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Showing posts from January, 2016

The Mythical STEM Shortage

Long ago, there were Personnel Managers.  Nowadays, there are Human Resource Managers.  As an engineer or scientist, you are a consumable resource, just like oil and electricity.  You are used to make a project work and once the project is done, you are not needed anymore and you will be laid off.   In my experience, there is a perpetual over supply of engineers and scientists and roughly 10% to 15% of engineers are always unemployed or underemployed.  However, there is a huge shortage of Entrepreneurs. Jobs are created by small businesses - large businesses destroy jobs. Large businesses buy small businesses, absorb them, take the good products, discard the bad ones, fire half the people in the first round, and the rest in the second round.  This is known as increasing productivity. For example Intel, Microsoft, Cobham, IBM, Yahoo, Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, United Technologies - they buy companies and then frack them and shake the employees out.  The result is a constant clam

Juniper, Citrix and Fortinet

No, this is not about the famous Donovan song. Most of this list was compiled by M. Jennings: NSA Helped British Spies Find Security Holes In Juniper Firewalls [theintercept.com] Quote: "... British spy agency GCHQ, with the knowledge and apparent cooperation of the NSA, acquired the capability to covertly exploit security vulnerabilities in 13 different models of firewalls made by Juniper Networks..." Secret Code Found in Juniper's Firewalls Shows Risk of Government Backdoors [wired.com] Quote: "This is a very good showcase for why backdoors are really something governments should not have in these types of devices because at some point it will backfire." New Discovery Around Juniper Backdoor Raises More Questions About the Company [wired.com] Quote: "Juniper added the insecure algorithm to its software long after the more secure one was already in it, raising questions about why the company would have knowingly undermined an al