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Comment Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease (Score 5, Insightful) 293

I've seen this sort of thing over and over again as protocols are removed from browsers, etc., with no option to just ignore the issue, with the result being that people have to use old versions to manage embedded appliances or old stuff that is no longer being supported. This forces you to use an old browser that will likely get hacked if you forget and open a modern site (like forgetting you're in the old browser and googling for something), but it would have been completely secure because the appliance or old device is in some disconnected network where no one is snooping on the traffic. I had this with UPSs, printers, data acquisition systems, lab testing equipment, etc.

This move will result in more expired certs, meaning more people will be trained to ignore expired certs, meaning they won't notice that the cert wasn't just expired but replaced. Even if the updates are automated, the real risk is that the signing cert is hacked, and that will just keep getting used in automation. The thing that needs quicker response time is invalidation. The same logic led to decades of 30-day password expiry...

Submission + - It's been 25 years since the first real slashdot effect (slashdot.org)

reg writes: Twenty-five years ago today, CmdrTaco innocently posted a story entitled "Collection of Fun Video Clips" in the days of T1 lines and invited anyone with the bandwidth to check it out. Even though the term "Slashdot Effect" had already been coined, this was the first time it took down a site. The site owner got a personal call from their ISP, which was later reported in the comments, where he also noted that he was writing a novella called "She Hates My Futon." Many old timers started reading that, although it's never been finished, despite having a Good Reads page, and a Facebook page, and several promises that he'll complete it.

Comment Nothing to do with Biden, it's simple greed (Score 1) 207

Decades ago, before global warming became obvious, it was clear that there would be a day of peak oil. At that point, whoever had the most reserves in the ground would win the planet because oil was vital, and whoever had the last drops for their war machine would win. So it was best to let others extract their reserves while holding on to your own.

Now that it's clear that burning even a fraction of the reserves we know about will alter life as we know it, it's a race to see who can extract their reserves the fastest because there'll always be enough oil for the war machine, but whoever hasn't extract their oil will be left with nothing.

The problem is that it's a game of chicken combined with Russian roulette. Whoever stops extracting too early misses out on all the money, but if too much oil is burned, someone will pay a heavy price. Like all gamblers, the rich and their political puppets think they'll be the ones to win and not pay the price. And if history is any lesson, the rich will probably win, and the poor will suffer...

Comment Re:CAPTCHA works even on the phone. (Score 1) 104

I just ask Bill what he's doing about systematic racism in policing. He's stopped calling... And Ted from the firefighters union gets asked about convict firefighters. If there's an actual person on the other end of the line or standing at your door, engaging them with real issues is much more effective at making them go away than chasing them off your lawn. Their supervisor doesn't want their bubble burst, or else they might realize they're being exploited.

Comment Re:Base reputation on quality, not quantity (Score 1) 127

The problem with this is that there is no tracking of reasons for citation, like +1,-1 here. If you get a junk paper published, it will often be highly cited, all saying you're an idiot... Some fields in the social sciences use a "for/against" style in their citations, but the h-index does not capture those. A lot of very highly cited papers are also "method" papers. If ASTM/IEEE standards had an h-index, it would be huge and meaningless. And then there's the issue of missing citations (very convenient when one research group 'forgets' to cite their 'rival' group), incorrect citations, etc.

Comment Re:tn? (Score 1) 71

7.5e12*1e6g*334J/g = 2.5e21J, or 2.5 ZJ... But yes, since over those 26 years, the earth has absorbed about 350ZJ of excess energy, that's 0.7% of the total AGW, which, given that current models have total ice melt at ~4%, with the Antarctic Ice Shelves seeing the least impact, that seems about right for a quick check.

Comment Re:Trust but verify. (Score 2) 122

As an engineer, this is not really true. Science is about observing the world. Engineering is about changing it. Engineers are not scientists and don't use the scientific method for most of their work. I'm a research engineer, so I use the scientific method to develop engineering methods, but that's pretty niche. Yes, engineers take the basics of science and build on that, but in most fields, as much as scientists would love to claim that every other discipline is just applied science (as Wikipedia does), "applied science" really means two things: "How do I make the theory work in the real world?" and "How do I describe the real world using the theory?" For example, applied mathematics is about implementing numerical methods to solve fancy math with tractable calculations or about looking at a problem and describing it with math. It is the same with statistics and physics, so you end up with many "assume a spherical cow" type solutions. This is most clear in chemistry, where applied chemists often focus on a problem to determine what chemistry is taking place, while chemical engineering is more about making as much of something as possible... There's been almost no new actual science in the last century in civil engineering. This is not true in fields like electronic engineering, where quantum effects are "new."

The analogy I like to use is simple optimization. Science develops a theory of a function and a slope. Applied science tries to work out the slope of some actual function. Engineering asks what the maximum for the function is and tries to make a step up the slope.

So yes, there is some sense in which engineers test scientific theories, in that if the theory says the slope goes up this way, but you find it doesn't, you're going to question the theory, but this is not the goal of engineering.

As a side note: Engineers are also not technicians, as shows like the Big Bang Theory and lots of SciFi shows like to promote...

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