American Idol for Security Geeks 101
Ant writes to tell us SearchSecurity.com has an article touting the latest "reality show" idea from the Georgia Tech College of Computing, Information Security Center, and Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center. The "Tiger Team" competition promises to be an "American Idol for security geeks." Students "prep, sweat and show their stuff while a panel of critics decides their fates. But unlike the popular 'reality' TV show, judges aren't determining who can best carry a tune. Instead they weigh students' ideas for making information security more user-friendly, with $50,000 -- enough cash to fund a project for 12 months -- hanging in the balance."
$50K for 12 months? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:$50K for 12 months? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:$50K for 12 months? (Score:1)
Re:$50K for 12 months? (Score:2)
Re:$50K for 12 months? (Score:5, Funny)
At 69 cents for the 'good' Ramen (Maruchian), $50K would buy 72463 grad student meals. That's enough to feed 66 grad students 3 meals a day for a year!!! SO--YES.
Re: Cheapest Student Coders (Score:2)
Rent: $3600 (utilities included)
Food: $1200
Tuition and Fees: $5000
So for a round $10K a year, you get your basic Grad Student(TM). Pay them $50K and you will get a whole lot more than that. It has been my experience that there's a lot of distance from the bottom of the grad student pile to the top. Top students can accomplish two orders of magnitude more, and you don't have to pay them a whole lot, just give them
Re: Cheapest Student Coders (Score:2)
In a safe neighborhood? You dont want your programmer murdered or mugged before the project is over.
Food : $1200 pm
What? mac n Cheese? What about a balanced diet? Do you even care about this person you are paying???
Please use realistic figures that someone can actually live by. 4 years ago, you could not live with that amount of cash in Los Angeles. How about now?
Re: Cheapest Student Coders (Score:1)
what does that break down to? $40/day?
where do YOU do your grocery shopping? steakhouses?
Re: Cheapest Student Coders (Score:1)
Re: Cheapest Student Coders (Score:2)
Re: Cheapest Student Coders (Score:2)
$50k buys you a few months for a small team. I know this because I have been to 4 countries recruiting them.
Nevermind your start up and legal expenses. I'm sorry folks, but true innovation is just too damn expensive to be done domestically. $50k and a plane ticket to Malaysia I'd have believed it.
Think about your start up costs, an
Re: Cheapest Student Coders (Score:2)
Food is more likely a bare minimum of $200/month, likely more, I know I spend more per month on that. More realistic housing depends where you live, and more importantly how many people you live
Re:$50K for 12 months? (Score:2)
Of course, you'd quicky die of a sodium overdose (and an everything else underdose), but there you go. But a grad student living off of nothing but Ramen isn't going to be very productive - I'm thinkin
Re:$50K for 12 months? (Score:2)
At $0.69 you overpay for ramen (Score:1)
Re:$50K for 12 months? (Score:1)
Re:$50K for 12 months? (Score:1)
Holy shit, that's my work password...but it's jimbo306 now. Remind me to change it first thing in the morning.
Re:$50K for 12 months? (Score:1)
Re:$50K for 12 months? (Score:1)
I wonder when the networks will get it (Score:1)
Taking a leaf from the RIAA/MPAA book of customer relations, perhaps?
Re:I wonder when the networks will get it (Score:1)
Re:I wonder when the networks will get it (Score:1)
Hey - maybe that's even good naming material. Dusk to Pw0nd!
Huh? (Score:2)
I'm not sure how the other composites are doing nowadays (Amazing Race, Survivor, Family Makeover) but they don't have to do that well to turn a profit.
Among the intelligensia, sure, reality programming bites it, but we're not the targets.
Blogs are reality TV for the Internet (Score:2)
Focus Groups are Broken (Score:2)
but.... (Score:4, Funny)
root@notmine>rm -rf *
Re:but.... (Score:3, Funny)
root@notmine>pwd
/home/Darth_brooks
Re:but.... (Score:2)
Besides, the Password Inspector on IRC said my root password was one of the best he'd ever seen.
Re:but.... (Score:2)
C:\Documents and Settings\cooldev>rm -rf *
'rm' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
Does this mean I'm secure?
Re:but.... (Score:2)
Judging change (Score:1)
Re:Judging change (Score:2)
Re:$50K? (Score:1, Funny)
TALC? Easy to bypass. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not going to be very effective without some means of identifying/limiting who gets to rate a site.
Re:TALC? Easy to bypass. (Score:2)
The flaw with anything that depends on a web of trust is bootstrapping. How to build a big enough userbase of people who trust each other in real life?
This sounds lame and scammish (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds more like a VC "talent search", where the $50k MIGHT be enough cash to pay one person a mac-and-cheese salary and get a business plan and some collateral marketing done to get properly financed.
Or, it could be a "anything you submit will become our property" type "scam", where some grad student has a unique approach that this group then becomes the owner of for a mere $50k. They can then take the idea and run with it, and reap the benefits.
All in all, sounds like something I'd not be lining up for.
$50,000 is still a good chunk of money!! (Score:1)
Where was Apple computers founded? They made the PC revolution happen, before any AT clones were seen in peoples homes. Wasn't it just a bunch of guys who liked computers, and put in work for the cause? I don't remember the exact facts, but didn't it start by ordering parts from a magazine and seeing wha
Re:$50,000 is still a good chunk of money!! (Score:1)
American Inventor? (Score:3, Insightful)
Does anyone think American Inventor [go.com] fits better instead of American Idol [fox.com] for this story? It seems like this story is about inventing.
Re:American Inventor? (Score:2)
Re:American Inventor? (Score:2)
OS/Music Genre by Category (Score:5, Funny)
Alternative: Linux
Rock: BSD
Jazz: Mac
Country: Solaris
William Hung: Pick any above. Set root/admin password to PASSWORD. Mission accomplished.
Re:OS/Music Genre by Category (Score:2, Funny)
Country: Etch-a-Sketch
Re:OS/Music Genre by Category (Score:2)
I'd even say Solaris is Bluegrass.
When it's done right, it's awe inspiring. But, goddamn, is it more complex than it needs to be.
~W
Re:OS/Music Genre by Category (Score:2)
Plowing data, hearding traffic...
Disclaimer: I admin Solaris postgresql server for my employer.
Re:OS/Music Genre by Category (Score:1)
When I run Windows I get the Blues.
Grad students (Score:2, Informative)
$50,000?!? That's enough to fund 2 green card graduate students for 5 years EACH!!
Careless with money...
weakest link (Score:1)
Enough to fund for 12 months? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Enough to fund for 12 months? (Score:1)
They spend $50G to pay you $25G, and after taxes you get more like $17G of which you still must pay car/home owners insurance and sales tax. When it is all said and done you are left with maybe $12G/year of spendable income for car/house/food/clothing etc.
Don't spend it all in one place.
Re:Enough to fund for 12 months? (Score:1)
Re:Enough to fund for 12 months? (Score:2)
Re:Enough to fund for 12 months? (Score:1)
Re:Enough to fund for 12 months? (Score:2)
And yet you can't afford to log in to Slashdot?
second, the $50k is not enough to pay for power, computers, internet service and cleaning of the room you'll be working in. Let alone enough to develop the code and start a company to get it out in the world.
Depends on where you are. Where I am(Pittsburgh PA), 50K would allow you to rent a small office & pay utilities for a year while still having more than half of it remaining. Hell, you might even be
Re:Enough to fund for 12 months? (Score:1)
Re:Enough to fund for 12 months? (Score:2)
Apparently you missed this article earlier today.
more user-friendly? (Score:1)
the problem isn't that security software is too technical (look at zonealarm's nice and friendly interface), it's that people aren't educated about the most fundamental aspects of computer security, like what firewalls are, and that AV programs only work if you keep them updated. Bleh.
Re:more user-friendly? (Score:1)
Don't waste the prize money! (Score:3, Funny)
Hm... decisions, decisions... (Score:2)
Re:Hm... decisions, decisions... (Score:1)
But I don't think this is actually a T.V. show. I read the entire article and the only mention of a reality T.V. show was in the headline.
long enough name? (Score:1)
This kind of reminds me of a dilbert strip...
Re:long enough name? (Score:2)
Please tell me they are televising this (Score:2)
useless (Score:1)
Obligatory (Score:1)
besuretodrinkyourovaltine
A Different Appraoch.... (Score:1)
I call shenanigans! (Score:2)
"In the real world, when you are in a bad neighborhood it is very clear," said Mustaque Ahamad, director of Georgia Tech's Information Security Center. "But online, you have no idea whether you or your computer system is in any kind of danger."
That's BS
Here's how to determine if you're in a bad "cyberhood" in 3 easy steps with great accuracy and very reasonable false positive rate:
1. Are you illegally downloading content (music/movies/software/etc)? If yes, you are in a bad neighborho
Re:I call shenanigans! (Score:1)
Re:I call shenanigans! (Score:1, Insightful)
I've never paid for anything on the internet... most of the best sites (to me) don't even have adverts. And what about linux!
Comments from one of the actual "Winners" (Score:1)
Let me set some misconceptions right. I'm disheartened to note that present day journalism is still very much a grapevine. The author of the original article added a bit of sensationalism by comparing a scholarly competition to "American Idol" probably to get the attention of the reader. I can level with that. But it goes downhill from there. In the case of my project TALC, everything other than the name is pretty much off target. TALC combines Awareness, using techniques like Ambient displays; Learni
Agreed (Score:2)