains, email, cms, etc.

Comment focus on engineering (Score 3, Interesting) 637

The problem I've seen in CS grads over the last 10-15 years is they have little to no engineering background (even when their degree is "Computer Engineering"). Most applications are complex systems. And most CS grads don't understand systems. I've been able to teach EEs, a chem E, a civil E, an MD and a CPA (among others) how to program. And they've had no trouble implementing solid class hierarchies and robust applications. It's much harder to teach a CS grad about structural integrity, analyzing a design for weaknesses, and root cause analysis. In some cases they won't accept those are even an issue since "software is so different from physical structures". So they keep building things that pass all the tests but repeatedly fall down once they get to production.

Comment what? (Score 1) 608

I know quite a few "normal" people who have developed software. I've worked with a doctor (MD) and CPA who learned programming on their own and decided to switch careers. No to mention a lot of people with non-technical backgrounds who got into designing web sites, then javascript, then backend work.

If anything it's getting too easy to get a "software development" job. Lot's of "programmers" work their way up to all levels of "software development" without expanding their understanding of software systems. Lots of others do learn along the way and belong where they rise to. But there is a lot of learning that needs to be done and many colleges don't even give a broad base to start with so even that's not always a good start. My guess is that healthcare.gov had too many people who knew how to program (i.e. "programmers") and not enough who understood systems/engineering ("software engineers" though that term is misused often since people don't understand the "engineering" aspect which takes a lot of learning )

If you want to see "exclusion" from a job try to help a sheetrocker, electrician, or plumber be allowed to be the lead architect for the next 70-story skyscraper. Or see if they can work their way up to that responsibility over the next 20 years without "requiring rare talents, grueling training, and total dedication".

Comment do we get to find out? (Score 1) 129

Is the IG obligated to tell the people anything? Or is this an attempt for them to find out (and cover up) any wrongdoings before we find out?

"Mr S found out about a part of project X. We need to tighten security on that project before the wrong workers find out about the rest of project X. Also start monitoring all of Mr S's personal communications and arrest him if anything looks suspicious and save anything that we can use to attack him publicly and destroy his credibility if he tells a reporter that we are doing something illegal and didn't stop when it was pointed out."

Comment Re:Relevant Skills (Score 2) 355

Lego skills are very useful for engineering. I've been in software development 30+ years and still apply skills I learned from lego, lincoln logs, and erector sets in the 60s and 70s. You can use these sets to build almost identical looking structures in many ways . Some will fall over when you barely touch them. Some can be rolled and even tossed a short distance without falling apart. Software is the same. You can put classes together to make a robust & stable system, or use similar classes to make a similar looking fragile system.

An understanding of structural stability is the biggest lack I've seen in developers the last 10 years. Non-software engineers are generally better than software engineers right out of school because the physical engineers got some understanding of structures in school. You can't test stability in. You need to be aware of it in all phases - design, throughout implementation, and finding root causes when there are problems rather than just fixing the bug (which needs to be fixed but may or may not be the root cause).

Comment one warning came to pass (Score 2) 230

Think of all of the warnings we hear from scientists/experts.

Mudslides, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes - there are lots of places we just shouldn't live because some day there will be a disaster.

Bridges, buildings, subways - there are lots of man-made structures we need to repair. some will collapse

Diet, medicine, excessive - it will harm society if we are allowed 20 oz drinks or salt at the table.

We could probably list legitimate warnings all day. And I'll probably experience dozens of things today that scientists have warned about. This situation is tragic but it doesn't mean anyone is to blame. With 1000s of warnings from scientists, some will happen - but most don't.

  If there's anywhere to focus it's on how to evaluate and prioritize warnings across a wide variety of areas (natural disaster, diet, structures, etc). We don't have the resources to fix everything we are warned about - where do we start?

The other thing we may want to learn is that the media should not over-hype all warnings. People need to know better what warnings to pay attention to. When we watch the news and scientists say "just about everything you do today" may kill you (or the planet), why even try to fix anything?

Comment Re:Should be easy to prove or dis-prove (Score 1) 335

Detection of extreme weather events hasn't been consistent so it's hard to say for example if there are more or more powerful hurricanes now than in the 1930's. Hurricanes need an eye witness to label them. These days we see something on radar and send a plane. In the 1930's it depended on having a boat in the area or making landfall in a populated area. One result is that there are a lot more recorded cat 1 and 2s now than 100 years ago but not so many more 4s and 5s (very likely they usually made land or were big enough that a boat recorded them before as now).

Around TAR timeframe this was not a generally accepted explanation so skeptics were called wrong when they pointed it out. But now it is more accepted and the latest IPCC report reduced their confidence that AGW will make hurricanes worse.

We can "prove or dis-prove" a lot if you're talking about 20-30 years. When you go back further it's much harder to say things are worse. Methods and devices have changed. We don't always even have access to those devices or the people who used them, especially if you want to go back 100s of years. We know about a few decadal oscillation and 60 year oscillations and there's evidence of multi-century natural oscillations. We don't know enough about the longer oscillations to say where we are in them and how extreme weather events are affected by them vs AGW. The medieval warm period and little ice age could cause problems for AGW supporters if it ends up that there is a multi-century cycle peaking that contributes to these extreme events. But, we really don't know much about those centuries or weather events in them.

Comment took me a while to get used to it (Score 4, Interesting) 208

I liked what I saw co-workers able to do with it and saw potential once I got it figured out so I kept at it. It took me a few weeks to get used to it but once I did, I loved it.

I was part of dozens (20-40) of projects at a time and it was great for keeping all of my notes about each project organized as I went from meeting to meeting. After I left that job (too many meetings) I didn't have a paid version of office. I've been more than happy with substitutes for everything else but have missed OneNote.

Comment laws and creative agencies (Score 1) 382

That's what I've seen in a very big company (100s of web sites)

Once you've met accessibility laws and blown this year's budget on new cookie laws and have done a lot to ensure privacy and security is a big cost and risk to be mobile friendly.

Add to that creative agencies who are GREAT at non-interactive but just getting good at desktop Web usability and mobile is tough. Agencies aren't always good with you going somewhere else for Web/mobile. And the interactive agencies aren't always good at understanding brand equity which is VERY important to the overall marketing strategy.

There are many other reasons (crappy old CMS). But I'd put legal and creative as the two biggest by far.

Comment depends on what you're protecting (Score 1) 213

The front door on my house works great for me. A bank wouldn't want to use it to protect their vault.

My router does fine for me. I'd like my politicians, and boss, and many other people who's decisions & actions affect me to be better protected than I am, but I can't build a custom router for them.

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