My last official university course was the “Introduction to Computer Science”. When I originally took the intro course they used BASIC. Well, the university used BASIC in the course for non-majors, but the course for majors used Pascal. I asked if I could just write a Pascal compiler and forget the course, but I had to take it. I taught the bloody intro course for two years as an adjunct, so it was a bit annoying, but bureaucracies just check boxes.

I was slated to take the graduate level course in Russian at Syracuse University which granted Masters to graduates, but the Defense Language Institute decided to offer the course, so all I got was a certificate of completion. The Institute is fully accredited, but it doesn’t grant degrees. Who knows why organizations do what they do?

You are correct, and I like your choices. 🙂 I was torn between language and history. Originally, I planned to study language, because I supposed it would be an excellent prerequisite for studying history! 🙂 But the language course was full that year.

I understand about going to the *right* school too. I wish I’d known before I entered the school I finally chose. After graduating I got a job with DEC then with GD. GD sponsored me to complete my post grad studies (Masters). But I discovered that because of the school and recent changes n the system, it was marked as a *Masters equivalent* rather than an official Masters degree. *shrug* Bureaucrats… May they all rot in hell!

My formal BS is computers is with “super” minors in social sciences and Slavic languages and literature, and the bulk of my graduate work in Russian culture. If I had been at a different university I could have been awarded both a BA and a BS, but it was too late to change horses and I was only doing it to make filling out an employment application easier, anyway. Most HR/personnel departments can’t figure out that 400 semester hours is more than a bachelor’s degree, so I was catering to their lack of knowledge.

In most of the universities in the US they have created special courses in the humanities for tech majors to fulfill requirements without requiring people to actually learn much about the field. This has resulted the garbage that passes as manuals and help files – the people who create them can’t write in non-technical English. It is pointless to connect the world when people can’t write in a comprehensible manner.

Over-specialization tends to reduce communication. You need translators to re-write things from jargon to general English.

The claim is that there have been so many advances that you can’t teach everything, which I understand, and it is a valid statement, but if you don’t know the basics, how can’t you understand what came afterward?

Cheers!

A lot of the better hackers get hired off the books, so it is in no one’s “interest” that they get prosecuted. Most of those who actually get nailed aren’t that good, but they know how to give an interesting interview, or their lawyer does.

The bulk of people in most professions are held back by “conventional wisdom” that tells what can and can’t be done, so they don’t ever “go for it”. To be honest, there aren’t many places you can work that reward innovation.

The value of a degree may be dropping, but the people are as intelligent as ever, if they get a chance to show it.

I use various flavors of linux, and a hardened XP behind a linux gateway.

There was a crew out of Thailand called simply the Tiger Team that were either admired or feared depending whether you were a client or a target. They were never known to fail. For varying amounts starting around the $10k mark, they guaranteed success. I haven’t heard much about them for a few years. I suspect they went deep under cover after a couple of internationally famous hacks. 🙂

It’s interesting to me that many renowned (and usually anonymous) hackers are Aussies. 🙂

It is a much misunderstood and fascinating World they inhabit, and there is a curious *war* being waged there. Many Gov & Corp’s fear them, and yet understand their potential value to them. I suspect this is the main reason there has been no real concerted effort to hunt black-hat (or grey) hackers. But the rules are vastly different in the Digital Underworld. 🙂

That quote by Cray is quite correct Bryan. 🙂 And I learned it a couple decades ago when hiring staff for a major project. I had to ask myself “How do I find people with the skills and experience to do something that has never been done before?” Of course, I couldn’t. I need people who hadn’t yet learned that word ‘impossible’ yet. So I hired mostly graduates. We won several awards over the next few years. They were a very good team. The way the education system is today, I doubt I could do that again. Sad.

Cheers!

Any network can be cracked because there has to be two-way traffic, the “sweet spot” is where it is more trouble than it’s worth to do it, and the network isn’t overly affected by the restrictions.

Truly high security systems are a pain in the neck to use because everyone has to restart with new codes if there’s an anomaly during connections. Some satellite-based synchronous systems are almost unusable during solar flare activity because the timing and quality of the signals is affected. There’s always a trade off.

That said, whatever these guys did, others can do now that they know it’s possible.

Seymour Cray said he hired graduate students to work on his supercomputers because they hadn’t learned what was impossible to do, so they just did it.

It’s like nuclear weapons – they are really simple once you know what will happen. Staying alive while building one is the hard part.

I’m not a computer partisan: I don’t much care what kind of computer I use, as long as it does the job and doesn’t fall to hackers in two minutes. Oh, wait…