Is UML Really Dead, Or Only Cataleptic?
Original post provide by Slashdot: ITdanielstoner writes “Recently UML was pronounced dead as a tool for all programming needs by an article posted on Little Tutorials: 13 reasons for UML’s descent into darkness. The author suggests UML was killed by, among other causes, greed, heavy process, and design-by-committee. Is UML really a fading technology? Is it useful beyond a whiteboard notation for designers? Is there any value in code generation?”
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Full Disclosure And Why Vendors Hate It
He argues that vendor-only disclosure protects the vendors and not the consumer, and that vendors easily abuse this to downplay privacy concerns while continuing to sell insecure products. In contrast, he paints full disclosure as a capitalist means to keep the vendor accountable, and describes how public outcry can be one of the best motivating factors to get a vulnerability addressed."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Microsoft Urges Windows Users To Shun Safari
Essentially, Apple does not see unsolicited downloads of hundreds or even thousands of executable files to users' desktops as being a security problem." Now while downloading a hundred files to your desktop won't automatically execute them, Microsoft's position is that a secondary attack could execute them for you.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A Look At The Workings Of Google's Data Centers
Quoting: "'Our view is it's better to have twice as much hardware that's not as reliable than half as much that's more reliable,' Dean said. 'You have to provide reliability on a software level. If you're running 10,000 machines, something is going to die every day.' Bringing a new cluster online shows just how fallible hardware is, Dean said.
Bank Of NY Loses Tapes With 4.5 Million Clients' Data
has admitted they lost a box of unencrypted data storage tapes. The tapes contained personal information for over 4.5 million people. From Computerworld: "The bank informed the Connecticut State Attorney General's Office that the tapes ... were lost in transport by off-site storage firm Archive America on Feb.
Ajax Security Tools
IdaAshley points out the latest from IBM developerWorks' Web development section, which talks about shoring up potential weaknesses in Ajax applications. It follows another recent guide for improving Ajax performance. "In this article, you'll learn about Ajax security tools, which you'll be using to scan for SQL injection and cross-site scripting vulnerabilities; to set a master password; and to restore the state of all windows after crashes.
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China's Cyber-Militia
We have discussed China's actions on numerous occasions over the years. The news in this report is the suggestion that Chinese cyber-attakers may have been involved in major power outages in the US. "Computer hackers in China, including those working on behalf of the Chinese government and military, have penetrated deeply into the information systems of US companies and government agencies, stolen proprietary information from American executives in advance of their business meetings in China, and, in a few cases, gained access to electric power plants in the United States, possibly triggering two recent and widespread blackouts in Florida and the Northeast, according to US government officials and computer-security experts..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Havok Releases Free Version For PC Developers
An anonymous reader writes "Havok has released the free version of its widely-used physics and animation engine (but without source code), including tools that integrate with Autodesk 3ds Max and Maya. Developers may use Havok for free for non-commercial games, middleware, and academic projects.
MagLev, Ruby VM On Gemstone OODB, Wows RailsConf
The Gemstone OODB also takes care of any distribution, allowing the Ruby VM and data to scale across many servers (Cheerio, memcached!). There's also an earlier quite technical interview with Gemstone's Bob Walker and Avi Bryant about MagLev."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Color Conversion
Package: Color Conversion Summary: Convert color values between different models Groups: Conversion, Graphics, PHP 5 Author: Nathan Lucas Description: This class can be used to convert color values between different color models. Currently it can convert colors between the models RGB, HSV, HSL and hexadecimal RGB codes used in HTML.
Moving Between Countries?
An anonymous reader writes "In 6 months time, I am packing up and moving from Australia (Melbourne) to Canada (Vancouver). I'm a qualified network engineer. What I want to know is, what sort of quirks and tricks I am going to have to get used to in the Canadian job market?