Google starts watching what you do off the Internet too — after you shop at mall with your credit card, you'll see same Store ads online later

RT: Google is all but certain to ensure that all user data collected off- and online will be cloaked through safeguards that will allow for complete and total anonymity for customers. When on-the-Web interactions start mirroring real life activity, though, even a certain degree of privacy doesn't make Conversions API any less creepy. As Jim Edwards writes for Business Insider, "If you bought a T shirt at The Gap in the mall with your credit card, you could start seeing a lot more Gap ads online later, suggesting jeans that go with that shirt."

Of course, there is always the possibility that all of this information can be unencrypted and, in some cases, obtained by third-parties that you might not want prying into your personal business. Edwards notes in his report that Google does not explicitly note that intelligence used in Conversions API will be anonymized, but the blowback from not doing as much would sure be enough to start a colossal uproar. Meanwhile, however, all of the information being collected by Google — estimated to be on millions of servers around the globe — is being handed over to more than just advertising companies. Last month Google reported that the US government requested personal information from roughly 8,000 individual users during just the first few months of 2012.

"This is the sixth time we've released this data, and one trend has become clear: Government surveillance is on the rise," Google admitted with their report.

Please continue reading at:

http://rt.com/usa/news/google-internet-online-offline-500/

Nine out of ten organizations lack proper tech skills: study | Is #socialmedia killing our productivity?

Is digital distraction the cause of this headshot to our nations productivity?

...findings of a new survey of 1,200 executives, just released by the IBM Center for Applied Insights. The survey report examines the rise of four technology areas – mobile, business analytics, cloud and social business – concluding that only one in ten organizations has all the skills it needs. "These shortages are not trivial or isolated," it continues. "Within each area, roughly one-quarter report major skill gaps, and 60 percent or more report moderate to major shortfalls."

Plus, there doesn't seem to be much help coming down the pipeline either. In a parallel academic survey, IBM says close to half of the educators and students responding said there were major gaps in IT skills coverage – "a deficit nearly twice the size of what businesses are already experiencing. Including those with
moderate gaps, totals rise to 73% or more."

As Jim Corgel, IBM general manager for academic and developer relations, puts it: "Today we are faced with one of the largest skills gap in history." He advises more aggressive actions on the part of businesses to invest in skills development among current employees. 

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Scientific American's Fred Guterl Explores the Threats Posed By Technology -via @Slashdot

"Fred Guterl is the executive editor of Scientific American, and in this piece he explores various threats posed by the technology that modern civilization relies on. He discusses West African and Indian monsoons, infectious diseases, and computer hacking. Here's a quote: 'Today the technologies that pose some of the biggest problems are not so much military as commercial. They come from biology, energy production, and the information sciences — and are the very technologies that have fueled our prodigious growth as a species. They are far more seductive than nuclear weapons, and more difficult to extricate ourselves from. The technologies we worry about today form the basis of our global civilization and are essential to our survival.'"
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Scientists See Startling Gains in Artificial Intelligence

NYTimes.com...The technology, called deep learning, has already been put to use in services like Apple's Siri virtual personal assistant, which is based on Nuance Communications' speech recognition service, and in Google's Street View, which uses machine vision to identify specific addresses.

But what is new in recent months is the growing speed and accuracy of deep-learning programs, often called artificial neural networks or just "neural nets" for their resemblance to the neural connections in the brain.

"There has been a number of stunning new results with deep-learning methods," said Yann LeCun, a computer scientist at New York University who did pioneering research in handwriting recognition at Bell Laboratories. "The kind of jump we are seeing in the accuracy of these systems is very rare indeed."

Artificial intelligence researchers are acutely aware of the dangers of being overly optimistic. Their field has long been plagued by outbursts of misplaced enthusiasm followed by equally striking declines.

In the 1960s, some computer scientists believed that a workable artificial intelligence system was just 10 years away. In the 1980s, a wave of commercial start-ups collapsed, leading to what some people called the "A.I. winter."


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Study Claims Human Intelligence Peaked Two To Six Millennia Ago

Slashdot- Professor Gerald "Jerry" Crabtree of Stanford's Crabtree Laboratorypublished a paper (PDF) that has appeared in two parts in Trends in Genetics. The paper opens with a very controversial suggestion: 'I would be willing to wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000 BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions.' From there, Crabtree speculates we're on the decline of human intelligence and we have been for at least a couple millennia. His argument suggests agriculture and, following from that, cities, have allowed us to break free of some environmental forces on competitive genetic mutations — a la Mike Judge's theory. However, the conclusion of the paper urges humans to keep calm and carry on, as any attempt to fix this genetic trend would almost certainly be futile and disturbing."
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http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/11/13/191217/study-claims-human-intelligence-peaked-two-to-six-millennia-ago

The duo ... Bravo

Security Firm VUPEN Claims to Have Hacked Windows 8 and IE10

TNW...If you've never heard of VUPEN, that's because it isn't your typical security company. The firm finds exploits in popular software from major technology companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Google, only to sell the details to governments around the world and various other parties willing to write massive cheques.

That's right; the exploits aren't reported to the companies affected, but are instead sold so that: VUPEN customers can protect themselves (while their competitors are left vulnerable), they can be abused for spying purposes, and they can be used to create malware. This is why, if you read the tweet above again, you'll note that this latest victory was only possible thanks to multiple already-existing 0-days that VUPEN found and did not disclose publicly. If it had, it would not be able to sell them, nor would it be able to hack Windows 8, as Microsoft would have already patched the flaws long ago.

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Does Russia care about children's future more than U.S? Internet Child Protection Law Takes Effect

Slashdot:
"A law that aims to protect children from harmful internet content by allowing the government to take sites offline has taken effect in Russia. The authorities are now able to blacklist and force offline certain websites without a trial. The law was approved by both houses of parliament and signed by President Vladimir Putin in July. If the websites themselves cannot be shut down, internet service providers (ISPs) and web hosting companies can be forced to block access to the offending material."

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http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/11/01/154215/russias-internet-blacklist-law-takes-effienct

'2013 is going to be ugly' for Microsoft as it shifts to Windows 8, Forrester predicts

As Microsoft launches Windows 8, and with it, an attempt to stabilize a precipitous decline in its share of operating systems for 'personal devices, 2013 is going to be a tough, very tough year, research firm Forrester said today.

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Silicon Valley Morally Bankrupt and Toxic

Slashdot - Since I've been out of the Silicon-Valley-centered tech industry, I've become increasingly convinced that it's morally bankrupt and essentially toxic to our society. Companies like Google and Facebook — in common with most public companies — have interests that are frequently in conflict with the well-being of — I was going to say their customers or their users, but I'll say 'people' in general, since it's wider than that. People who use their systems directly, people who don't — we're all affected by it, and although some of the outcomes are positive a disturbingly high number of them are negative: the erosion of privacy, of consumer rights, of the public domain and fair use, of meaningful connections between people and a sense of true community, of beauty and care taken in craftsmanship, of our very physical well-being. No amount of employee benefits or underfunded Google.org projects can counteract that. Over time, I've come to consider that this situation is irremediable, given our current capitalist system and all its inequalities. To fix it, we're going to need to work on social justice and rethinking how we live and work and relate to each other. Geek toys like self-driving cars and augmented reality sunglasses won't fix it. Social networks designed to identify you to corporations so they can sell you more stuff won't fix it. Better ad targeting or content matching algorithms definitely won't fix it."

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http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/10/29/2332216/is-silicon-valley-morally-bankrupt-and-toxic

The Future Talk with Steve Jobs - Daily Exhaust

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http://dailyexhaust.com/2012/10/post-1.html

Windows 8 may be death blow to PC market

Windows 8 is "a dramatic departure from existing PC paradigms" and may not stop the declining growth in PC sales, warns a just-released IDC report. The reports adds that PC sales will be only up a fraction of a percent in 2012 over 2011.


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Computer firms try to grow talent to handle mainframe worker shortage

USATODAY..."Big Iron," as the machines are called, is not headed for extinction any time soon. But nearly 50 years after these once-giant computers were first introduced, companies like Detroit-based Compuware and IBM are preparing for a shortage of mainframe workers.

"This will be a growing problem very quickly," said Bob Paul, CEO of Compuware, a business software firm that gets 40% of its revenue from its mainframe division.

Compuware estimates that as many as 40% of the world's mainframe programmers will be retiring in the near future.

The looming shortage has forced mainframe companies such as Compuware, IBM and CA Technologies to step up their talent-development efforts. But in a world with 3D graphics, video streaming and all kinds of social media, getting young people interested in a career in mainframes is a tough sell.

"It is not as sexy as developing new mobile apps," Paul acknowledged. "But if you want a secure and highly valued career, this is a great place to go."

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1984 “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were...



"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." — 1984

Ablogalypse


Ablogalypse

Dead wrong... Windows phones are 2% of market

HISTORY of windows 8...those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.

demotivational posters - HISTORY

My commdork 64

Apples new logo

Why Didn't the Internet Take Off In 1983? - Slashdot

"An amazing pair of videos from the AT&T archives tout a service called Viewtron that brought much of what we expect from the modern Internet to customers' homes in 1983. Online news, banking services, restaurant reviews, shopping, e-mail — all were available on your TV set, controlled by a wireless infrared keyboard. The system had 15,000 customers in cities on the U.S. east coast, but was shut down after $50 million was spent on it. But why did it flop? Was the world just not ready for it?"

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Computer Programmers Only the 5th Most Sleep Deprived Profession - Slashdot


"As described in the NY Times Economix blog, the mattress chain Sleepy's analyzed data from the National Health Interview Survey to findthe ten most sleep deprived professions. In order, they are: Home Health Aides, Lawyer, Police Officers, Doctors/Paramedics, Tie: (Economists, Social Workers, Computer Programmers), Financial Analysts, Plant Operators (undefined, but we assume 'factory' and not 'Audrey II'), and Secretaries."

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No one is on google+... Yeah, Facebook wastes the most time, money and energy



shortformblog: A somewhat different take on the thing we reblogged earlier, but it shows two very interesting things: First, Tumblr and Pinterest are timesucks in equal measure, and second, nobody's actually hanging around Google+ once they sign up. 

Reblogged again by: 


Social Networking at It’s Worst - graphjam.com

funny graphs - Social Networking at It's Worst 

THE GOOD OLD DAYS

demotivational posters - THE GOOD OLD DAYS

IBMs new experimental atomic-scale magnet memory is at least 100 times denser than conventional memory

Scientists from IBM Research (NYSE: IBM) have successfully demonstrated the ability to store information in as few as 12 magnetic atoms. This is significantly less than today's disk drives, which use about one million atoms to store a single bit of information. The ability to manipulate matter by its most basic components – atom by atom – could lead to the vital understanding necessary to build smaller, faster and more energy-efficient devices.

Social Media Explained In One Image

Will Windows 8 Tablets Make IT Pros Hate Microsoft?

Short answer... Yes, IT will end up being hurt by Windows 8

ghacks - When Windows 8 launches the app store will likely be fairly barren, and it will take many months, if not years for Windows to catch up with the number of apps available in the iPad and Android markets.  This ultimately can hurt sales of the platform as people might choose an Android or Apple device over Windows because there's more they can do with it, they'll probably not even be able to run their existing desktop software on it so what will be the point in getting one?

It is crucial however that Windows 8 tablets take off in a big way and sell in the millions, the reason for this is that Microsoft have re-engineered Windows directly around tablets, effectively betting the entire platform on the success of these devices that will probably only ever form 10% of the whole computing market.

The remaining 90% is largely constituted of IT Pros and businesses, many of whom are already taking a dim view of Microsoft's new direction for Windows or who are, at the very least, concerned about what it means for them.  If the new Windows 8 tablets don't take off and sell in huge volumes it will essentially be seen as one huge slap in the face for the IT Pro community who will have had their precious desktop working environment decimated in the name of a product gamble.

The failure of Windows tablets to sell could see these IT Pros turning on Microsoft in huge numbers and perhaps even looking for an alternative (I've even considered a dual-booting iMac as my next PC for the first time ever!)  This means that Microsoft simply cannot afford to get Windows tablets wrong.  As the whole structure of Windows is being re-engineered around them, no matter how friendly they might say Metro will be on desktops and laptops, it is too big a gamble to get it wrong.

Please read more from by Mike Halsey at http://www.ghacks.net/2012/01/08/windows-8-tablets-make-it-pros-hate-microsoft/

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