The United States National Security Agency (NSA), an intelligence agency under the US Department of Defense, today announced a new program to "prime" college students for careers in "Cyber Ops." Called the National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations Program, it's the result of the President's National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education. The program's goal is "to ultimately yield a larger pool of professionals with expertise" in the protection of national cyberspace. The program will "identify institutions that offer a deeply technical, interdisciplinary curriculum centered on fields such as computer science, computer engineering, and electrical engineering." Additionally, it will offer selected students the opportunity to attend "cutting-edge summer seminars" at NSA. Participating schools will receive a "CAE-Cyber Operations" designation for five-year periods. The first four ... Continue reading →
Ethnologue is the comprehensive reference volume that catalogs all the known living languages in the world today. The Ethnologue has been an active research project for more than fifty years. Thousands of linguists and other researchers all over the world rely on and have contributed to the Ethnologue. It is widely regarded to be the most comprehensive listing of information of its kind. A new edition is published approximately every four years.Features6,909 language descriptions organized by continent and country 41,186 primary names, alternate names, and dialect names 208 color maps showing location and distribution of languages Unique three-letter identifier for each language from the International Standard ISO 639-3 Statistical summaries with numerical tabulations of living languages and number of speakers by continent, by language size, ... Continue reading →
For those that missed Sunday night’s episode of The Simpsons, there was a brilliant “couch gag” in the opening credits: the Simpson family animated by The Ren & Stimpy Show mastermind John Kricfalusi. The bit (above) was bizarre, awkward, weird (yes that’s Homer pouring a beer directly into his cranium), and wonderful. Basically, it’s all the [...] Texas governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry is floating the idea of invading Mexico. Too late: The U.S. military is already up to epaulets there. 10.03.11 From Danger Room The United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement on Saturday, an accord targeting intellectual property piracy. 10.03.11 From Threat Level Ten years ago this month, in a small-ish theater ... Continue reading →
Should we turn our kids into hackers? Photo: Jon Lim Carlos Bueno wants your 5-year-old to think like a programmer. By day, Bueno is a Facebook engineer. He helps hone software on the servers underpinning the world’s largest social network. But he moonlights as a children’s author. His first book is called Lauren Ipsum, and it’s a fairy tale that seeks to introduce children — as young as five or as old as 12 — to the concepts of computer science. But this isn’t done with code. It’s done with metaphors. In one scene, the titular character, Laurie Ipsum, teaches a mechanical turtle to draw a perfect circle using simple instructions in the form of a poem. “I wanted to write a book not on ... Continue reading →
