Programming Grads Meet a Skills Gap in the Real World

Despite the best laid plans of colleges and universities, there remains a skills gap between what computer science graduates learn in their undergraduate years and what they need to become proficient in a typical at-work environment.

In short, many people on both sides of the equation—teachers as well as potential employers—say the educational system is not doing enough to keep pace with the ever-changing needs of IT, and that entering the work force often is as much of an educational experience as is college, particularly for programmers.

Ari Zilka, chief technology officer at Terracotta, in San Francisco, said he knows very well about the skills gap, as he worked his way through college in the high-tech business while attending the University of California, Berkeley.

“I found that UC Berkeley had an excellent curriculum but not only was my schooling lagging behind work, it became very hard to even go to school because work had me learning the concepts and their applicability and nuances that teachers didn’t even seem to know.”

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The Future Of Mobile Tech: Next Year’s Notebooks Will Be Worth Waiting For

Good things come to those who wait, says the proverb. Right now, this is very appropriate if you’re in the market for a new notebook. Unless you’re in a hurry, you may want to keep your wallet in your pocket — there are new technologies around the corner you won’t want to miss.

While for a few years, the pace of innovation seemed to be slowing down, the year 2008 may be different. Conversations with several experts on industry trends, and a deep dive into the conventional wisdom of published reports, have yielded some interesting prognostications:

• Big notebooks are getting bigger
• Notebook displays are going Hollywood
• Small notebooks will continue to shrink
• Wireless use will continue to expand
• It’s getting easier to be green
• Storage is going solid-state
• More notebooks may mean less Windows

This spurt of technological creativity may be due, at least in part, to the increasing popularity of notebooks. Experts expect that desktop PCs will still outsell laptops in 2008 — but by less than they did in 2007. Laptop sales are growing 19 percent a year, says the analyst firm Gartner, Inc., and 2010 will actually be the tipping point when notebooks finally outsell desktops. Corporations and emerging economies are still buying desktops, says Gartner Research vice president Leslie Fiering, a mobile computing specialist, “but for consumers we’re seeing the crossover.”

So what kind of technology shifts can you expect for next year’s notebooks?

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Ipod and MP3s are killing music

Music producers are upset that the fad for MP3s and Ipods is killing off well-made music.They say that most of the files which are being distributed represent less than 10 percent of the original music.

Most of the data is junked during computer analysis and squeezed down until it fits through the Interweb tubes. According to Seattle Pi, a CD contains less than half the information stored to studio hard drives during recording.

And when compressed by MP3 and similar formats only a minuscule fraction of the actual live event survives.

Record producer Phil Ramone, who has recorded everyone from Frank Sinatra to the Rolling Stones, said it is impossible to really appreciate music in MP3 format. He said that his music played on an Ipod was painful.

Speaker designer John Meyer, of Meyer Sound Labs, agrees, telling the paper that it is impossible to appreciate the music on an iPod because it forces the brain to work harder to fill in the gaps in the sound.

Top acoustic boffin, Robert Sweetow, head of the University of California audiology department said that the low-fi music stimulates the brain in different ways. Different neurons are stimulated and fewer cortical neurons connected back to the limbic system, where the emotions are stored, apparently.

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Ipod and MP3s are killing music

Music producers are upset that the fad for MP3s and Ipods is killing off well-made music.They say that most of the files which are being distributed represent less than 10 percent of the original music.

Most of the data is junked during computer analysis and squeezed down until it fits through the Interweb tubes. According to Seattle Pi, a CD contains less than half the information stored to studio hard drives during recording.

And when compressed by MP3 and similar formats only a minuscule fraction of the actual live event survives.

Record producer Phil Ramone, who has recorded everyone from Frank Sinatra to the Rolling Stones, said it is impossible to really appreciate music in MP3 format. He said that his music played on an Ipod was painful.

Speaker designer John Meyer, of Meyer Sound Labs, agrees, telling the paper that it is impossible to appreciate the music on an iPod because it forces the brain to work harder to fill in the gaps in the sound.

Top acoustic boffin, Robert Sweetow, head of the University of California audiology department said that the low-fi music stimulates the brain in different ways. Different neurons are stimulated and fewer cortical neurons connected back to the limbic system, where the emotions are stored, apparently.

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German “anti-hacker” law forces hacker sites to relocate

Germany isn’t the place to go if you’re 1) a Scientologist or 2) a computer security researcher with a penchant for writing code. We reported earlier on Germany’s new “anti-hacker” law, but now that the law has gone into effect, we’re starting to see the results. Already a number of security projects have relocated or shut down to avoid any possibility of prosecution under the broadly-worded statute.

The new law, dubbed “202c” after the section of the German legal code it occupies, bans the distribution and possession of software which has as its primary goal the circumvention of security measures. The Chaos Computer Club, one of the oldest and largest hacker groups in the country, denounced the law, saying, “Forbidding this software is about as helpful as forbidding the sale and production of hammers because sometimes they also cause damage.”

It’s not fully clear how the new law will be applied, but several developers are taking a cautious approach. KisMAC, a wireless sniffer and encryption cracker for Mac OS, went dark in late July; now, the KisMAC web site has a politically-charged message for visitors. “One of the major exporters in the world prohibits production and distribution of security software (StGB §202c),” it reads. “From a nation of poets and thinkers to a nation of bureaucrats and ignoramuses.”

Still, KisMAC will live on. The site promises a move to a Dutch server soon, and relocating to servers outside the country appears to be a popular option. Phenoelit, a group that publishes securty exploits and maintains a large list of default passwords, has moved its material to a US server because “of the new law that makes possessing ‘hacker tools’ illegal.”

The Chaos Computer Club, not pleased with the law or its effects, has turned its home page into a message, but there’s no sign that modifications to the law might be coming. Fortunately for bored hackers, file-swapping remains only a “petty offense” in Germany.

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PS3 Sucks… apparently

One of the “resistance” fighting against the power of CELL and PS3 has had his knuckles well and truly rapped for being, what can only be described as, a total idiot!

The young man was arrested for writing PS3 Sucks on 23 PlayStation game cases! As incredible as it sounds it seems that the youth, one of them Xbox types, was held at the scene of the crime (his local Toys ‘R Us store!) until the police arrived.

The police made an attempt to contact his parents but they were not available so the young man was later taken to child services. When asked by the police why he decided to deface the game cases, the boy commented that he has an Xbox and hates PlayStation, and as he was bored he decided to write all over the cases. It seems the Xbox fans are starting up a new offense in the Console War using permanent markers rather than just harsh language!

The question is will Toys R Us be in for some form of reprisal from devout PS3 fans? Or will the PlayStation masses rise above this blatant and stupid attack? If I hear of anything I will be sure to let you all know!

What do you think the punishment should be for this crazy Xbox fan? His treasured Xbox taken away and replaced with the Nintendo Virtual Boy perhaps?

[ View ]

German “anti-hacker” law forces hacker sites to relocate

Germany isn’t the place to go if you’re 1) a Scientologist or 2) a computer security researcher with a penchant for writing code. We reported earlier on Germany’s new “anti-hacker” law, but now that the law has gone into effect, we’re starting to see the results. Already a number of security projects have relocated or shut down to avoid any possibility of prosecution under the broadly-worded statute.

The new law, dubbed “202c” after the section of the German legal code it occupies, bans the distribution and possession of software which has as its primary goal the circumvention of security measures. The Chaos Computer Club, one of the oldest and largest hacker groups in the country, denounced the law, saying, “Forbidding this software is about as helpful as forbidding the sale and production of hammers because sometimes they also cause damage.”

It’s not fully clear how the new law will be applied, but several developers are taking a cautious approach. KisMAC, a wireless sniffer and encryption cracker for Mac OS, went dark in late July; now, the KisMAC web site has a politically-charged message for visitors. “One of the major exporters in the world prohibits production and distribution of security software (StGB §202c),” it reads. “From a nation of poets and thinkers to a nation of bureaucrats and ignoramuses.”

Still, KisMAC will live on. The site promises a move to a Dutch server soon, and relocating to servers outside the country appears to be a popular option. Phenoelit, a group that publishes securty exploits and maintains a large list of default passwords, has moved its material to a US server because “of the new law that makes possessing ‘hacker tools’ illegal.”

The Chaos Computer Club, not pleased with the law or its effects, has turned its home page into a message, but there’s no sign that modifications to the law might be coming. Fortunately for bored hackers, file-swapping remains only a “petty offense” in Germany.

[ View ]

PS3 Sucks… apparently

One of the “resistance” fighting against the power of CELL and PS3 has had his knuckles well and truly rapped for being, what can only be described as, a total idiot!

The young man was arrested for writing PS3 Sucks on 23 PlayStation game cases! As incredible as it sounds it seems that the youth, one of them Xbox types, was held at the scene of the crime (his local Toys ‘R Us store!) until the police arrived.

The police made an attempt to contact his parents but they were not available so the young man was later taken to child services. When asked by the police why he decided to deface the game cases, the boy commented that he has an Xbox and hates PlayStation, and as he was bored he decided to write all over the cases. It seems the Xbox fans are starting up a new offense in the Console War using permanent markers rather than just harsh language!

The question is will Toys R Us be in for some form of reprisal from devout PS3 fans? Or will the PlayStation masses rise above this blatant and stupid attack? If I hear of anything I will be sure to let you all know!

What do you think the punishment should be for this crazy Xbox fan? His treasured Xbox taken away and replaced with the Nintendo Virtual Boy perhaps?

[ View ]

Former Adelphia Executives Report to Prison

After fighting one of the US’s largest corporate fraud cases, Adelphia Communications founder John Rigas and his son Tim Rigas, the company’s former chief financial officer, reported to federal prison in North Carolina today; the pair was convicted in 2004 on multiple charges of securities fraud, conspiracy to commit bank fraud and bank fraud but had remained free while an appeal was pending. John, 82 years old, recieved 15 years while Tom, 51, received 20 years. Although the two had requested that they be allowed to serve their time together at a facility close to their homes in Coudersport, Pennsylvania, the federal Bureau of Prisons had other plans, sending them to the Butner Federal Correctional Complex, located about 45 minutes northwest of Raleigh.

Among the Rigas’s crimes leading to the collapse of one of the US’s largest cable companies were concealment of over $2.3 billion in debt to investors and use of company funds for personal gain, including the purchase of 100 pairs of slippers for Timothy Rigas. Authorities began investigating the company in 2002 after the company announced its 2001 results with a press release that included a footnote on its final page noting Adelphia had billions in liabilities not previously reported on its balance sheet.

Full Story on SiliconValley.com

U.S. requests WTO ruling in piracy complaint against China

The Bush administration has asked the World Trade Organization to rule in a complaint against China over the piracy of copyrighted movies, music, software and books, escalating a dispute that has roiled commercial relations.The U.S. Trade Representative’s office took the formal step Monday of asking the WTO to decree that China’s laws fall short of international agreements, after consultations failed to resolve differences over what the United States says are weak Chinese laws to safeguard patents and copyrights.

“We still see important gaps that need to be addressed,” said Sean Spicer, a spokesman for Susan Schwab, the trade representative.

China’s copying of movies, music and software costs companies $2.2 billion in 2006 sales, according to an estimate by lobby groups representing Microsoft, Walt Disney and Vivendi. The WTO complaint, announced in April, is the first by the United States against China for breaching intellectual property rights.

Under WTO rules, China can block the establishment of a three-member panel this month. If it does so, then the United States will need to request another panel next month, which China can’t block. The judges typically take a year or more to rule on a complaint.

The two sides held one formal consultation in June, and China has not taken any steps that address U.S. concerns, the trade representative’s office said.

This is one of five WTO cases the United States has brought against China and the third of those in which the United States has requested a WTO dispute settlement panel.

China prefers to address disputes through negotiations and consultations because sanctions don’t resolve disagreements, said Liao Xiaoqi, China’s vice minister of commerce. “China will continue using legal and administrative means to strengthen our protection of intellectual property rights,” Liao said.

In this case, the United States says that China’s threshold for prosecution is so high that it effectively allows the sale of pirated or counterfeited goods on a commercial scale without violators having to face criminal charges.

Second, the United States says China allows pirated goods that are seized to be sold once the fake labels on them are removed. The United States wants those products destroyed. Third, Chinese laws do not provide copyright protection for works that are awaiting approval by censors, which allows pirates to get a head start on legitimate distributors, the United States says.

In April, the United States filed a complaint about barriers it says U.S.-based movie, music, book and other copyright industries face in selling in China.

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