There are so many issues here. The time and effort to really understand a problem. The lack of understanding security issues. And, of course, the "necessity" for officials to know everyone else's secrets.
I'm sure you all are familiar with the expression, "By the time you have written the program and have it in production, you are ready to write the program." That's one thing I like about Project Euler. It forces one to really understand the problem, because obvious solutions seldom work. Next we have all these tools available to solve complex mathematical problems. We simply call the routine and display the results without understanding the math behind it. Use GUI and available tools, one can easily throw an impressive app without any understanding of the problem. And, unfortunately, even the users of the app probably don't understand either. While still working I was in the printer room of our computer facility with six two-thousand-line-a-minute printers, all running as fast as the operators could remove and reload the paper. One of the operators said to me, "You went to Sam Houston, didn't you?" I said, "Yes. How did you know?" He said, "With so much printing it's hard to know when something is printing that's interesting. But there are some jobs that are put in hold, and we have to call upstairs to have someone to stand with the printer to make sure no one sees what's printing. Not that anyone can read anything on the front of the printer as it's a blur. But if you go behind the next printer to take out the printed paper, you can look over behind the next printer and easily read it as it goes into the stacker." It was obvious neither management nor the secretary to guard the print-out understood the problem of securing the print-out. Now we have pressure on to have ways to unlock our phones and everything else we want private in the name of protection. Yet our leaders don't realize that any such facility will probably leak out. And even if it doesn't, there are lots and lots of people to try to hack it just for the fun of it. And if it's there, they will find it. The very process of requiring such loopholes makes all data unsecure, including their own. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
