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Submission + - A Short History of Computers in the Movies

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: The big screen has always tried to keep step with technology usually unsuccessfully. Peter Salus looks at how the film industry has treated computing.

For a long time, the "product placement" of big iron was limited to a few brands, primarily Burroughs. For instance:

Batman: The Movie and Fantastic Voyage (both 1966) revert to the archaic Burroughs B205, though Fantastic Voyage also shows an IBM AN/FSQ-7 Combat Direction Central. At 250 tons for each installation (there were about two dozen) the AN/FSQ-7 was the largest computer ever built, with 60,000 vacuum tubes and a requirement of 3 megawatts of power to perform 75,000 ips for regional radar centers. The last IBM AN/FSQ-7, at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, was demolished in February 1984.

Fun reading, I think.

Submission + - SF movies teach us project management skills

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: Or maybe they don't, but it's certainly fun to pretend to find work inspiration from our favorite SF films. That's what Carol Pinchefsky does in two posts, one about positive business lessons you can take away from SF films (such as "agile thinking can save many a project (and project manager) in a crisis" from Robocop and team motivation lessons from Buffy), and the other, 5 Project Management Horror Stories Found in Sci-Fi Movies, with examples of the impact of poor documentation on Captain America.

It's worth a giggle and, maybe, a thoughtful moment.

Submission + - DRM has always been a horrible idea (computerworld.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For years, the reaction of the big entertainment companies to digital disruption has been to try and restrict and control, a wrong-headed approach that was bound to backfire. But the entertainment companies were never known for being forward thinking whether it was radio in the 20s or cassette tapes in the 70s or VCRs in the 80s or Napster in the 90s. The reaction was the always the same. Take a defensive position and try to battle the disruptive force --and it never worked.

And DRM was perhaps the worst reaction of all, place restrictions on your content that punish the very people who were willing to pay for it, while others were free to use it without restriction. It was an approach that never made much sense, and it's good to know that mounting evidence proves that's the case.

Submission + - Cell phone location data: Today the police, tomorrow the world (citeworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Just because you're paranoid department....

Another day and more revelations about the NSA. This time comes word that they're collecting cell phone location data. And if the NSA can do it, you have to figure that other law enforcement agencies can too, and if they can track your location, they can learn an awful lot about you. In fact, they could begin to piece together a detailed profile of where you go, what you do and who your friends are.

Combine that with a growing network of sensor data capturing our location every time we step into sensor's zone, and you may really have a legitimate reason to be paranoid. http://bit.ly/1fpIqg2

Submission + - Heroku will only sponsor events that have a code of conduct in place (heroku.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: No code of conduct? No cash. Heroku (owned by Salesforce) announced a new policy that requires events to have —or adopt— a code of conduct policy before getting sponsorship funds. Heroku also became an Ada Initiative corporate sponsor with a $10,000 contribution.

Submission + - Why Johnny Can't Write Multithreaded Programs

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: Programming for multiple threads is not fundamentally different from writing an event-oriented GUI application or even a straight up sequential application, writes Jim Mischel. The important lessons of encapsulation, separation of concerns, loose coupling, etc. all apply.

But developers get into trouble with multiple threads when they don’t apply those lessons; instead they try to apply the mostly-irrelevant bits of information they learned about threads and synchronization primitives from introductory multithreading texts. Mischel focuses on two things that developers do wrong when writing multithreaded code, and explains how to avoid them.

Here's one of them:

Probably the most important lesson to be learned from the past 60 years of software development is that global mutable state is bad. Really bad. Programs that depend on global mutable state are harder to reason about and generally less reliable, because there are too many possible ways for the state to change. There is a huge amount of research to back up that generalization, and countless design patterns whose primary purpose is to implement some type of data hiding. The best thing you can do to make your programs easier to reason about is to eliminate as much global mutable state as possible.

Think he's on track? What have you you learned about writing multithreaded code that might save the next programmer from teeth-gnashing?

Submission + - Apple's iPhone 5C strategy is working just as it was supposed to (citeworld.com)

Submitted by rsmiller510
rsmiller510 writes: Apple was never going to be a low-end phone company. It just doesn't fit in with their company culture and product mentality, but they knew they had to at least come up with a mid-range phone that would lure some Android customers, particularly Samsung loyalists, to the Apple ecosystem. The 5C was a kind of compromise for them. It was a lower end phone without being a cheap phone and the idea was to add some customers who couldn't afford an iPhone in the past. Some new data suggests the iPhone 5C might not be selling like hot cakes, but it is drawing in that very type of customer Apple was hoping for, and from that perspective, the strategy is working according to plan.

Submission + - 12 Things Developers Wish the CIO Remembered

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: Every CIO wants to build a development team that’s hard-working, loyal, and devoted to creating quality software. The developers are willing! But they want CIOs to lead them and understand their needs. Andy Lester writes an open letter explaining what developers hope their CIOs keep in mind to motivate them and make them happy.

For instance:
  • We need to be protected from the rest of the organization.
  • We don’t ask for stuff just for the hell of it.
  • Be glad we spend so much time on automated tests.

Read his list, and see if there's anything you'd add, or with which you disagree. (Wait, this is slashdot. Of course you are going to disagree!)

Submission + - How to Keep a Job Search Going Through the Holidays

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: Companies don’t hire during the holidays, you say? Corporate hiring managers are all out on vacation? Nobody’s going to get back to you, so you’re just going to go stand in line at a big-box store on Black Friday and dive into shopping mob frenzy? Bah, humbug! The truth is: Companies do plenty of hiring during the last two months of the year, and the rare job seeker who keeps up the hunt is a big fish in a shrinking pond.

It's a lousy time of year to be out of work (I know; I was once fired on December 15th, after paying for presents with credit cards), when everyone else is cheerfully spending money. And, you're sure, all the hiring managers are all off drinking at holiday parties. Except... it isn't true, or not anymore. For example, 62% of recruiters say that hiring decisions increase in November and December or stay the same as at other times of the year. Fifty-three percent of executive recruiters report their interviewing activity stays the same or increases over the holidays. Lisa Vaas offers a few holiday-themed suggestions about what to do during this time period; for example, all those holiday parties? It's a good time to schmooze with people who are a bit more relaxed than usual.

Submission + - How To Dissolve the Arrogance of the Young Hot-Shot on Your Team

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: There is no expert as authoritative – in his own mind – as a college kid fresh out of school. Nobody is more sure that he is right about everything, and that he knows the exact right thing to do. Even if that makes the more experienced people on the project roll their eyes in disbelief.

But you have to work with them anyway.

Here's my advice — with input from several experienced project managers — on how to pull that off.

Submission + - Here's what happened when an iPhone loyalist tried a Nexus 5 | CITEworld (citeworld.com)

Submitted by rsmiller510
rsmiller510 writes: I've been using iPhones since I've been using smart phones. That goes back to the 2008 timeframe, so I thought it would be interesting to find out how it feels to use a high end Android phone, the new Nexus 5 running the Kitkat Android OS. One thing I learned is that a phone is a phone and that all the passion people waste on one OS or another is a bit ridiculous. Use what you want to use. Not sure why people have to go war over it. Anyway, here's what I learned.

Submission + - 6 Lessons IT Can Learn From 'The Hunger Games' (laserfiche.com)

Submitted by slfisher
slfisher writes: Surely we all know the difference between IT and The Hunger Games. One is a dystopian story about people fighting to the death, against impossible odds, simply to get the resources they need to survive, for the amusement of their cruel overlords. The other is a movie.

Submission + - The Cloud upended IT procurement --and it's never going back (techtarget.com)

Submitted by rsmiller510
rsmiller510 writes: Once upon a time if you wanted a server for your project, you begged to IT, and if you were lucky in 6 or 8 weeks, maybe you would have access to it. The cloud changed all that because with a service like Amazon Web Services, you can now provision a low-cost server environment with a credit card in about 90 seconds.

And the same goes for software. Thanks to open source and apps, we can get the software we need for free or very low cost and we don't have to ask IT permission or use the klunky, awful enterprise variety they always buy. This ability to procure our own stuff has forever changed the relationship between IT and end users, and I hate to tell you, but it's never going back.

Submission + - Removing Insecurity: The IETF Hums 5 Times 1

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: The IETF, which defines and promotes Internet standards, is taking a stand against the activities of the NSA by agreeing to improve the security of Internet protocols.

Nearly 1,100 people attended the IETF meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia at the beginning of November, where the big topic was security. “The Internet has been turned into a giant surveillance machine,” said Bruce Schneier, who spoke at the meeting’s technical plenary. “This is not just about any particular country or individual action. We need to work broadly to fix the problems of today and tomorrow.”

Five votes were cast — they hum, isn't that cool? — with perhaps some long-lasting effects. “At the IETF technical plenary, participants agreed that the current situation of pervasive surveillance represents an attack on the Internet,” said Stephen Farrell, one of the IETF’s two Security Area Directors. “While there are challenges isolating the specific areas of attack that IETF protocols can mitigate, all of the working groups that considered the topic have started planning to address the threat using IETF tools that can mitigate aspects of the problem.”

Peter Salus pulls together more information and speculates what it all may mean.

Submission + - Time to forgive Ed Snowden and let him come home (computerworld.com) 2

Submitted by rsmiller510
rsmiller510 writes: When Edward Snowden began showing us the extent of the US surveillance state back and in June, he was doing us a huge favor. He peeled back that curtain and let us see exactly what our government was doing, and in the process, while he surely embarrassed US officials, he didn't reveal any US government secrets that put US security at risk. For that reason, Snowden should be allowed to come back home without fear of retribution to testify before Congress, so that we can discuss these issues in the open and find the level of surveillance we are willing to tolerate in a free society in the name of keeping us safe.

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