There are a lot of cool but simple games there, and they are on a level that does not really require reading skills nor the capability to understand English. So our soon-to-be-5-year-old daughter has surfed that site a lot after she got the idea of a mouse two years ago or so.
Other favourites for our kid have been SimTunes and Bille & Trille games from Savannah in Denmark http://www.savannahkids.net/. If you're from Scandinavia, check them out, they're great!
>Vendors are made up of indifferent slugs who wouldn't fix security vulnerabilities quickly -- if at all
Well, maybe some vendors aren't but I know for a fact that some are. A couple of years back we reported a vulnerability to Opera and never heard from them afterwards. I mean, not a single word. It seemed that the whole thing disappeared into a black hole. Indifferent slugs, exactly.
The question was why people would share their internet connection to benefit media companies. Well, people will do it if there is incentive enough, i.e. they get other stuff faster or access to exclusive content or some other tangible benefits. The current P2P networks have already shown that people are willing to share, adding commercial beneficiaries may not change it radically. The businesses just need to invent the benefits for people for the win-win scenario.
(Argh, I actually used words like "incentive" and "win-win scenario"! I think I've been exposed to too many business proposals...)
I was in need of a software package that allowed me not just manage the bibliography information, but also include notes, commentary etc on an article item.
So I tried a Wiki, where I have one page per article, a <pre></pre> block of bibtex-formatted bibliography data and the rest is commentary, links etc. Then I have a script/plugin that goes through the pages and dumps the stuff within the <pre></pre>-blocks to a file. Instant.bib.
On a positive side this worked out pretty well. The DB is web-accessible, and I can also take the whole Wiki-DB with me in a PDA if the need arises. The Wiki linking feature is really cool, I can annotate the paper with references like "This paper continues the work of XZY and see also ABCD for a related discussion".
On a negative side, some hacking was required. I did this over a year ago on a phpWiki platform, I hope someone knows a Wiki SW that has some inbuilt features of this kind.
I was similarly enchanted by Psion handhelds (I have had Psion 3 and Revo). Great keyboard, superb battery lifetime, fast apps in ROM. Absolutely the world's best calendaring software... Not many third party apps, though.
Well, my Psion Revo finally died, so I bought Zaurus CL-760 directly from Japan (Zaurus 7XX series has a keyboard, unlike 5XXX or 6XXX series). As a Linux geek I'm happy with it, although in some regards Psions still take the lead.
And no, I haven't run the Sharp supplied ROM in ages, the Sharp compatible Cacko ROM is great but a true mini-laptop feeling can achieved using the pdaX ROM.
You have to look at a map to see what will happen. Netherlands is pretty small, from nearly anywhere in the country you will be able to drive to a neighbouring EU country in a couple of hours. Sooo... No more stores carrying MP3 players in the Netherlands, but booming businesses in Germany and Belgium. And of course in the Internet, all legal and nice within EU.
If writing code is all the CS program expects from majors, I'd encourage both men and women to leave immediately. While algorithmic thinking and coding is essential to a computer science degree, there's so much more to it that even people who don't like to code should find a niche there. No wonder women leave if the program emphasizes CS==coding.
I've got a MSc from CS and after the novelty wore off I have found coding boring. But I'm a respected professional in my area, security.
>I was told in high school health class that diabities is almost 100% due to diet or lack of exersize. I am glad to see we are getting better reasons than "he's fat and does not exersize, so that is why he got sick".
Your high school had it wrong. There are two types of diabetes; I and II. Type I you get as a child/teenager and it destroys your insulin production cells. It has nothing to do with your diet or weight. This is the type talked in the article. The only treatment is taking the missing insulin regularly as shots.
Type II is the adult form, where the body develops insulin resistance. The insulin production cells are there and working, but your body metabolism does not work with it that well. In this type the diet and weight are factors, i.e. if you are overweight you are more liable to develop Type II diabetes. There are several treatment approaches, some manage a good balance with a proper diet, some need drugs.
>The best way to get your point across - hack the consultants' box!
Yeah, and that will make you look...co-operative, right?
I've done security consulting for years: tens of Nessus scans, web app tests, pen. tests etc. From this background I have some points here.
One clear problem for a third party consultant is that the risk level assignment is not necessarily as clear cut as the Nessus/ISS/whatever report says. We've never given a client a report directly from the tool, but have written our own detailing the problem and in what circumstances the problem is exploitable. This manually compiled report is definitely the killer when project price is concerned. Web-based scans with automatically generated reports are so much cheaper...
Moreover, we usually work WITH the sysadmins instead of against them. This is a key thing in a successfull security audit. Most sysadmins are not security experts and if they happen to be, they still do not usually have the time to do a thorough sweep of the whole network. The sysadmins in my experience have usually been very HAPPY with our results. In all company internal scans there have been major holes, but after our report, they know exactly where they should put the time/effort to enhance their security and what patches/fixes/tools to use for this.
Besides, in my experience, most of the time sysadmins have not been given any direction whatsoever on the desired security level of the systems. So in the absence of any direction, the audit can NOT claim lack of compliance. We can only say that because the mgmt hasn't committed to security, their systems have ad-hoc security, i.e. security is occasionally good in spots where someone has had the time and clue.
With my crystal ball I'm seeing the future. Hmm... The price of the N editions will be...drum roll...MORE than the non-N versions! It's natural that since they need to remove some stuff from the original, they need to be compensated for this extra work!
And few years down the line Microsoft will claim that since the non-N versions are not selling so good, nobody really wants choice in media players.
>In both cases it seems the key factor is that the patient believes it's an active ingredient.
Well, yes, that is the key thing about placebo. If you believe, it may work. Then again even real painkillers sometimes fail to make the pain go away.
Another thing to note is also the effect of placebo on the doctor. Depending on whether the medical staff knows about the placebo, they may interpret the symptoms differently.
> The article asks readers to imagine what would happen if a woman took a two month maternity leave during which an enterprise software update happened. That would be stressful, and suddenly her skills would be obsolete.
If one software change makes your skillset totally obsolete, you need to go back to school to learn more general skills!
I've taken maternity leave and 12 months of it. Sure my company was not the same company I left when I came back and a lot of new stuff was done while I was gone, but it did not take long before I could be as productive as before.
Most people (men and women alike) in the IT field are personalities that like new things and ideas and they are interested in learning new skills. A couple of months off actually gives a chance to excercise that interest when one comes back.
Re:Women aren't interested.
on
Women Leaving I.T.
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
>Live and let live. They're not interested, so what?
It depends on WHY they are not interested.
1) They are just not into tech stuff anymore. 2) They are not interested because there's a glass ceiling and no room for advancement, 3) They are not interested anymore because they are tired of maintaining ten times the competence required from male co-workers.
One of them is more OK than others. Clueful people can tell which.
And women are not entering into IT either
on
Women Leaving I.T.
·
· Score: 1
I recently saw the freshmen statistics from my alma mater and the statistics show that only 20% of the university computer science freshmen were women. This number has been pretty much the same at least 3 years.
This is a striking difference to the days I was a freshman in the 80's, when about half of the class were female. But unfortunately a large chunk of them left to pursue a career in medicine or wherever.
OK, "security is top priority". As a security professional I think it's good that they've woken up.
However, I'd really like to know what are they going to DO about it, apart from the traditional "we'll train our programmers". This is a key question especially considering that they have millions of code lines written before security was any kind of priority.
I predict no radical changes to the number of discovered Microsoft software security flaws in the short term.
>From informal observations in graduate schools, I've concluded that older people learn faster because of their experience in learning techniques, which seems so counterintuitive!
Aiming for a PhD after a score of years in corporate environment, I agree. It is somewhat easier to learn when you have real life experience to which you can attach the book knowledge.
But let's also not forget a major factor: MOTIVATION. Teens and even college kids don't necessarily have a clear motivation to learn, older people are usually learning for a specific purpose. It really helps to focus energy for doing the right things.
The problem is not the observation that "men are typically X" or "women are typically Y". The problem happens when this is taken into the individual level.
There are women that are naturally stronger than some men (I used to coach a female discus thrower). There are women, who are better at logical thinking than some men (I have a MSc/CS degree). And sometimes we are just hurt by the disparaging comments about the group we represent and feel these comments basically say we do not exist.
Another issue is the underlying thought that since it may be rare to find these exceptional women, one should not even make sure that the selection process is unbiased or the facility should try to make them welcome (instead of making them feel freaks).
Yep, I think the REAL question here is whether the laptop design team(s) will stay on and continue under new management. And whether the new management is committed to implementing those smart designs instead of just churning out generic cheap laptops.
Slashdot Mirror
For younger kids, check out the BBC Teletubbies web site http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/teletubbies/funandga mes/index.shtml
There are a lot of cool but simple games there, and they are on a level that does not really require reading skills nor the capability to understand English. So our soon-to-be-5-year-old daughter has surfed that site a lot after she got the idea of a mouse two years ago or so.
Other favourites for our kid have been SimTunes and Bille & Trille games from Savannah in Denmark http://www.savannahkids.net/. If you're from Scandinavia, check them out, they're great!
>Vendors are made up of indifferent slugs who wouldn't fix security vulnerabilities quickly -- if at all
Well, maybe some vendors aren't but I know for a fact that some are. A couple of years back we reported a vulnerability to Opera and never heard from them afterwards. I mean, not a single word. It seemed that the whole thing disappeared into a black hole. Indifferent slugs, exactly.
The question was why people would share their internet connection to benefit media companies. Well, people will do it if there is incentive enough, i.e. they get other stuff faster or access to exclusive content or some other tangible benefits. The current P2P networks have already shown that people are willing to share, adding commercial beneficiaries may not change it radically. The businesses just need to invent the benefits for people for the win-win scenario.
(Argh, I actually used words like "incentive" and "win-win scenario"! I think I've been exposed to too many business proposals...)
I was in need of a software package that allowed me not just manage the bibliography information, but also include notes, commentary etc on an article item.
.bib.
So I tried a Wiki, where I have one page per article, a <pre></pre> block of bibtex-formatted bibliography data and the rest is commentary, links etc. Then I have a script/plugin that goes through the pages and dumps the stuff within the <pre></pre>-blocks to a file. Instant
On a positive side this worked out pretty well. The DB is web-accessible, and I can also take the whole Wiki-DB with me in a PDA if the need arises. The Wiki linking feature is really cool, I can annotate the paper with references like "This paper continues the work of XZY and see also ABCD for a related discussion".
On a negative side, some hacking was required. I did this over a year ago on a phpWiki platform, I hope someone knows a Wiki SW that has some inbuilt features of this kind.
> Issac Assimov and Phillip K. Dick
To that cast we could add Lois McMaster Boobjold and Octavia Buttler.
Not to forget Gordon Dickson and Michael Moorcock, but they were sort of obvious.
I was similarly enchanted by Psion handhelds (I have had Psion 3 and Revo). Great keyboard, superb battery lifetime, fast apps in ROM. Absolutely the world's best calendaring software... Not many third party apps, though.
Well, my Psion Revo finally died, so I bought Zaurus CL-760 directly from Japan (Zaurus 7XX series has a keyboard, unlike 5XXX or 6XXX series). As a Linux geek I'm happy with it, although in some regards Psions still take the lead.
And no, I haven't run the Sharp supplied ROM in ages, the Sharp compatible Cacko ROM is great but a true mini-laptop feeling can achieved using the pdaX ROM.
You have to look at a map to see what will happen. Netherlands is pretty small, from nearly anywhere in the country you will be able to drive to a neighbouring EU country in a couple of hours. Sooo... No more stores carrying MP3 players in the Netherlands, but booming businesses in Germany and Belgium. And of course in the Internet, all legal and nice within EU.
The legislators really need a reality check.
If writing code is all the CS program expects from majors, I'd encourage both men and women to leave immediately. While algorithmic thinking and coding is essential to a computer science degree, there's so much more to it that even people who don't like to code should find a niche there. No wonder women leave if the program emphasizes CS==coding.
I've got a MSc from CS and after the novelty wore off I have found coding boring. But I'm a respected professional in my area, security.
>I was told in high school health class that diabities is almost 100% due to diet or lack of exersize. I am glad to see we are getting better reasons than "he's fat and does not exersize, so that is why he got sick".
Your high school had it wrong. There are two types of diabetes; I and II. Type I you get as a child/teenager and it destroys your insulin production cells. It has nothing to do with your diet or weight. This is the type talked in the article. The only treatment is taking the missing insulin regularly as shots.
Type II is the adult form, where the body develops insulin resistance. The insulin production cells are there and working, but your body metabolism does not work with it that well. In this type the diet and weight are factors, i.e. if you are overweight you are more liable to develop Type II diabetes. There are several treatment approaches, some manage a good balance with a proper diet, some need drugs.
So the woman is not taking insulin anymore, but she is taking immuno-suppressants.
This means she has switched from one type of life-long medication to another type of life-long medication. Is this really a change for the better?
Well, there's the thing that Civ 3, at least the version I have bought years ago, does not work anymore when we have switched to Windows XP SP2.
>The best way to get your point across - hack the consultants' box!
Yeah, and that will make you look...co-operative, right?
I've done security consulting for years: tens of Nessus scans, web app tests, pen. tests etc. From this background I have some points here.
One clear problem for a third party consultant is that the risk level assignment is not necessarily as clear cut as the Nessus/ISS/whatever report says. We've never given a client a report directly from the tool, but have written our own detailing the problem and in what circumstances the problem is exploitable. This manually compiled report is definitely the killer when project price is concerned. Web-based scans with automatically generated reports are so much cheaper...
Moreover, we usually work WITH the sysadmins instead of against them. This is a key thing in a successfull security audit. Most sysadmins are not security experts and if they happen to be, they still do not usually have the time to do a thorough sweep of the whole network. The sysadmins in my experience have usually been very HAPPY with our results. In all company internal scans there have been major holes, but after our report, they know exactly where they should put the time/effort to enhance their security and what patches/fixes/tools to use for this.
Besides, in my experience, most of the time sysadmins have not been given any direction whatsoever on the desired security level of the systems. So in the absence of any direction, the audit can NOT claim lack of compliance. We can only say that because the mgmt hasn't committed to security, their systems have ad-hoc security, i.e. security is occasionally good in spots where someone has had the time and clue.
Regards, a GSNA
With my crystal ball I'm seeing the future. Hmm... The price of the N editions will be...drum roll...MORE than the non-N versions! It's natural that since they need to remove some stuff from the original, they need to be compensated for this extra work!
And few years down the line Microsoft will claim that since the non-N versions are not selling so good, nobody really wants choice in media players.
>In both cases it seems the key factor is that the patient believes it's an active ingredient.
Well, yes, that is the key thing about placebo. If you believe, it may work. Then again even real painkillers sometimes fail to make the pain go away.
Another thing to note is also the effect of placebo on the doctor. Depending on whether the medical staff knows about the placebo, they may interpret the symptoms differently.
Never mind boring Honda ads, this is definitely inspired by Wallace & Gromit.
And hey, Nick Park is a brit too! Did he go to Cambridge as well?
> The article asks readers to imagine what would happen if a woman took a two month maternity leave during which an enterprise software update happened. That would be stressful, and suddenly her skills would be obsolete.
If one software change makes your skillset totally obsolete, you need to go back to school to learn more general skills!
I've taken maternity leave and 12 months of it. Sure my company was not the same company I left when I came back and a lot of new stuff was done while I was gone, but it did not take long before I could be as productive as before.
Most people (men and women alike) in the IT field are personalities that like new things and ideas and they are interested in learning new skills. A couple of months off actually gives a chance to excercise that interest when one comes back.
>Live and let live. They're not interested, so what?
It depends on WHY they are not interested.
1) They are just not into tech stuff anymore.
2) They are not interested because there's a glass ceiling and no room for advancement,
3) They are not interested anymore because they are tired of maintaining ten times the competence required from male co-workers.
One of them is more OK than others. Clueful people can tell which.
I recently saw the freshmen statistics from my alma mater and the statistics show that only 20% of the university computer science freshmen were women. This number has been pretty much the same at least 3 years.
This is a striking difference to the days I was a freshman in the 80's, when about half of the class were female. But unfortunately a large chunk of them left to pursue a career in medicine or wherever.
No, it was pr0n of course.
Yeah, mod this funny, but also look at the image on the article!
OK, "security is top priority". As a security professional I think it's good that they've woken up.
However, I'd really like to know what are they going to DO about it, apart from the traditional "we'll train our programmers". This is a key question especially considering that they have millions of code lines written before security was any kind of priority.
I predict no radical changes to the number of discovered Microsoft software security flaws in the short term.
>From informal observations in graduate schools, I've concluded that older people learn faster because of their experience in learning techniques, which seems so counterintuitive!
Aiming for a PhD after a score of years in corporate environment, I agree. It is somewhat easier to learn when you have real life experience to which you can attach the book knowledge.
But let's also not forget a major factor: MOTIVATION. Teens and even college kids don't necessarily have a clear motivation to learn, older people are usually learning for a specific purpose. It really helps to focus energy for doing the right things.
The problem is not the observation that "men are typically X" or "women are typically Y". The problem happens when this is taken into the individual level.
There are women that are naturally stronger than some men (I used to coach a female discus thrower). There are women, who are better at logical thinking than some men (I have a MSc/CS degree). And sometimes we are just hurt by the disparaging comments about the group we represent and feel these comments basically say we do not exist.
Another issue is the underlying thought that since it may be rare to find these exceptional women, one should not even make sure that the selection process is unbiased or the facility should try to make them welcome (instead of making them feel freaks).
Where is Donald Knuth?
Their daily intake is 3000 calories, before the cut that is.
Wow! What on earth [sic!] are they doing up there? I'd think they would not require that much food since they don't have to deal with gravity.
Inquiring minds want to know...
Yep, I think the REAL question here is whether the laptop design team(s) will stay on and continue under new management. And whether the new management is committed to implementing those smart designs instead of just churning out generic cheap laptops.