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Submission + - Aliens are likely to look and behave like us (telegraph.co.uk) 1

Submitted by It's the tripnaut!
It's the tripnaut! writes: The Daily Telegraph has posted an article stating that 'Professor Simon Conway Morris at Cambridge University will tell a conference on alien life that extraterrestrials will most likely have evolved just like "earthlings" and so resemble us to a degree with heads, limbs and bodies.' They also add a cautionary note that 'Unfortunately they will have also evolved our foibles and faults which could make them dangerous if they ever did visit us on Earth.'
Education

CompTIA Reneges, Reconsiders on Lifetime Certifications 245

Posted by kdawson from the had-our-fingers-crossed dept.
garg0yle writes "Recently, it was reported that IT certification house CompTIA had changed their A+, Network+, and Security+ certifications — rather than being 'for life,' there would now be a recertification requirement through continuing-education credits (and an accompanying fee). Needless to say, this made a lot of people very unhappy, and today it was announced that CompTIA has reversed their decision. Basically, any certification obtained before 2011 will still be 'for life.'" Ars notes the coincidence that CompTIA contacted them about the change of heart an hour after Ars's story about CompTIA's initial switcheroo went live.
Security

Submission + - U.S. Has No Deterrent for Digital Attacks (nytimes.com)

Submitted by twailgum
twailgum writes: A NYTimes article outlines the dire and grim outlook for US infosecurity in an age when there is no comparative "nuclear retaliation" for cyber threats.

"On a Monday morning earlier this month, top Pentagon leaders gathered to simulate how they would respond to a sophisticated cyberattack aimed at paralyzing the nation’s power grids, its communications systems or its financial networks. The results were dispiriting. The enemy had all the advantages: stealth, anonymity and unpredictability. No one could pinpoint the country from which the attack came, so there was no effective way to deter further damage by threatening retaliation."
Businesses

Is Programming a Lucrative Profession? 844

Posted by Soulskill from the do-fractions-of-pennies-count dept.
itwbennett writes "A pamphlet distributed by blogger Cameron Laird's local high school proclaimed that 'Computer Science BS graduates can expect an annual salary from $54,000-$74,000. Starting salaries for MS and PhD graduates can be to up to $100,000' and 'employment of computer scientists is expected to grow by 24 percent from 2010 to 2018.' The pamphlet lists The US Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics as a reference, so how wrong can it be? 'This is so wrong, I don't know where to start,' says Laird. 'There are a lot of ways to look at the figures, but only the most skewed ones come up with starting salaries approaching $60,000 annually, and I see plenty of programmers in the US working for less,' says Laird. At issue, though, isn't so much inaccurate salary information as what is happening to programming as a career: 'Professionalization of programmers nowadays strikes chords more like those familiar to auto mechanics or nurses than the knowledge workers we once thought we were,' writes Laird, 'we're expected to pay for our own tools, we're increasingly bound by legal entanglements, H1B accumulates degrading tales, and hyperspecialization dominates hiring decisions.'"
The Courts

Prison Bans D&D For Mimicking Gang Structure 496

Posted by kdawson from the step-away-from-the-polyhedral-dice dept.
Trepidity writes "In a case that has been winding its way through the courts for a while now, a Wisconsin prison banned inmates from playing Dungeons & Dragons, using the justification that 'one player is denoted the Dungeon Master... [who] is tasked with giving directions to other players... [which] mimics the organization of a gang.' The prison also cited some sparse evidence that a handful of non-inmate D&D players once committed some crimes that allegedly were related to their D&D playing. On Monday the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the regulation (PDF) against challenges from inmates. The court appeared skeptical of the ban, sarcastically referring to it as the 'war on D&D,' but upheld it nonetheless as having a 'rational basis.' Law professor Ilya Somin suggests that the court may have had no choice, given how deferential rational-basis review usually is."
Medicine

Interview With the Founder of a Video Game Rehab Clinic 59

Posted by Soulskill from the real-medicine dept.
Ten Ton Hammer has posted the transcript from an interview with Dr. Hilarie Cash, co-founder of the "reSTART Internet Addiction Recovery Program," a relatively new clinic that deals with adults who feel that they are addicted to video games. The interview contains some.. interesting nuggets of wisdom. If you want to avoid addiction, you'd better spend less than two hours per day on online entertainment! The good news is that she doesn't recommend beating people. "When people come, they come for 45 days. It is only for adults; patients must be 18 or older. When they first come, they come for a minimum 2 days to be interviewed and to interview us, because we don't want anyone there who doesn't want to be there. So if they decide they want to be there then they stay for 45 days or longer if they choose. During that time they don't have access to the internet. The idea is that it takes at least 30 days for the brain to make some adjustments it needs to make to get over this addiction, so the brain can begin to rewire back to normal. During that time we are helping them look at why they got addicted, what motivated their addiction and we're assessing to see what skills they are lacking so they can be successful in their adult lives. We try to make a good start at helping to build those skills."
Spam

Researchers Claim "Effectively Perfect" Spam Blocking Discovery 353

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the sounds-evolutionary-not-revolutionary dept.
A team of computer scientists from the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, CA are claiming to have found an "effectively perfect" method for blocking spam. The new system deciphers the templates a botnet is using to create spam and then teaches filters what to look for. "The system ... works by exploiting a trick that spammers use to defeat email filters. As spam is churned out, subtle changes are typically incorporated into the messages to confound spam filters. Each message is generated from a template that specifies the message content and how it should be varied. The team reasoned that analyzing such messages could reveal the template that created them. And since the spam template describes the entire range of the emails a bot will send, possessing it might provide a watertight method of blocking spam from that bot."
Microsoft

Submission + - Linux Foundation Responds to MSFT's Smack Talk (cio.com)

Submitted by twailgum
twailgum writes: Microsoft's mobile chief dressed down Linux phones at CES and now the Linux Foundation is firing back. What's at stake? Control of the future smartphone market. Microsoft mobile chief Robbie Bach may believe that the Linux OS will lose out to Windows Mobile in the smartphone space, but Linux Foundation director Jim Zemlin is having none of that. "By Bach's count there are 17 variants of Linux available on mobile phones," writes Zemlin, in a blog post. "He sees this as a bad thing for customers. We, unsurprisingly, see this as a bad thing for Microsoft."
Input Devices

Pen vs. Keyboard vs. Touch vs. Everything Else 203

Posted by timothy from the good-clicky-keyboard-is-the-way-to-go dept.
benz001 writes "In the run-up to everyone's favourite tablet, Phil Gyford goes back through his gadget collection and compares text entry speeds to see which one comes out on top. It's not what you'd call a rich data set, and of course the Qwerty keyboard comes up trumps, but the iPhone virtual keyboard came in a surprisingly close second, just edging out the Treo — and all the keyboard solutions regardless of how small and fiddly beat real pen and paper. This probably matches most people's experience (when was the last time you had to handwrite more than a bullet point in a meeting?) and gels pretty well with Macworld's predictions but I'm still hoping for sub-vocal voice recognition. (Jump straight to the final results here)."

Submission + - Why Project Management Certifications Matter (cio.com)

Submitted by twailgum
twailgum writes: The value of project management certifications is hotly debated among IT professionals. CIO.com investigates whether certifications make better project managers and whether projects staffed by certified project managers are more successful than projects without PMPs.

What we found: Project management certifications matter a great deal to some employers, but not always for realistic reasons. We also found that project managers can certainly benefit from certification: It can provide them with hold greater access to jobs and higher salaries, but it doesn't necessarily make them a better project manager.

Says one 17-year project manager: Some PMPs he's worked with and hired have been excellent project managers. Others, he says, "couldn't find their way out of a wet paper bag with a flashlight and a knife."
Windows

Newly-Found Windows Bug Affects All Versions Since NT 393

Posted by Soulskill from the staying-power dept.
garg0yle writes "A researcher has found a security bug that could allow privilege escalation in Windows. Nothing new there, right? Well, this affects the Virtual DOS Machine, found in every 32-bit version of Windows all the way back to Windows NT. That's 17 years worth of Windows and counting. 'Using code written for the VDM, an unprivileged user can inject code of his choosing directly into the system's kernel, making it possible to make changes to highly sensitive parts of the operating system. ... The vulnerability exists in all 32-bit versions of Microsoft OSes released since 1993, and proof-of-concept code works on the XP, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008, and 7 versions of Windows, Ormandy reported.'"
Communications

Analyst Estimates AT&T Needs To Spend $5B To Catch Up 187

Posted by Soulskill from the connection-lost dept.
itwbennett writes "The public's perception of AT&T's network is poor and declining, apparently because of real shortcomings when compared with Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel,' says Gerard Hallaren, director of research at TownHall Investment Research. 'AT&T's capital expenditures on its wireless network from 2006 through September 2009 totaled about $21.6 billion, compared with $25.4 billion for Verizon and $16 billion for Sprint (including Sprint's investments in WiMax operator Clearwire). Over that time, Verizon has spent far more per subscriber: $353, compared with $308 for AT&T,' Hallaren said. 'Even Sprint has outspent AT&T per subscriber, laying out $310 for network capital expenditure.' All this means AT&T has a choice, says Hallaren: 'spend or suffer.'"
Books

Sherlock Holmes and the Copyright Tangle 290

Posted by kdawson from the making-lawyers'-eyes-roll dept.
spagiola passes along a New York Times piece on the copyright travails of Sherlock Holmes. "At his age [123 years], Holmes would logically seem to have entered the public domain. But not only is the character still under copyright in the United States, for nearly 80 years he has also been caught in a web of ownership issues so tangled that Professor Moriarty wouldn't have wished them upon him."
Businesses

Why "Running IT As a Business" Is a Bad Idea 364

Posted by kdawson from the guerilla-movement dept.
snydeq sends along a provocative piece from Infoworld, arguing that the conventional wisdom on how IT should be run is all wrong. "Bob Lewis dispels the familiar litany that 'IT should be run as a business,' instead offering insights into what he is calling a 'guerilla movement' to reject conventional 'IT wisdom' and industry punditry in favor of what experience tells you will work in real organizations. 'When IT is a business, selling to its "internal customers," its principal product is software that "meets requirements." This all but ensures a less-than-optimal solution, lack of business ownership, and poor acceptance of the results,' Lewis writes. 'The alternatives begin with a radically different model of the relationship between IT and the rest of the business — that IT must be integrated into the heart of the enterprise, and everyone in IT must collaborate as a peer with those in the business who need what they do.' To do otherwise is a sure sign of numbered days for IT, according to Lewis. After all, the standard 'run IT as a business' model had its origins in the IT outsourcing industry, 'which has a vested interest in encouraging internal IT to eliminate everything that makes it more attractive than outside service providers.'"

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