Minister in Charge of Japan's Cybersecurity Says He Has Never Used a Computer (nytimes.com) 199
Futurepower(R) shares a report: A lot of people don't use computers. Most of them aren't in charge of a nation's cybersecurity. But one is. Japanese lawmakers were aghast on Wednesday when Yoshitaka Sakurada, 68, the minister who heads the government's cybersecurity office, said during questioning in Parliament that he had no need for the devices, and appeared confused when asked basic technology questions. "I have been independently running my own business since I was 25 years old," he said. When computer use is necessary, he said, "I order my employees or secretaries" to do it. [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source.] "I don't type on a computer," he added.
Asked by a lawmaker if nuclear power plants allowed the use of USB drives, a common technology widely considered to be a security risk, Mr. Sakurada did not seem to understand what they were. "I don't know details well," he said. "So how about having an expert answer your question if necessary, how's that?" The comments were immediately criticized. "I can't believe that a person who never used a computer is in charge of cybersecurity measures," said Masato Imai, an opposition lawmaker.
Asked by a lawmaker if nuclear power plants allowed the use of USB drives, a common technology widely considered to be a security risk, Mr. Sakurada did not seem to understand what they were. "I don't know details well," he said. "So how about having an expert answer your question if necessary, how's that?" The comments were immediately criticized. "I can't believe that a person who never used a computer is in charge of cybersecurity measures," said Masato Imai, an opposition lawmaker.
This is new? (Score:5, Informative)
I could argue that the US president knows a similar amount about politics or diplomatics, but then I guess that honor could be extended to most in his administration.
See guys, now that it happens in another country is when you see it is a weird thing.
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I could argue that the US president knows a similar amount about politics or diplomatics, but then I guess that honor could be extended to most in his administration.
See guys, now that it happens in another country is when you see it is a weird thing.
Did you say the same when a Senator with all of two years of experience in the US Senate and no actual leadership experience ever became President in 2008?
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No, you don't have to be a lifetime Congressman/Senator to become a capable President. In fact I'd say it would be better if you were not part of the system - that's until we got one of the most useless people alive become president, someone whose only qualification is that he is not a politician, but fails at every other human metric...
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Or they want to show it to "them" and vote for the OTHER asshole! That's gonna show them!
Every time I hear that, I get reminded of the stupidity machine in Zak McKracken, where you can switch the lever to go from one "maximum stupidity" to the OTHER "maximum stupidity" setting.
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Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!
It would have made all the change. Trust me.
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Re:This is new? (Score:4, Informative)
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I could argue that the US president knows a similar amount about politics or diplomatics, but then I guess that honor could be extended to most in his administration. See guys, now that it happens in another country is when you see it is a weird thing.
Did you say the same when a Senator with all of two years of experience in the US Senate and no actual leadership experience ever became President in 2008?
Ya... but that Senator can read and write sentences longer than 140 characters (and, yes, I know the limit is now 280).
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That senator was a constitutional scholar who at least understood the limits on his authority and how government works.
His great orange-ness? He knows none of this, and the stream of crooks and cronies he brings in who spend tax-payer money on stupid things and utterly fail to understand the function of the department they are heading would be a joke if
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The big difference is that Trump, in this position, would claim to be the most l33t uber-hacker who ever lived, and respond to anyone who disagreed with childish shit-talk.
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Yea Trump!!! Made me pee the bed!!
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Too bad you're an AC, you won't even see this.
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For a lot of other countries who traditionally staff their governments with something other than legal majors yes, this is new.
He's just a businessman (Score:5, Funny)
He knows how to do business things. Sit at desks. Make calls. Write reports. Attend board meetings. Shake hands. Carry briefcases. All the business skills you need for general businessing.
Re: He's just a businessman (Score:3)
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>Write reports
With a pen.
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No, by secretary.
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No, by secretary.
I was talking with a professor of computer science about whether senior scientists still have time to do actual programming themselves. He told me he programs in a high-level programming language called phd...
Low-tech Japanese (Score:4, Interesting)
One good example of this is how email hasn't become as commonplace as it has in most of the developed world. No, people in Japan, particularly companies, instead chose to use fax machines to achieve the same tasks as it was still the 1980s. Another example is that the very old fashioned hierarchies within companies allows bosses to be exactly like this computer illiterate cyber security chief. While this may seem really odd to us westerners, it's perfectly normal over there.
As for how someone so ill fitted for the job has been given said job, it's more to do with how jobs like his are first and foremost given out based on party affiliation rather than aptitude for the job or any kind of merit. It sort of makes you wonder if it was better that rather than having political appointees actually run government organizations like this, limit political appointees within them to oversight roles rather than active management.
Re:Low-tech Japanese (Score:4, Informative)
The same thing happens all the time in the UK. Important jobs are given out as rewards or to groom allies of the Prime Minister. The people in charge of stuff like education, the army, Wales and of course cybersecurity are normally completely unqualified and clueless. It's the job of the civil servants to explain everything to them and handle the detail.
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The people in charge of stuff like education, the army, Wales and of course cybersecurity are normally completely unqualified and clueless
Top be fair, having an incompetent supervise a bunch of sheep and gnomes isn't that tragic.
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The same thing happens all the time in the UK. Important jobs are given out as rewards or to groom allies of the Prime Minister. The people in charge of stuff like education, the army, Wales and of course cybersecurity are normally completely unqualified and clueless. It's the job of the civil servants to explain everything to them and handle the detail.
Isn't this just the modern day version of how things have worked in England since at least 1066?
Re:Low-tech Japanese (Score:4, Insightful)
I suppose it is the same in most places. Sometimes it can work out if the subject does not require too much understanding of the technicalities and the opinions of experts is either easy to vulgarize or very consensual. In many subjects where the politician is going to be showered by propaganda from various lobbies who can simulate expertise, it won't do and it can lead to catastrophes.
If you read TFA, the guy is obviously a doofus. This is not his first.
I grew up in a country (Belgium) where a big chunk of the public is hostile to the very notion of expertise. They perceive it as arrogance. So incompetence is not only tolerated but touted as a form of modesty or some kind of righteous revenge of the legitimate "people" against the abusive "elites". So kakistocracy is actually a thing.
Of course, it must happen in many other countries. I just happen to know the one i grew up in.
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Erm, by "elites" i did not mean at all the politicians else i would not have described my former system as a kakistocracy.
I am aware in the US the people who are at the same time more educated AND vote tend to vote D but let's not forget half of the Americans do not vote at all and despise both sides. I probably will abstain too if i get citizenship.
I am speaking about a more direct jealousy toward people who have an education. In a system that is a big welfare state by the way.
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It's not jealousy, it's resentment that the educated people have used their advantage to ruthlessly destroy the working class. Our elites don't just look down on the rural working class. They look down on urban working class and poor people as well. The term "ghetto" doesn't exactly describe small-town America.
It's doubly offensive because, first of all, there's not a damn thing wrong with being a worker who lives in a trailer. I mean for chrissake, do we need to have the French Revolution all over again?
Re: Low-tech Japanese (Score:2)
the Japanese can be surprisingly low-tech in many regards
When I was a kid, IC's were sold in Akihabara by the pound out of straw baskets.
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Some of the high-tech / low-tech weirdness can be explained by the fact that people tend to go high tech only when necessary.
Fax machines saw a much wider adoption in Japan than in the west. One reason is that there are no street names in Japan, so finding a place by its address alone is very difficult, and as a result, the usual way of communicating is to fax a map. With fax machines being so ubiquitous, one could use them for written communication, so there is less need for email.
The Japanese were also sl
Re:Low-tech Japanese (Score:5, Interesting)
I have my own experience about it. Unfortunately i can't tell you the details, but i can just say, the japs in this case are completely incapable to understand and follow a very simple protocol despite many different engineers and executives explaining it over >5 meetings. God damn, it pisses me off.
I have a Japanese hybrid car, a Toyota. The engine, drivetrain and structural engineering are awesome. The user interface for all the electronics is the most gawdawful inane junk I have ever seen on a motor vehicle. Nothing makes any sense or is the least bit intuitive. It's clear their brains do not work the same way as ours.
The GPS can't find half of the addresses that have existed for 50 years unless it matches one 2000 miles away. I updated the maps to fix that problem without any success. My $1,000 navigation system is not even in the same league as the $100 TomTom I bought ten years ago. Turning off the engine when you forget to put the transmission in park (I used to drive a stick) causes the car to lose it's damn mind. You have to restart it, place the lever in park and THEN turn it off again. If you are in a hurry and accidentally open the driver's door while pushing the off button, the steering wheel refuses to lock and the car incessantly beeps angrily at you even after you get out and close the door. You have to either climb back in, close the door and restart the car and turn it back off again or else press the door lock button on the fob to make it shut up. To start it you have to press the brake, then a green (Why green?) LED lights up on the start button. Then when you press that start button, the green LED turns off giving you no indication that the car is on. (It's a hybrid so the engine does not immediately fire up) There is absolutely nothing to indicate if the car is actually on or instead accidentally turned off since the lights and dash do not go dark for some time after the car is turned off. Who in their right mind would design a car so that the green LED on the on/off button would turn off when the car turns on?
It's so bad, Microsoft could have designed it.
Re: Low-tech Japanese (Score:2)
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My son had a 2005 with no issue either. The GPS is indeed junk.
Logic isn't your thing, is it?
Re:Low-tech Japanese (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a Toyota Prius, their flagship Hybrid and I call your BS. My son had a 2005 with no issue either. The GPS is indeed junk. You can turn off the car without putting it in Park and it does that automatically. I have never seen that green power LED issue. on any of the 3 Prii I have experienced. The Speedometer goes dark immediately when turned off, in my experience.
Mine is a 2008 Camry Hybrid and it is no BS. I have demonstrated to many people how awful the design is just because I could not believe how stupid it was. My speedo stays lit for some time after turning it off. The headlights stay lit too. I have gone inside the house all the way wondering if I forgot to turn the damn thing off because I see the lights are still on through the windows. I hit the lock on the keyfob and off go the lights. If it turn it off in park, the steering wheel locks. If it is out of park when it is turned off, the steering wheel is loose and the dash will never go dark... ever. Until you restart it, seat the gearshift lever and turn it back off again. The previous owner told me she left it on all night in the garage one time because she thought it was turned off when it wasn't.
One friend has an Equinox and when it is off but the brake is applied the start button LED glows red. Once started, it goes green and stays on until it is turned back off again. NOW THAT MAKES SENSE.
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Lights staying on after you switch the car off is not a bug, it's a feature. Park your car on a dark driveway, and the car lights the way to the front door for you.
Sounds like they need to add an automatic shutoff on a delay though.
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Lights staying on after you switch the car off is not a bug, it's a feature. Park your car on a dark driveway, and the car lights the way to the front door for you. Sounds like they need to add an automatic shutoff on a delay though.
My previous car had automatic lights too, so I know it's a feature. The problem is that the timeout for the Camry is SOOO long and coupled with the fact that you're never quite sure if you successfully turned off the car that it's a problem. It's the totality of a shitty design. I never wondered if my old car was still running. With the Camry, I can either stand there watching for who knows how long until it decides that it's had enough and turns off the lights or I can press the lock on the fob and try
Doesn't have to be that bad (Score:5, Insightful)
This is much better than having someone who thinks he is a cybersecurity expert after blacklisting a website on his home router. That guy would not think it's safe to plug in a random USB stick in a nuclear power plant terminal because "of course the plant has a firewall".
He at least KNOWS that he has to ask experts for technical questions. It's the half-knowledge that's most dangerous.
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What are you talking about? You need a basic level grasp of things to make a decision after the input of experts. He seems to be nowhere near that level, and it is not the experts who will be called to decide things!
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I'll remind you of this everytime someone on /. posts about errors that were so obvious if only the decisions had been left to the experts instead of the politicians...
Re:Doesn't have to be that bad (Score:5, Insightful)
That's my thought, too. I've been teaching people to use computers for 20 years. It's pretty easy to show people what technology will let them do.
What's a lot more difficult is to teach the thought process to recognize unsafe interactions that is necessary for a security expert. I can't easily teach someone to second-guess technical assumptions stated as facts. I can't easily teach someone to understand that nobody is trustworthy enough to have unaudited system privileges. I can't easily teach someone that security comes from work, not from progress.
Sure, I can try to teach these things. I can lecture lots of students, and they might even learn a few of the concepts, but thinking from a security perspective is very different from the "just make it work" approach that engineers and sysadmins tend to follow. Give me an old businessman who understands how to manage people and processes to do the huge amounts of work needed to maintain security, and I can teach him the few technical details he'll need to make sense of the systems.
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Yes. Well, of course it could turn out the exact opposite, too....
But if played well, this weakness could be turned into an advantage.
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Sorry I have to tell you that your username is politically incorrect.. I have been informed at work that you can no longer say dykes, they're called Lesbian Cutters. You should request a name change from slashdot staff to avoid confusion O.o
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If I may introduce myself.... Mervyn Bickerdyke [wikipedia.org]. Pleased to meet you.
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Jeez way to ruin the joke. I know it's frowned upon here on slashdot, but you got to laugh at some point in time..
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'Auditing' is a business term, I think? 'Certificates'.. even a computer technician or programmer will have a hard time to understand what the hell are these HTTPS or SSL certificates and how they work.
Auditing is making a record of actions. Just like a business ledger, the integrity of that record is important if you ever need to confirm or explain exactly what happened. If your audit log is secured in the same area as the main record, anyone doing something illicit can simply change both at the same time, and hide their crime.
Certificates are like the certificate of authenticity associated with artifacts or pieces of art. Even if genuine, the certificate is only as trustworthy as who issued it, and to b
Re:Doesn't have to be that bad (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s just a paper pusher. If that’s the case it probably is better that he just smiles nicely and doesn’t screw things up for everyone working under him. Sure you could argue that it would be better still if a competent person were in his position, but if this position just exists for someone to make appearances and deliver speeches, you’re just wasting the competent person’s time.
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what do you do when the experts disagree or don’t have good answer themselves.
A good leader can build a team that's smarter than he is. If two of your experts disagree, then get them each to write up support for their position and get comments from other experts. If the community can't come up with a clear winner (or shred them both to bits), then they are probably both good ideas.
If your experts don't have an answer, send it to your research department.
This stuff isn't hard... "Minister of" positions aren't the most capable people in their respective fields, they're managers.
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You're right. Having an "expert" is much worse than having an expert. Then again, with absolutely no background knowledge, how does he know whether those he delegates to are "experts" or experts?
I mean, call me crazy, but even if you're not an expert shouldn't you at least have a fundamental understanding of how the organization you are in charge of affects the world day to day?
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Have three experts and majority vote.
How does a real expert do that? He would compare the statement of a maybe-expert to his own knowledge - which he got from other experts: at school, at university, books written by experts and so on.
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... That's not quite how expertise works in applied sciences. If someone tells you that plugging a USB stick into a computer that is behind a firewall is safe, you might have heard that it's unsafe, but since it's a testable action you can *know* it's not safe. Somewhere down the line, someone (a lot of people, usually) actually did the thing they purport to have expertise on. For complex topics you would defer to other experts in the field, but for basic wide-ranging policies you should really be utiliz
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If someone tells you that plugging a USB stick into a computer that is behind a firewall is safe, you might have heard that it's unsafe, but since it's a testable action you can *know* it's not safe.
Did it hundreds of times. Nothing happened.
It's still not safe....
Re: Doesn't have to be that bad (Score:2)
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I think most people's concern is not that his expertise is at an elite level hacker who knows Assembly language and can code in binary. The concern is that he doesn't have basic experience with computers. Just like I don't expect a Secretary of Transportation to be able to change out my car's transmission but I would like that person to have driven a car before.
Great, a car analogy!
I would say that someone who had no driving licence and had only ever been chauffeur-driven was entirely capable of being 'Secretary of Transportation'. But I'm not from the US.
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He at least KNOWS that he has to ask experts for technical questions. It's the half-knowledge that's most dangerous.
Uh, when you have to ask the experts about everything pertaining to your position, it tends to question the entire point of putting an idiot in charge. Might as well put a 3-year old in the position.
Half-knowledge may be dangerous, but NO knowledge is worthless, and can end up just as being dangerous due to the person being easily manipulated due to sheer ignorance.
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I don't know. But it would be a trait that could replace actual field experience. Usually paired with a humble mind.
I think this is from a Japanese satire site.. (Score:1)
Not a first (Score:4, Insightful)
Robert Moses, who tore up a bunch of New York City neighborhoods to build freeways, never drove a car. (He had a chauffeur drive him everywhere)
It's certainly odd... (Score:2)
While I agree that it's odd, I'm not sure that it really matters. As long as he knows how to put qualified people in key positions, then that's all that really matters. How many of his predecessors had to actually code or do anything hands on while in that position? If they could, would it be a smart use of their time? And just how effective would they have been?
Eisenhower was criticized in his day for delegating and not being hands on enough. But he was smart enough to put the right people in the right
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You got a little downvoted, but you're right.
I've worked long enough to know that you don't need to know the domain to be a leader in it.
What you do need is the trust of key technical people. It's why you often see an executive take a position and then bring over a lot of staff from the old company. He knows them. He trusts them. He can get to work.
Having a good background in the domain can help; especially in a new situation to know if someone is 'legit'. But as long as he surrounds himself and trusts good
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How is he supposed to know who is qualified for the job if he doesn't even understand what the job is?
No executive is an expert in every job of his subordinates.
There must be some way for people to be good at judging competence in areas they themselves are not expert in. Because it happens all the time.
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How is he supposed to know who is qualified for the job if he doesn't even understand what the job is?
No executive is an expert in every job of his subordinates.
There must be some way for people to be good at judging competence in areas they themselves are not expert in. Because it happens all the time.
I've heard this argument before and its 100% weapons grade BS. You are right that nobody can be an expert in anything. But you are forgetting about Dunning-Kruger [nih.gov] where ability confers the ability to judge other's ability. How on earth could this computer illiterate possibly hope to be able to tell good cybersecurity from something that couldn't stop your average 15 yro?
This is why the myth of a pure manager needs to die. Skill in management itself is maybe 30% of the job in management. The strategy,
How is this news? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well I know a country that recently elected someone despite looking like a drooling idiot.....
Re:How is this news? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How is this news? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's often overlooked in the rest of the world.
Heck, a wig on a broomstick would have beaten both of them.
Personal versus professional (Score:3)
Most science ministers lack a science degree and there have certainly been some decidedly uneducated education ministers.
We have both of those currently here in the US.
Defence ministers have rarely served in the armed forces and we once had a Chancellor of the Exchequer who could not balance his credit card.
Speaking as a certified accountant I can definitively say that the skill sets for personal finance and for corporate or government finance bear very little resemblance to each other so I'm not really sure what your point about the Chancellor of the Exchequer is. Just because someone is irresponsible in their personal finances doesn't mean they are incompetent or irresponsible with their professional responsibilities.
And "balance his credit card"? I don't know
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Just because someone is irresponsible in their personal finances doesn't mean they are incompetent or irresponsible with their professional responsibilities.
You can make that argument about anything though e.g. just because someone doesn't know which end of a computer plugs into the wall it doesn't mean that they cannot manage a government department on cyber security. The problem is though that someone like that is going to be utterly dependent on what their civil servants tell them because they have no experience of their own which is relevant. I suspect that this is what stops democracy being an unmitigated disaster.
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It would be useful if he did use a computer though, just so that he could put in to practice the things his department recommends. No better way to see how practical they are and understand the issues that prevent computer security.
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Ministers are not elected ... they are appointed by who ever was elected.
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You don't need to be elected ro be a minister.
However usually they are MPs, that is right.
Elections had consequences, eh? (Score:2)
Few enough insightful comments that I could review all of them. Also the keywords for the actual insight are few enough that I could check them, too. (And yes, sadly there was no humor to be found on Slashdot, but perhaps that's reasonable in this case because the topic is intrinsically low on fuel for funny--but that's exactly where the best jokes can appear, where you least expect them.)
So of the small number of insightful comments, I regard this as the closest to actual insight. And yet all it spawned wa
Demonstrate by Doing (Score:1)
We admitted we were powerless over computers, so we refused to ever and will never use them.
So did you expect the minister to write the code ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you need a race car driver to run the national highway administration ?
Doing actual security work is probably the last thing anyone expects him to do and the last thing his job calls for.
What he is going to have to do is be the voice of his agency within the government
Insure it's properly funded.
Settle internal disputes.
Where he will have problems is making informed decisions about the merits of different technologies and given that technical people aren't even particularly useful there it's not that big
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So did you expect the minister to write the code ?
Only when he's in the opposition party.
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Do you need a race car driver to run the national highway administration ?
No, but you do at least need someone who understands what is a "car" and what is a "highway". An administrator need not be an expert, but he bloody well does have to have a basic idea of what he is administrating.
race car driver is a bad fit for highways (Score:2)
But at easy they should have some basic road use and for security work like this even at an high level CEO like job at least basic Computer use.
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Do you need a race car driver to run the national highway administration ?
Doing actual security work is probably the last thing anyone expects him to do and the last thing his job calls for.
What he is going to have to do is be the voice of his agency within the government Insure it's properly funded.
You don't need to be the world's leading expert to run a show. In fact, you are in the wrong position if you are.
That being said, there are levels of ignorance that shouldn't be tolerated. Needing an expert to talk about a USB thumb drive is at that level.
I've been working lately with a number of people who don't have a lot of knowledge about matters that I am expert in. But they are smart people, and I've educated them enough so that they won't make fools out of themselves when asked simple questions.
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Well to some extent I agree with that.
But at least this guy knew what he didn't know and was willing to refer the issue to someone who did know.
It's not hard to find the complete opposite.
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Once you've actually done the job of managing people, you realize just how asinine
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Do you need a race car driver to run the national highway administration ?
Probably not, but at least to a person having a driver license.
Insure it's properly funded. Settle internal disputes.
And also set priorities, which requires at least some practice in the field.
Computers are a passing fad (Score:2)
Sounds good to me (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like he is 100% perfect at cybersecurity. No devices, no compromises. :)
I actually don't see a problem here ... (Score:3)
It sounds strange to say, in 2018, that someone "has never used a computer", but there is some merit in the argument that an executive or high ranking government leader should be earning hundreds, maybe thousands, of dollars an hour to type letters and answer eMails. There are people who can do that for him or her, and probably should be doing that for him or her.
A management job or even a government minister's job is not to do the work of his department or company himself. Maybe this particular minister achieved his non-governmental success by delegation, perhaps? And if he chooses his subordinates wisely, he can be perfectly effective.
He should be judged on the merits of his department, not on whether he can touch type. If the Japanese Cyber Security ministry does good work, then he is doing a good job. If not, then he should be replaced. Whether he uses a computer or not is misrepresenting his duty as the skill set of a minimum wage employee at the lowest pay scale.
Re:I actually don't see a problem here ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Finally, some good news! (Score:2, Insightful)
The US isn't the only country with complete idiots running things.
You're surprised? (Score:2)
Why should Japan be different from the rest of the world when it comes to filling political positions?
Excellent (Score:2)
I hate to point it out to you naysayers, but he is probably the least likeliest to be hacked in the whole organization!
Take that you geeks of changing password every week!
The Trump Administration Has A Place For Him (Score:2)
Ignorance is a highly valued attribute in 'Murika, he'd fit right in.
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Dijkstra started working with computers in his early 20s. Sure, some of that may have involved writing specifications and manuals. But I think that qualifies as being in the industry.
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I think there's an inherent exception for people who contributed to the development of the very first computers. It's not like they could use the devices before they were invented.
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On paper you can two algorithms that both appear to O(n) but in the real-world perform vastly different.
No, in RL they both still will be O(n).
Theory without application is idiotic.
Yeah, and citing theories without knowing how to apply them, is idiotic, too.
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You don't know what the fuck you are talking about.
O(n) _completely_ ignores the cost of HOW memory is accessed -- which matters in the Real World (TM).
Here are two array summation algorithms. Both are O(n) yet the second runs AT LEAST 2x slower because the second has a memory access pattern that doesn't take advantage of how the L1/L2/L3 cache works.
var i, sum,k beg, ms, stride, STRIDE = 16, SIZE = 1 << 22;
var a = new Array( SIZE );
for( i = 0; i < SIZE; ++i )
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I know what I'm talking about.
And you don't know how to make an argument.
An O(n) algorithm is an O(n) algorithm ... always ...
But keep believing that all O(n) perform the same when O() is a shitty, incomplete measurement of performance. ...
I did not say that
Both are O(n) yet the second runs AT LEAST 2x slower because the second has a memory access pattern that doesn't take advantage of how the L1/L2/L3 cache works. ... O(n).
And? Two times slower is
Perhaps you should reread what you think you know about O ca
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^^ THIS.
A BubbleSort can also work great when the data is already "mostly" sorted.
That's the problem with academics -- they tend to be completely and utterly clueless about performance. The reality is OOP is shit for high performance, throughput is more important then latency, O() is a garbage performance metric, sub 60 FPS is crap, etc.
i.e.
Radix Sort is O(k*n) so it MUST be better then the traditional O(n log n) sort, right? Wrong. Only the clueless ignore the cost of memory accesses like our idiot friend
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By hiring a Consultant that tells you which people are the right ones.
And that Consultant you hire based on recommendations from the friends you play golf with.
I've been invited to play at the C-Level a while ago. You quickly learn how things are done up here. It's actually pretty easy once you realize that money only matters when it comes to expenses for people who actually work, but nobody questions any expenses for consulting. Ever.
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Steve Jobs never bent metal, designed PCB's, or wrote Operating System code. Did that make him a terrible leader of the most profitable technology company?
Bill Gates never designed PCB's, never built his own gaming system, though he did write the original MS DOS. Does that make him a terrible leader?
William Clay Ford Jr. never drew up design documents for a work truck, never casted an engine block, and (honestly) probably never looked at an assembly line in detail. Does that make him unfit to lead Ford Moto
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My superior is also no expert in infosec. But he knows enough to know what shit's important and what's just fluff. And for the stuff that needs experts, he has me and my crew. I, on the other hand, know little about his job, with the juggling of finances and smooching investors and whatnot. I just know enough about which asses are important and should be kissed and which ones are not and can be kicked if they get into the way.
Little hint: If it contains "cyber" in its name, it's fluff.
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What has one to do with the other? Just look at how many people evade taxes that don't even bother to think about becoming POTUS.
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Well, I'm not sure about that, but international politics sure resembles some kind of soap opera.