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Comment Never had to use any college math on the job (Score 1) 241

by mrflash818 (#47486517) Attached to: Math, Programming, and Language Learning

Knowing the concepts may have helped for some work I have done, but, I have never used any advanced math for paid programming.

Five years as a J2EE developer: zero use of any advanced math for work projects.

Numerical methods (using Fortran) was just in school.
Calculus, linear algebra, and such: just in school.

Big-O notation, to pick algorithms and STL objects, sure, but probably doesn't count as 'math' for this article.

Since only a fraction of Computer Science graduates will work at a science shop (JPL, etc), I think some of the math requirements are a bit unfair. Perhaps I am just a low-range "Forrest Gump" programmer, but my personal experience was the actual math was burdensome to do to work towards a Computer Science degree.

Submission + - Inside Linux creator Linus Torvalds' home office (linux.com)

Submitted by LibbyMC
LibbyMC writes: Linux creator Linus Torvalds has given a personal video tour of his workspace, filmed by the Linux Foundation. It also includes behind the scenes laughs and footage, as well as a closer look at what he keeps on his desk and what he does between kernel releases.

Submission + - How the University of Michigan patched Heartbleed (techtarget.com)

Submitted by FrankPoole
FrankPoole writes: Former University of Michigan Chief Security Officer Paul Howell talks with SearchSecurity.com about how the school responded to Heartbleed and how he overcame challenges with assessment, patching and communication. Howell details his experiences, from the discovery of Heartbleed on April 7 to the final patching efforts, and explains why the university didn't order all users to change their passwords and how he had to convice the school's leadership that "the Internet is not melting."

Submission + - LibreSSL PRNG Vulnerability Patched (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: The OpenBSD project late last night rushed out a patch for a vulnerability in the LibreSSL pseudo random number generator (PRNG).

The flaw was disclosed two days ago by the founder of secure backup company Opsmate, Andrew Ayer, who said the vulnerability was a “catastrophic failure of the PRNG.”

OpenBSD founder Theo de Raadt and developer Bob Beck, however, countered saying that the issue is “overblown” because Ayer’s test program is unrealistic. Ayer’s test program, when linked to LibreSSL and made two different calls to the PRNG, returned the exact same data both times.

“It is actually only a problem with the author’s contrived test program,” Beck said. “While it’s a real issue, it’s actually a fairly minor one, because real applications don’t work the way the author describes, both because the PID (process identification number) issue would be very difficult to have become a real issue in real software, and nobody writes real software with OpenSSL the way the author has set this test up in the article.”

Submission + - Nearly 25 years ago, IBM helped save Macintosh (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: Apple and IBM, which just announced partnership to bring iOS and cloud services to enterprises, have helped each other before. IBM played a key role in turning the Macintosh into a successful hardware platform at a point when it — and the company itself — were struggling. Nearly 25 years ago, IBM was a part of an alliance that gave Apple access to PowerPC chips for Macintosh systems that were competitive, if not better performing in some benchmarks, than the processors Intel was producing at the time for Windows PCs. In 1991, Apple was looking for a RISC-based processor to replace the Motorola 68K it had been using in its Macintosh line. "The PCs of the era were definitely outperforming the Macintoshes that were based on the 68K," he said. "Apple was definitely behind the power, performance curve," said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64. The PowerPC processor that emerged from that earlier pairing changed that. PowerPC processors were used in Macintoshes for more than a decade, until 2006, when Apple switched to Intel chips.

Submission + - Selectively re-using bad passwords is not a bad idea, researchers say

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For all the repeated advice to use different, complex password for each online account, users are still opting for easy-to-guess, short ones and use them repeatedly across many websites and online services. Unfortunately, it seems that security professionals must make peace with the situation, or find another way to make users listen and do as they are counselled. But is the experts' advice sound? A trio of researchers from Microsoft Researcher and Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada are of a different mind, and are challenging that long-held belief that every account needs a strong password.

Submission + - The startling mortality of JP Morgan IT workers

Submitted by Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: Three New JPMorgan IT Deaths Include Alleged Murder-Suicide

Since December of last year, JPMorgan Chase has been experiencing tragic, sudden deaths of workers on a scale which sets it alarmingly apart from other Wall Street mega banks. Adding to the concern generated by the deaths is the recent revelation that JPMorgan has an estimated $180 billion of life insurance in force on its current and former workers.

This year JP Morgan has lost its Executive Director at the Global Network Operations Center of JPMorgan in Whippany, NJ to an alledged murder-suicide. They have also lost a VP who fell from the roof of JP Morgan's London office, at 34 year old IT worker in Pearland, Texas who died of a heart attack, a 49, year old worker who was an Application Development Team Lead in the Tampa office, cause of death still under investigation,a 42 year old Managing Director of Global Infrastructure Engineering who died of heart disease, a 37 year old Executive Director who died of ethanol toxicity/accident, a worker in Hong Kong fell from the roof of the JP Morgan office, and a 28 year old analyst fell from the roof top of his apartment building,

Submission + - The Sci-fi Blockbuster About Income Inequality Was Nearly Killed by the 1%

Submitted by merbs
merbs writes: I watched the summers best and most original action movie—hands down, no contest—in an art house theater with about two dozen people. The screen, one of just two the establishment operated, was smallish, and the sound was even on the quiet side, or at least, it was quieter and smaller than weve been conditioned to expect anytime we sit down to watch Captain America smash through waves of foes with nothing but his fists and his gumption. And all because a notoriously harsh one percenter tried to crush the years most exciting film about income inequality.

Submission + - The Search for a Fifth Force of Nature (bbc.com)

Submitted by Jonathan Salinas
Jonathan Salinas writes: They're really beginning to consider killing SUSY because they are seeing that it has produced no concrete experimental evidence when it should have already. This sounds like quite the farce of force, but at least it's opening a path to the next step in uncovering the truth.

From the article: http://www.bbc.com/news/scienc...
"According to the simplest versions of the theory, supersymmetric particles should have been discovered at the LHC by now...Next year will be an important year for SUSY. The LHC will be smashing atoms together at almost twice the energy it did in its first run. Even those who are still strong advocates of SUSY, such as Cern's revered professor of theoretical physics, John Ellis, agree that if LHC scientists do not find super particles in the LHC's second run, it might be time for the hospital patient to be moved to the mortuary.

One of the alternative models being considered is the composite Higgs theory: "The composite Higgs theory also solves the fine tuning problem, albeit less elegantly and, just as with SUSY, there is no experimental evidence for it. It supposes that the Higgs is not a fundamental particle, but is instead made up of other fundamental particles bound together by a hitherto unseen fifth force of nature. This is similar to what is already known to happen with the strong nuclear force, which binds quarks together to produce nuclear particles like protons and neutrons."

Submission + - Prevalence of offshoring in the Information Security industry

Submitted by sundarvenkata
sundarvenkata writes: After having been a regular (C# .NET, C++) code monkey in the US for 6 years now with readily offshoreable skills, I feel like I am fighting an uphill battle against third world wages. While I am not prepared for a drastic career change that will be completely incompatible with my Computer Science background, I was wondering if investing money and resources in getting a degree in Information Security would be worthwhile to get a job that can't easily be offshored.

I would welcome insights from the industry insiders on the level of offshoring that they have witnessed in this industry (in the US) and the barriers-to-entry for someone with an undergrad in Computer Science.

Submission + - Would Microsoft really cut its QA department? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: Bloomberg reports that Nadella is making changes to the engineering organization and that QA testers may feel the ax. The publication attributes to him the notion that "it often makes sense to have the developers test and fix bugs instead of a separate team of testers."

This would be an incredible move if it's true, because it would fly in the face of more than 30 years of development processes. The whole premise of Agile development is based on building one small piece, test, test, test, add another feature, test, test, test, rinse, repeat. You don't let programmers debug their code for the same reason you don't let writers be their own editor; you need fresh eyes to see what the other person might not.

Microsoft does use a different technique for development. Rather than straight QA people, it uses what it called Software Developer Engineer Test, or SDET, who create software that identifies bugs and fixes them when possible. There is still a layer of human intervention for harder-to-find bugs, but the process does automate testing.

Might Microsoft be bold enough to cut QA for its software products and increase its automated testing processes? Or is this just a nightmare scenario that has cropped up amid Microsoft layoff rumors?

Submission + - India forged Google SSL certificates

Submitted by NotInHere
NotInHere writes: As Google writes on its Online Security Blog, the National Informatics Centre of India (NIC) used its intermediate CA certificate issued by Indian CCA, to issue several unauthorized certificates for Google domains, allowing to do Man in the middle attacks. Possible impact however is limited, as, according to Google, the root certificates for the CA were only installed on Windows, which Firefox doesn't use, and for the Chrom{e,ium} browser, the CA for important Google domains is pinned to the Google CA.
According to its website, the NIC CA has suspended certificate issuance, and according to Google, its root certificates were revoked by Indian CCA.

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