DARPA Issues Call For Computer Science Devotees 80
coondoggie writes "The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is looking for a few good university-based computer science researchers who might be interested in developing systems for the US military. The move is seen, in part anyway, as a way for the agency to win more hearts and minds of the advanced science community."
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Maybe, maybe not. I know of researchers who have no problem with weapons funding whereas I do for the most part. IME, the DARPA program managers are sharp, but I reckon they're lap dogs of the military who simply want $WEAPON and don't really understand the science, and there are willing to throw money -- a lot of money -- at the problem.
In the current funding climate, it's perhaps inevitable to have to accept some funding from entities whose interests are not terribly academically aligned.
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reckon they're lap dogs of the military who simply want $WEAPON and don't really understand the science,
Right, its DARPA. The D stands for Defense. In the US, Defense is a political term for Military. That is exactly who they are.
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Don't forget, the internet is a product of DARPA (formerly ARPA). Having advanced communications is essential for an effective military spread over the world, but it also happens to be very handy for everyone else too. Military campaigns are about more than just shooting things and blowing things up; fundamentally, they're really just giant exercises in logistics. Logistics have many applications outside the military: construction, commerce, etc. Someone who develops tools to improve logistical capabili
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Yes, but there's been a recent policy shift.
DARPA has, for the past several years, been trying to refocus away from academic research and more into "applied" (meaning, basically, private-sector) research.
This has not worked out so well, in a number of respects (both practical and pseudo-political) so DARPA is now moving back towards a more academia-friendly
Theo (Score:1, Interesting)
Call on Theo De Raadt
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Isn't he a South African living in Canada who makes a product that ships with uber-strong crypto out of the box (like, even encoding the password file in Blowfish by default) and doesn't host any servers in the US to avoid crypto export regulations? As awesome as he would be at somehing like NSA's IAD, he seems to be kind of the opposite of what they're looking for.
In case you mssed it: (Score:4, Insightful)
These are JOB postings, guys. Rare enough in the US these days.
Of course, you'll have to pass a background check, so you all just go ahead.
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Actually, they are not always looking for research on new weapons. Sometimes, they're looking for other stuff.
This book [amazon.com] offers a keen insight into Darpa. While their research is pursued with the military in mind, it's not all about weapons. The chapter on limb research is a fascinating counter-example, as is the part on auto-surgeons. Of course, the author got permission to explore mostly the popular stuff : as a PR job, it's bette
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Yeah, their first murderous project is a 'universal compiler'. I'm sure it will kill twice as many people as gcc, but probably only half as many as gpp. Run and hide!
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Well, speaking as someone that at one point of time held a security clearance above secret. Being in debt and not having many friends didn't seem to impact my ability to get my clearance. Although, I assume drugs will instantly disqualify you if you are currently using, previous use in the past doesn't seem to disqualify you either.
As long as you're honest, getting a high level security clearance is fairly easy, just takes the FBI 6+ months to check up on you and give you the go ahead.
So a basic backgroun
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postings that show how bad it is (Score:3, Interesting)
Did you RTFA? These aren't job postings. You already have to have a very particular job. A mere PhD is not good enough, no you must be employed at a university as a junior faculty member and have received your PhD within the last 7 years. (Amazing how quickly an advanced degree becomes stale. Guess it would have been discriminatory to require that every participant be under the age of 40.) This DARPA program is a way for you to secure your tenured faculty position by bringing in DARPA money.
Nowadays
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I think the reason why it is so hard to have a lab under 30 is because Ph.D.s take longer, and postdocs are more common. Pretty much every professor I know over the age of 40 took four
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setting by underpaid flunkies who couldn't hack it in industry,
As someone with much experience in the industry, I find this rather amusing. Given the number of genuinely stupid people I see promoted to managerial positions in the industry, I'd say it's just the opposite: those who can't think creatively or logically *have* to find a job in industry, because it's the only place where lack of creativity and objectivity are an asset, rather than a liability. In academia, you could never get away with:
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It's still an offer of employment, which is a job.
Just because one of the qualifications is that you have a particular job, doesn't mean it's not a job listing. For example, a job as a full professor often requires that you have a position as an assistant or associate. But they're still "job postings" when you see them in Chronicle of Higher Education.
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In academia it is.
I don't think I want them winning hearts or minds (Score:5, Funny)
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Have them see their work used in main street USA is a huge emotional security risk.
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You will be developing our SkyNet and Colossus robot based anti personnel devices.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could develop stuff like the Internet without at the same time spending such a vast quantity of otherwise productive wealth on deadweight loss activities like developing weapons systems?
And if we simply must pour huge amounts of otherwise productive wealth into deadweight loss activities, why not make it space exploration, unlikely-to-pay-off energy research, a cure for the common heartbreak?
What is it about killing people in large numbers that is so fascinating that it compel
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So what is it? Why do people build such huge deadweight loss systems, far beyond anything required to simply protect ourselves from invasion by others?
Here are a few reasons I see:
1. Offshoring of manufacturing. Weapons are physical things, and most other physical things are now made in China. If you live somewhere like Ohio, weapons development is pretty much what is left. In theory we could make other stuff like windmills, but there is a lot of inertia in economic development. Most people can't just get together with a half dozen friends and start an alternative energy company. But its pretty easy to get into DoD work, because it already exists lo
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Finally, a slashdove who acknowledges that DARPA actually had a positive role...
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Violence isn't effective. Quite the contrary, it involves tremendous costs; for example, the current running cost of Iraq and Afghanistan wars comes to over one trillion dollars - and let's not forget that these are wars against a hopelessly outmatched foe, and have
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This is a non sequitur. I never said it was cheap. I merely said it was effective. It's efficiency varies widely.
More likely we'd have a couple more half-developed launch platforms destined for cancellation.
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Given infinite resources, almost everything is "effective", since it gets your goal. Given finite resources, whatever gets your goal cheapest is "effective".
The reason NASA projects get cancelled is that the funding gets cancelled. Give them a trillion dollars and a directive to colonize the Moon with
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Infinite resources spent in the wrong way are NOT effective.
Now there's an article of faith. I find it more likely they'd burn through the trillion with various poorly thought out and
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It certainly isn't any actual utility: violience is the least efficient and effective way of solving any problem.
There's a saying: violence is like XML. If it isn't solving your problem, you're not using enough of it!
(A more serious answer would be that at some point or in some cases, only more violence can beat violence. If I'm willing to solve my problems with violence and you aren't, at some point I'm always going to win. Passive resistance only works if I have a sense of shame.)
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Military technology is a double-edged sword. A peaceful society with white marble libraries, people in flowing robes discussing philosophy and nary a bad word to be heard will be destroyed when the first Viking longboat comes ashore.
On the other hand, an otherwise peaceful society with fantastically effective military technology might become militarily adventurous. And what the modern communications media is teaching us is that all war - ALL war - results in mangled noncombatants as well as mangled soldier
The US should (Score:2)
Trusted partners with security clearances who have been with the US security establishment from their inception*.
Larger organisations that can bring a wealth of real world experience to any DARPA project.
Developers who understand the interface needs of raw US armed forces recruits.
Developers who are committed to security.
Developers, developers
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Weapons systems designed by graduates (Score:1)
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Anthropology will provide an insight into the family, tribe, clan and nationalist issues offering a clean divide and conquer process for long term resource control.
I'll happily work for the military (Score:2)
I have heard that at the moment wages are increasing faster in the government than the priva
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I refuse to work for the military or Microsoft until they offer more money than I get as a crack-dealing gigolo hitman.
In all fairness that is 3 jobs...
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not any more (Score:1)
Government jobs are now -generally speaking- higher paying than civilian jobs, at least in the US. Of course this will contribute to the insane economic trickle down theory of boom and eventual bust/collapse (along with the usury and wealth skimming industry and money "creation" model we have), but they hold most of the aces now and can just demand that everyone else support their growth and raises.
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20091211/1afedpay11_st.art.htm [usatoday.com]
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503983_162 [cbsnews.com]
Position Requirments (Score:1)
What is "demonstrated exceptional potential"? This makes no sense. Either you have performed exceptionally or you haven't. And what is up with junior faculty? They
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Your future: (Score:2)
Hokay! I'll take fries with that!
FTA: (Score:2)
The restrictions? An eligible participant must be a junior faculty member at a US higher education institution. Participants should be no more than seven years beyond receiving a doctoral degree, pretenure junior faculty, with demonstrated exceptional potential for worldclass contributions to the field of computer science.
So, it seems like they only want faculty with the most tenuous positions at their institutions to do projects that will likely be viewed with suspicion by their more senior peers. After completing their project terms, they'll likely be anathema to the other faculty in their departments, and since they don't have tenure and likely won't be able to get it, will be ripe for the poaching. But they pay and benefits are probably a lot better than the universities can muster these days.
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I kind of wonder if they're fishing for the next batch of project managers for information systems projects.
The previous director of DARPA, wasn't so popular with the research community; he was an engineer from industry, and instituted a regime of (fairly unrealistic) GNG (go/no go) targets in programs every year. If sites didn't hit certain scores on the GNG evals, they lost their funding. Which sounds not too bad on the surface - why would you continue to fund an organization that's not doing well? Exc
Seriously? (Score:2)
I wouldn't hire any of my university professors to do anything software related.
Academics should stay in academia.
. . . for the new Zombie weapon system . . . (Score:2)
The move is seen, in part anyway, as a way for the agency to win more heart and braaaaiiiiiinnns of the advanced science community.
There, fixed that for 'em.
Interviewer: "At the start, you will be involved with testing this new weapon system."
Interviewee: "Hey, what happened to the researchers who used to work on this project?"
Interviewer: "Oh, you know, the tough work here can sometimes just devour you."
Bad comic: ". . . tip the veal, try the waitress . . ."
Send us your best and brightest, your huddled few (Score:1)
A better way to win the hearts and minds... (Score:1)
DARPA funded BSD Unix and the Internet.... (Score:2)
Thank you for the Internet (Score:2)
Wait a minute! (Score:2)
This article is by the same dumbass that wrote the Juno article that was posted here yesterday! Can we put a moratorium on links to this a-hole's column until he learns to convert metric and Imperial units correctly, at the very least?!?! I would give his articles a grain of salt on being accurate in any sense!
Hello, Newbie (Score:1)
Sure... (Score:2)
... because I got into the field to write code to help kill people.
Yes, I know that it's now the Department of Defense, but we seem to be doing a whole bunch of offense lately. Why don't we just go back to what it was originally called - The Department of War? It seems to be much closer to their mandate right now.
But all of you basement warriors out there won't have to worry. I'm sure that there are plenty of contract whores in academia to pick up the gun.
I don't see it (Score:2)
Revolutionary IT is an oxymoron. IT is all about deep infrastructure and you can't revolutionize the status quo; you can only evolutionize it after first understanding it thoroughly and then chipping away at the edges. No prof is willing to immerse him/herself in that level of ritual embowelment just to win a $100k contract.
Now robotics might be different. A new robot can serve an isolated niche for DARPA which doesn't require the professor to first understand the workings of a huge and complex hierarchi
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You can't? The switch from data centers holding several IBM mainframes to data centers holding lots of x86 boxes wasn't revolutionary?
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My point: one proposal by one junior CS DARPA researcher isn't going to revolutionize the US military's software, not even a little.
And IIRC data centers *evolved*. The transition from COBOL and VMS to PHP and Apache didn't happen overnight.
nominal (Score:1)
> heart and minds
Old nomenclature. "Trust and confidence" is the official new.