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Some of the sweeping cultural changes affecting Microsoft are having an impact on the company's research arm, as well, says MSR chief Peter Lee. I could go with a cheap Sauron item here, but I'll just say, "Better together"
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Leavitt’s Hopscotch app for iPad is filled with cute, colorful characters and ways to train them to do things like move across the screen, change shape and draw, based on input like tapping or the sound of clapping. The product is open-ended — kids decide what they want to build and put it into action. Because using a keyboard to code is so last century
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It's still not "building something"
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Microsoft's latest Security Intelligence Report for the second half of 2013 sees Java and Flash as the top attack vectors, with Java being nearly the default. And they *know* vulnerable
Yes, they are MUCH better now than they were. No need for emails.
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Fortunately most people don't need java enabled in the browser. Much better than the situation a few years ago when flash was target #1 and avoiding flash on the web was extremely painful.
Edit: Page 21/22 (aka 13/14) in the MS PDF report has the exploit breakdown by type charts. For 2013, by vulnerabilities targeted it's ~73% java, 18% IE, and 9% flash. The breakdown by exploit used in observed attacks is even worse for Whoracle, with Java exploits growing from 60% of the total in Jan 2012 to >90% by mid year (All values are eyeball estimates.)
Interestingly the other major type of exploit seen in use in 2013 was adobe reader which wasn't listed in the other chart for 2013. I'm guessing that means the first chart is counting vulnerabilities by year of discovery and that the exploits targeted at reader last year used vulnerabilities found in 2012 or earlier. The combination of people getting around to updating their copies of acrobat and/or their browser using pdf.js to show pdfs probably also contributed to it withering as an employed exploit.
Longer term I'm curious how long Java will remain the exploit target king. It's not something that 99% of users need installed in their browser; as people gradually remove it or have it removed for them (when they talk us into fixing their computer) its attractiveness as a target for attack should go down.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Dan Neely wrote: Longer term I'm curious how long Java will remain the exploit target king. It's not something that 99% of users need installed in their browser; as people gradually remove it or have it removed for them (when they talk us into fixing their computer) its attractiveness as a target for attack should go down.
Good point. This is one of the 'fixes' I tend to do when I get stuck with a relative's computer. Most of them have Java installed either because of something they ran years ago, or because it was installed with something else (Oh, I hate installers that do that).
I still seem to get dinged when I uninstall Flash, but maybe it's just my Kongregate addition.
TTFN - Kent
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I occasionally turned flash block on to see what'd happen. HTML5 hasn't killed enough old video players off to make disabling it viable yet.
Hmmmm, probably time to check again; IIRC my last trial was at the end of last year.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Looking through the rest of the document (page 43/35), the most widely used windows exploit for most of 2013 was one found in 2010. The second most used one was found in 2011. A patched computer would've been immune to these for several years. 
The infection rate per OS version table (p65/57) is surprising. it only shows 2013Q3 vs 2013Q4. The Q3 numbers are about what would be expected with Vista/Win7 being infected at half the rate of XP, and W8 being infected at 1/4 the rate. Q4 shows a huge jump in infection detection rates for all OS versions; but the new exploits that hammered systems then had a much smaller impact level on XP than newer versions of windows; with only Win8 having a lower infection rate as a result. I'm a bit surprised by this; I'd've expected it'd be longer before XP became rare enough to be a less popular malware target. Part of the reason for the q4 spike this was that researchers found a bit of malware that'd found a new way to hide for a while, and a piece of crapware that'd been around for 2 years but was just useless (and thus ignored by AV scanners until then) decloaked and started installing malware.
Spam volumes have still not recovered from from a few massive takedowns in 2010/2011 (p85/77). Exchange Online only had to eat 3 out of every 4 messages it recieved in 2013h2 vs 32 of 33 in 2010.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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The Visual Studio Image Library contains application images that appear in Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Windows, the Office system and other Microsoft software. The libraries for both Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio 2013 are available and each library contains over 5,000 images which can be used to create applications that look visually consistent with Microsoft software. Now your application can look flat and (mostly) colourless too!
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Awesome! 
/ravi
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Ah, and I had even put a bit in the last Daily News about it: Shane, Bob, and I went off for a bit of a rehab. We're back (mostly recharged and uninjured), at least until Chris decides we're too much of a bother.
TTFN - Kent
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Forensic experts have long been able to match a series of prints to the hand that left them, or a bullet to the gun that fired it. Now, the same thing is being done with the photos taken by digital cameras, and is ushering in a new era of digital crime fighting. Sounds real accurate: "...researchers were able to match a photo with a specific person 56 per cent of the time..."
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What's really sad about this article is that they tested
the pictures from only 10 people, not a very representative
sample size. 
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The worse thing is that the method will be applied, regardless how bad it is, and ... bad luck for you once you were wrongly identified.
Remember that ten-year old boy who was suspected (based on a DNA analysis) to have been involved in an IRA attack several years before he was born? Or the "phantom" who was involved in dozens of unrelated crimes throughout Germany and Austria (who eventually was identified as a staff member of the company providing the DNA tests)?
Greetings from Kafka.
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Hmm, seems like a place where technology can be used to anonymize pictures to prevent such matching.
I feel an app coming on...
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.-John Q. Adams
You must accept one of two basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not alone in the universe. And either way, the implications are staggering.-Wernher von Braun
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.-Albert Einstein
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Japan and car manufacturing are pretty much synonymous with robots. Some of the most advanced and practical bots hail from the former and work in the latter.
It may, therefore, surprise you to learn Japanese carmaker, Toyota, is flipping the equation by replacing robots with humans to boost efficiency. Lineups at the local Robo Food Bank are expected to triple.
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China has been infamous for producing bad knock-offs of Western tech in recent years - from poor smartphone imitations to fake Apple stores and everything in-between.
However, Cambridge-based chip designer ARM reckons the tide is turning, with many China-based tech companies looking to differentiate from Western products by focusing on innovation and meeting the needs of the region's vast consumer base. We'll miss you China!
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The internet will have nearly 3 billion users, about 40 percent of the world's population, by the end of 2014, according to a new report from the United Nations International Telecommunications Union. Two-thirds of those users will be in developing countries. I guess people really like the Internet or something.
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That's like a world population of 7.5 billion people.
Better start crankin' out more iPhones, iPods and Androids, people!
IPv8, here we come!
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An article in The Wall Street Journal this week quoted executives from antivirus pioneer Symantec uttering words that would have been industry heresy a few years ago, declaring antivirus software “dead” and stating that the company is focusing on developing technologies that attack online threats from a different angle. Global champagne shortage as Black Hats everywhere begin "poppin' bottles".
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More companies are collecting more internal and external data than ever before, increasing the need for tech pros capable of wielding powerful analytics tools. Big Data, Big Data everywhere!
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Curious, what would you guys suggest for a new kid who loves technology but doesn't have an overwhelming programming fetish to aim for?
We have a couple interns starting in a week or two and from the interviews, they seem pretty sharp. I was thinking DBA.
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It seems to me that a big problem with big data is the high barrier to entry - there just aren't many large data sets available for learners to use to find their mojo. The low cost of entry for programming, by contrast, means there is always a large cadre of new entrants.
What open data sets exist are typically on the model of running queries to extract data then perform the analytics on your side of the wire.
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Incidentally, in he UK at the moment there is huge controversy about the use of the NHS medical data - an absolutely huge source of data on pretty much every citizen in the UK. This data could be hugely useful to companies looking for diagnostic correlation that require a data set too big for clinical trial, but there are (obviously) major concerns about personal identifiable information and how to trust third parties with that data.
If, instead, the government kept the data closed but allowed people to write and submit Map-Reduce style queries then (a) the data threat is reduced and (b) that huge Big-Data resource could be used by universities to train the next generation of IT people. I believe this is already how things are done in Wales?
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