cweditor - Slashdot User

Submission + - Washington Post Job Board Hacked: 1.27M Accounts (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey on Thursday July 07, 2011 @11:28AM

wiredmikey writes: The Washington Post has notified users of its jobs board that a recent a cyber attack has resulted in a data breach that compromised up to 1.27 million job seeker accounts.

The Washington Post said that the attack occurred in two brief episodes, once on June 27 and once on June 28, resulting in the attacker(s) getting hold of roughly 1.27 million user IDs and e-mail addresses. Passwords or other personal information were not compromised, the publisher said.

Just over a week ago, Gannett Government Media, publisher of several high profile publications catering to the military and government sectors, was the victim of a recent a cyber attack, resulting in files containing information including first and last name, userID, password, email address, and customer numbers for its subscribers.

Comment Maybe the problem is too many choices (Score 1) 5

by cweditor on Thursday June 23, 2011 @11:16AM (#36541784) Attached to: Learning Programming in a Post-BASIC World

Studies show that if consumers have too many choices, they're less likely to take action than if they had fewer options. This may be the issue with beginning programming. When BASIC was one of the only languages available by default to most beginners, that's what they dabbled in. I think there are plenty of fine options available today (can't see how today's scripting languages are so much more limited in what they can do than BASIC was) -- so many, in fact, that kids are less likely to start experimenting on their own because they don't know where to start.

Submission + - Learning Programming in a Post-BASIC World (computerworld.com) 5

Submitted by ErichTheRed on Thursday June 23, 2011 @10:47AM

ErichTheRed writes: This Computerworld piece actually got me thinking — it basically says that there are few good "starter languages" to get students interested in programming. I remember hacking away at BASIC incessantly when I was a kid, and it taught me a lot about logic and computers in general. Has the level of abstraction in computer systems reached a point where beginners can't just code something quick without a huge amount of back-story? I find this to be the case now; scripting languages are good, but limited in what you can do...and GUI creation requires students to be familiar with a lot of concepts (event handling, etc.) that aren't intuitive for beginners. What would you show a beginner first — JavaScript? Python? How do you get the instant gratification we oldies got when sitting down in front of the early-80s home computers?

Submission + - Best Places To Work In IT (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123 on Monday June 20, 2011 @02:39PM

Lucas123 writes: USAA Insurance topped a list of 100 companies rated as the overall best places to work in IT this year by Computerworld. USAA ranked No. 4 for training and No. 1 for retention and innovation due to its Open Innovation Lab, which allows employees to design and test ideas before moving them to full production. USAA was followed by Securitan financial services and General Mills foods. The number four and five spots were taken by Genentech and Verizon, which took the number three spot for benefits and two spot for IT training, respectively.

Submission + - By The Numbers: Android Vs. iPhone And iPad (computerworld.com)

Submitted by

CWmike

on Thursday June 09, 2011 @12:30PM

CWmike writes: "It looks increasingly like Android will be the major challenger to both Apple's iPhone and iPad. In the tablet market, Apple's iOS has a commanding lead, while Android is the only other OS that registers a market share in double digits. In the smartphone arena, there are other significant competitors, such as BlackBerry and Windows. However, BlackBerry market share is dropping, according to comScore's latest survey — in fact, Apple surpassed RIM in comScore's April report — while Microsoft has yet to make much of a dent. How do Apple's iOS and Google's Android stack up head to head? Computerworld crunched the numbers."

Submission + - Brain Cancer Worries? Look Up Your Phone's SAR (computerworld.com)

Submitted by CWmike on Friday June 03, 2011 @08:15PM

CWmike writes: With recent news of a possible link between cell phone radiation and risk of brain cancer, you may have a new-found interest in knowing how much radiation your mobile handset is giving off — or, more importantly, how much your body might be absorbing. The FCC's legal limit for mobile phones is 1.6 Watts of radiofrequency energy per kilogram, using a measure called Specific Absorption Rate (SAR). The Environmental Working Group, which tracks SAR data for more than 1,300 cell phone and smartphone models, notes that several factors besides your handset affect your actual level of exposure. Look up your phone's SAR; or see a full chart of phones.

Submission + - 22 free tools for data visualization and analysis (computerworld.com)

Submitted by

cweditor

on Wednesday April 20, 2011 @07:22AM

cweditor writes: "Tools to extract and display useful information from mountains of data — and then display those results in a meaningful way — can often be pricey, but there are a number of compelling alternatives that are free."

Submission + - Apple vs. Microsoft By The Numbers (computerworld.com) 1

Submitted by

CWmike

on Tuesday April 19, 2011 @11:31AM

CWmike writes: "It's a matter of opinion which company makes the better operating system or is likely to grow its smartphone market share. But numbers don't lie — or exaggerate. A little less than a year ago, Wall Street reached a Microsoft vs. Apple milestone: for the first time, Apple's corporate value surpassed Microsoft's. What has happened since? With Apple due to report its latest quarterly earnings on Wednesday — Microsoft reports its numbers next week — we look at some recent numbers, as well as data over time."

Submission + - DEC Co-Founder Ken Olsen Dies at 84 (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123 on Monday February 07, 2011 @11:49PM

Lucas123 writes: Ken Olsen, who founded Digital Equipment Corp. in 1957, and helped move the industry away from mainframes to minicomputers has died at the age of 84. Olsen was known as an engineer's engineer, a man who believed if you built a quality product, it would have buyers.

Submission + - Recession hits older tech workers unusually hard (computerworld.com)

Submitted by cweditor on Thursday January 27, 2011 @05:35PM

cweditor writes: Is it really so much tougher to get a tech job if you're over 55? New government data says yes. The unemployment rate for younger workers in computer and tech jobs actually went down in 2010. But for those 55 and over, joblessness rose from 6% in 2009 to 8.4% last year — compared with 4.5% for those ages 25-54, Computerworld reports.

Submission + - H-1B At 20: How 'Tech Worker Visa' Is Remaking IT (computerworld.com)

Submitted by CWmike on Wednesday November 17, 2010 @01:06PM

CWmike writes: When Congress created the H-1B visa program 20 years ago this month, it sent the American IT industry into uncharted territory from which it has yet to emerge. Over the years, supporters have included Microsoft's Bill Gates and former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2009 told Congress that the annual visa cap of 85,000 is 'too small to meet the need' and that protecting U.S. IT workers from global competition creates a 'privileged elite.' Groups like the Economic Policy Institute have begged to differ. In a report released last month by researcher Ron Hira, he argues that the H-1B along with the L-1 visa allow employers to bypass U.S. workers. Computerworld's special report on the 20th anniversary of the H-1B includes first-person accounts from five IT workers who have been directly affected by the H-1B program and visual and interactive tools to help you analyze H-1B visa data.

Submission + - Flat Pay Prompts 1 in 3 in IT to Consider Jump (computerworld.com)

Submitted by CWmike on Thursday October 07, 2010 @03:17PM

CWmike writes: Companies have cut salaries and training, held back on bonuses and piled more work on employees in response to the economic downturn. These tactics may well be pushing many IT pros to go job hunting, Computerworld's latest salary poll has found. More than one third (36%) of the 343 respondents to a recent poll said they are looking to move to a new employer in the next six months. And 69% reported they had not received a pay raise in the past six months. The poll was conducted during the last two weeks in September. For employers, the warning could not be more clear. As the economy improves, the most able IT workers may leave for something better.

Submission + - Spammers Using Soft Hypen to Hide Malicious URLs (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7 on Thursday October 07, 2010 @03:13PM

Trailrunner7 writes: Spammers have jumped on the little-used soft hyphen (or SHY character) to fool URL filtering devices. According to researchers, spammers are larding up URLs for sites they promote with the soft hyphen character, which many browsers ignore.

Spammers aren't shy about jumping humans flexible cognitive abilities to slip past the notice of spam filters (H3rb41 V14gr4, anyone?). They're also ever-alert to flaws or inconsistencies in the way that browsers render text to allow them to slip pitches URLs by programs designed to spot unwanted solicitations, phishing attempts and more. The latest trend involves the use of an obscure character called the soft hyphen or "SHY" character to obscure malicious URLs in spam messages. Writing on the Symantec Connect blog, researcher Samir Patil said that the company has seen recent spam messages that insert the HTML symbol for the soft hyphen to obfuscate URLs for Web pages promoted by the spammers

Submission + - Missing MIS: 5 Old-School Ideas We Want Back (computerworld.com)

Submitted by CWmike on Friday October 01, 2010 @12:35PM

CWmike writes: Back before the age of the PC, men in computer science — and they were almost always men — wearing white shirts, ties and pocket protectors, spent their days punching data requests onto cards. On machines such as the IBM/System 360 was built the entire hierarchy of MIS — management information systems, writes Michael Fitzgerald. Today, both machine and management style look Neolithic, he writes. Storage space, processing speeds and data volume have expanded far beyond what few in the 1960s could have begun to imagine, and the stove-piped, glass-towered, heads-down MIS departments of old have given way to decentralized, service-oriented, business-focused IT organizations. Nobody wants to go back to punch-card programming, but some other old tech practices could stand a revival. Cobol, anyone?

Submission + - BlackBerry's encryption hacked; backups now a risk (infoworld.com)

Submitted by GMGruman on Friday October 01, 2010 @11:28AM

GMGruman writes: InfoWorld blogger Martin Heller reveals that a Russian passcode-breaker developer has broken the encryption used in BlackBerry backups. That can help recover data when passwords are lost but also give data thieves access to a treasure trove of corporate secrets. And the developer boasts that it was easier to crack the BlackBerry encryption than it was to crack Apple iOS's.

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