1. US computer and video game software sales grew six percent in 2006 to $7.4 billion – almost tripling industry software sales since 1996.

2. Sixty-nine percent of American heads of households play computer and video games.

3. The average game player is 33 years old and has been playing games for 12 years.

4. The average age of the most frequent game buyer is 40 years old. In 2006, 93 percent of computer game buyers and 83 percent of console game buyers were over the age of 18.

5. Eighty-five percent of all games sold in 2005 were rated “E” for Everyone, “T” for Teen, or “E10+” for Everyone 10+. For more information on ratings, please see www.esrb.org.

6. Eighty-seven percent of game players under the age of 18 report that they get their parents’ permission when renting or buying games, and 89 percent say their parents are present when they buy games.

7. Thirty-five percent of American parents say they play computer and video games. Further, 80 percent of gamer parents say they play video games with their kids. Sixty-six percent feel that playing games has brought their families closer together.

8. Thirty-eight percent of all game players are women. In fact, women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (30%) than boys age 17 or younger (23%).

9. In 2005, 25 percent of Americans over the age of 50 played video games, an increase from nine percent in 1999.

10. Forty-four percent of game players say they play games online one or more hours per week. In addition, 32 percent of heads of households play games on a wireless device, such as a cell phone or PDA, up from 20 percent in 2002.

May 8th, 2019My life without Google

How much did I use Google? Apparently a lot more often than even I could speculate. For the last two weeks, I’ve had google.com blocked at both work and home. The amount of data they’re gathering on me is frightening. Not because of Google, but because I’m positive the government will legislate their way into Google’s database sooner or later and start labeling people as suspicious. Political paranoia aside, let us look at the fact here; Life on the internet without using Google is hard.

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May 5th, 2019Whats new?

The Javascript Programming Language

“Excellent presentation and great insight on the history and basics. Douglas rocks, yahoo is real lucky to have him!”

The $25,000,000,000 Eigenvector: The Linear Algebra Behind Google

An undergraduate-oriented explanation of the beautiful and simple linear algebra that lies behind an important facet of Google’s PageRank algorithm. The page has some demo code.

Basics of Compiler Design

“I have taught an undergraduate compilers course for over a decade. In the last several years, I have used my own textbook “Basics of Compiler Design”. I have now decided to make this available online.”

Dell’s Ubuntu PCs won’t include Windows emulation

Dell does not plan to include software such as Wine, which lets users run Windows programs on Linux, with its PCs that will soon be preloaded Ubuntu Linux. “I do not want to position Ubuntu and Linux as a cheap alternative to Windows,” Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth told eWEEK.com.

Absolutely HUGE List of Color Related Sites!

Someone put together a list of just about every color related resource (worth mentioning) in the known universe. Designers rejoice!

Vista draining laptop batteries, patience

Some of Microsoft’s most important customers aren’t happy with the battery life offered by notebooks running Windows Vista.

Ubuntu Posters for your wall or office door!

Want to show off your Ubuntu pride? Want to help spread awareness there is such a thing as Ubuntu? Or do you just want to decorate your own room? Perhaps one of these community-produced posters are just what you need. Twice the size of the last run, shipped anywhere around the world. You can throw in a few laptop stickers/case badges as well.

Getting Skewed Perspective Screenshots With Photoshop

Dave Shea has an excellent tutorial over on Mezzoblue that shows how to spice up your screenshots by giving them some perspective and a touch of focal blur.

May 5th, 2019Google Calendar

Many people schedule their day on the fly, and are often away from their computers when they need to run to their next event. With Google Calendar, you don’t have to be online to be alerted about upcoming events—all you need is a mobile phone. Now you can set up mobile SMS (text message) reminders that will be sent to your mobile phone.

Read more at Official Google Blog: Calendar on the go

by: Igor Pankov

Introduction

The Internet is becoming a more and more dangerous place to be, due in no small part to the inherent security risks posed by viruses and spyware. Additionally, applications that access the Internet as part of their normal operations may have errors in their code that allows hackers to launch attacks against the computer on which those applications are running. The safety and integrity of digital assets is further compromised by the fast-growing threat of cybercrooks who devise and implement large-scale hoaxes such as phishing and ID theft.

In the light of all this, it’s clear that users need a reliable and secure web browser between them and the Internet, which will be free of these problems and won’t let harmful content invade the computer.

The web browser industry continues to be dominated by the Windows-bundled Internet Explorer, with an 85% market share, but in recent years a new breed of free, more functional and resilient browsers has appeared – the most popular being Mozilla/Firefox and Opera. All have received serious security upgrades to help protect against recent scares and safeguard users online.

Internet Explorer is at version 6.0, essentially the same product that was included with Windows XP in 2001. Eighteen months ago, the release of Windows XP Service Pack 2 substantially increased IE safety; however, it did not eliminate many of the loopholes exploited by hostile program code. At present, Firefox is at version 1.5, but its very different development history (see next section) means that it can be considered at a similar level of maturity as Internet Explorer.

Currently, Microsoft is preparing its next-generation browser, Internet Explorer 7.0, which it plans to introduce sometime during the first half of 2006. The company has stated that it intends to make the browser stronger and more secure to help protect its users against the many problems that have dogged the software over the years.

We, along with Internet users everywhere, await the final results with interest. In the meantime, we decided to undertake our own security evaluation of both IE 7 (beta) and its closest rival, Firefox 1.5.

History and overview

Internet Explorer is a proprietary graphical web browser developed by Microsoft. In 1995, the company licensed the commercial version of Internet Explorer 3.0 from Spyglass Mosaic and integrated the program into its Windows 95 OSR1 edition. Later, it included IE4 as the default browser in Windows 98 – a move which continues to raise many antitrust questions.

Firefox is an open-source browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation; anyone who is proficient enough can collaborate in writing and improving its program code. Mozilla is known for its stringent approach to security, promising a bounty of several thousand dollars for any major vulnerability found in the product.

Security incidents and threat response

While no browser is perfect, major security lapses happened rather more frequently with IE than with Firefox. To be fair, Firefox has less than a 10% market share and is thus a rather less enticing target than IE; that’s probably also why security researchers focus much of their attention on the vulnerabilities of Microsoft’s browser, not Firefox’s. Some people have argued that if the market shares were reversed, bugs in Firefox would start appearing on a more frequent basis, as has recently been the case with Internet Explorer.

The open-source architecture of Firefox contributes to the overall safety of the browser; a community of skilled programmers can spot problems more quickly and correct them before a new release is available for general use. It’s been said that threat response time for Firefox averages one week, while it may take months for Microsoft engineers to fix critical bugs reported by security analysts – an unacceptable situation for users who remain unnecessarily vulnerable to exploits (hacker attacks) during that time.

>From the threat response standpoint, Firefox is clearly the winner.

Security features

Phishing safeguard

New protection against financial fraud and identity theft has been incorporated into the new IE. A so-called “phishing filter” now appears on the Internet Options menu, which is intended to protect users against unknowingly disclosing private information to unauthorized third parties. Here’s how it works:

If a user visits a spoofed site which looks exactly like a genuine one – usually as a result of clicking on a link in a fraudulent email - the browser senses a phishing attempt and compares the site against a list of known phishing sites. If the filter finds the site is a phishing culprit, it blocks access to the site and informs the user of the danger of leaving his/her personal details on sites like this. The database of known phishing sites is updated regularly, and users have an option to report a suspected phishing instant to Microsoft for evaluation.

We’re pleased to report that, even in beta, the filter appears to work quite well, correctly identifying half of the test sites we visited as phishing sites.

In Firefox, phishing protection is delivered through third-party extensions such as Google Safe Browsing (currently in beta for US-based users only (see http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/safebrowsing/index.html); this can be plugged into the browser’s extension menu.

As additional protection against accidental phishing, the authors of IE have stated that they plan to make their product display the URL of every visited site. With IE 6, this capability was not available and many pop-ups appeared without displaying an address in the previously non-existent address bar. Unfortunately, in neither browser were we were able to achieve more than a fifty percent URL display ratio; we trust that this percentage will increase as the release of IE 7 approaches and Mozilla continues to work on improving its functionality in this area.

Restriction of executable Web content

In the current version of IE, suspect websites have been free to install almost any software they want on visitors’ machines. While XP SP2 has dramatically reduced this possibility, many unnecessary add-ons and toolbars can still be easily installed by inexperienced users. IE 7 should provide more protection for naïve users, as it will offer to run in protected mode, thus restricting access to the host OS files and settings and making these critical elements of the computer inaccessible to malware.

The default setting for Firefox 1.5 is to have installation of extensions and add-ons disabled; the user must manually change settings in order to enable adding extensions to the browser.

There will always be a tradeoff between security and functionality, but security experts always maintained that letting websites unrestrictedly launch executable code within the browser creates unlimited potential for exploitation. IE 7 will offer much greater flexibility in configuring which external code will be permitted to run within the browser and what impact it would have on the OS.

ActiveX restrictions

Aside from some graphics enhancement of web pages, in most cases ActiveX is more damaging than beneficial. Many sites that serve up spyware and pop-up ads use ActiveX scripting technology, and ActiveX scripting in the Windows environment can be allowed to run unrestrictedly with administrator (root) privileges. Firefox 1.5 does not support Microsoft’s proprietary ActiveX technology and so the Firefox browser is more resilient against spyware infection.

In IE6, even with SP2, ActiveX is allowed to run by default, which automatically renders IE users less protected against the threat of spyware. In the upcoming IE 7, it is not yet known whether Microsoft will continue this approach, but early indications point to this being the case. This would be unfortunate, since the current approach is a clear security vulnerability.

Of course, IE users can manually disable ActiveX scripting on a particular website and let ActiveX be started automatically on all other sites visited. Or, vice versa, they can disable ActiveX scripting on most of the sites visited and permit it to run on a particular site. All this can be configured under the Security tab in IE’s Options menu. However, it is hardly realistic to expect Internet novices, who need the most protection, to do this.

Java, JavaScript and Visual Basic components

Java and JavaScript can be enabled and disabled by both browsers. Firefox allows users to specify permissions for particular actions performed by these scripts. IE 6 allows users to create a group of trusted sites to which global limitations on these scripts will not apply. In IE 7, more flexibility will be added that will lead users toward a more customized display of web pages belonging to a particular site; it appears Firefox also plans to introduce more flexible parameters.

Internal download manager

IE 7’s download manager will be revamped, and feature an option to pause and resume downloads - a feature not available with the current version. Specific actions will be able to be defined following the completion of a download, and users can check the newly-downloaded file with their anti-virus before running it. This approach is already in place with Firefox, so Microsoft appears to be playing catch-up here.

Encryption of data on protected sites

When you submit sensitive information, such as transaction details to a bank or financial institution, it travels in an encrypted form through a secure HTTP (SHTTP) connection. The information is encrypted by your browser and decrypted at the receiving end. The new version of IE will use stronger encryption algorithms to reliably transfer your data without the risk of being intercepted and deciphered by someone in transit. A padlock icon indicating that a user is on a secure site will be placed in a more obvious place than currently, and more detailed information will be provided to help visitors check the authenticity of such sites.

Firefox currently has a better-organized display of security certificates for its users, so clearly Microsoft has a room for improvement.

Updating

Both browsers are updated automatically when new code is ready. Firefox has this update mechanism already in place, and for IE 7, it is expected that updates will be provided through Windows update technology.

Privacy enhancements

IE 7 will have the ability for users to flexibly set what private data will be saved and can be applied to different sites; users will be able to easily remove browsing history and other private details such as passwords, cookies, details submitted on web forms, download history, and temporary files. In IE 6, these files were stored all over the place and users have complained that there is no clear way to delete this information. Firefox 1.5 already provides this capability.

Conclusion

IE 7 promises a lot of interesting security and privacy enhancements that will help users stay more secure. With the final release users will receive a good, solid browser that, if Microsoft promises are fulfilled, will help it to compete well on the security front. As we have seen, Firefox 1.5 is already a role model, and it will be interesting to see what lies ahead for this talented challenger.

Quoting our favorite source of “people familiar with the situation,” the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) claims that executives at Microsoft and Yahoo are in early-stage discussions about merging the two companies to take on Google. Investors seem to be taking this seriously, as Yahoo shares surged in overseas trading because of this news. The company’s market value is now close to $38 billion up from $32 billion earlier this week. So if you want to quantify this rumor, there you have it: the world thinks its worth $6 billion dollars.

Read More: Yahoo to join Microsoft?

Pligg had released beta version 9.5, our last installment of the beta series for Pligg.
Between this release and the next there will be additional optimizations performed and some final tweaking and bugfixes added.
We love open source Stuff, and internet or blog tools, and we always welcome new release, and like always we’ll do the best to inform you about anything new that appearing.

Pligg, for those who’s not familiar with is unique compared to most other content management systems because of its flexibility. A web designer can do pretty much anything with Pligg because the software was designed to be used in as many ways as possible. Not only can a person with very little knowledge of PHP and MySQL install it, but they can modify and administer it with relatively little difficulty. For those who have a greater understanding of web languages, Pligg can act as the first step in a highly customized personal content management system.

Google and four U.S. states have partnered to improve the amount of data Google indexes from their Web sites and makes available to users of its search engine.

Google has provided free training and advise to webmasters from the states of California, Utah, Arizona, and Virginia regarding topics like the creation of site maps and the use of Google’s Custom Search Engine service, the company and the states will announce Monday.

Although the improved sites were well architected, their webmasters hadn’t focused much on optimizing them for search engines like Google’s, said J.L. Needham, Google’s manager of public sector content partnerships. “These people have search religion. Their site search tools are well designed, but they lack awareness of the site as a search engine target,” Needham said.

Publishers of commercial Web sites are more aware of search engine optimization, because they generate revenue from online advertising and it’s in their best interest to get good placement in search engine results. Not so with government Web sites, Needham said. Consequently, Google believes there are many public pages from government Web sites missing from its index and in general from the indexes of other search engines. This has led to the creation of a mini-industry around the online sale of public government information, data that instead should be easily and freely accessible via search engines and government sites, Needham said,

The four participating states generally chose to prioritize optimizing Web sites with information they consider to be particularly useful to end users, like information about education, jobs and health.

For example, Arizona’s initial picks include sites with information about licensed child care centers and nursing homes, state jobs, licensed real estate agents and building contractors. “We’re very impressed with the early results of this partnership. The citizens of our state will have access to more state government information that’s more relevant to their daily lives,” said Chris Cummiskey, Arizona’s chief information officer.

Cummiskey expects to add more state agencies to the effort, and that the knowledge will also trickle down to webmasters in counties and cities. “The cornerstone of this is increasing accessibility of Web information to the public and knocking down barriers that exist [between our sites] and the commercial search engines,” Cummiskey said.

Along with Monday’s announcement, Google will set up a site with information on how webmasters from the public sector can optimize their sites so that more information can be indexed by search engines. Google hopes more public sector webmasters will join this program.

A site map is a file that webmasters put on their sites to help the search engines’ automated Web crawlers properly index Web pages. Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are backing a common protocol to provide a standard format for site maps. Google’s Custom Search Engine lets publishers put a search box on their sites that only returns results from specific sites, as opposed to including results from Google’s entire Web index.

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Saved From http://compsci.ca/blog/6-degrees-of-computer-science/

A common confusion among high school seniors interested in computers has to do with too many, often similar, options available for pursuit in higher education. What is the difference between Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, and why is neither the same as obtaining a Computer Science degree? I have put together a graph of programs related to computer science education. Ultimately either will allow for a computer career such as a programmer, but each option also offers a unique flavour. It is essential to pick out where one fits best on this academic gradient, in order to ensure the best University experience.

Computer Science degree choices

Computer Science

The most familiar name, Computer Science is the pillar degree of the IT world. Available with a plethora of options and minors, there’s an aura of customizability around this major, but such difficult choices are usually not required until the 2nd year of study.

Computer Science is recognized as an independent discipline with an inherently mathematical nature. Its activity ranges from theoretical areas such as the theory of automata, system organization and logic design, formal languages and computability theory to applied areas such as scientific computing, programming languages, bioinformatics, software management, and computer systems.

This is where one gets to design algorithms, mathematically figure out their efficiencies, and actually gets to write out code to implement the said algorithms in practice. For those who enjoy figuring out just how the code works, and generally code monkey around - this should be the program of choice.

Software Engineering

Probably the closest program to Computer Science, this major will also fetch an Iron Ring for those graduating in Canada. If Computer Science is about writing code, then Software Engineering is thinking about writing the said code.

The technical requirements of these software engineers include a strong foundation in mathematics, natural sciences, and computer science; a broad education in software engineering and design; an understanding of computers and networks; a better appreciation for all aspects of the software engineering life cycle; and the use of methodologies and tools.

The curriculum requirements are not all technical. Industry is also asking for graduates who have facility across several disciplines. Software engineering graduates need to have substantial communications, business, and reasoning skills. Graduates should be able to work in groups; make presentations to technical and non-technical audiences; write coherent well-reasoned reports; and assess the social, technical, legal, and commercial implications of the technology they help to create.

Not quite the same level of involvement with the code. Software Engineering is more abstract, more “larger picture” focused. Lack of Pointer kung-foo is made up with non-technical skills such as communication and presentations. Management material education.

Computer Engineering

In many ways similar to Software Engineering, the Computer Engineering discipline deals with design of specialized type of software, and incorporates more hardware material into studies.

Computer Engineers apply algorithmic and digital design principles to design, build, and test computer software or hardware components used for information processing, communication, and storage – typically embedded in larger engineered systems and in distributed, networked environments. Application areas include communication, automation and robotics, power and energy, health care, business, security, entertainment, and many others.

For those lucky enough to have taken Computer Engineering in high school, this is it. Here you get to design your circuit board, and program it too! Lower level coding, but for actually physical gadgets. Pretty cool.

Electrical Engineering

A yet lower level approach, Electrical Engineering would be most similar to Computer Engineering, but with a heavier focus on hardware than software components of study.

Electrical Engineers apply electronic and electromagnetic/optical design principles to design, build, and test analog or digital devices, circuits, and systems – for processing, communication, and storage of information; distribution, conversion, and storage of energy; and process automation or robotics. Application areas include communication, manufacturing, power and energy, health care, computing, security, entertainment, and many others.

Someone has to push those electrons faster! Hardware level optimization really pushes the limits of critical systems, and for some this low level computing is where it’s at. A typical EE program still includes enough programming courses and is a similar enough discipline to allow one to write software.

Mechatronics Engineering

Mechatronics Engineering is an interesting program as it tries to integrate every other discipline from the above chart. Described as a mix of Software, Hardware, Mechanical parts, and lots of Math, there was still room to include a couple of programming courses into the program’s schedule. At the expense of elective courses.

Mechatronics engineering is an integrated approach to the design of computer controlled electro-mechanical systems. Mechatronic applications are pervasive in our everyday lives, so much so that we often take them for granted. Familiar examples of mechatronic systems include automotive anti-lock braking systems (ABS), SLR cameras, and aerospace “fly-by-wire” systems. These mechatronic designs are much more than simply the addition of a microcontroller to an existing mechanical system – their complete and properly integrated redesign is what makes them successful. An integrated design philosophy has been incorporated into the development of this program.

The broad scope will likely be appealing for those interested in picking up on a lot of new and varying material. Very management material course, as the education promises a middle ground that will unite all the other disciplines that are deemed to be unable to communicate well with each other.

After completing a year of Mechatronics Engineering, I have decided that I am much more interested in just the code and programming part, so now I’m in pursuit of a Computer Science degree instead.

Math / Physics

There’s also an option to ditch the computers all together, and pursue the pure logic, theory, and problem solving with the underlying Math. Computer Science is inherently mathematical in nature, and to some there is an appeal in this direction of problem solving by numbers, theory, and without limitations and bounds of programming languages.

Applied Mathematics is motivated mathematics, or mathematics to a purpose. It reflects the belief that there exists a basic order and harmony in the universe which may be described by the logical structures of mathematics. Thus, it is no coincidence that some of the greatest mathematicians of the past were also interested in engineering and physics.

A major in Physics also offers a similar level of fulfillment, though with a slightly different focus. Obviously either choice offers a minor in Computer Science to fine-tune the desired dose of exposure to actual programming.

In Conclusion…

Minors and options provide a fine gradient of choice between related programs. An undergraduate degree is a 4 or 5 year pursuit, so it’s best to consider all of the available options and excel in a field of interest and passion for the subject.

phdcomics.com : choosing grad school
So what are you interested in?

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