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MIT To Offer Internet of Things Training For Professionals (computerworld.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the what-is-this-now? dept.

dcblogs writes: MIT is offering an online course about the Internet of Things, and this is what you need to know up front: It's going to require, perhaps, six to eight hours of study time a week, which includes watching videos of lectures, engaging with faculty and fellow students in forums and taking tests. It begins April 12 and continues through May 24. It costs $495, and unlike some online courses, there is no free option. Students who complete the program and pass the tests earn a certificate of completion and 1.2 Continuing Education Units (CEUs) in MIT's professional education program. In exchange for their time and money, students will get an introduction, a roadmap, into the IoT and hear from some of the university's top professors, including Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web. This professional program is a relatively new effort for the university.

41 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. End of lesson by cosm · · Score: 1

    Things with internet. Exam on Tuesday.

    --
    'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
    1. Re:End of lesson by ls671 · · Score: 1

      MIT professionals need a course on Internet of things? One might expect that they already know about it if they are MIT professionals ;-)

      --
      Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
  2. A Continuing Education Unit is ... by tlambert · · Score: 1

    "A Continuing Education Unit is a measure used in continuing education programs, particularly those required in a licensed profession. A CEU is not an academic credit; however, it is a nationally recognized method of quantifying the time spent in the classroom during professional development and training activities."

    So in other words: "A Continuing Education Unit is ... worthless as shit for a software engineer or electrical engineer, since neither of these are licensed professions".

    Good to know. Thanks for 1.2 of them, MIT, especially at the low, low price of $495.00!!!

    1. Re:A Continuing Education Unit is ... by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      It is learning for fun done be professionals. That is not a bad thing, that is in fact a great thing and far better than the stupidity of going to a strip club, or some lame island tourist trap or a sex cruise. All idiot narcissist marketing aside, something which main stream media thrives on, selling stupid to idiots to waste their money, this is a real and profound change or more accurately a reversion to more logical values espoused early in the last century prior to the advent of lead in fuels (screw you Thomas Midgley junior https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...).

      Learning sabaticals as holidays used to be all the rage for intellectual professionals but something went disastrously wrong and the air head entertainers and their sexual proclivity took over and was hugely and ludicrously distorted into being something of high social value (without the lead, this would never have occurred, ahh, lead in the pencil http://www.sex-lexis.com/-Dict..., so profoundly accurate, had to get lead in the big head so that the little head could take over, visible all over main stream media and stupidly cheered on).

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    2. Re:A Continuing Education Unit is ... by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 1

      Worthless, and you're paying $15 an hour to watch videos of lectures ...

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    3. Re:A Continuing Education Unit is ... by tlambert · · Score: 1

      So in other words: "A Continuing Education Unit is ... worthless as shit for a software engineer or electrical engineer, since neither of these are licensed professions".

      Huh, software and electrical engineers aren't licensed? Does that mean it is possible to pay some online school a bunch of money to send you a bunch of emails and then you become an engineer? or does license refer to something else?

      No. Licenses derive from professional or governmental organizations which grant licenses to allow you to practice in the profession. These professional organizations (for example: The New York Bar Association has to admit you to the bar in order to practice law in New York) have the right to regulate your participation in an industry, because they were granted that right by other members already participating in the industry.

      In other words, it's like a trade union that exists to prevent "too many" practitioners of a given trade, in order to artificially inflate the per hour pay of the remaining people who are actually permitted to practice the trade. Mostly because the "know the right people" or have come up with enough money to "bribe the right people".

      When a license is granted by a governmental organization -- such as a drivers license, or a massage therapists license -- it's generally either because there are minimal acceptable standards for the purposes of public safety, or because there are illegal activities going on under the name of the profession, and it's to encourage those illegal practitioners to just be honestly illegal, rather than trying to hide un a professional name. This is accomplished by charging huge fees to those people who are legitimately involved in the profession (yeah, it seems stupid to me, too).

      I'm asking because I'm not in America and has never been there. Here engineer is classified as "protected title", which mean you are only allowed to call yourself that if you graduate from a university licensed to educate engineers and the university in question approved of you being an engineer (that is, studying an engineering line. You can't be an engineer with a major in history).

      This is different. For some industries, you require a license to practice (as previously noted: said industries generally impact public safety).

      Software is not one of these. It's not like bridge building. If a software program collapses, people don't end up dead.

      Keeping people from writing software for a living just because they haven't paid extortionate tuitions to for profit companies ... er ... sorry ... universities, who, according to accreditation agencies, are permitted to graduate software engineers is [...]

      About as stupid as permitting an accreditation agency the authority to grant universities these monopolies merely because the accreditation agency claims that it's somehow qualified to do so merely because it says it's qualified, and we can trust them (nudge nudge, wink wink).

      ---

      In any case, you haven't demonstrated any value for a CEU from MIT as opposed to a CEU from Reverend Ike's Late Night Television Ministry.

    4. Re:A Continuing Education Unit is ... by tlambert · · Score: 1

      Software is not one of these. It's not like bridge building. If a software program collapses, people don't end up dead.

      I hope people making making pacemaker firmware or car brake-by-wire systems doesn't share your attitude about importance of software reliability

      Most people who are calling for certifications for life support systems software (which is the technical term for what you are talking about here) are not sufficiently qualified as software engineers to be able to judge the quality of other software engineers.

      They are certainly not going to be able to identify those people who are (or are not) qualified to be working on life support systems.

      Generally, there are a small number of us who are at the top of our game, and then there's everyone else who should not be touching the console software on the GE Medical Systems MRI machines, and shouldn't be touching the software in the cell counter, and shouldn't be touching the software in the blood gas monitor.

      The only thing you are going to get by certifying many of those people is non-functioning software, at best, and a gamma knife that over-irradiates people because some idiot operator hit return instead of entering a specific value, because they didn't know the difference between "view" and "controller", and that just because there was a value displayed in the UI didn't mean that that was the value that would have been used if you "just hit return".

      In other words: the people you want making the certification decisions have to be competent to write the software themselves, only they are too busy certifying people to actually write the code.

      The only ones who win in that situation are the people putting up bonds for the software which accidentally works, and the people receiving payments from the bonds that were put up, for software that doesn't actually work.

      Congrats: you've discovered another way to employ actuaries, and keep insurance companies in business, without actually improving the quality of software at all.

      On the plus side, I suppose you can require citizenship or a green card as a precondition of licensing someone to do that sort of work, which of course, *also* won't improve the code quality, but at lest you'll be able to charge a lot for your services, since there will be a smaller supply of certified people than the demand for certified people, so you'll be able to write your own ticket.

      Now all you need to do is build a union hall...

    5. Re:A Continuing Education Unit is ... by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 2

      My wife is a doctor and gets a $10k stipend each year for continuing education. The "IoT" is coming to medicine. It might be worth it to have some Doctors in the loop with that conversation.

      It's apparent they didn't when designing electronic medical records.

    6. Re:A Continuing Education Unit is ... by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 1

      Doctors should at least be aware of the security implications of suggesting someone gets on IoT pacemaker, insulin pump, etc. Any medical device can (and will) be embedded with feedback on how it's performing rather than just doing it open loop.

  3. already outdated by turkeydance · · Score: 1

    April?

  4. Yet more Internet of Things waffle .. by tetraverse · · Score: 1

    And how is this 'Internet of Things' supposed to function given the current lack of Internet security, yet more marketing waffle similar to the 'cloud'. Besides, does anyone remember that coke machine that was once connected to the Internet ref.

  5. Internet Of Exploits by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They should name the course, "Internet Of Cheaply Made Shit With Built-In Exploits".

    Hackers everywhere are wetting their pants in expectation of this enormous, unbounded gift of a billion new things to hijack, spoof, and abuse. Because we all know that "security" will be an afterthought, if it's thought of at all.

    "I'll be in late today, boss, my refrigerator got hacked again and they made it order 10,000 gallons of soy milk off of Amazon. Oh, and while they were at it they took over my TV and it won't stop showing kiddie porn. And for some reason all of my internet-enabled toilets just keep flushing and flushing and flushing, I can't get 'em to stop...hey, why is my car blowing its horn over and over?"

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    1. Re:Internet Of Exploits by dbIII · · Score: 2

      That's probably a good reason for such courses. At least warn them of the utter newbie mistakes that a competent software developer and starting sysadmin knows not to make.
      I keep on bumping into "developers" that keep on making swarms of WiFi things all on the same IPv4 subnet as everyone else and all trying to talk to the same access point instead of having a mesh - and they keep assuming they can have thousands of the things so long as they have routing hacks. They want to know how to deal with fifteen things having an IP address of 10.0.0.25 instead of doing the absolute obvious of not having lots of things on the same IP address. Even worse are the things that sit and collect critical data offline until it's time to dump what they have so the network is turned on, just in time to find out that they have been sitting there for a week collecting nothing. Such devices could have a function to allow waking them up to do some sort of check but the software developer never thought of it. The field is full of utter newbie mistakes, rush jobs and functions added as an afterthought.

      The people to talk to at the moment appear to be the radio astronomers who have networked astonishing numbers of devices and are doing it well.

    2. Re:Internet Of Exploits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      ...hey, why is my car blowing its horn over and over?"

      I was once on a locomotive doing that. It blew the horn when approaching a crossing and then the valve jammed and didn't shut. Blowing the horn a few times to make it open and close fixed the problem. Even though the problem didn't repeat that day, the repair shop shop looked at it, but could not find the problem. If they did anything, it might have been lubing the moving parts (not sure about that), but the problem never repeated.

      In addition to security issues, problems like this is actually my main concern with internet of things. How do you fix a problem where you can't tell if it is a hardware or software problem? Adding software to everything seems like a poor choice if your goal is reliability. I fear a future where your fridge refuse to cool on the 29th of February, which ruins all the food due to overheating. Alternatively it refuse to turn off, freezing everything if you buy ham on the first of a month.

      If done correctly, the temperature control would be interrupt based with a higher priority than anything else as the temperature is the most important task. This would ensure the microcontroller would do multitasking in hardware rather than software and it would control the temperature even if the "regular" software/OS hangs or crashes. However my trust in everybody coding "the correct software" is close to non-existing and using the OS to multitask like on a computer is likely easier. Also it could be "fun" to write a fridge virus, which writes to the address of the requested temperature and assign a really high number.

      Don't get me wrong. I love the concept of getting hardware/software to provide improvements. However we should accept that some tasks are just better controlled in hardware or purely mechanical. IoT seems to me like adding software control to everything "because we can". There is no consideration if we really benefit from it or side effects. In fact it seems to me like IoT is about adding software to everything and adding as many features to the software as possible. This mean increased complexity to the software and simplicity is what you want if your goal is reliability.

      Also I see no point in connecting everything in a network. If the stove heats up the kitchen, the fridge should figure it out using temperature sensor(s). Relying on the stove to tell the fridge means the end user has to tell that it is his stove and not the neighbor's and he has to remember that if he moves the fridge to another room and there is a bunch of other issues to go wrong, like product compatibility. The fridge should be produced as a self contained unit where everything internally is compatible and it really doesn't have to exchange data with anything outside.

      The only electronics I can think of in a fridge, which would be useful would be statistics on compressor operations. If it is on too often or it starts to draw a bigger current than it is specified to do, then it should turn on some red light telling that the compressor is malfunctioning instead of just carrying on and use as much power as the rest of the house. However it still doesn't need a network connection with anything to do that and I haven't seen any IoT description with monitoring issues like that. They are all "I don't need that".

    3. Re:Internet Of Exploits by bakoolguy2 · · Score: 1

      They have a cyber security course going on now which you may be interested in. https://mitprofessionalx.mit.e...

    4. Re:Internet Of Exploits by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      That's probably a good reason for such courses. At least warn them of the utter newbie mistakes that a competent software developer and starting sysadmin knows not to make.

      I'd hope this would have some beneficial effects, but will the manufacturers (specifically, managers and bean counters) spend the money to implement secure networking and access controls? My guess is probably not, unless they get a lot of pressure from end users or security professionals.

      They probably won't hire or listen to security professionals, and they won't hear from the end users until after they get hacked...so all in all, I'm not optimistic. It's just so much easier and cheaper to build something quick and dirty and let it ship. By the time there's any outcry half of the people who made the "lets skip security" decisions will have moved on or been promoted.

      If there were serious monetary penalties or the possibility of jail time then that might have an effect, but I think we're in for 10 or 20 years of Exploit du Jour headlines.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    5. Re:Internet Of Exploits by Shortguy881 · · Score: 1

      Or don't build a networked toilet. That's an option.

      --
      Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
    6. Re:Internet Of Exploits by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      so give up and crawl back into your cave, apparently it's your only option

      But my cave requires a dual-token, interweb-enabled authoritative sign in verified by a blockchain of restricted IP network thingys!

      I long for the good ol' days of Cave 1.0.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    7. Re:Internet Of Exploits by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      Or don't build a networked toilet. That's an option.

      I'll never build one but someone decided it was a good idea.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    8. Re:Internet Of Exploits by dbIII · · Score: 1

      but I think we're in for 10 or 20 years of Exploit du Jour headlines.

      Ten year in embedded space maybe but we've already had that and more in desktop space - it's a malware swamp. Cryptolocker should be science fiction but utter stupidity on the security front made it possible just by people clicking on an email at which point MS Outlook and IE work together to carry out the will of the malware distributors.

  6. Re:Why the ignorant as shit term "internet of thin by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 2, Funny

    Indeed. Why don't we just call it what it really is ...

    IoT
    Internet of Trash

    D.U.M.B.
    Devices Unsecured Mostly Broken.

    I.D.I.O.T.S.
    Insecure Devices Internetworked Offering Trouble

  7. Re:Why the ignorant as shit term "internet of thin by reboot246 · · Score: 1

    It seriously needs a new abbreviation. Every time I see IoT, I read it as LoT because the capital 'i' looks like a lowercase L. They should change the 'I' to lowercase 'i'.

    ioT --- still not perfect, but more understandable.

    Won't be any of that crap in my house anyway. If it comes with it already installed, I'll do everything I can to disable it or remove it. If it won't work without being connected, I don't want it.

  8. Re:Why the ignorant as shit term "internet of thin by dugancent · · Score: 1

    Agreed. I have less devices connected now that I did few years ago, not more.

    Lets see, I currently have my computer (one laptop), smart phone and roku. That's it. I have more devices that could connect, but they aren't, and they won't.

    --
    SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
  9. Re:Why the ignorant as shit term "internet of thin by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    Hopefully this course includes a section on security. Doesn't look like it will, as a professional course, it looks more aimed at business people.

    In fact,if they made the course entirely about security, the world would be better off.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  10. Oooh...a Shiny Certificate! by Irate+Engineer · · Score: 4, Funny

    And they get a nice certificate "Introductory Diploma, Internet Of Things" that the can hang on their wall.

    --

    Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!

    Vote for Bernie in 2016!

    1. Re:Oooh...a Shiny Certificate! by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Before you can sell anything, you need to know who your potential customers are, right?

      Suggest to your marketing department that they start a project called Identify Demographic - Internet Of Things. Team identity is important. Budget for T-shirts & hats.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    2. Re:Oooh...a Shiny Certificate! by andrewbaldwin · · Score: 1

      Slightly off-topic but...

      Some years ago (when cloud was still to become a commonplace term) some of my colleagues were setting up a marketing initiative on the grounds of identifying opportunities, planning and doing initial analyses.

      The internal name for this activity was Cloud Opportunity Workshop.

      I was asked to create a rapid prototype** tool for tracking various actions before, during and after the go-to-market engagements. For want of a better name [OK due to my mischievous nature] I called it the Planning Analysis Tool.

      It was only when the flyer returned from graphics (and before it went to print) that the marketing team realised that the acronym appeared in big letters as COWPAT -- a veritable piece of bulls__t.

      The name was changed before it got to the sales team.

      (In the UK at least, the dried up remains of cow faeces is known as a cowpat)

      ** In other words, do it yesterday for minimum cost and with no hardware/software budget

    3. Re:Oooh...a Shiny Certificate! by jandersen · · Score: 1

      Don't be so negative - just think of all the money you are likely to make from fixing problems with these thingies going wrong.

    4. Re:Oooh...a Shiny Certificate! by Irate+Engineer · · Score: 1

      Don't be so negative - just think of all the money you are likely to make from fixing problems with these thingies going wrong.

      *Reaches over to unplug power cord from router*

      "Fixed! My consulting bill will be arriving in the mail soon, payable within 30 days. You're welcome!"

      *Jumps into limo for next consulting appointment*

      --

      Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!

      Vote for Bernie in 2016!

    5. Re:Oooh...a Shiny Certificate! by Irate+Engineer · · Score: 1

      For want of a better name [OK due to my mischievous nature] I called it the Planning Analysis Tool.

      If yours is an international company, fitting the acronym to a derogatory word in one of the languages of one of your foreign offices can help slip this through radar. These are usually pronounceable words which is often the goal of acronyms. It livens up company meetings considerably.

      --

      Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!

      Vote for Bernie in 2016!

  11. Re:Why the ignorant as shit term "internet of thin by gl4ss · · Score: 1

    well they had to get the I at the front.

    and Things On Internet would have made too much sense.

    so they decided to go with Internet of Things. maybe actually someone thought that they would put them on a separate network or that the things would network with each other. which would make a lot more sense than to have them all on internet.

    your temperature sensors interacting with your temperature display for example makes perfect engineering sense. both of them interacting with a hardware manufacturers server on a different fucking continent makes zero sense at all.

    I guess the funny thing is that if you want to buy Wifi connected plugs, sensors and stuff. or even low power networking components, you can buy so frigging much of them for 500 bucks and you might actually learn something.

    --
    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  12. Re:Overview only by AchilleTalon · · Score: 1

    There is already one and another one is under preparation by University of Texas at Austin in cooperation with Texas Instruments. It will be broacasted on the edx.org platform.

    --
    Achille Talon
    Hop!
  13. Torrents by MouseTheLuckyDog · · Score: 1

    What's the over/under on how long after May 24 the classes appear on a torrent site?

  14. Re:Why the ignorant as shit term "internet of thin by LarryRiedel · · Score: 1

    Hopefully this course includes a section on security. Doesn't look like it will

    ???
    That page says:

    Section D: Security in IOT

    • Why is security for IoT so hard?
    • Threat models
    • Defensive strategies and examples
  15. Re:Why the ignorant as shit term "internet of thin by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    lol looks like I need to read more carefully

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  16. His name... is Tim by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 3, Funny

    Tim Berners-Lee

    who I recently heard likes to refer to himself as "web developer."

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  17. Internet of Things and security .. by tetraverse · · Score: 2

    Have they managed to fix the hacking phishing pestilence that's infesting the current Internet?

  18. Schedule by malditaenvidia · · Score: 1

    When does the "synergy for end-to-end enterprise web 2.0 solutions" course start?

  19. Not keeping up with the times by bigsexyjoe · · Score: 1

    Now, I would put down good money to become an expert on Internet of Things 2.0. But old fashioned Internet of Things? Get real!

    --
    Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
  20. Maybe worthless to you... by KingSkippus · · Score: 1

    All other things being equal, I'd give raises and promotions to the people who demonstrate that they have a continuing interest in learning more and keeping abreast about subjects relevant to their field than someone who thinks that once they get their degree, they never have to learn anything else. So if you think that "quantifying the time spent in the classroom during professional development and training activities" = "worthless as shit", then hey, it's your résumé, good luck with that.

    (Of course, that's just the practical monetary consideration of the matter. Some of us actually like doing these classes just to see what's new and to *gasp!* expand our horizons.)

  21. Re:Reasons why I don't like the Internet of Things by Shortguy881 · · Score: 1

    I listen to the Backstreet Boys.

    You're right, that is cause for concern.

    --
    Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.