Cop Car's Beat

IT roles we old times never filled

Excerpts from NETWORKWORLD

Cisco spotlights new IT roles you've never heard of

A Cisco report on IT trends says new jobs to address changing IT needs include business translator, network guardian and network detective.

By Michael Cooney

Senior Editor, Network World| May 4, 2020 10:18 am PDT

 

From the networking study, Cisco put forward a number of new or developing roles it expects to see in the future, including:

• Business translator: The business translator works to better turn the needs of business into service-level, security and compliance requirements that can be applied and monitored across the network. The translator also works to use network and network data for business value and innovation, and their knowledge of networking and application APIs will help them glue the business to the IT landscape.
• Network guardian: A network guardian works to bridge network and security architectures. They build the distributed intelligence of the network into security architecture and the SecOps process. This is where networking and security meet, and the guardian is at the center of it all, pulling in and pushing out vast amounts of data, distilling it and then taking action to identify faults or adapt to shutdown attackers.
• Network commander: Intent-based networking builds on controller-based automation and orchestration processes. The network commander takes charge of these processes and practices that ensure the health and continuous operation of the network controller and underlying network.
• Network orchestrator: This position translates business needs into network policy. It focuses on policy translation and automation, and policy alignment across network and IT domains.
• Network detective: A network detective uses and tunes network assurance tools that employadvanced analytics and AI to ensure that the network delivers on business intent. They work with IT service-management processes and SecOps teams to identify network anomalies and close potential security holes. Like the network guardian, they use data proactively to identify faults and attacks.

“These new jobs represent a growing tie between business and technology,” Clarke said. "Piece parts of these new criteria are handled by different people but what we are seeing is a need for a hybrid engineer to handle a blend of duties they don’t typically deal with today."

For example, the business intent might be high-quality video calls from a remote workspace that then might be moved from one place to another. The network doesn’t understand that but an engineer can take a multistep configuration to make that happen. How you deal with security, control bandwidth, QoS and use analytics and automation together is part of an evolving role, he said.

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Disclosure: I own a few shares (fewer than 200) of Cisco; but, they know nothing about me or my blog and this posting is not, in any way, endorsed by them.

We are edging toward the user-friendly computing arena about which I dreamed 40-50 years ago.

Back in the days when, to make good use of digital computing power, one needed to program to a certain extent (More from Slashdot.org - What was your first coding language?), I lamented that "Just because we have the capability of doing something doesn't mean that we should need to do it."

One of the latest postings on Slashdot.org (below) gives me hope that we'll eventually reach the state in which the person on the street will be able to tell digital computers what to do.

Will Low-Code and No-Code Platforms Revolutionize Programming? (forbes.com) 94

Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday February 23, 2020 @03:34AM from the pondering-platforms dept.

In a new article in Forbes, a Business Technology professor at the Villanova School of Business argues that the way we build software applications is changing: If you're living in the 21st century you turn to your cloud provider for help where many of the most powerful technologies are now offered as-a-service. When your requirements cannot be completely fulfilled from cloud offerings, you build something. But what does "building" mean? What does "programming" mean...? You can program from scratch. You can go to Github (where you can find code of all flavors). Or you can — if you're a little lazier — turn to low-code or no-code programming platforms to develop your applications.

All of this falls under the umbrella of what, the Gartner Group defines as the "democratization of expertise":

"Democratization is focused on providing people with access to technical expertise (for example, ML, application development) or business domain expertise (for example, sales process, economic analysis) via a radically simplified experience and without requiring extensive and costly training...."

[T]he new repositories, platforms and tools are enabling a whole new set of what we used to call "programming." As Satya Nadella said, "Every business will become a software business, build applications, use advanced analytics and provide SAAS services," and as Sajjad Daya says so well in Hackernoon, "Coding takes too long for it to be both profitable and competitively priced. That's not the case with no-code platforms, though. The platforms do the complicated programming automatically, slashing development time..."

The technology democracy has forever changed corporate strategy. And what does this mean? It means that the technical team scales on cue. But "technical" means competencies around Github, low-code/no-code platforms and especially business domains... [A]ll of this levels the technology playing field among companies — so long as they understand the skills and competencies they need.

Today's witty remark from Slashdot.org: "16.5 feet in the Twilight Zone = 1 Rod Serling"

More from Slashdot.org - What was your first coding language?

The following item is taken from Slashdot.org.

Are There Generational Differences In First Coding Languages and Learning Resources? (hackerrank.com) 81

Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday February 09, 2020 @06:34AM from the big-on-bootcamps dept.

"Under the age of 39? Odds are that most of your peers learned to code in C.

"Most Baby Boomers and Gen Xers — or, those between the ages of 40 and 74 in 2020 — learned to code in BASIC."

That's just one of the interesting conclusions from HackerRank's third annual "Developer Skills Report," which this year compiled responses from over 116,000 developers (from 162 different countries). Developed for educational use in 1964, BASIC was a popular instructional language in college classrooms. But that began to change in 1972, when Bell Labs invented C, allowing portability of the Unix operating system. Though it wasn't an instant hit, the language rose to popularity in the late 70s and early 80s alongside the growth of Unix. Today, the language is celebrated for its longevity, flexibility, and ease of use — just some of the reasons it's still popular for Gen Zers learning to code today.

Gen Z is more likely than any previous generation to utilize bootcamps. Nearly one in six say they've leveraged bootcamps to learn new skills. On the flip side, they're less likely to learn coding skills from older generations' go-tos, like books and on-the-job training. As Gen Z comes to rely more heavily on non-traditional education sources like bootcamps, they're poised to become a key talent pool.
Jaxenter also summarizes another interesting finding from the survey. "72% of hiring managers reported that bootcamp grads were equally or better equipped for their job." The I-Programmer site even noted the top reasons managers gave the surveyors for why bootcamp grads exceed:

• Ability to learn new technologies & languages quickly (71%)
• Strong practical experience (61%)
• Eager to take on new responsibilities (52%)

And they also summarizes another interesting result. "Almost of third of developers at small companies (1-49 employees) haven't obtained a Bachelor's degree -- a proportion that drops to only 9% in companies with 10,000 or more employees."

I notice that they looked at no one older than 74. That makes sense since they were looking at developers (which we oldsters called computer programmers) - active ones, who are still employed. My generation mostly cut our teeth on FORTRAN (I started coding with it in 1961), did not become developers, and are, by and large, retired or dead rather than employed. My succeeding programming codes (which we called "languages") were WAT4 (Boeing's version of FORTRAN 4), WAT5 (Boeing's version of FORTRAN 5), APT (for driving numerically controlled machines), BASIC, and who remembers anything after that? Mostly, I used apps that were put out by an aircraft manufacturer or NASA (NASTRAN Versions 16 & 68), from then on.

I'm wondering how many (computer) languages Stu has learned and/or used. In general, anything really challenging, I got a PhD like Stu to do!!

More from Slashdot.org - Google finally plans to pull the plug on tracking cookies & User-Agent Strings - and NAS report on biobots

Cookies Track You Across the Internet. Google Plans To Phase Them Out (nbcnews.com) 39

Posted by msmash on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @01:44PM from the how-about-that dept.

 

Google has announced plans to limit the ability of other companies to track people across the internet and collect information about them, a significant change that has widespread ramifications for online privacy as well as the digital economy. From a report: The company said Tuesday that it plans to phase out the use of digital tools known as tracking cookies, which other companies use to identify people online and learn more about them. The move is meant to offer users greater control over their digital footprints and enhance user privacy, according to Google. But the move could also provide Google with even greater control over the online advertising market, which the company already dominates. Google said the change will come to its Chrome web browser and be rolled out over two years. Google did not announce any changes to its own data collection methods.

Google also said that a previously announced change to make third-party cookies more secure and precise in their abilities will be rolled out in February. Justin Schuh, director of engineering for trust and safety for Google's Chrome, said the search giant needs time to enact changes because it is working with advertisers and publishers to address the need for cookies to remember sign-ins, embed third-party services such as weather widgets and deliver targeted advertising. But he did not downplay the significance of Google's announcement. "We want to change the way the web works," he said in an interview.

 

Google To Phase Out User-Agent Strings in Chrome (zdnet.com) 74

Posted by msmash on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @12:21PM from the up-next dept.

 

Google has announced plans today to phase out the usage of user-agent strings in its web browser Chrome. From a report: UA strings have been developed part of the Netscape browser in the 90s, and have been in use ever since. For decades, websites have used UA strings to fine-tune features based on a visitor's technical specifications. But now, Google says that this once-useful mechanism has become a constant source of problems, on different fronts. For starters, UA strings have been used by online advertisers as a way to track and fingerprint website visitors. "On top of those privacy issues, User-Agent sniffing is an abundant source of compatibility issues, in particular for minority browsers, resulting in browsers lying about themselves (generally or to specific sites) , and sites (including Google properties) being broken in some browsers for no good reason," said Yoav Weiss, a Google engineer working on the Chrome browser.

To address these issues, Google said it plans to phase out the importance of UA strings in Chrome by freezing the standard as a whole. Google's plan is to stop updating Chrome's UA component with new strings (the UA string text that Chrome shares with websites). The long-term plan is to unify all Chrome UA strings into generic values that don't reveal too much information about a user. This means that new Chrome browser releases on new platforms such as new smartphone models or new OS releases will use a generic UA string, rather than one that's customised for that specific platform.

 

Scientists Use Stems Cells From Frogs To Build First Living Robots (theguardian.com) 31

Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @02:00AM from the first-of-its-kind dept.

Cy Guy writes: Having not learned the lessons of Jurassic Park and the Terminator, scientists from the University of Vermont and Tufts have created "reconfigurable organisms" using stem cells from frogs. But don't worry, the research was funded by the Department of Defense, so I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong this time. "The robots, which are less than 1mm long, are designed by an 'evolutionary algorithm' that runs on a supercomputer," reports The Guardian. "The program starts by generating random 3D configurations of 500 to 1,000 skin and heart cells. Each design is then tested in a virtual environment, to see, for example, how far it moves when the heart cells are set beating. The best performers are used to spawn more designs, which themselves are then put through their paces."

"Because heart cells spontaneously contract and relax, they behave like miniature engines that drive the robots along until their energy reserves run out," the report adds. "The cells have enough fuel inside them for the robots to survive for a week to 10 days before keeling over."

The findings have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

BTW: If you don't find that last item scary, try reading Clive Cussler's and Graham Brown's novel, The Storm, 2012, ISBN 1-4104-4821-5.

What Elder Brother Wanted

I'm sure that Elder Brother (EB) was happy to see us; but, the real reason he made the effort to drive here through treacherous weather was revealed shortly after his arrival when he said, "The laptop computer that [CC] gave me is driving me crazy! Norton keeps nagging me. I'd throw the machine away except it's the only machine that I have from which I can print!" Hunky Husband (HH) advised EB to do as he does. Said HH, "When I have a computer problem, I snivel and complain until [CC] fixes it for me." Replied EB, "That's exactly what I'm trying to do."

Image from MARZ [The nc6220 is a 14" laptop rather than, as shown in the graphic, a notebook.]

HH brought the ancient laptop, a Compaq nc6220, in and we set it up on my non-computer desk. The computer OS is Windows 7 which most of us know has only until the 14th of this month left on its "life". Microsoft has announced that it will no longer support Windows 7 after that date. That said, it is the only (of three or four) computer in EB's stable that runs anything more recent than Windows 98. You wouldn't believe what contortions EB goes through to do what he wants to get done. He still uses the single-floppy (5.25", for Pete's sake) version of Lotus 1-2-3 that I gave him when we both lived in New Mexico (Hint: I left NM 30 years ago!) The laptop that I gave EB in 2015 when I departed his Colorado home following a month of observing EB's recovery from cardiac arrest is slow and, because I had installed Norton 360 on it, it virtually choked whenever EB tried to do anything with it. [Truth be said, EB's patience is terribly thin and as is true with many of us engineers, he can't understand why anyone would design equipment/software in a manner other than the precise way in which he would have done so! Did I tell you that EB eschews use of a mouse, preferring to use keystrokes and touchpad? He also uses the DOS emulator to look at the directory, did not know how to delete a file or a folder, and did not have the first clue about several other things that we "normal" folk take for granted on computers. He worked on nuclear weaponry, of course!]

It took a while; but, by last evening, "we" had managed to uninstall all Norton files, install Firefox (which EB had been unable to accomplish), remove some stragglers of my own old files, and defrag the hard drive. At that point, EB was a happy camper who stowed his laptop in his car for cartage home. I hasten to add that EB connects to only one URL with that machine. He uses that machine, only, to access data that are available at the Wall Street Journal's website; thus, he isn't much worried about acquiring viruses online.

The end...

The end is near here! At least, that's what I'm reading on Slashdot.org.

Windows 10 Mobile Reaches End of Support (androidauthority.com) 49

Posted by msmash on Friday December 13, 2019 @11:10AM from the how-about-that dept.

We've known Windows 10 Mobile has been a dead platform for years now. Even Microsoft themselves have been telling people they need to switch to Android or iOS. But yesterday, we saw the final blow to Microsoft's mobile OS -- it officially reached its end of life and is no longer supported. From a report: There is some good news for the two of you still running Windows 10 Mobile though. The platform's office apps will receive updates and security patches until January 12, 2021. This includes Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. That means you still have a little more time before you absolutely need to migrate to another mobile platform if you just can')t break your Windows 10 Mobile addiction. Though we still recommend you take the leap as soon as possible.

 

I am less alarmed than, perhaps, I should be. My own smart phone still runs on Windows Mobile 6 Professional. The last time I was able to update my Windows Mobile was at 9:28am on 7/18/2019 - which is more recently than I would have thought. One of the Windows 10 updates on my desktop computer wiped out the capability of syncing my Palm Treo 700WX phone to my desktop. Whenever I have gone into the local Verizon store during the past several months, whoever is helping me has called everyone over to look at my antique! They told me a few months ago that they would stop offering phone service to my TREO within about six months. Verizon doesn't make enough money off of me. I probably have the last smart phone in Kansas that doesn't require a data service. I get plain vanilla phone service, with texting capability turned "off" by Verizon. The only smart feature that I use is being able to carry/consult Microsoft Office files. That's the beauty of running a Windows OS. Too bad that no Windows-based phones have come out in the past umpteen years!

Progression in electronic calculators

A bit of family history in calculating equipment was presented in Slide Rules last year. Below is a photo showing most of my progression in electronic calculators. The photo fails to actually show my first electronic calculator, an HP-35, that I purchased in 1972 or 1973; because, that calculator went to Bogie a few years ago. I have no idea why I still have the case and booklet that went with it. Probably, I couldn't find them at the time.

Left-to-right in the photo are the (phantom) HP-35, HP-19C (circa 1978), and HP-48GX (circa 1990).

The machine that has been most-used was the HP-19C (photo, below). It was (to me!) a marvel. Unlike the HP-35, it doesn't lose its mind when it is shut off - thus the "C" for "continuous memory" in its model number. Not only is it programmable, but it has a small thermal printer built into the top of it for printing out programs, calculations, or answers. It saw use not only in calculations of aircraft structural quantities but in later calculations required in program management. It was totally useless in most of the work that I did while in Albuquerque as those programs were classified and a continuous memory machine was banned.

My latest and, undoubtedly, last electronic calculator is the HP-48GX (photo, below).

The HP-48GX owes its existence in my stable of machines to the fact that I returned to Kansas - to a job totally unrelated to what I had done in Florida and Albuquerque. In essence, I "started over" - in aircraft structures stress and fatigue analysis. There I was, back to actually doing technical calculations. The HP-48GX was well suited to the tasking. However, it didn't see much use because, within a couple of years, I started revising a rather large super-element NASTRAN model (on a Sun) that ran on The Little Airplane Factory's mainframe computer. The model had been built, sequentially, by about eight engineers over the previous two or three years; but, the latest NASTRAN guru who had been making a major modification to reflect a new option (a wide door that would allow ingress by a person on a stretcher, etc), was reassigned to work on the Citation X that was in development at the time.

The "Wide Door" model was used to certify the installation by analysis (except for the cyclic pressurization testing) rather than the theretofore standard method of using extensive testing. So large was the model that, in order to run it, I had the computer people use the "disaster pack" tape system. Not a great situation; but, it got the job done. The output was never printed out. I was able to convince the FAA engineer that he didn't really want to bring a truck to pick up the output, but would be better off with a huge book of microfiche.

Currently, the HP-48GX sees use, mostly, doing odd calculations suggested by blog postings, blog friends, or Hunky Husband - and, a couple of times each year, helping me balance my checkbook. It's a good little machine, but totally underemployed (as are many people, these days!)

Week in Review - 2019Nov22

Hunky Husband's new desktop computer and monitor have been set up at his computer desk and the data from his old computer has been migrated. My new computer was delivered Tuesday afternoon while I was in the far back yard "supervising" the planting of two gingko trees. Fortunately, HH was at home to hear the doorbell ring and sign for the delivery. After carrying 10 gallons of water to each of the new trees, I was too pooped to worry about setting up my new computer and monitor (delivered 10 days ago) until after dinner.

As I had played "musical desks" with the old computer, setting it up on my non-computer desk where I had previously set up HH's old computer while draining it of data, I was able to install the new equipment on my computer desk without much fuss (photo, below). Having now transferred the data from the old computer to the new, the old computer now resides at the downstairs desk. Since, unlike HH's old computer, my old computer has no problem with the new cheapie speakers, it will do to play exercise videos for me.

INSERTION OF 11/26/2019 6:12PM - Only 7 days later

As expected, and much like HH's new computer, this computer processes lickety-split! I'm trying out using the new, flat-layout keyboard that came with the computer. It seems very strange and it is harder for me to work with the keyboard under the desktop - where I cannot see it. If, after a couple of months, I don't adjust well to the new keyboard, I shall re-install the old keyboard. It came with a computer that I purchased at least 10 years ago...perhaps 15. I do OK, already, in plain text inputting. It's the numbers and special keys that are hard for me to find - especially since the layout is slightly different from that to which I was accustomed. (Comparison of keyboards in photo, below - older keyboard at top of photo.)

Wednesday, since I was supposed to give the new gingko trees 20 gallons of water, each, I strung all three four of our watering hoses together to stretch into the far back yard to complete the watering. While I was at it, I watered the walnut tree that was transplanted into the woods about three years ago, a couple of walnut saplings that I had planted in the near woods a few years ago (which have reached an astounding height of about 12" - yes, that is inches), a volunteer redbud, and the umbrella catalpa and pink dogwood trees that have been planted in what is now the edge of the woods within the past two years. Dragging around and coiling up 150' 200' (plus) of watering hose made me as pooped as had the carrying buckets of water the 100+ 150+ feet from the house to the new gingko trees!

Three Body Problem

This artist's concept illustrates Kepler-47, the first transiting circumbinary system.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle

One graduate-level course, alone, nearly convinced me to give up the study of physics altogether. I felt that I spent 30 years in a one-semester class on the three body problem; thus, I found the following item from Slashdot.org really interesting - if 50 years too late!

AI Cracks Centuries-Old 'Three Body Problem' In Under a Second (livescience.com) 122

Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday November 09, 2019 @02:34PM from the matters-of-great-gravity dept.

 

Long-time Slashdot reader taiwanjohn shared this article from Live Science: The mind-bending calculations required to predict how three heavenly bodies orbit each other have baffled physicists since the time of Sir Isaac Newton. Now artificial intelligence (A.I.) has shown that it can solve the problem in a fraction of the time required by previous approaches.

Newton was the first to formulate the problem in the 17th century, but finding a simple way to solve it has proved incredibly difficult. The gravitational interactions between three celestial objects like planets, stars and moons result in a chaotic system -- one that is complex and highly sensitive to the starting positions of each body. Current approaches to solving these problems involve using software that can take weeks or even months to complete calculations. So researchers decided to see if a neural network -- a type of pattern recognizing A.I. that loosely mimics how the brain works -- could do better.

The algorithm they built provided accurate solutions up to 100 million times faster than the most advanced software program, known as Brutus. That could prove invaluable to astronomers trying to understand things like the behavior of star clusters and the broader evolution of the universe, said Chris Foley, a biostatistician at the University of Cambridge and co-author of a paper to the arXiv database, which has yet to be peer-reviewed.

 

Slashdot.org's wise saying of the day: "Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing."

Laughing along with HH

It was 1:00am, following a light lunch, today. I was kicking back in my reading chair, spreading a light quilt over myself to see if I could catch a short nap. Sometimes I manage, sometimes I don't. Before I had quite settled in, Hunky Husband came into my den with a question.

HH: Where's your phone?

CC: In my purse [on my non-computer desk, across the room].

HH: [Retrieving my purse and setting it into my lap.] Would you please call me? I've looked all over the house for my phone and can't find it.

CC: [Hits the speed dial for HH's phone.]

HH's Phone: [Plays the ring tone assigned to calls from me. Sounds close.]

HH: Oh!

The phone was in HH's shirt pocket. It's hard to get to sleep following a raucous belly laugh.