it_wont_work - Slashdot User

How SBC (AT&T) Pillaged South Africa's Economy 270

Posted by kdawson on Sunday August 26, 2007 @03:18PM from the privatization-trumping-liberalization dept.

Kifoth writes "For 8 years, SBC and Telekom Malaysia controlled South Africa's only telecommunications company, Telkom. Telkom had a government granted monopoly in order for it to connect the large parts of South Africa that had been neglected under apartheid. Instead of helping, SBC abused their position and raised Telkom's prices to be among the highest in the world. The billions they made here ultimately went to fund their AT&T merger. From the article: 'SBC, described as "congenitally litigious", is said to have played a major role in the failure of South Africa's telecoms policy to develop a competitive telephone service. Under SBC's control Telkom not only failed to meet its roll-out obligations but behaved "as a tax on industry and a drag on economic growth."'"

Teen Hacks $84 Million Porn Filter in 30 Minutes 479

Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday August 25, 2007 @11:13AM from the worth-every-penny dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Tom Wood, a Year 10 Australian student has cracked the federal government's $84-million Internet porn filter in just 30 minutes. He can deactivate the filter in several clicks in such a way that the software's icon is not deleted which will make his parents believe the filter is still working. Tom says it is a matter of time before some computer-savvy kid puts the bypass on the Internet for others to use."

Feed Wired: Bittersweet Sunshine: Four Decades of FOIA Wins and Losses (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @12:52AM

Wired News celebrates the 41st birthday of an open-government law and lists the top five filled and unfilled Freedom of Information Act requests.

Controversial Security Paper Nixed From Black Hat 144

Posted by Zonk on Friday June 29, 2007 @10:21AM from the keep-it-under-your-hat dept.

coondoggie writes us with a link to the Network World site, as he tends to do. Today he offers an article discussing the cancellation of a presentation which would have undermined chip-based security on PCs. Scheduled during the Black Hat USA 2007 event, the event's briefing promised to break the Trusted Computing Group's module, as well as Vista's Bitlocker. Live demos were to be included. The presenters pulled the event, and have no interest in discussing the subject any more. "[Presenters Nitin and Vipin Kumar's] promised exploit would be a chink in the armor of hardware-based system integrity that [trusted platform module] (TPM) is designed to ensure. TPM is also a key component of Trusted Computing Group's architecture for network access control (NAC). TPM would create a unique value or hash of all the steps of a computer's boot sequence that would represent the particular state of that machine, according to Steve Hanna, co-chair of TCG's NAC effort."

Comment Getting a CS Degree (Score 1) 166

by it_wont_work on Thursday February 01, 2007 @12:44PM (#17844952) Attached to: Would a CS Degree Be Good for Someone Over 30?

The best programmers I have hired were not CS majors. One was a clinical psychologist and the other was a Cardiologist who was tired of practicing medicine. They knew a lot about programming but, more importantly, they knew about real world stuff and how programming could be applied and used by real people.

I recommend getting a degree in something like electrical engineering or a basic science but with a heavy dose of computer engineering as a minor or at least as part of your education. You already know the programming stuff.

The CS degree is good if you want to pursue CS research or if you plan to design compliers or next generation systems of something. If you want to design the next search engine or invent some new networking algorithm the CS degree is probably necessary. If you are programming for business or engineering, there are better options.

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