So many. I have a programmer friend who saw that movie and became obsessed with going and working for some hip tech company (like Twitter). I can't say this from experience, but I imagine working for twitter (or any other sexy tech company) isn't a big party. It's hard work. It's seventy hour weeks and a ball-breaking boss.
The point he's making, in my opinion, is that while farming rats to kill them is useless, farming vulnerabilities is not. There's no real use in advancing our knowledge of rat slaughter, we know how to do that pretty well already, and these rat farmers are indeed gaming the system.
Researchers aren't necessarily injecting bugs in the system unscrupulously, but even if they were, would it be a bad thing? The nature of security is such that bug farming would probably help move the problem forward. The science of mitigating threats is far more complicated than that of killing rats. So manufacturing vulnerabilities will advance our understanding of computer security.
This is exactly the kind of things that the Obama Administration's NSTIC policy aims to create. I feel like a number of companies (Google, Facebook, your bank, specifically) already have plans to do this.
I guess my entire interest in VRM is because I do not like being data mined, and you just named _the_ top candidates for data mining that concern me.
EDIT: When the NSTIC was announced, many organisations I respect, and typically agree with, game out against it[1]:
"Shortly after the draft's release, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, in conjunction with a number of other consumer-rights and civil liberties organizations[5], sent the Committee a statement in response to the draft NSTIC policy, requesting that the White House provide a clearer and more complete plan to create and safeguard Internet users' rights and privacy."
"We developed a novel method, called UDmap, to identify dynamically assigned IP addresses and analyze their dynamics pattern. UDmap is fully automatic, and relies only on application-level server logs that are already available today."
That's a good point. Invading Gaul et al. was probably more lucrative than invading a country like Afghanistan as the Romans were more obviously and unabashedly imperialistic and that war had to do with territorial expansion.
The invasion of Gaul is more akin to the way (relatively) early Americans forced out the Native Americans, and their culture certainly changed/doesn't really exist anymore. WWII Japan and Nazi Germany are examples of a places where a short war changed the culture.
The reason it won't work any more is because that style of 'total war' appears to have gone out of style. Probably a good thing, though Fareed Zakaria was on the Daily Show the other night talking about how one reason America has been so powerful is because Europe was leveled in WWII and the US had the industry to rebuild.
I agree it is much too short, but I think we need a good solid baby boom before we will take arms in the near future.
I was also thinking that economics and not war are behind the spread of the English language. You could argue that movies (culture) also cause people to learn a language, but the movies are coming from the place that has the money and industry to make them.
I agree. The point of this article is to refute the belief that a broad and open field of employment interests will increase your chances of finding a job. The reality is that a refined interest is better. Same goes for job postings; it's better to pick a company and hone in than it is to blanket resumes across a number of potential employers.
I will agree 100% regarding the job postings. 'Carpet bombing' companies rarely works. However the same doesn't always apply to dealing a recruiters and/or friends, your reality isn't everyones.
I'm only expressing that there is validity to not narrowing your interests, fields or industries and that dismissing someone out of hand because they are 'unfocused' is just as bad and unhelpful as dismissing someone because they don't have a degree. (an entirely different conversation)
There is value in being wide open to opportunities, but there is no value in being wishy-washy when asking for a referral.
You are imagining every conceivable conversation you could have with someone in a position to help you network for a job, and searching for something that breaks the pattern of "being specific and actionable". Lo and behold, there are cases where "specific and actionable" doesn't fit! For instance, if you're asking for advice about what kinds of roles fit your skills and interests, maybe you don't want to lock the conversation down to a specific title.
But that has nothing to do with asking for referrals.
You have to look at it from the other person's perspective. You have to help me help you. I need to be confident in my introductions. I know a lot of people so you need to help me narrow it down. And I would prefer to have a story.
