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Welcome! In all likelihood, you have come to this site to find out more about the exciting field of computing. The goal of this web site is to provide additional details that will help you prepare for a career in this area. In particular, we hope this site can help you decide how to develop the skills you need to be successful in a computing career - a journey that ordinarily begins with an undergraduate degree in a computing-related discipline. To find out more about the world of computing, click on the links at the left of this page.

How Facebook fixed the site: they turned it off and on again. Literally An unusual database problem at the giant social networking site could only be cured by taking the sort of action you normally take with a misbehaving PC

Jeff Atwood, co-founder of question-and-answer site Stack Exchange, has a huge list of 30 new pieces of programming jargon that have emerged on the question-and-answer site.

Last year we introduced HTTPS by default for Gmail and encrypted search. We're pleased to see that other major communications sites are following suit and deploying HTTPS in one form or another. We are now pushing forward by enabling forward secrecy by default. Most major sites supporting HTTPS operate in a non-forward secret fashion, which runs the risk of retrospective decryption. In other words, an encrypted, unreadable email could be recorded while being delivered to your computer today. In ten years time, when computers are much faster, an adversary could break the server private key and retrospectively decrypt today's email traffic.

Last week Doug Peterson pointed me to an article called "Let's not call it computer science if we really mean computer programming." My initial reaction was "Let's not call it computer programming if we really mean software engineering."  Really the author was talking more about the difference between CS and SE than much else.The ACM has a great Computing Careers web site which lists a number of computing fields and degrees. I recommend this series to teachers and guidance councilors all the time. They list five different degree paths:

Last week Doug Peterson pointed me to an article called "Let's not call it computer science if we really mean computer programming." My initial reaction was "Let's not call it computer programming if we really mean software engineering."  Really the author was talking more about the difference between CS and SE than much else.The ACM has a great Computing Careers web site which lists a number of computing fields and degrees. I recommend this series to teachers and guidance councilors all the time. They list five different degree paths:

The FBI is investigating an incident where pictures of teen girls were taken from Facebook and placed on a pornographic website. The victim's ages range from 14-17 years old.

There are a number of HTML5 testing sites (like HTML5TEST), but this one has an interesting way of grouping key features into Rings. Ring 0 is not too difficult to reach, but there are very few browsers that go beyond Ring 0 these days.

Welcome to the 2nd Edition of Learn Python the hard way. You can visit the companion site to the book at http://learnpythonthehardway.org/ where you can purchase digital downloads and paper versions of the book. The free HTML version of the book is available at http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/

In springtime, people's fancies may turn to love, but their to-do list turns to cleaning. Make this the year that you finally recycle all the ancient MP3 players, toner cartridges, ethernet cables, and bulky monitors out of the closets, garages, and spare rooms where they've been lurking. Your home will feel more modern, and you'll be doing your part to boost the 27 percent electronics recycling rate. Just in time for another spring constant, Earth Day. Before you get rid of any of your electronics The first step on your recycling journey: Make sure that none of your personal data will be leaving the house along with your soon-to-be-discarded electronics. If you're using Apple's iTunes to manage your digital music and video, be sure you deauthorize any device you're recycling. "But that computer is dead" is no excuse: Apple expects you to simply deauthorize all your devices via the iTunes app, then reauthorize the ones that are still alive If you're recycling a smartphone, do a complete reset of your phone to wipe out its data and restore it to its factory settings. Before you do this, however, make sure that you've got your data backed up someplace else If you're recycling a computer or a hard drive, don't just assume that deleting files will wipe the data off your system, because it won't. All it does is reformat the space on the drive, and the data can be snagged using tools designed for disaster recovery. Now, on to recycling Broadly speaking, you have three recycling options: You can drop off your unwanted stuff in person somewhere; you can ship it away; or you can donate it to a willing organization. Drop it off in person. The advantage to dropping off your gear is that you don't need to really plan ahead and print out prepaid labels (as you would if you were shipping things away); you just toss your stuff in the car and go Another option that's cropping up across the U.S. is the electronics recyc

There's nothing you can do if hackers get into a database with your password in it, but you can still protect yourself for all the other worst-case scenarios involving hacking. First, don't make it easy on hackers by choosing a common password. Splashdata uses security breaches to gather 'most popular passwords' lists each year. The word 'password', number sequences, and other simplistic phrases or numbers fill the top spots. Also, don't use your name, a password related to another one you might have on a different site, or a login name. Instead, experts recommend using 15 characters, upper-case letters, better yet nonsensical words with special characters and numbers inside them. By-The Xpert Crew @ http://techvedic.com

E-commerce, gaming, and social networking sites are grabbing the maximum attention, where you knowingly, or sometimes even unknowingly submit your personal information. And, Internet perpetrators are taking advantage of the pervasive Internet, people's growing dependencies on the Web, and addiction thereof. Thus, what you share on the Web, and with whom you share is an area of concern.

Soaring mobile Internet penetration has given new success dimension to the social network usage. Facebook, has recently reviled that 488 million users regularly use Facebook mobile, and a leading digital media firm Socialnomics has admitted that 23 percent of Facebook's users check their account 5 or more times daily. But a sad news is that, taking clues of the popularity, Internet attackers have targeted 54% of Social Networking Customers, claimed Barracuda Networks, a web security company.

Michael Bluejay's Saving Electricity site reveals that powering a desktop PC with a 17-inch LCD, 8 hours a day, 20 days a month costs about $35 a year. It also claims that computers and electronics consume nearly 10 percent (in some cases below) of the average energy bill. Hence, you should take considerable approach to reduce the PC's carbon footprint.

Yontoo Trojan, detected by noted security company Dr. Web is blamed for tracking the browsing behaviors across a range of popular browsers like Safari, Chrome, and Firefox. It may pretend as a media player, download manager, or other plug-in, thereby directing you to some maliciously crafted Web sites disguised as sources for file sharing and movie trailers.

After two phone interviews Google asked me to visit London and have a whole day of chatting about technology and solving intricate coding puzzles. Just to see how good I am on a scale of 1 to Google.

A six-week App Inventor curriculum unit for an introductory CS course

This is the schedule for University of San Francisco's CS107-01, spring 2011. The schedule is subject to change, so please check back regularly.

Are you teaching Advanced Placement Computer Science? Are you looking for supplemental exercises that may help you students with the concepts? If so this announcement may be of interest to you. Pex for Fun has been around for a while offering coding duels in C#, F# and Visual Basic. Recently though it was decided to invest some time, money and effort to adapt some exercises specifically to help learn APCS concepts. Most students find the differences between Java and C# pretty minor at this level so most APCS students will find this doable even if they have only been taught Java previously.

As children are surrounded by technology more than ever, the way computers are taught will need to change. This was reflected in a recent government announcement by Michael Gove around reforming and updating the computer science curriculum.