gManZboy - Slashdot User

Submission + - Should High Schools Teach Big Data? (informationweek.com)

Submitted by

gManZboy

on Tuesday October 16, 2012 @03:45PM

gManZboy writes: "Given the anticipated shortage of data scientists, some high school educators have jumped in to expose students to big data concepts. One example: A Montana high school is using a team-based challenge, with one prize being a scholarship, to get students interested in big data opportunities at University of Montana, and hopefully, big data careers. "High school kids are proposing [projects] that are as good as I'm seeing in college," says one of the project leaders. What computer science and analytics building block skills can high schools teach future data scientists?"

Submission + - Windows 8: Do I Really Need A Single OS? (informationweek.com)

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gManZboy

on Friday October 12, 2012 @04:56PM

gManZboy writes: "If you skip Windows 8, you lose the appealing opportunity to synchronize all of your devices on a single platform--or so goes the argument. If you're skeptical, you're not alone.

OS monogamy may be in Apple's interest, and Microsoft's, but ask why it's in your interest. Can Microsoft convince the skeptics? "If the hardware and software are the same at home and at work, one can't be "better" than the other. It would help if Microsoft convinced users like me that their platform is so good, we'd be fools to go anywhere else," writes Kevin Casey."

Submission + - Anatomy Of A Brokerage IT Meltdown (informationweek.com)

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gManZboy

on Monday October 08, 2012 @04:32PM

gManZboy writes: "Regulators last year issued the SEC's first-ever privacy fine against now defunct broker-dealer GunnAllen for failing to protect customer data. But former IT staffers say regulators didn’t seem to know half of this cautionary tale of outsourcing and oversight gone wrong.

Why would a network engineer route all of his employer's traffic through his home RoadRunner cable modem? That's just one example Mat Schwartz found in this cautionary tale of what happens when a company tosses all IT responsibility over a wall and rarely peeks back. Could your outsourcing provider get in over its head? Do SEC regulators--even now--get a full picture of such messes? Consider the picture that former IT staffers shared with InformationWeek."

Submission + - Cisco Customers Seeing VMware's Charms (informationweek.com)

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gManZboy

on Friday September 28, 2012 @04:22PM

gManZboy writes: "Back in 1983, the Ethernet market was led by 3Com, Digital Equipment Corp., and possibly Intel. Cisco was still just a gleam in the eyes of Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner. TCP/IP was far from the leading protocol that used Ethernet as its underpinnings. Apple had AppleTalk, DEC had DECnet, Novell had IPX/SPX, 3Com had its own protocol. Multiprotocol routers were mostly a theory. Cisco jumped into this void with the promise that it would route just about any protocol that could be routed. Its hardware was robust, it performed well, and Cisco's engineering team would find a fix to practically any problem its customers had.

IT pros would like that Cisco back.

When InformationWeek asked 588 IT pros what they think about Cisco, and what they think the company needs to do to remain competitive, the top two responses were lower product prices and focus on your roots.

The real shocker: Among respondents looking to use less Cisco gear in the future, 38% mentioned interest in VMware. Should Cisco worry about the software-defined data center rhetoric? You bet."

Submission + - 14 Amazing DARPA Technologies On Tap (informationweek.com)

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gManZboy

on Friday September 28, 2012 @04:10PM

gManZboy writes: "DARPA draws a lot of attention for far-out research projects like the world's fastest robot and a plan to capture and recycle space junk--but electronics, communications, and IT have always been core to its mission. DARPA recently revealed it had successfully tested a camera with 1.4 gigapixel resolution. To achieve that resolution--the equivalent of 1,400 megapixels--the camera builds a panoramic image from more than 100 micro cameras. DARPA's newest development, called the Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System (CT2WS), blends mind and machine to help soldiers on the battlefield respond more quickly to deadly threats. It includes a 120-megapixel camera, radar, computers with cognitive visual-processing algorithms, and brainwave scanners worn by soldiers. Check out these and 12 other interesting DARPA technologies in the works."

Submission + - FAA's New Flight Control System Has Security Holes: Researcher (informationweek.com)

Submitted by gManZboy on Thursday July 26, 2012 @03:06PM

gManZboy writes: A key component of the FAA's emerging "Next Gen" air traffic control system is fundamentally insecure and ripe for manipulation and attack, security researcher Andrei Costin said in a presentation Wednesday at Black Hat 2012. Costin outlined a series of issues related to the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) system, a replacement to the decades-old ground radar system used to guide airplanes through the sky and on the ground at airports. Among the threats to ADS-B: The system lacks a capability for message authentication. "Any attacker can pretend to be an aircraft" by injecting a message into the system, Costin said. There's also no mechanism in ADS-B for encrypting messages. One example problem related to the lack of encryption: Costin showed a screen capture showing the location of Air Force One--or that someone had spoofed the system.

Submission + - Black Hat: 6 FBI Lessons To Tighten Enterprise Security (informationweek.com)

Submitted by

gManZboy

on Wednesday July 25, 2012 @04:39PM

gManZboy writes: "How can corporate America cure its information security ills? Take a page from the FBI's terrorism-combating revamp.

That was the pitch made by Shawn Henry, president of CrowdStrike, in his keynote presentation Wednesday opening the Black Hat 2012 conference in Las Vegas. Until March 2012, Henry was the executive assistant director of the FBI, with responsibility for all of the FBI's criminal investigations worldwide, including cyber investigations, the critical incident response group, and international investigations. Two examples: Business must get proactive about fighting threats and must think hard about what to keep off the network entirely."

Submission + - Stopping Hackers With Girlfirends: What You Said (informationweek.com)

Submitted by

gManZboy

on Tuesday July 24, 2012 @10:15AM

gManZboy writes: "Mathew Schwartz's modest proposal to deter law-breaking hackers by helping them get girlfriends sparked condemnation, support--and even marriage advice. Slashdot readers and others have plenty of opinions about what Schwartz got right and wrong--and raised some interesting new questions.How many hackers simply never get caught, for instance? And how many are pointed in a new direction like this:

"AutumnL78" wrote: "The key issue is not discouraging, but encouraging in a positive and educated way. Instead of trying to stop kids from hacking, we need to be focusing on what can be done to encourage them to become ethical hackers," she wrote.

"How do I know this??? Eight years ago I married the guy who got busted for hacking the schools' dial-up system from home in middle school, who would take leave to go to hacker cons, and owned a small library of 2600 magazines," she said. "I encouraged this hacker to change rates in the Navy so that he could use his interest in hacking and all the skills he had for good. I supported his desire to get not one, but two master's in Internet security. I have gone to many hacker cons just to learn and understand what my husband is passionate about.""

Submission + - Health IT Pros Face Salary Gap (informationweek.com)

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gManZboy

on Monday July 23, 2012 @11:53AM

gManZboy writes: "Implementation of electronic health records (EHRs), compliance with government regulations, and other healthcare IT initiatives are driving up demand for health IT pros. But while their pay inched up last year, health IT professionals' compensation still, for the most part, lags behind IT pros across all industries. What gives? It's a good year to be a health IT staffer or a health IT CIO--but not such a good year to be a health IT middle manager. That's due to compliance cycles at many healthcare organizations. See more on health IT salaries, in the InformationWeek 2012 IT Salary Survey."

Submission + - Maritz's VMware Legacy Defies Doubters (informationweek.com)

Submitted by

gManZboy

on Thursday July 19, 2012 @01:10PM

gManZboy writes: "When Paul Maritz became VMware's CEO in July, 2008, many expected VMware to fail--another startup whose market would taken away from it by an established powerhouse, Microsoft. Instead, Maritz made it tough for the traditional systems management vendors, including Microsoft, to keep up with VMware's management offerings, and took VMware to the point where it's nearly a $5 billion a year company.

Maritz says he hates confrontation.That matches EMC Chairman Joe Tucci's description of Maritz during an analyst briefing Tuesday as "probably the most selfless, mild mannered executive that I have ever worked with." But Maritz embodies a contradiction: behind that polite and considerate exterior, he has a keen appreciation of technology, and he's driven to an extreme to never lose a technology race. Just ask his rivals. You can bet his new role at EMC will be more than ceremonial."

Submission + - VMware, EMC Shakeup Hints At Data Center's Future (informationweek.com)

Submitted by

gManZboy

on Wednesday July 18, 2012 @12:10PM

gManZboy writes: "What's really behind the leadership switch that will see Paul Maritz become EMC chief strategist and Pat Gelsinger become VMware CEO? It's EMC's need to push its vision for the software-defined data center.

The EMC/VMware vision for a "software-defined data center" takes a conservative approach. Think of it as pulling existing legacy systems into one management console without worrying about the IT changes a cloud environment demands, like letting employees self-provision their computing capacity or imposing a strict environment limited to x86 servers. The software-defined data center message lets EMC/VMware cater to both legacy and newly built, cloud-oriented, applications without VMware or EMC needing to tell customers which camp they should be in. Here's a close look at the pieces that EMC and VMware need to work closely on together, to make such a data center a reality."

Submission + - General Motors Will Slash Outsourcing In IT Overhaul (informationweek.com)

Submitted by

gManZboy

on Monday July 09, 2012 @03:43PM

gManZboy writes: "GM's new CIO Randy Mott plans to bring nearly all IT work in-house as one piece of a sweeping IT overhaul. It's a high-risk strategy that's similar to what Mott drove at Hewlett-Packard.

Today, about 90% of GM's IT services, from running data centers to writing applications, are provided by outsourcing companies such as HP/EDS, IBM, Capgemini, and Wipro, and only 10% are done by GM employees. Mott plans to flip those percentages in about three years--to 90% GM staff, 10% outsourcers. This will require a hiring binge.

Mott's larger IT transformation plan doesn't emphasize budget cuts but centers on delivering more value from IT, much faster--at a time when the world's No. 2 automaker (Toyota is now No. 1) is still climbing out of bankruptcy protection and a $50 billion government bailout."

Submission + - Military Transformers: 20 Innovative Defense Technologies (informationweek.com)

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gManZboy

on Tuesday May 15, 2012 @01:34PM

gManZboy writes: "Much of the Department of Defense's most advanced research goes on at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where work is underway on everything from a jet that shoots across the sky at Mach 20 to disaster-response robots. But DARPA's not the only source of war-fighting innovations. The Naval Research Laboratory, major defense contractors, and IBM have projects underway, too. Check out these 20 innovative defense technologies, some that are being deployed and others still on the drawing board.

Which will see the light of day? The proposed Defense budget for fiscal year 2013 would cut R&D funding by $2.2 billion, to $69.7 billion, though DARPA's budget would be spared significant cuts.

Some of the technologies in development have potential application in the commercial world. Others--including a battleground vehicle that transforms into a helicopter--rewrite the rules of war."

Submission + - Automate Your Way To One-Day Work Week (informationweek.com)

Submitted by

gManZboy

on Friday May 11, 2012 @03:38PM

gManZboy writes: "If you discovered a way to do your job so efficiently that you could earn four times your base salary in bonuses while working only one day in five, would you tell your employer?

In a post on Reddit earlier this week, a man from the Netherlands claims to come up with a way to automate his payment processing job using a game programming framework called GameMaker and C++. For the past four years, he says, he has been collecting about 90% of the bonus share offered by his company. That has amounted to 160,000 euros each year, for the past four years, on top of his 42,000 euro salary, or almost $260,000 total annually. Neither his employer, nor his bonus-deprived colleagues, are aware of this.

As technology automates more jobs, from taxi driving to editing, interesting ethics questions arise. How would you weigh in on the ethics of the situation?"

Submission + - VMware Breach: Time To Assume Hypervisor Code Open? (informationweek.com)

Submitted by

gManZboy

on Friday April 27, 2012 @01:09PM

gManZboy writes: "VMware's confirmation this week that ESX Server source code has been posted on the Internet has awakened a long-sleeping fear for enterprise IT, that a compromised VM could become a listening post for snoopers, spies and malware makers. By sharing some source code and promising to share more, Hardcore Charlie has chipped away at an advantage that VMware has enjoyed. Both Xen and KVM source code were published for everyone to see. ESX Server was proprietary and would stay that way, an extra precaution to IT managers worried about so much operational control moving to a single piece of software.

That never made ESX Server unbreachable. How vulnerable is it to exploits now? Probably not much more so than before. It’s not going to be subject to any increase in the kinds of harassment launched by script kiddies and other lightweight creators of malware.

But the source code disclosure forces us to view ESX Server in a different light. Somewhere in the world, there are substantial resources behind efforts to compromise ESX Server, given its prominence in business and government. The marketplace voted against an extra-secure environment for VMs at one innovative data center, but more expensive approaches to virtualization security may be in your future."

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