As an obv IT outsider, but at least one who has been involved from the CDC-6600,7600 PDP-8 days - with some nose rubbing into the basics:

I see little difference between..

[THEN]
When first PDP-8 arrived, and I said, hmmm - think I'll play with that (while folks tinkered with the accelerator pieces during a shutdown) - and got a simple problem: "read this BCD tape, please"...

And I asked: where's the Manual? And got ~~ MAN xxyz Just Like Unix. Natch the manual presumed I was hip to the jargon and just needed to know how to punch a bootstrap loader tape . . .

AND:

[NOW]
Except it's Worse Now, because everyone Has been mistrained into the absurdities of the Secret Knowledge of proprietary massively bloated kluges and NDAs.

I See this-all: SET IN CONCRETE >>|<<

And worst, perhaps - a multibillion$ criminal monopoly spending huge amounts to suborn the likes of an Ashcroft now and next, to ENSURE that the US never ever.. gets out of the current morass of Universally-shitty s/ware and its [hah] ""paradigm"" [Hah].

Anything << H-Bomb blast could not dislodge the mindset and especially - evoke the WILL even to try. The certificated ones .. like wives of old -- have been encouraged to settle for rote implementation as 'good enough". Now we have a second generation of the barely-trained.

I infer this as the pattern within the now thousands of posts I Have Read (many 'here' as IWE has morphed) throughout the past almost 10 years. Good Ideas count absolutely SHIT within such a coccoon. We see. Either Dumth causes Bizness or vice versa: take your pick.

Sorry about your profession, folks.. it once semed to have Legs, now it's just Leggo.


Ashton

(But that's OK.. you aren't alone.)
Talked to a cohort at the 'new' Advanced Light Source (ALS) - a synchrotron - at LBL; it's run by Corp droids there, now: each 'experiment' merely a development effort for a new commodity; run by technicians. Taxpayers subsidizing Intel or GE or YAN Corp - all masked as "research".
Physics?? at a US "National Laboratory" in '03 ??? Nahhh.. Engineering-to-Market.

The US shall soon be 3rd rate in physics research, too - much preferring to fund the few theoreticians -that's CHEAP- and outsource the experimental facilities and concomitant training grounds for the next generation... to those who Care: elsewhere. -That's 'CHEAPEST' of all-

cf. fuckedcountry.com