Fav5

My pick of the week's top 5 items of interest:

1. What if Google lost your data? I think most of trust Google enough that this is very unlikely to happen, but it certainly is not outside the realm of possibility. Google Operating System offers tips to Creating a Backup for Your Google Account.
   


2. According to a new study of IT managers, more than 50% of respondents described the Millennials (employees between the ages of 18 and 31) as the "toughest generation to manage." My generation faired a little better: Gen X (ages 32 to 42 years old) placed second with 17% of respondents saying we pose a management challenge.
   


3. According to the Department of Homeland Security, open source code is just as vulnerable to security holes as commercial software: approximately one security exposure for every 1,000 lines of code.


4. Joel Spolsky has written an interesting essay on the need for undergraduate programs for kids who love to program but who aren't as excited about computer science. I think our program at Harding isn't too far-off from what Joel is envisioning, although our faculty is a little light on industry experience (most of us have worked in the industry for just a few years and spent most of our time in academia).


5. Finally, which is more dangerous: surfing or skateboarding? Google knows.
   

Be afraid, be very afraid

Hey, Windows user- if you haven’t made sure you’re running the latest version of Internet Explorer, do it now. If you’re lacking the motivation, take a look at this video that shows just what might happen to you if you were to misspell google.com. Scary. (See a blog posting about this video here. Note that the link to the video on that site is currently broken.)

You also can't always trust websites that you normally trust. A few days before the Super Bowl, the official website of Dolphin Stadium was hacked (that's where the Super Bowl was held). Website visitors running Windows might have been infected with a Trojan keylogger/backdoor if they hadn't already installed a couple of Windows security patches.

And if you’re thinking you’re safe from attack just because you’re running some other OS, take a look at this recent report: Some researchers set up 4 Linux boxes and watched as the servers were attacked on average once every 39 seconds. The hackers most often attempted to access the machines with user names of "root" and "admin" using passwords which were variations of the user name or "123." Man, I thought I was the only one using 123...

Another recent study states that 70% of websites are at immediate risk of being hacked! Well, maybe that number is a little high. But the point is, if you are on the Internet, you better watch out. Have a nice day.