I just had a look at the original post (I'm a native speaker). It said that the government claims to be able, in principle, to partially decrypt PGP and Secure Shell. This is a vague enough statement.
Further, the German government has an incredibly poor track record when it comes to IT. Recent highlights include a laughable "national trojan" that cost millions of tax payer money and didn't quite live up to (leaked) specifications. Further, the lack of knowledge about all matters IT of our elected leaders are frequently being ridiculed. There are interviews of ministers floating around who couldn't say what the Internet or a web browser was.
My best bet is that the spokesperson simply had no clue what PGP is and gave an evasive answer.
If you think that they just play a couple of standard moves and the "wing it", you are mistaken. They both possess very deep opening knowledge, as do all top GMs.
There was a story on TIME claiming that plumbers can make up to 250k: "Americans want and need working pipes, just like they want and need their trash collected every few days — sanitation being another service always in demand by consumers and not always in demand by job-seekers, and typically pretty well paying as a result.
That said, a plumber's earnings vary widely depending on the region in which they work and whether a plumber owns a business that employs others. Journeymen in cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Boston are in higher demand and command higher prices — up to about $250,000 a year." [1]
"he point is not to mop floors for $20, but to create a website (essentially a business) that solves somebody else's pain. That is the essential idea. Find a pain, fix it, charge enough to make a profit and move on to the next pain point that needs fixing."
This sounds like a Ponzi scheme. Surely its not the case that millions of people can create millions of websites that solve each others problems.
What is the reasoning behind this policy? It seems quite arbitrary to me. I know of people having signed contracts that say that their employer owns (!) all the code they may write in their spare time.
Why do you think mortgages are reasonable? With a little luck, you give half your life's earnings to a bank. Much better to rent, save up cash, and buy property outright when you can.
Obviously, you have a very limited understanding of software development and the skill various areas demand. Further, your claiming that I have "offered nothing in response" doesn't make it so. Dunning-Kruger is a bitch.
You must be joking! The book you are referring to accompanies a course called "CS116". What about digging through some graduate school course catalogues instead?
Of course Kernel development isn't impossible. Otherwise, there wouldn't be any kernels in the first place. But of course it is the domain of a rather small number of people.
"There is nothing, in software engineering that can’t be done by other “non-genius” programmers. Further no one developer is greater than a community of developers. - Coding Ninja"
If you think that kernel programming is easy and can be done by "average" programmers then you are either so far ahead of the curve that you don't even realize it, or you are a prime example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. I strongly suspect that it's the latter.
The important stuff gets done by truly outstanding people. To deny this is nothing but laughable.
"Any actual real professional musician knows good and damn well that he can get a beautiful sound out of an Alvarez and that only rookies have the time to make fun of each other for their choice because the pros are too busy creating."
So, why do professionals then bother using better tools in the first place?
I really wonder if people submit links to HN with the sole purpose of getting ripped to shreds. Maybe it's a masochistic element in the nature of those blog writers.
Who creates the tools that allow, in your world view, average programmers to compete with "geniuses"?
Further, you are the one making bold claims, so the burden of proof lies on you. There are more than enough examples of great software written by "geniuses". But now please mention one great (groundbreaking) project that was written by an army of mediocre programmers.
Do you know who McCarthy and Alonzo Church were, what the lambda calculus is, and in which way LISP relates to mathematics? If this is all Greek to you, then please look it up. Next time, though, please do some research BEFORE you write blog posts. It will save you from being ridiculed.
This blog post is ludicrous. Seriously, how bloated does your head have to be to insert your own quotes in your blog articles? Check this out:
"There is nothing, in software engineering that can’t be done by other “non-genius” programmers. Further no one developer is greater than a community of developers. - Coding Ninja"
Are you so sure about it? A million mediocre mathematicians couldn't have achieved what Grigori Perelman did, and a million of mediocre developers couldn't have produced the tools we use nowadays. There is absolutely no evidence that a community of average guys could have come up with something like LIPS or Smalltalk. If you claim otherwise, then please mention ONE example. We're all standing on the shoulders of giants, and only a myopic cretin would deny the staggering impact they have on all our lives and our profession.