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Comment This works for both sides... (Score 1) 1316

by Muckluck (#27203197) Attached to: Narcissistic College Graduates In the Workplace?
I am fortunate to have the opportunity to beat them down before they graduate. The Fortune 500 company I work for will only hire co-op students if the applicant is "fresh out of school" so they already have an idea of how our corporate culture works and what the expectations are for each job level. This serves to be the weed out point for students coming into the company and they have a good idea if they want to continue working in the established culture. It works well for both sides of the equation.

Comment In all fairness... (Score 1) 372

by Muckluck (#26410073) Attached to: How Will Recent Financial Downturns Affect IT Jobs?
I work at a company that uses IT jobs as the "slush fund" for layoffs. Not always the right thing to do, but that's how they do it. Nice thing is, they tend to offer early retirement packages first to the people closest to retirement age so "voluntary attrition" usually takes care of solving most of the problem. Then we hire younger, less experienced people because they are cheaper and train them to do what we need to get done. The people who retire have already trained the next wave and they in turn train the next and so on. Long story, short... Things aren't bad everywhere you just need to be sure your resume stands out for the right reason.
Google

Google Opens Up (Some) Search Algorithms 86

Posted by CmdrTaco from the nobody-else-has-a-million-servers-anyway dept.
overmars writes "After years of closely guarding the formula for its search algorithms, Google is opening up a little. The search engine company has kept its search formula a closely guarded secret for two reasons: competition and to prevent abuse, said Udi Manber, Google's vice president of engineering, search quality, in a post on the corporate blog. Manber said the blog post is the first part of a renewed effort at the company 'to open up a bit more than we have in the past.' Manber said the most famous part of Google's ranking algorithm is PageRank, an algorithm developed by Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. While PageRank is still in use, it is a 'part of a much larger system,' he said. 'Other parts include language models (the ability to handle phrases, synonyms, diacritics, spelling mistakes, and so on), query models (it's not just the language, it's how people use it today), time models (some queries are best answered with a 30-minutes old page, and some are better answered with a page that stood the test of time), and personalized models (not all people want the same thing),' he said."
Space

Rover Accidentally Uncovers Mars Hydrothermal Vent 53

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the best-discoveries-by-accident dept.
The rover Spirit has been dragging one wheel around the surface of Mars for some time. One of the resulting gouges revealed a mineral deposit which was probably caused by a hydrothermal vent. This implies a large amount of water was present when the vent was active.
Security

Hiding a Rootkit In System Management Mode 119

Posted by kdawson from the can-you-see-me-now dept.
Sniper223 notes a PC World article on a new kind of rootkit recently developed by researchers, which will be demoed at Black Hat in August. The rootkit runs in System Management Mode, a longtime feature of x86 architecture that allows for code to run in a locked part of memory. It is said to be harder to detect, potentially, than VM-based rootkits. The article notes that the technique is unlikely to lead to widespread expoitation: "Being divorced from the operating system makes the SMM rootkit stealthy, but it also means that hackers have to write this driver code expressly for the system they are attacking."
The Media

Submission + - NBCU wants the internet "filtered"

Submitted by yet another steve
yet another steve writes: NBC/Universal wants far more than filtering of material uploaded to YouTube. They want broadband providers (ISPs) themselves to be required to filter internet content. Putting aside the obvious technical reasons why it won't work, the idea of mandatory filtering by your provider of everything you send and receive on the internet sounds a lot like... China. Killing freedom on the net to protect the sitcom.

This seems dangerous, intrusive and unprecedented... and I'm a little surprised it hasn't received more attention.

Check out: http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1019
and http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9745325-7.html?ta g=blog.2

Honestly, I haven't found a single source that seems to understand the gravity of the precedent. People are outraged that a corporation in a broadcast it controlled censored some words (not defending that act, btw), but this is the idea that EVERY packet you send and receive will be required to be monitored and FILTERED. It seems an unbelieveable proposal no matter what the intent.

They do this in China, right?
Windows

Submission + - Windows XP Thumb Drive Edition Is Real (osweekly.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: OSWeekly.com's Matt Hartley has discovered a real, working version of Windows XP Thumb Edition. He comments: "While a proof-of-concept has been perpetuated without Microsoft's content, the instructions are fuzzy, and trying to install this would certainly be a clear violation of existing US law, but my sources have indicated this to be the real deal — you can install Windows XP onto a USB drive as described above. Why hasn't Microsoft bothered to create such a thing themselves? It could be the belief that they do not see the cost/benefit value for offering a bootable USB OS despite the immense success of such a thing with Linux.

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