A Threat to Your Career: Combating Certification Fraud

A Threat to Your Career: Combating Certification Fraud

There is a problem in the IT certification business. It affects all of us in the industry: hardware and software companies that sponsor certification programs, IT professionals who seek certification to validate their skills and employers who use certifications to identify qualified workers.

Yet this problem is the elephant in the room that everyone knows is there, but no one wants to acknowledge. What is it?

It’s certification fraud.

When people cheat to obtain IT credentials, the value of certification is diminished for everyone. Fraud destroys the trust employers and individuals have in brand-name certifications that are the foundation of the IT profession. Rumors of cheating lead to doubt about the qualifications of all people who hold credentials.

Employers no longer can assume that candidates can do a job, even if their certifications indicate they should have the requisite knowledge and...

One million bank accounts going, going, gone for £35 on eBay

One million bank accounts going, going, gone for £35 on eBay

When Andrew Chapman from Oxford, England successfully bid £35 for an old computer on eBay he wasn't expecting to have the details of a million bank accounts thrown in for free...Sometimes it seems like hardly a day goes past without news breaking of the staggering incompetence of both government and big business to protect the data being held about us. And so it should not really have come as any surprise to discover over the Bank Holiday weekend in the United Kingdom that yet another data protection fiasco has blundered its way into the spotlight. This time it is the not so small matter of an old computer that sold on eBay for the princely sum of just UKP £35.

The full story can be found at ITWire.com.

Microsoft granted Page Up Page Down patent

Microsoft granted Page Up Page Down patent

If patenting the obvious is considered something of an art form in the world of IT, then Microsoft is undoubtedly an old master. The Page Up Page Down patent it has been granted would seem to confirm this...

US Patent 7,415,666 goes under the snappy title of: "Method and system for navigating paginated content in page-based increments" and is the latest to be granted to that serial patent application junkie better known as Microsoft.

Anyone who has ever looked at technology patents will know that there is a trick to quickly scanning these application titles in order to weed out the genuine ones from those that are, to be fair, just attempting to patent something that already exists.

So what could a method of navigating paginated content, or stuff on the page, using page-based increments possibly refer to? Ding! Of course, the PgUp and PgDn keys.

Read whole story...

Red Hat fesses up to Fedora FOSS security fiasco

Red Hat fesses up to Fedora FOSS security fiasco

A week or so ago, end users of the Linux-based Red Hat Fedora OS were warned to avoid downloading packages due to an "issue in the infrastructure systems" which waved big red flags suggesting a security breach to many industry observers. Now Fedora has admitted Red Hat OpenSSH packages were compromised by two separate server intrusions...

It all started with a highly cryptic Fedora-Announce mailing list posting which stated that "The Fedora Infrastructure team is currently investigating an issue in the infrastructure systems. That process may result in service outages, for which we apologize in advance."

Fair enough, that kind of thing happens, apology accepted. What was less acceptable was the bit which went on to say that "We’re still assessing the end-user impact of the situation, but as a precaution, we recommend you not download or update any additional packages on your Fedora systems."
Now,...

Certification at the Entry Level

Certification at the Entry Level

...a hiring manager could use a CCNA or CCNP entry on a resume as an indicator of time, experience and knowledge. The CCNA candidate most likely had three to five years in the business, whereas the CCNP was a more senior person. A casual glance through CompTIA’s Web site shows what it expects of candidates before they even attempt an exam — 18-24 months of experience before attempting Security +, for example.

But the new reality is that certifications are sometimes used as a shortcut to a career. While a person working in academia, for example, must follow a specified, inescapable series of steps to progress to title and glory, an IT worker need only take the appropriate certification exam and a credential declaring knowledge and skill is awarded. This, of course, has had an entirely predictable outcome: Businesses and hiring managers have begun looking past the credential toward the experience and educational...

Man buys $1,000 worth of iPhone pixels by accident

Man buys $1,000 worth of iPhone pixels by accident

An American man has accidentally spent $999.99 on an iPhone app that does nothing but display a glowing red ruby.

Dubbed "I Am Rich," the app is meant as a status symbol for the wealthy. But in reality, it's a scarlet letter for the gullible.

As reported by our friends at Valleywag, a Jesus Phone user known only as Lee5279xx spilled $1,000 on some red pixels because he was addled enough to think Steve Jobs has a sense of humor.

"I saw this app with a few friends and we jokingly clicked 'buy,' thinking it was a joke, to see what would happen," he says, recalling his ill-fated encounter with the Apple iTunes App Store.

What happened was that when he clicked "buy," iTunes assumed he was interested in buying. "I forgot my wife had 'iclick' activated on my laptop, and it really bought this app for $999."

Read the whole story...

Actors paid to queue for Poland's iPhone launch

Actors paid to queue for Poland's iPhone launch

Mobile phone carrier Orange Poland admitted today that it hired actors to stand in line for the country's iPhone debut.

"It was a part of our marketing strategy, the concept was thought up at Orange Poland," the company told the Associated Press. "The aim was to 'warm up' the atmosphere around the launch of the iPhone."

Orange said they set up fake queues in front of about 20 stores around the country. Meanwhile, there were no lines outside of rival Era retail stores which also carry the iPhone in Poland according to several reports.

We assume it's mostly been honest-to-goodness Apple fanatics that queued up across the globe to pay tithe to the Jesus Phone. Apple certainly doesn't seem to have much trouble stirring hearts elsewhere into a froth of consumer zealotry without dipping into the local talent pool.

Read the whole story...

IT GCSE uptake falls again

IT GCSE uptake falls again

GCSE results for 2008 show uptake for the IT GCSE is in steady decline. Some 85,599 UK students sat the exam this year, compared with 99,656 in 2007.

Uptake in 2007 had already fallen from the previous year, with 109,601 students taking an IT GCSE in 2006. Around 25 per cent of students got a grade D in 2008 making it the most commonly awarded grade for the second year running.

Rob Chapman, CEO of IT training company Firebrand, believes there needs to be a shift in the way a career IT is perceived. "When you look at the skills gap and how IT is paid you would think students would realise that studying IT means they are likely to get a job and are likely to be paid well. There's also this perception that IT workers are fat, smelly, hairy, and wear sandals. People don't seem to realise that developing applications for Facebook is a job in IT."

Read the whole story...

Hacker 'proves' Olympic gymnasts underage

Hacker 'proves' Olympic gymnasts underage

A hacker has unearthed evidence that several of the Chinese gymnast team were underage, as suspected. The digital remains of deleted files were dug up revealing the real ages of the Chinese athletes that won gold ahead of the United States.

Search engine hacker Stryde Hax – earth name Mike Walker – found traces of the official registration documents in the translation cache of Chinese search engine Baidu. The files had been deleted by the authorities from the official site, and Google documents.

They stated that one of the women-child gymnasts, He Kexin, was only 14 this year, beneath the mandatory age for competing of 16, which must be reached during the Olympic year. Kexin also won individual gold on the uneven bars.

Read the whole story here.

Credit to Arroryn for the find

-Ken

Intel cuts electric cords with wireless power system

Intel cuts electric cords with wireless power system

Intel on Thursday showed off a wireless electric power system that analysts say could revolutionize modern life by freeing devices from transformers and wall outlets. Intel chief technology officer Justin Rattner demonstrated a Wireless Energy Resonant Link as he spoke at the California firm's annual developers forum in San Francisco. Electricity was sent wirelessly to a lamp on stage, lighting a 60 watt bulb that uses more power than a typical laptop computer. Most importantly, the electricity was transmitted without zapping anything or anyone that got between the sending and receiving units.

Does the next revolution begin now? Find out at news.yahoo.com.