Agreed. On certain business-oriented Finnish web sites I've noticed an odd pattern of posters who claim the Lumia phones are 'the best phone ever' and who attack any negative commenters on WP7 as "liars" etc. The pattern reeks very much of a deliberate marketing campaign either by Nokia's marketing department or desperate stock holders trying to cash out before the wheels come off. I wouldn't be surprised if something similar was happening on English language web sites as well.
I've had an HTC WP7 from the company for almost 6 months now and esp after the 7.5 Mango update the phone has felt reliable (reliable enough where this is now the phone I trust to wake me up in the mornings) and the device feels quite responsive. The things which I don't like about the phone is a) the demented interface design which expects you to reorient the phone between landscape and portrait when navigating from one menu to another and b) the phone is lacking in apps which I'd personally find useful/interesting. The free apps tend to be ad-filled garbage and the paid apps are overpriced IMO - but I appreciate that my Nokia N900-based expectation of getting useful/interesting apps for cheap/free is part of any problem Nokia may face in trying to convince iPhone/Android devs to target the WP7 platform.
As a taxpayer I'd prefer my tax money to go towards supporting lean security-hardened Linux distros (with some genuine potential for overall cost savings) rather than licenses for the latest Microsoft desktop OS, Exchange servers etc. This ought to be good news for taxpayers long-term regardless of how the economy is doing now.
Here's a prediction.. 20 years from now Apple won't be remembered for the iMacs or iPods, but for successfully revolutionising education as we know it. If $60-$100 textbooks can be acquired for $15 per book for a digital iPad version, it'll be a no-brainer (for whomever is currently paying for the textbooks) to buy an iPad for any education requiring more than 6-12 textbooks.
SpiderOak promotes zero knowledge storage. They have no way to break the encryption and couldn't do so in response to a subpoena if they wanted to.
I just tested this service as follows:
1. Uploaded a massive file to a private share folder - deliberately uploaded this from a machine on a slow connection (took approx an hour).
2. Added this folder to a public share folder
3. Fifteen seconds later disconnected the upload machine - certainly not enough time for it to reupload the file unencrypted.
4. One minute later downloaded the entire file to another machine on a fast network connection.
See the problem? In spite of them claiming to have zero knowledge of user data their server must've decrypted the file remotely in order for the file to be available in the share straight away. Who's to say they can't decrypt the rest of your data once they have your private decryption key? I hate to say this but their claim of 'zero knowledge' doesn't seem convincing.
Out of interest, how does SpiderOak support shareclouds (i.e. sharing of your information with others) if they have no way of decrypting your data? Does the action of sharing a file decrypt the data locally on your machine and then reupload it non-encrypted, or something else? Their FAQ did not cover this question.
FTA: "It's likely that personal computers belonging to anyone who used a flash drive during the past decade to carry information home were also affected."
The college has a CS department providing courses for "seasoned IT professionals" (as per ccsf.edu) and nobody notices viruses on their flash drives (etc) over the past 10 years? Unlikely.
We rolled our eyes at Jurassic Park's representation of a "Unix system" back in 1993 (the directory hierarchy was basically a bunch of 3D boxes you could fly around), but here we are 20 years later looking at a code analyser which represents the information as.. a bunch of 3D boxes you can fly around:-)
The Kenyans - with ample sunlight - going nuclear, and the Germans - with a less favourable climate - hoping solar energy will help them get rid of their nuclear power plants.
It's hardly news that GPUs can be used to speed up parallel tasks/computations, but even so this article is a useful reminder of two things; 1) there are still many important processes that can be sped up by using GPUs, and 2) this can be achieved pretty much anywhere in the world.
Every organisation has different needs, but even so "looking at real code they've written, talking through bigger picture issues" takes time, and an initial interview with more basic questions should probably be there to weed out the weakest candidates (unless the people in charge of recruitment interviews have nothing else to do and want to look busy, of course).
Energy performance is especially relevant when faced with high energy costs. From thegreengrid.org's press release: "The Green Grid will help promote the improvement of resource efficiency in business computing throughout China, a country with huge potential for energy efficiency increases."
An ugly reality about IT is that there are managers who believe old people can't code (given your post, you probably suspect as much), so your odds are not necessarily as good as for someone in their late 20s or 30s. You can probably get an idea about a company's bias by the age of its oldest developers. Be prepared for some unfair rejections, be prepared to prove your skills, and if possible figure out which companies/departments are hiring older developers in your area (do you know any older programmers who work in the area?). FWIW I've hired developers your age and they have worked out great.
One way of interpreting the decision is that Google is finding it hard to make money off tech-savvy people (who probably use adblockers and can tell the difference between sponsored links and actual search results, etc).
I guess what the article is really saying is that now the cable companies _need_ network specialists even at the customer-facing frontline, but they're not willing to pay for them.
True, but at the same time I can't help but think that the works of Shakespeare would 1) be more expensive to enjoy, and 2) generate more revenue for a government if they were still under copyright (that's assuming the copyright owner would seek to maximise licensing income). It would actually make for an interesting bit of impartial research - perhaps one could attempt to estimate total revenue from public domain music versus copyrighted music at around the current copyright expiration cutoff. Any takers?:-)
Like it or not, from a government's perspective the licensing (etc) of these works generate at least a few private sector jobs and some tax revenue. As such it's conceivable that we will move toward - if we are not already there in practice - a system where copyrights never expire.
This post does appear to provide some additional information on the issue, and arguably a serious vulnerability deserves all the press it can get.
Prisons aren't the only facilities where SCADA tampering could create a risk for the public, so expect a few more "duplicates" in 2012 as researchers audit other installations.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. On certain business-oriented Finnish web sites I've noticed an odd pattern of posters who claim the Lumia phones are 'the best phone ever' and who attack any negative commenters on WP7 as "liars" etc. The pattern reeks very much of a deliberate marketing campaign either by Nokia's marketing department or desperate stock holders trying to cash out before the wheels come off. I wouldn't be surprised if something similar was happening on English language web sites as well.
I've had an HTC WP7 from the company for almost 6 months now and esp after the 7.5 Mango update the phone has felt reliable (reliable enough where this is now the phone I trust to wake me up in the mornings) and the device feels quite responsive. The things which I don't like about the phone is a) the demented interface design which expects you to reorient the phone between landscape and portrait when navigating from one menu to another and b) the phone is lacking in apps which I'd personally find useful/interesting. The free apps tend to be ad-filled garbage and the paid apps are overpriced IMO - but I appreciate that my Nokia N900-based expectation of getting useful/interesting apps for cheap/free is part of any problem Nokia may face in trying to convince iPhone/Android devs to target the WP7 platform.
As a taxpayer I'd prefer my tax money to go towards supporting lean security-hardened Linux distros (with some genuine potential for overall cost savings) rather than licenses for the latest Microsoft desktop OS, Exchange servers etc. This ought to be good news for taxpayers long-term regardless of how the economy is doing now.
Here's a prediction.. 20 years from now Apple won't be remembered for the iMacs or iPods, but for successfully revolutionising education as we know it. If $60-$100 textbooks can be acquired for $15 per book for a digital iPad version, it'll be a no-brainer (for whomever is currently paying for the textbooks) to buy an iPad for any education requiring more than 6-12 textbooks.
Debris in close orbit around Earth? Trailer parks in year 2200?
SpiderOak promotes zero knowledge storage. They have no way to break the encryption and couldn't do so in response to a subpoena if they wanted to.
I just tested this service as follows:
1. Uploaded a massive file to a private share folder - deliberately uploaded this from a machine on a slow connection (took approx an hour).
2. Added this folder to a public share folder
3. Fifteen seconds later disconnected the upload machine - certainly not enough time for it to reupload the file unencrypted.
4. One minute later downloaded the entire file to another machine on a fast network connection.
See the problem? In spite of them claiming to have zero knowledge of user data their server must've decrypted the file remotely in order for the file to be available in the share straight away. Who's to say they can't decrypt the rest of your data once they have your private decryption key? I hate to say this but their claim of 'zero knowledge' doesn't seem convincing.
Out of interest, how does SpiderOak support shareclouds (i.e. sharing of your information with others) if they have no way of decrypting your data? Does the action of sharing a file decrypt the data locally on your machine and then reupload it non-encrypted, or something else? Their FAQ did not cover this question.
FTA: "It's likely that personal computers belonging to anyone who used a flash drive during the past decade to carry information home were also affected." The college has a CS department providing courses for "seasoned IT professionals" (as per ccsf.edu) and nobody notices viruses on their flash drives (etc) over the past 10 years? Unlikely.
We rolled our eyes at Jurassic Park's representation of a "Unix system" back in 1993 (the directory hierarchy was basically a bunch of 3D boxes you could fly around), but here we are 20 years later looking at a code analyser which represents the information as.. a bunch of 3D boxes you can fly around :-)
The Kenyans - with ample sunlight - going nuclear, and the Germans - with a less favourable climate - hoping solar energy will help them get rid of their nuclear power plants.
It's hardly news that GPUs can be used to speed up parallel tasks/computations, but even so this article is a useful reminder of two things; 1) there are still many important processes that can be sped up by using GPUs, and 2) this can be achieved pretty much anywhere in the world.
Every organisation has different needs, but even so "looking at real code they've written, talking through bigger picture issues" takes time, and an initial interview with more basic questions should probably be there to weed out the weakest candidates (unless the people in charge of recruitment interviews have nothing else to do and want to look busy, of course).
Energy performance is especially relevant when faced with high energy costs. From thegreengrid.org's press release: "The Green Grid will help promote the improvement of resource efficiency in business computing throughout China, a country with huge potential for energy efficiency increases."
An ugly reality about IT is that there are managers who believe old people can't code (given your post, you probably suspect as much), so your odds are not necessarily as good as for someone in their late 20s or 30s. You can probably get an idea about a company's bias by the age of its oldest developers. Be prepared for some unfair rejections, be prepared to prove your skills, and if possible figure out which companies/departments are hiring older developers in your area (do you know any older programmers who work in the area?). FWIW I've hired developers your age and they have worked out great.
One way of interpreting the decision is that Google is finding it hard to make money off tech-savvy people (who probably use adblockers and can tell the difference between sponsored links and actual search results, etc).
I guess what the article is really saying is that now the cable companies _need_ network specialists even at the customer-facing frontline, but they're not willing to pay for them.
True, but at the same time I can't help but think that the works of Shakespeare would 1) be more expensive to enjoy, and 2) generate more revenue for a government if they were still under copyright (that's assuming the copyright owner would seek to maximise licensing income). It would actually make for an interesting bit of impartial research - perhaps one could attempt to estimate total revenue from public domain music versus copyrighted music at around the current copyright expiration cutoff. Any takers? :-)
Like it or not, from a government's perspective the licensing (etc) of these works generate at least a few private sector jobs and some tax revenue. As such it's conceivable that we will move toward - if we are not already there in practice - a system where copyrights never expire.
This post does appear to provide some additional information on the issue, and arguably a serious vulnerability deserves all the press it can get. Prisons aren't the only facilities where SCADA tampering could create a risk for the public, so expect a few more "duplicates" in 2012 as researchers audit other installations.