I generally ignore conspiracy theories. The more you know about history, probability, and human nature, the harder it is to seriously attribute malicious intent to things that happen by random chance, or as a result of public and well-known systems. The assassination of John F. Kennedy was (probably) a legitimate conspiracy. The claim that Kentucky …
This fellow (warning, PDF file) claims that all computer science graduates should take a course in writing Trojans, viruses, worms, and the like — “malware” — or at least that it should be offered as a regular part of an elective security course. At first, I was taken aback by the suggestion. You don’t want …
Continue reading ‘“The Growing Harm of Not Teaching Malware”’ »
Short, sweet, and very amusing. If you don’t read this one, you’ll regret it.
Definitely tongue-in-cheek, but amusing for us programmer-geeks.
I love this.
An exciting discovery: […] Similar to the flexibility of artificial nano-wires, the conducting properties of the Geobacter biofilm could be manipulated by simply changing the temperature or regulating gene expression to create a new strain, for example. By adding a third electrode, the biofilm can act like a biological transistor, able to be switched on …
Continue reading ‘“Bacterial nanowire discovery could revolutionize bioelectronics”’ »
It’s true. The modern conveniences are great, once you know how to do things the old-fashioned, by-hand way. But if you’ve always used the conveniences, and never bothered to learn the hard way of doing something, you’re cheating yourself. I see it all the time in programming. People who started out with a high-level language …
Continue reading ‘“Increase Your Brain Power by Doing Things the Hard Way”’ »
This week, on the Colbert Report, I heard something that shocked me: some evangelical Christian scientists were beginning to publicly doubt that humanity could be descended from one man and one woman, as described in the book of Genesis. The reason it shocked me is that I couldn’t believe that someone who identified himself as …
Continue reading ‘“Are Some Evangelicals Beginning to Question the Existence of Adam and Eve?”’ »
What is this, a geek version of one-upsmanship? Now the Italians are offering their own plan for cleaning up low-Earth orbit: a robotic satellite that will slap a thruster onto larger pieces of debris and light it. This rivals the Japanese fishing-net idea and the American ground-based laser plan.
Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, points out a Bloomberg article about the CEO of Starbucks Corp. urging other business leaders to suspend donations to political campaigns “until the Congress and the President return to Washington and deliver a fiscally disciplined long-term debt and deficit plan to the American people.” Other than armed revolt, that’s likely …