If this doesn't make you go donate $20 to WikiLeaks, I don't know what will.
Go to their web site now, scroll down to the PayPal form, and reply here once you've sent them a few bucks. Put Slashdot in your donation comment, so they understand how much normal people care. http://www.wikileaks.com/
As someone that works for a blue-chip tech firm and has no connection whatsoever to them, I can tell you that I PayPal'd WikiLeaks $10 a couple weeks ago when I saw their full site was down due to lack of funds. Like others, I wondered if and when they'd come back. But after reading about the Collateral Murder release on Slashdot and Digg, I didn't think twice before sending another $100. WikiLeaks' unique ability to acquire and distribute information like this (and effectively promote it) is exactly why you should support them. Their own releases show that the US government (among others) is/was trying to bury them, but now it's going to be full-scale war -- they are sure to need your dollars more than ever. I got 5 minutes into the video before I felt sick and had to stop watching.
I truly believe the only reasonable action anyone can take to even have a chance at preventing future cover-ups like this is to send money to WikiLeaks. There is no other organization doing what they are at this level.
Yes, but important decisions at large organizations are made by CEOs or other key executives (CMO, CTO, etc.) with clear lines of responsibility and accountability, not by establishing several dozen committees. Only in government (and poorly-run, similarly-bloated conglomerates) is this kind of bureaucratic, process-obsessed operation characterized as "reinventing their approach".
Don't forget to separate execution of the plan from development of the plan. It will clearly take thousands of people collaborating to execute on the vision of "go to the moon by 2017" -- but deciding what the top priorities are while keeping in mind resources, timelines, and feasibility, simply does not require four more committees at NASA.
If they want to reinvent their approach, perhaps they should start by not creating multiple committees every time they want to accomplish something... or am I forgetting the long track record of success by new committees at already-bloated government organizations?
The analogy is very clear: you get benefits from storing your data in the cloud, just like you get benefits from storing your money in the bank -- but at the expense of some degree of control. Those benefits aren't completely identical (as evidenced by your nonsensical, literal interpretation of the analogy as "data earning interest"), nor is the degree of loss of control identical.
While it's still an early-adopter market, I stand by the point that people being afraid to put their money in a bank is similar to people being afraid to put their data in the cloud, though you're free to disagree.
The best part is that you're 100% correct -- and the only reason you're questioning yourself is because it's just so obvious that you're confused as to why it's a discussion. I suggest CNET publish your post as a cover story.
3 Things You Need to Know About Cloud Computing
Web services != Cloud: Don't consider things like Facebook true cloud computing
For most cloud applications, getting data out of the cloud could not be simpler
The real problem is that "Cloud Computing" has become a big tent that is coming to include a lot of things it shouldn't.
They adore titles with both numbers and buzzwords in them, so I don't see how they could resist.
Why would you ever give up control of your money, but not your important data? Or are you saying that you don't put your money in banks or investments? Perhaps you're comfortable with the balance of control that you have over your money vs. the financial institution when combined with the protections afforded to you by various regulations, government agencies, and legal precedent. Do you suppose this would be impossible to put in place for in-the-cloud applications?
If people spent as much time exploring how to make cloud applications better as they did bashing them, we would get to our inevitable future much more quickly and painlessly.
Can someone give a little depth to the vague and unsubstantiated comment in TFA
No one can give you any depth, because it doesn't exist -- this article is fluff and the only supporting posts on this board sound like the old-world IT crowd spouting off, "Nothing beats having your own data!". They also bury their money in their own yard, so as not to avoid outsourcing their money with in-the-cloud financial providers (aka banks). After all, it's almost as difficult to switch "banks" as to go from MySpace to Facebook, i.e. the sky is falling.
I'm being sarcastic, but the point is that it's clear from an efficiency perspective that using services in the cloud can offer a net benefit to some organizations. This requires that we (the IT community) work together to make sure the new complexities (data ownership, privacy, security, interoperability, etc.) are mitigated as much as possible... as opposed to a fundamental resistance to this feeling of losing control that many IT people succumb to when confronted with new technologies.
Every organization has differing requirements and the cloud is not the solution to every problem for every application for every organization -- but let's at least be accurate about what the pro's and con's are so that, in cases where it is better, we don't slow down the adoption.
From the perspective of data being stored in the cloud there are several unique cases. I'll pick two examples, but, as other posters have pointed out, the issues facing each are vastly different:
Google Apps/SalesForce: There is a clear choice between in-the-cloud and in-house: you can host key corporate data (customer contacts, email, etc.) or you can build in-house CRM, ERP, and/or Email. Amazon Computing Cloud fits here, as well, insofar as you have an in-house alternative: build your own VM environments in your own data center with all data hosted locally.
MySpace/Facebook: Aside from not being back-office business systems, you are not (intentionally) putting corporate data in the cloud and there is no real on-premise alternative for social networking. By definition, you want to connect to everyone. Yes, I know there are enterprise collaboration/IM tools (e.g. Google Wave), but these fall within the first scenario. Social networking tools are fundamentally enabled by being publicly available on the Internet, i.e. in the cloud.
Vendor Interoperability The point of this article -- vendor interoperability, especially around data conversion -- is an interesting one. But I would've thought that it was self-evident without having to raise examples that it's not an issue specific to the cloud: if I want to switch from one in-house technology to another (Oracle to SAP, Lotus to Exchange, Novell to Microsoft, etc.), it's an enormous pain in the ass. Especially between vendors, it's always difficult, and often impossible to transfer all data in full. There's no conversion script for me to take my Nortel PBX call queuing and scripting and magically transfer it to my Cisco Unity Call Manager. If my organization wants to switch from one in-house ERP to another, it's often a 12-18 month process: harvesting, transforming and normalizing, scrubbing, loading, and finalizing the data, and that doesn't even address the workflow, business process, or other issues.
While the issue of being locked into a particular vendor, product, or data format is never going away and merits further discussion, the answer is entirely independent of the cloud: hope/ensure that your contracts dictate the necessary level of flexibility in importing/exporting data from a given business application/system... or you could be screwed (both on-premise and in-the-cloud).
Do you seriously not understand the difference between having something show up on a list of updates that are available and actually having it download and install behind your back?
How much research do you think people do before checking a box in an iTunes dialog? The onus is on Apple to not offer stupid things that would coincidentally inflate the installed base of an enterprise utility.
Do you seriously not understand the use case of a typical end-user, e.g. teenager, that thinks they want the 'iPhone Configuration Utility' since it's offered by Apple iTunes and they... have an iPhone? "Hey, I might want to configure my iPhone. And I've always downloaded every other iTunes update with iPhone in the title." (Anyone that can read the description and decipher that it's for enterprise device management doesn't fit the definition of "typical end-user".)
The results speak for themselves: millions of users installed this software because it looked like a standard iPhone update.
Incorrect. Apple Updater has been popping up every time my wife opens iTunes (and sometimes even when she doesn't) asking her to install Bonjour, Safari, MobileMe, QuickTime and the iPhone Configuration Utility.
Can't argue with that!
And aren't we aware of Apple's iPhone in the enterprise push with IT buyers? Apple would love to say, "With over 10 million installs, the iPhone Configuration Utility is widely adopted by corporate IT departments". Nevermind that 99% of those are due to the "accidental" installation.
You also have to ask yourself, have they ever done anything to indicate their shyness with regard to software installation? QuickTime takes over every single audio/video playback association, both in Explorer and with browser-embedded media, and even gets its own system tray and desktop icons. Same goes for iTunes with its "uncheck if you don't want it" policy for the apps mentioned above.
I just don't see why we'd give Apple the benefit of the doubt on this one.
It's a few hundred dollars, at most, to test this theory. Go try it. I promise the results will be more useful and interesting than anything you'll get back from Slashdot (e.g. theories on mineral oil suspension, stories on potting mainframes in the 70s, etc.).
I was also skeptical, but then I Googled. My quick analysis is that Evans Data specializes in developer community research and that most of their research has resulted in pro-OSS results, if anything. For example, here are the titles of previous press releases:
Nine Out Of Ten Linux Developers Refute Sco's Linux Lawsuit
Evans Says Java Is Catching Up To.NET
Linux Adoption Not Slowed by SCO Lawsuit
Access to source code is the "primary motivating factor" in operating system adoption among embedded systems developers
(They also did one on KDE vs. Gnome, but I didn't take the time to parse the results.)
Anyhow, my sense is that this is more legit than not. Regarding sample size, they opted for in-depth interviews on lots of topics (GPLv3 was but a small piece of the study, it seems) instead of spamming a few questions to lots of folks. For the specific topic of GPL v3, I'm sure everyone would agree that a focused survey with a large sample size would likely be better... though it could be less accurate as you begin to include people that aren't actually involved in license decision-making or OSS development.
I concluded that it shouldn't be dismissed out-of-hand, but someone should dig deeper.
The value of this intellectual property is not defined by the cut-and-pasteability of source code into a company's product. Certainly, this is not the likely application for any would-be buyers. Instead, knowing how the #1 router company in the world implements stateful packet-filtering on an embedded device is a very worthy piece of knowledge that can be used as a basis for the design of anything that touches a packet.
In addition, Cisco spends hundreds of thousands of dollars in their support organization identifying hard-to-find interoperability issues and exception cases, testing things out in the lab, and then coding up fixes. All of these real-world experiences and corresponding code work-arounds that impact every other firewall/VPN/routing product on the market are captured in this source code.
Cisco PIXes have proprietary integration with third-party products, such as IDS systems, content-filtering proxies (e.g. WebSense), etc. This source code surely exposes these APIs, which are covered by Cisco's own NDA with these companies and are coveted by anyone trying to integrate with such closed-source commercial offerings.
Pre-employment tests are sometimes good for generic categorization of employees. Skills and aptitude tests are quite different from cognitive and behavioral tests. If you've ever taken either of the latter, they can be laughable. The problem is that hiring managers give those tests to a candidate, see "Inability to focus" and "Cannot develop strong relationships" on the results, and assume that's bad.
Give the same tests to your current employees and try to correlate the results. You'll undoubtably find a few patterns amongst your excellent employees that differ from your mediocre employees. The more results you collect from candidates that you know are horrible along with your employees, the better you'll be able to customize the feedback for your exact environment.
In a previous job, I found that all of our core software developers did fantastically on a general cognitive test (IQ-like), but that most did horribly on behavioral tests -- they were all "Likely to be insecure with their work". In fact, potential candidates that were also "Likely to be insecure" often matched the personality profile that worked in our group. So, test your own employees and see what happens if you highlight candidates that perform similarly to those employees that excel, rather than taking the simplistic approach of "a bad score must be bad!" with prospective employees.
You may find that if you give a variety of tests to 20 candidates, ranging from specific skillset assessment to leadership profiles, that you can at least take a harder look at the 3-5 candidates that score poorly across the board -- if they're barely above average (or worse) and they don't test well, that's not a great sign. Conversely, you could hire someone because they do a great job on all of the tests, but that would be equally horrible -- lots of people are good at taking tests and bad at producing actual work.
Assuming a handful of people with equal qualifications, why take the risk? Especially in this job market, there are too many people out there that not only have the right skills and behavior that can also do well on the corresponding tests.
If you want a fully outsourced, centrally managed solution that includes web-based, client-based, and site-to-site solutions neatly rolled into a package that doesn't require hardware or software installation on your corporate network, check out Positive Networks.
Here's some more detail. The service can be setup in a matter of hours, and there's a 30-day money back guarantee.
I think that it's fair to ask these questions of those that are offering you the position. I don't think you'll feel repercussions by stating your basic concerns (e.g. "I love my current position, but would like to complete these 3 milestones before I move on. What situation will that leave the team in? Do you have other qualified candidates in mind?")
That said, if the company believes that you're far better than any other candidate and/or that they would be injured if you didn't take the position, you should feel some obligation to take this position (assuming you are loyal to the company). If you don't, I think you'll rightfully be overlooked for future opportunities. Also, if you can get upper management to relate to your situation and help them find a viable alternative, you may help them appreciate your dedication to your current team.
At the end of the day, I think you have to understand the situation better: are you putting the team (or management) in a bad spot by not taking the position or are they just offering it to you because they think you're restless in your current job (you said you were applying for others)?
I setup a service just like this in January of 1999. At first glance, it looks a lot like prior art. Here's a description from the web site (archived here):
"We can offer a free sub domain to anyone who wants it... As an added bonus we are also giving you a FREE e-mail fowarder on the domain you choose. So if you go register http://yourname.overthelimit.com you ALSO get yourname@overthelimit.com"
Of course, we did it for several different domains for free, since DNS and MX records don't cost anything. Hmm... what to do?
If you think that the number of end users sitting at their homes using Squid w/ad-blocking is on the same order of magnitude as those users with a copy of Norton Antivirus installed, you may want to do a reality check.
Then: "Freenet is not just theoretical, it has been downloaded by over 1.2 million users since the project started, and it is used for the distribution of censored information all over the world, including countries such as China and the Middle East." -- Freenet web site
Now: "Freenet is a research project, always has been. If people find that its usable, then great, they can help us research how to make it better." -- Ian, Newsgroup posting
Use Freenet vs. Use Something Else:
Then: "Freenet is a pretty effective and scalable way to distribute large files and it is immune to "denial of service" attacks, so it is certainly useful beyond its primary goal of permitting anonymous information distribution." -- Ian, GrepLaw Interview
Now: "If you want something easy to use that works today and claims to protect your anonymity, I suggest you try Earth Station 5, its developers tell us that its just *great*!" -- Ian, Newsgroup posting
Production vs. Development:
Then: "Freenet is also actively used in other countries, including the United States, to distribute censored information such as the Church of Scientology "Operating Thetan" documents. Freenet has been download by over 2,000,000 people." -- Ian, GrepLaw Interview
Now: "I have never ever characterized Freenet as being anything other than in development. Either help, stop griping, or find an alternative." -- Ian, Newsgroup posting
I didn't find any direct conflicts in the articles linked above, but there's certainly a shift in tone. It's also worth mentioning that they have a release called "stable", in addition to the "development" and "unstable" branches.
PC Magazine agrees with me
on
MRAM in 2004?
·
· Score: 1
I'm not trying to bash MRAM, but it's clear that the "faster startup times" line is a red herring.
The real news is that you won't have to worry about your feet catching that power cord.
As for replacing hard drives, this is on a pretty distant timeline. An analyst in that same article said:
"MRAM won't replace DRAM for another 10 to 20 years"
So, 10 to 20 years for DRAM means at least another decade beyond that for hard drives, if at all. Cool technology, but it just seems like another obvious step on the technology path.
The bottom line: I don't think anyone on Slashdot is very surprised to find out that a technology will be around in 20 to 30 years that will let us persistently store stuff on something quicker and better than hard drives.
Faster startup times? Whatever...
on
MRAM in 2004?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
From the article:
faster startup times for computers, PDAs and cell phones
Clearly, my computer will startup no faster than it does when coming out of Standby mode (which stores the state of my computer in RAM, but requires that the PC remain plugged in). So, what do I gain? Basically, we get Standby mode that works even when you unplug the computer. And, that's still no improvement to the "startup time".
So, who needs their cell phone or PDA to startup faster? Most of these devices are pulling straight from some flavor of RAM during startup, already.
How often do you reset your iPaq? Just when it crashes, and it only takes 5 seconds, anyhow.
What about that annoying startup time on your cell phone? Let's see, only when the battery falls out do I ever exercise that feature.
If MRAM is really 6 times faster than today's static RAM, that's wonderful, but it will have little impact on startup times (see Hard Drive I/O-blocking).
All of the latest comprehensive spyware packages log keystrokes, monitor the clipboard, take screenshots, capture window titles, monitor running processes, etc. There are several of these available all over the Internet for under $50 with pretty GUIs and sneaky ways of hiding themselves (e.g. by installing themselves as a device driver or service rather than a running process in startup groups).
Some encrypt the data and store it locally, others store it to a web-accessible server on the Internet, and some e-mail information in real-time. So, defending against simple keystroke loggers or searching through text files on the local PC for logs are both outdated methods.
It's a conspiracy theory to assume anything negative about the type of encryption being used based on the information in these articles.
Everyone keeps asking about why the government is using top secret hardware to do encryption when they could just be using some standard encryption technique, people are complaining about security through obscurity, etc.
It could just be the storage media that holds their private key.
Anyone who stores their private keys on ThumbDrives or carries SmartCards has this kind of "top secret" hardware.
Slashdot Mirror
If this doesn't make you go donate $20 to WikiLeaks, I don't know what will.
Go to their web site now, scroll down to the PayPal form, and reply here once you've sent them a few bucks. Put Slashdot in your donation comment, so they understand how much normal people care.
http://www.wikileaks.com/
As someone that works for a blue-chip tech firm and has no connection whatsoever to them, I can tell you that I PayPal'd WikiLeaks $10 a couple weeks ago when I saw their full site was down due to lack of funds. Like others, I wondered if and when they'd come back. But after reading about the Collateral Murder release on Slashdot and Digg, I didn't think twice before sending another $100. WikiLeaks' unique ability to acquire and distribute information like this (and effectively promote it) is exactly why you should support them. Their own releases show that the US government (among others) is/was trying to bury them, but now it's going to be full-scale war -- they are sure to need your dollars more than ever. I got 5 minutes into the video before I felt sick and had to stop watching.
I truly believe the only reasonable action anyone can take to even have a chance at preventing future cover-ups like this is to send money to WikiLeaks. There is no other organization doing what they are at this level.
Yes, but important decisions at large organizations are made by CEOs or other key executives (CMO, CTO, etc.) with clear lines of responsibility and accountability, not by establishing several dozen committees. Only in government (and poorly-run, similarly-bloated conglomerates) is this kind of bureaucratic, process-obsessed operation characterized as "reinventing their approach".
Don't forget to separate execution of the plan from development of the plan. It will clearly take thousands of people collaborating to execute on the vision of "go to the moon by 2017" -- but deciding what the top priorities are while keeping in mind resources, timelines, and feasibility, simply does not require four more committees at NASA.
More committees. Way to think outside the box.
If they want to reinvent their approach, perhaps they should start by not creating multiple committees every time they want to accomplish something ... or am I forgetting the long track record of success by new committees at already-bloated government organizations?
The analogy is very clear: you get benefits from storing your data in the cloud, just like you get benefits from storing your money in the bank -- but at the expense of some degree of control. Those benefits aren't completely identical (as evidenced by your nonsensical, literal interpretation of the analogy as "data earning interest"), nor is the degree of loss of control identical.
While it's still an early-adopter market, I stand by the point that people being afraid to put their money in a bank is similar to people being afraid to put their data in the cloud, though you're free to disagree.
There's nothing like keeping your own data on your own system..
Or burying your own money in your own yard.
The best part is that you're 100% correct -- and the only reason you're questioning yourself is because it's just so obvious that you're confused as to why it's a discussion. I suggest CNET publish your post as a cover story.
3 Things You Need to Know About Cloud Computing
They adore titles with both numbers and buzzwords in them, so I don't see how they could resist.
Why would you ever give up control of your money, but not your important data? Or are you saying that you don't put your money in banks or investments? Perhaps you're comfortable with the balance of control that you have over your money vs. the financial institution when combined with the protections afforded to you by various regulations, government agencies, and legal precedent. Do you suppose this would be impossible to put in place for in-the-cloud applications?
If people spent as much time exploring how to make cloud applications better as they did bashing them, we would get to our inevitable future much more quickly and painlessly.
Can someone give a little depth to the vague and unsubstantiated comment in TFA
No one can give you any depth, because it doesn't exist -- this article is fluff and the only supporting posts on this board sound like the old-world IT crowd spouting off, "Nothing beats having your own data!". They also bury their money in their own yard, so as not to avoid outsourcing their money with in-the-cloud financial providers (aka banks). After all, it's almost as difficult to switch "banks" as to go from MySpace to Facebook, i.e. the sky is falling.
I'm being sarcastic, but the point is that it's clear from an efficiency perspective that using services in the cloud can offer a net benefit to some organizations. This requires that we (the IT community) work together to make sure the new complexities (data ownership, privacy, security, interoperability, etc.) are mitigated as much as possible ... as opposed to a fundamental resistance to this feeling of losing control that many IT people succumb to when confronted with new technologies.
Every organization has differing requirements and the cloud is not the solution to every problem for every application for every organization -- but let's at least be accurate about what the pro's and con's are so that, in cases where it is better, we don't slow down the adoption.
There are two key problems with this article:
Apples and Oranges
From the perspective of data being stored in the cloud there are several unique cases. I'll pick two examples, but, as other posters have pointed out, the issues facing each are vastly different:
Vendor Interoperability
The point of this article -- vendor interoperability, especially around data conversion -- is an interesting one. But I would've thought that it was self-evident without having to raise examples that it's not an issue specific to the cloud: if I want to switch from one in-house technology to another (Oracle to SAP, Lotus to Exchange, Novell to Microsoft, etc.), it's an enormous pain in the ass. Especially between vendors, it's always difficult, and often impossible to transfer all data in full. There's no conversion script for me to take my Nortel PBX call queuing and scripting and magically transfer it to my Cisco Unity Call Manager. If my organization wants to switch from one in-house ERP to another, it's often a 12-18 month process: harvesting, transforming and normalizing, scrubbing, loading, and finalizing the data, and that doesn't even address the workflow, business process, or other issues.
While the issue of being locked into a particular vendor, product, or data format is never going away and merits further discussion, the answer is entirely independent of the cloud: hope/ensure that your contracts dictate the necessary level of flexibility in importing/exporting data from a given business application/system ... or you could be screwed (both on-premise and in-the-cloud).
Do you seriously not understand the difference between having something show up on a list of updates that are available and actually having it download and install behind your back?
How much research do you think people do before checking a box in an iTunes dialog? The onus is on Apple to not offer stupid things that would coincidentally inflate the installed base of an enterprise utility.
Do you seriously not understand the use case of a typical end-user, e.g. teenager, that thinks they want the 'iPhone Configuration Utility' since it's offered by Apple iTunes and they ... have an iPhone? "Hey, I might want to configure my iPhone. And I've always downloaded every other iTunes update with iPhone in the title." (Anyone that can read the description and decipher that it's for enterprise device management doesn't fit the definition of "typical end-user".)
The results speak for themselves: millions of users installed this software because it looked like a standard iPhone update.
Incorrect. Apple Updater has been popping up every time my wife opens iTunes (and sometimes even when she doesn't) asking her to install Bonjour, Safari, MobileMe, QuickTime and the iPhone Configuration Utility.
Can't argue with that!
And aren't we aware of Apple's iPhone in the enterprise push with IT buyers? Apple would love to say, "With over 10 million installs, the iPhone Configuration Utility is widely adopted by corporate IT departments". Nevermind that 99% of those are due to the "accidental" installation.
You also have to ask yourself, have they ever done anything to indicate their shyness with regard to software installation? QuickTime takes over every single audio/video playback association, both in Explorer and with browser-embedded media, and even gets its own system tray and desktop icons. Same goes for iTunes with its "uncheck if you don't want it" policy for the apps mentioned above.
I just don't see why we'd give Apple the benefit of the doubt on this one.
It's a few hundred dollars, at most, to test this theory. Go try it. I promise the results will be more useful and interesting than anything you'll get back from Slashdot (e.g. theories on mineral oil suspension, stories on potting mainframes in the 70s, etc.).
- Nine Out Of Ten Linux Developers Refute Sco's Linux Lawsuit
- Evans Says Java Is Catching Up To
.NET
- Linux Adoption Not Slowed by SCO Lawsuit
- Access to source code is the "primary motivating factor" in operating system adoption among embedded systems developers
(They also did one on KDE vs. Gnome, but I didn't take the time to parse the results.)Anyhow, my sense is that this is more legit than not. Regarding sample size, they opted for in-depth interviews on lots of topics (GPLv3 was but a small piece of the study, it seems) instead of spamming a few questions to lots of folks. For the specific topic of GPL v3, I'm sure everyone would agree that a focused survey with a large sample size would likely be better
I concluded that it shouldn't be dismissed out-of-hand, but someone should dig deeper.
The value of this intellectual property is not defined by the cut-and-pasteability of source code into a company's product. Certainly, this is not the likely application for any would-be buyers. Instead, knowing how the #1 router company in the world implements stateful packet-filtering on an embedded device is a very worthy piece of knowledge that can be used as a basis for the design of anything that touches a packet.
In addition, Cisco spends hundreds of thousands of dollars in their support organization identifying hard-to-find interoperability issues and exception cases, testing things out in the lab, and then coding up fixes. All of these real-world experiences and corresponding code work-arounds that impact every other firewall/VPN/routing product on the market are captured in this source code.
Cisco PIXes have proprietary integration with third-party products, such as IDS systems, content-filtering proxies (e.g. WebSense), etc. This source code surely exposes these APIs, which are covered by Cisco's own NDA with these companies and are coveted by anyone trying to integrate with such closed-source commercial offerings.
Were it legal, it'd be a bargain!
Pre-employment tests are sometimes good for generic categorization of employees. Skills and aptitude tests are quite different from cognitive and behavioral tests. If you've ever taken either of the latter, they can be laughable. The problem is that hiring managers give those tests to a candidate, see "Inability to focus" and "Cannot develop strong relationships" on the results, and assume that's bad.
Give the same tests to your current employees and try to correlate the results. You'll undoubtably find a few patterns amongst your excellent employees that differ from your mediocre employees. The more results you collect from candidates that you know are horrible along with your employees, the better you'll be able to customize the feedback for your exact environment.
In a previous job, I found that all of our core software developers did fantastically on a general cognitive test (IQ-like), but that most did horribly on behavioral tests -- they were all "Likely to be insecure with their work". In fact, potential candidates that were also "Likely to be insecure" often matched the personality profile that worked in our group. So, test your own employees and see what happens if you highlight candidates that perform similarly to those employees that excel, rather than taking the simplistic approach of "a bad score must be bad!" with prospective employees.
You may find that if you give a variety of tests to 20 candidates, ranging from specific skillset assessment to leadership profiles, that you can at least take a harder look at the 3-5 candidates that score poorly across the board -- if they're barely above average (or worse) and they don't test well, that's not a great sign. Conversely, you could hire someone because they do a great job on all of the tests, but that would be equally horrible -- lots of people are good at taking tests and bad at producing actual work.
Assuming a handful of people with equal qualifications, why take the risk? Especially in this job market, there are too many people out there that not only have the right skills and behavior that can also do well on the corresponding tests.
If you want a fully outsourced, centrally managed solution that includes web-based, client-based, and site-to-site solutions neatly rolled into a package that doesn't require hardware or software installation on your corporate network, check out Positive Networks.
Here's some more detail. The service can be setup in a matter of hours, and there's a 30-day money back guarantee.
I think that it's fair to ask these questions of those that are offering you the position. I don't think you'll feel repercussions by stating your basic concerns (e.g. "I love my current position, but would like to complete these 3 milestones before I move on. What situation will that leave the team in? Do you have other qualified candidates in mind?")
That said, if the company believes that you're far better than any other candidate and/or that they would be injured if you didn't take the position, you should feel some obligation to take this position (assuming you are loyal to the company). If you don't, I think you'll rightfully be overlooked for future opportunities. Also, if you can get upper management to relate to your situation and help them find a viable alternative, you may help them appreciate your dedication to your current team.
At the end of the day, I think you have to understand the situation better: are you putting the team (or management) in a bad spot by not taking the position or are they just offering it to you because they think you're restless in your current job (you said you were applying for others)?
Who knows? They may be trying to do you a favor.
If you think that the number of end users sitting at their homes using Squid w/ad-blocking is on the same order of magnitude as those users with a copy of Norton Antivirus installed, you may want to do a reality check.
Real vs. Theoretical:
Use Freenet vs. Use Something Else:
Production vs. Development:
I didn't find any direct conflicts in the articles linked above, but there's certainly a shift in tone. It's also worth mentioning that they have a release called "stable", in addition to the "development" and "unstable" branches.
From PC Magazine's article on MRAM:
As for replacing hard drives, this is on a pretty distant timeline. An analyst in that same article said:
So, 10 to 20 years for DRAM means at least another decade beyond that for hard drives, if at all. Cool technology, but it just seems like another obvious step on the technology path.
The bottom line: I don't think anyone on Slashdot is very surprised to find out that a technology will be around in 20 to 30 years that will let us persistently store stuff on something quicker and better than hard drives.
Clearly, my computer will startup no faster than it does when coming out of Standby mode (which stores the state of my computer in RAM, but requires that the PC remain plugged in). So, what do I gain? Basically, we get Standby mode that works even when you unplug the computer. And, that's still no improvement to the "startup time".
So, who needs their cell phone or PDA to startup faster? Most of these devices are pulling straight from some flavor of RAM during startup, already.
How often do you reset your iPaq? Just when it crashes, and it only takes 5 seconds, anyhow.
What about that annoying startup time on your cell phone? Let's see, only when the battery falls out do I ever exercise that feature.
If MRAM is really 6 times faster than today's static RAM, that's wonderful, but it will have little impact on startup times (see Hard Drive I/O-blocking).
All of the latest comprehensive spyware packages log keystrokes, monitor the clipboard, take screenshots, capture window titles, monitor running processes, etc. There are several of these available all over the Internet for under $50 with pretty GUIs and sneaky ways of hiding themselves (e.g. by installing themselves as a device driver or service rather than a running process in startup groups).
Some encrypt the data and store it locally, others store it to a web-accessible server on the Internet, and some e-mail information in real-time. So, defending against simple keystroke loggers or searching through text files on the local PC for logs are both outdated methods.
You don't need books about GPL software. Just read the source code. Riiight.
It's a conspiracy theory to assume anything negative about the type of encryption being used based on the information in these articles.
Everyone keeps asking about why the government is using top secret hardware to do encryption when they could just be using some standard encryption technique, people are complaining about security through obscurity, etc.
It could just be the storage media that holds their private key.
Anyone who stores their private keys on ThumbDrives or carries SmartCards has this kind of "top secret" hardware.