[Lilug] On-topic to last night's meeting

Wed Apr 11 16:05:09 PDT 2018

I was trying to hold back, and may re-open a can of worms, but I here are my thoughts, opinions and possible clarifications from latest to oldest. 

1 - Basic programming concepts are the same, however paradigm shifts like structured coding and object oriented coding have made programming much easier then a bunch of machine level code with a large number of goto statements. ( Granted the actual generated machine code may not be as efficient, but the source code and concepts have become easier to read and support ). 

2 - Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around for so long and in so many forms, I'm glad that it is starting to make some headway. As for it's use, if the programmer is Austin Powers it would lean one way, if the programmer is Dr. Evil, it would go the other way, either way the outcome will be interesting. 

3 - I'm not proficient in python (yet), but I think Tom showed code for CSON [CoffeeScript-Object-Notation] that relied on placement of statements rather then python itself. 

4 - It would make sense that psychology would be considered in AI implementation, but how would a psychologist implement code in an AI. What if the implemented code was created by a 'psychotic' psychologist? 

5 - Humans always push things too far and too fast. Then have to backup (or not) to review the damage and consider the consequences. It's the quest for dominance and the next great thing that will bring fame and fortune to the ones who did it first. To hell with the casualties along the way. 

6 - Airplanes and control systems (SCADA) are systems that run with high reliability. they are not perfect, and they are not flawless, but enough consideration is put in their design and implementation that a reduced number of people fear flying or riding the train. I assume the same will happen with automated vehicles. 

As another thought on automated vehicles, one designer could decide to signal all vehicles in the area to come to a immediate stop in the event of a 'danger' or mis-understood driving situation. This could not happen with a single self-driving car, but can work when all cars are automated. Another scenario I heard of monetizes automated vehicles where if someone wants to get somewhere before everyone else and has the money, their car can 'bribe' the other cars to move over and let them through for a fee (Wealth wins again!). 

When an airplane or train crashes and lives are lost, who is responsible then? 

7 - No comment on your last 17 years. We all have our cross to bear. 

8 - FOSS (Free Open Source Software) and Linux do not impede people from making money, they encourage freedom of choice and provide options with regards to computing. Without Apache, MySQL, PHP, Perl, Java and Javascript a whole industry of web designers would have never been born, and from that, at a higher level a generation of Word Press and other CMS (Content Management Systems) that people make money from. 

Sure someone can create a WordPress site in-house and not have to pay someone to do it. But to get a really nice WordPress site, you need to hire a professional and pay them accordingly, whether they be in-house or contracted. 

9 - Clients that don't want to pay for software or services that help their company run more efficiently are just cheap. 

10 - Technology is not a panacea, If your business runs better with index cards, as the manager or owner of your business, you should not implement tech because everyone else is doing it. 

11- I think your professor made a wrong assumption. If the Linux or BSD were a 'corrected' UNIX then programs and scripts would be failing all over the place. You would have to make it appear, at least at the highest level, virtually identical even with the errors. 

12 - You're ability to override security software by re-installing the OS is why systems need to be secured physically as well. If you're the vampire trying to get in and the owner of the house says "come on in" then no amount of chains, locks and bolts will stop you from getting to that neck. 

13 - I like that security is being considered at the programming level. It's a pain if your coding and just want to get something to work, but now coders are really trying to validate their inputs and outputs, resulting in cleaner, better and more secure code. If we had started this years ago before single user systems went multi-user (on an un-named closed source system), we would be in a better place. That's why the security on Unix, Linux and BSD is better, because it was designed with multiple users from the beginning. (Depending on the administrator, of course) 

14 - Educational != Pirated. Linux and BSD have found legitimate (legal) places in industry that may not be possible with other closed sourced systems. It IS NOT an inferior OS, just a different one. 

15 - Hope you found your glasses. 

----- Original Message -----

From: "iN8sWoRld.net" <nate at in8sworld.net> 
To: "LILUG Mailing List" <lilug at lists.lilug.org> 
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2018 5:26:45 PM 
Subject: Re: [Lilug] On-topic to last night's meeting 

I would agree that the core concepts of programming are fairly universal, even if syntax can be very different. 
I would agree that the rapid development of AI seemingly without moral / ethical boundaries and/or guidance is perhaps the biggest threat to humanity since humanity. 

On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 4:56 PM, Robert Wilkens < rob.wilkens at ieee.org > wrote: 

Oh and bringing up COBOL: 

Every programming language is pretty much the same 

The big idea behind COBOL class was that you aligned things underneath each other to make statement segments 

Well, big circle, apparently I learned last night python is pretty much the same exact thing 

Every programming language pretty much consists of, as I read elsewhere, some combination of “assignments”, “comparisons”, and “jumps”. There isn’t too much more to it. You can label the syntax/semantics however you want, but programming really hasn’t changed. 

It’s interesting with AI, they’re using more PSYCHOLOGY (positive psychology), I’ve been learning more about AI from my membership in the American Psychological Association in the last few months than I have ever learned from computer science magazines. Sure, computer scientists invented artificial neural networks some 20-40 years ago, and the hardware caught up, but now psychology is what is used to PROGRAM them. 

-Rob 

Sent from Mail for Windows 10 

From: Robert Wilkens 
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2018 4:40 PM 

To: LILUG Mailing List 
Subject: RE: [Lilug] On-topic to last night's meeting 

As a final “talking to myself” point, I am a lifetime member of the Association “for” computing machinery, I just wish people would think things THROUGH before PUSHING TOO FAR TOO FAST.. Some things need to be secured, for example, at the DESKTOP level before you think of putting same technology into a roaming vehicle which can murder (and there HAVE been deaths by self driving cars already, multiple). In that case, WHO do you hold responsible? 

-Rob 

Sent from Mail for Windows 10 

From: Robert Wilkens 
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2018 4:30 PM 
To: LILUG Mailing List 
Subject: RE: [Lilug] On-topic to last night's meeting 

Oh, and most of the last 17 years I’ve been sitting on my butt and doing my own thing for $2,000/month + free health insurance I’m just watching with disbelief as the world happens. 

-Rob 

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From: iN8sWoRld.net 
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2018 4:25 PM 
To: LILUG Mailing List 
Subject: Re: [Lilug] On-topic to last night's meeting 

I'm sorry to hear that you have found it difficult to make money with free software. Its often difficult for folks in industries disrupted by new technologies to figure out a way to make money in a new economy. This has happened over and over again thoughout history and will not stop any time soon. You won't find a job as a milkman or an elevator operator no matter how much you beat the pavement looking for one. You mentioned automation, and I think we've all heard the predictions that driverless cars may soon displace all delivery drivers for example. We could deal with this information a couple ways, but ignoring the warnings, getting a CDL and selling our homes to buy a big rig might not be the best choice. 

The bright side of change of course is that for all the jobs lost in maintaining legacy COBOL applications there have been a bucket-load of people making mobile and web applications. In fact, it seems to me that there are many *more* people writing code today than there used to be precisely because its more accessible (both in the availability of training and opportunity to market on the internet). Programming is still one of the highest paying jobs you can have - and no messy physical work required! 

On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 3:52 PM, Robert Wilkens < rob.wilkens at ieee.org > wrote: 
<blockquote>

Oh, and don’t be fooled by AI and automated decision making with modern tech as tech advances faster and faster. There are ways to make people get used to the idea of algorithms deciding – who to pair you up with on a dating site, who to put you in class with, whether or not to approve credit, etc. – And then there are those who know how to either BIAS those algorithms with misleading training data, and/or intentionally slip in malicious (for their benefit) code when people aren’t looking. 

And yes, people WILL do that ethically just to get people not to trust these things. 

-Rob 

Sent from Mail for Windows 10 

From: Robert Wilkens 
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2018 3:49 PM 

To: LILUG Mailing List 
Subject: RE: [Lilug] On-topic to last night's meeting 

In my not so humble opinion, Linux has made it virtually impossible to make money as a programmer. That’s largely why the last 20 years or so I’ve been “virtually homeless”. You see it all over California too, former tech people living on the streets in cardboard boxes, all because people don’t want to pay for software and services, and would rather foreigners support and develop this software --- in some cases software we use for our own ‘national security’, how dumb is that. 

Sent from Mail for Windows 10 

From: Robert Wilkens 
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2018 2:53 PM 
To: LILUG Mailing List 
Subject: RE: [Lilug] On-topic to last night's meeting 

Recall them, then : - ) 

I remember a professor back in college in 1996 said “There is too much stuff done wrong in exactly the same way as real unix for Linux not to have been copied almost directly from UNIX code” 

-Rob 

Sent from Mail for Windows 10 

From: iN8sWoRld.net 
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2018 9:56 AM 
To: LILUG Mailing List 
Subject: Re: [Lilug] On-topic to last night's meeting 

I take issue with your characterization of Linux and BSD as "pirated" software as this has been litigated (to death) by patent trolls who create NOTHING and waste tons of other people's time and money trying to make money off of other people's work. Neither Linux nor BSD can properly be called "pirated" software in any sense, its just incorrect and quite like the FUD I recognize as typical of Microsoft and SCO. They are "unix-like" operating systems, they do not use unix code. In fact, if anyone pirated things, its Microsoft who were using BSD TCP/IP stack right up until sometime before Win7? They did comply and put the disclaimer in there that the code was from BSD however. 
Another point I'd like to make is that you can place any disclaimer you wish on anything you sell, but what matters is whether that claim will hold up in court. This typically depends on which state you are in and whether you show "gross negligence" in your application. Speaking as someone who has been involved in the making of actual physical products for 25 years (some with Linux), I can confirm that lawyers will use any tactic possible to pin a failure on the weakest link in the chain (provided that link also has enough money to be a worthwhile target - there is a calculus there), so you certainly would be wise to evaluate the tools you use carefully, and document that things are tested against specifications with third party agencies. If Linux should not be used in actual real world application you've got some serious problems. You would need to recall billions of phones, almost every super computer, not to mention high energy physics colliders, all Amazon and Google server farms, and soon you won't be able to buy a darn thing (iOT) without some kind of Linux in it. 

On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 8:56 AM, Robert Wilkens < rob.wilkens at ieee.org > wrote: 
<blockquote>

Sorry to keep replying to myself, but here’s why software guys (at least not with an engineering background) shouldn’t be involved in designing ‘security’ into systems.. 

Back in 2001, I was working on a U.S. Army project with people from intelligence agencies from various other governments (such as the Mossat, and MI-Whatever that british agency) .. And I was only there less than two months.. And this was JUST BEFORE 9/11 by a matter of 3-4 months.. And I managed to break through all this incredible software security (completely by accident, not knowing it was there), when one of those foreign agents casually asked me to reinstall windows for them.. So, despite layers and layers of security controls in the system, this military security as it was some 17 years ago (I’m disclosing this now, hoping they learned their lesson), all it took to bypass this wonderful security the military had was to reinstall windows from the commercial install disk over-the-counter. 

I know Linus Torvalds’ was pissed when Spectre and Meltdown were ‘revealed’ to the public, but sometimes backdoors are put into systems ON PURPOSE, whether or not that is smart. Sometimes it’s a government insisting on a back-way-in, and other times it’s an individual who thinks they’re smart, and sometimes it’s actually just an accident, and going back in time to figure out which is virtually impossible (even if it were possible, the factors involved in decision making are often difficult to determine). 

-Rob 

Sent from Mail for Windows 10 

From: Robert Wilkens 
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2018 7:59 AM 

To: LILUG Mailing List 
Subject: RE: [Lilug] On-topic to last night's meeting 

ON a side note, MacOS is built on BSD which is also an ‘educational’ (pirated) operating system, BSD=University of California at Berkeley I believe.. As such, pirating MacOS should be considered free to do, since they didn’t have a problem with that, and I wouldn’t dare use a Mac in industry running BSD. 

Sent from Mail for Windows 10 

From: Robert Wilkens 
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2018 7:41 AM 
To: LILUG Mailing List 
Subject: RE: [Lilug] On-topic to last night's meeting 

Again, pardon typos, my eyeglasses were lost, it’ll probably be a week or two until replacements arrive 

Sent from Mail for Windows 10 

From: Robert Wilkens 
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2018 7:39 AM 
To: LILUG Mailing List 
Subject: RE: [Lilug] On-topic to last night's meeting 

And this, again, is why Linux should never ever be used in industy legally. It’s educational, it’s open source clone of real UNIX which professional like myself have contributed to.. However, Linux ultimately is pirated software, which is valid for educational use, scientific experimentation and learning, but never in practice should it ever be used. 

-Rob 

Sent from Mail for Windows 10 

From: Robert Wilkens 
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2018 7:05 AM 
To: LILUG Mailing List 
Subject: RE: [Lilug] On-topic to last night's meeting 

I saw a five line or so comment at the top of some source code disclaiming all warranties, expressed or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose, etc. etc. 

>From my understanding this is what they consider a “blanket disclaimer” 

What separates scientists (people who research) from Engineers (people who practice) is that the practitioners HAVE to have responsibility for their products, like I said there are a lot of products today that are potentially deadly that rely on software, and if we’re talking murder or manslaughter, we CAN NOT just say “well, I said I wasn’t responsible, therefore I am not”. 

By the way, if any ‘software engineers’ in new York aren’t aware, you cannot legally call yourself an engineer in new York state without approval from NCEES (I believe it is called), this is a certification process for licensing, the term engineer is protected in new york state. NCEES incidentally has a mailing address in the same town that I want to college. 

Sent from Mail for Windows 10 

From: iN8sWoRld.net 
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2018 7:01 AM 
To: LILUG Mailing List 
Subject: Re: [Lilug] On-topic to last night's meeting 

As this interested me I took a quick look on github and all I can find is that Atom is released under the MIT license. 
Is this the "waiver" to which you refer? The MIT license doesn't imply any warranty at all and doesn't require users sign any waiver that I'm aware. 

https://github.com/atom/atom/blob/master/LICENSE.md 

Nate 

Not sent from Windows 

On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 6:01 AM, Robert Wilkens < rob.wilkens at ieee.org > wrote: 
<blockquote>

I’ve noticed that there was a ‘blanket disclaimer’ on the ATOM source code shown. I’ve heard these blanket disclaimers might start becoming invalid or disallowed as computers are more and more involved in tasks that involve life and death (such as self driving cars). Clearly someone has to be responsible. Does anyone here have opinions on the elimination of the legality of discarding all liabilities with a simple statement making that claim? 

Rob 

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