Does big data mean big risks for businesses? ? Tech News and ...

As big data becomes a potential game-changer for businesses, the security risks become even greater. Now that businesses have collected and stored all of this data, what are they going to do with it? How are they going to protect it? And most importantly, how are they going to use if safely and legitimately?

Users are increasingly alarmed by the amount of data being collected, with whom the data is being shared and how it is being used. Clearly, there needs to be better engagement among key stakeholders and joined-up thinking throughout organizations ? from the chief marketing officer to the IT department ? to develop guidelines and best practices for the usage, storage and transfer of data both inside and outside the business.

From the information security standpoint, the key issues surrounding big data tend to fall into the following five areas:

1. ?Cyber security:?With more transactions, conversations, interactions and data now online, there are greater incentives for cyber criminals than ever before. According to the Information Security Forum?s (ISF?s) January 2012 report, ?Cyber Security Strategies: Achieving Cyber Resilience,? today?s cyber criminals are better organized, more professional and have access to powerful tools and capabilities, which they use to identify, target and attack. When things go wrong, they can go wrong big time for an organization. It?s not the one-off data breaches or hacker attacks stories that hit the headlines, but those with far-reaching consequences that can mean reputational damage, legal liability and even financial ruin. Cyber resilience and preparedness strategies are crucial for big data.
2. Data in the cloud:?The pressure for businesses to quickly adopt and implement new technologies such as cloud services ? often to support big data?s challenging storage and processing needs ? comes with unforeseen risks and unintended consequences. Big data in the cloud is a highly attractive target for cyber criminals looking to harvest information. This places more demand on businesses to get their secure cloud sourcing strategy right.?
3. Consumerization:?Hand in hand with the growth of big data is the proliferation of new mobile devices, used to gather, store, access and transfer data. Businesses are now faced with the challenge of managing and securing employees? personal devices in the workplace and balancing the need for security with productivity. The volume of smartphone analytics and Web browsing details are the stuff of security nightmares, particularly when these are blended with both home and work data. Businesses should ensure that their employee acceptable usage policies are in place and continue to manage mobile devices in line with their established security policy.
4. Interconnected supply chains:?Organizations are part of often complex, global and interdependent supply chains, which can be their weakest link. Information is what binds supply chains together, ranging from simple mundane data, to trade or commercial secrets and intellectual property ? loss of which can lead to reputational damage and financial or legal penalties. There is a key role for information security in coordinating the contracting and provisioning of business relationships, including outsourcers, offshorers and supply chain and cloud providers.
5. Privacy:?As larger amounts of data are generated, stored and analyzed, privacy concerns will become an even bigger issue in the years to come. Start planning for new data protection requirements as soon as possible, while monitoring for further legislative and regulatory developments.

Data aggregation and big data analytics promise businesses a treasure trove of marketing intelligence. The ability to target customers based on the combination of past buying patterns, sentiment and previously ?private? preferences are the Holy Grail for marketers. But business leaders eager to adopt these new technologies for business benefit will be well advised to understand the legal and other restrictions that may apply across multiple jurisdictions. They should also implement privacy best practices and design them into the analytics programs, build in transparency and accountability, and never lose sight of big data?s effect on people, processes and technology.

It goes without saying that securing both the data inputs and big data outputs present a key challenge that can impact not just potential business campaigns and opportunities, but also have far reaching legal implications. The answer? Stay agile and ideally anticipate changes to regulation rather than being caught when they suddenly appear.

That being said, it is still early days and we have not yet seen a tremendous amount of external requirements mandating that businesses assure information integrity. However, the sheer scale of information processed by businesses remains on the increase and with big data analytics bringing business decisions closer and closer to raw data, the quality of information has become increasingly important. If the same sophisticated analysis can be applied to relevant security data, big data may even be used to improve information security.

While such solutions may not yet appear to be widespread, you can be assured they are well on the way with big data analytics already being used for fraud prevention, cyber security detection, social analysis and real-time multimodal surveillance.

Steve Durbin is global vice president of the Information Security Forum (ISF). His main areas of focus include the emerging security threat landscape, cyber security, consumerization and outsourced cloud security. Previously, he was senior vice president at Gartner.?

Image courtesy of?Flickr user?KellBailey.

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'Girls' Finale: Happily Ever After?

As the HBO series' first season comes to an end, we reflect on the girls' evolution.
By Amy Wilkinson

Lena Dunham in "Girls"
Photo:

One of our first glimpses of aspiring writer Hannah Horvath, the plucky protagonist of HBO's freshman series "Girls," was as she soaked in the bath, noshing on a cupcake as best friend and roommate Marnie shaved her legs and bemoaned her lackluster relationship with boyfriend Charlie. So it seems only fitting that our last look at Hannah during Sunday's season finale also involved a baked good and a body of water. But this time it was a solitary Hannah sitting on a Coney Island beach, finishing off a piece of tin-foil-wrapped wedding cake as she contemplated, well, what exactly, we don't know.

It was a season of highs and lows for each of the four females on "Girls," as a litany of breakups, make-ups, sexually-transmitted-disease diagnoses and employment snafus culminated in one girl's wedding, one girl's first time and one girl's heartbreak. Let's take a look at each character's evolution during season one.

Hannah
My chief complaint with Lena Dunham's Hannah as the series began was her incredible sense of entitlement: Her parents had been supporting her for the better part of two years as she toiled at an unpaid internship, and she expected nothing less from them. "I'm your only child, it's not like I'm draining your resources!" she huffed when mom and dad finally disavowed any financial responsibility for her. Yet it looked as though Hannah might redeem herself, landing a full-time gig after at least one incredibly awkward job interview (rape is never a work-appropriate topic of conversation, kids!). But it didn't last long as her boss was the grab-happy sort, and Hannah left, unsuccessfully trying to blackmail him for a sweet severance package on her way out. All of which left her Marnie's financial dependent — a status that ultimately ended their roommate relationship.

Hannah also struggled with relationships of the romantic variety, namely with wood-working actor Adam, who finally agreed to be her boyfriend. But Hannah got scared and messed that up, too.

For all intents and purposes, it seems our heroine grew the least of all the girls. But perhaps it's for the best, as there wouldn't be much of a show left if she had everything figured out.

Marnie
Marnie, too, grappled with unsuccessful relationships this season, though it may have been the one with herself that needed the most help. Marnie, played by Allison Williams, began the season with a long-term boyfriend whom she couldn't stand. "His touch now feels like a weird uncle putting his hand on my leg at Thanksgiving," she told Hannah. Charlie learned of Marnie's feelings the hard way, when the contents of Hannah's diary, in which she mused over the pair's dysfunctional relationship, became public knowledge. Thus, the two were done. Then they weren't. Then they were again. And as much as Marnie had outgrown Charlie, it didn't make their breakup any easier when he fell right back into a relationship only a couple weeks later.

Something changed in Marnie, and she decided to live her life more freely, which apparently meant making out with Jessa and engaging in almost-threesomes. She also finally came to terms with how much of a mooch (both emotionally and financially) Hannah had become and moved out of their apartment and, temporarily, into Shoshanna's. Having no plans would be good for her, she said. Marnie's newfound whimsy even inspired her to make out with guest star Bobby Moynihan.

Jessa
Then there's free spirit Jessa, played by Jemima Kirke. She blew into town at the series' onset, seemingly just stopping over until her next adventure pearl-shucking or climbing the Himalayas or meditating at an ashram. But she moved in with cousin Shoshanna and started a life for herself, taking a job babysitting two precocious Manhattan tykes — a situation that quickly got messy when the father made a pass at her during the most epic Bushwick warehouse party of the year. His impressively calm wife later asked Jessa to come back to the children, all the while knowing very well she couldn't. But her maternal instincts didn't flag, and she gave Jessa a piece of parting advice: "You're getting into dramas to distract from who you want to be."

The wisdom apparently cut Jessa deep, because as we saw during Sunday night's finale, she decided who she wanted to be, and that was a wife.

In a surprise ceremony, she wed Thomas-John, the guy who thought he was going to have a three-way with Jessa and Marnie. Will the spur-of-the-moment marriage last? We'll have to wait for season two to find out.

Shoshanna
Finally, lest we forget, is Shoshanna, the most underutilized yet arguably most interesting character on "Girls." Unfortunately, her entire plot arc revolved around losing her virginity — something she finally did during "She Did." She'd come close before with a former fellow camper, but he didn't want the responsibility of taking her V-card, even if she was "the least virginy virgin ever." In the end, it was her crack spiritual guide Ray who was her first, and we can only hope he didn't get in her emotional way. If there's one thing season two could use more of, it's the wonderfully adept Zosia Mamet.

What did you think of Sunday night's "Girls" finale? Sound off in the comments below!

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Wildfire destroys 181 homes in Colorado

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Spain PM brushes off IMF austerity advice for now

El jefe de gobierno espa?ol Mariano Rajoy asiste a una sesi?n del Parlamento en Madrid, el mi?rcoles 13 de junio de 2012. La tasa de inter?s que Espa?a tendr?a que pagar para recaudar dinero en los mercados mundiales de bonos sigui? aumentando el mi?rcoles. (Foto AP/Daniel Ochoa de Olza)

El jefe de gobierno espa?ol Mariano Rajoy asiste a una sesi?n del Parlamento en Madrid, el mi?rcoles 13 de junio de 2012. La tasa de inter?s que Espa?a tendr?a que pagar para recaudar dinero en los mercados mundiales de bonos sigui? aumentando el mi?rcoles. (Foto AP/Daniel Ochoa de Olza)

El primer ministro espa?ol Mariano Rajoy se marcha tras una sesi?n de control en el parlamento espa?ol, en Madrid, el mi?rcoles 13 de junio de 2012. (AP foto/Daniel Ochoa de Olza)

MADRID (AP) ? Spain will not immediately implement the International Monetary Fund's latest recommendations, which include cutting government workers' wages further, because they are nonbinding advice, the prime minister said Saturday.

The IMF is one of three organizations Mariano Rajoy's government turned to for an assessment of the state of Spain's banking sector ahead of a ?100 billion ($125 billion) bailout for failing lenders.

The latest IMF document, released Friday, was not part of a bank sector report, but one of regular economic analyses issued on the state of Spain's economy. It was critical of how the country had missed its deficit reduction target in 2011, despite insisting "until almost the end of the year that the deficit was on track."

Spain's deficit for 2011 had to be revised upward twice to finish at 8.9 percent of economic output, instead of the 3 percent maximum level set by the European Union.

Rajoy has set a goal of reducing the deficit to 5.3 percent of GDP in 2012. The IMF report called that goal "very ambitious" and said it would "likely be missed."

Rajoy said the IMF proposals, contained in the Friday report, were only suggestions and he would not implement them for now.

Meanwhile, several thousand demonstrators marched late Saturday in at least three Spanish cities to protest what they said was disgraceful mismanagement of banks that had left them on the verge of bankruptcy.

In Madrid the protesters gathered outside the headquarters Bankia SA, a bank that has requested euro19 billion ($23.9 billion) in state aid and has euro32 billion ($40.3 billion) in toxic assets on its books.

Bankia is one of five domestic Spanish banks assessed by the IMF in its June 9 financial stability report as having heavy exposure to corporate and retail real estate lending.

In Friday's report, the IMF also suggested that Rajoy's government increase value-added tax ? or VAT, a type of sales tax ? and eliminate a recently re-introduced deduction on mortgage payments for first-time homebuyers. The previous Socialist government boosted VAT to 18 percent and also reduced public sector pay by 5 percent in 2010.

Rajoy has since frozen wages but resisted cutting them and hiking sales tax, as the economy enters a double-dip recession.

Rajoy said that the most important item on Europe's political agenda is to reinforce the single currency's image.

"Europe has to transmit a message to the world making it clear that the euro is an irreversible project," Rajoy said.

Associated Press

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Greeks to vote with a global audience

A man begging for alms lays by a sticker with Greece' national football team players one day before general elections in Athens, on Saturday, June 16 2012. Greeks vote for the second time in six weeks Sunday amid fears that the country could be forced out of the euro if they reject the strict austerity measures taken in return for billions of euros in rescue loans from other European countries and the International Monetary Fund. (AP Photo/Kostas Tsironis)

A man begging for alms lays by a sticker with Greece' national football team players one day before general elections in Athens, on Saturday, June 16 2012. Greeks vote for the second time in six weeks Sunday amid fears that the country could be forced out of the euro if they reject the strict austerity measures taken in return for billions of euros in rescue loans from other European countries and the International Monetary Fund. (AP Photo/Kostas Tsironis)

A pedestrian checks lists with polling stations one day before general elections in Athens, Saturday, June 16, 2012. Greeks vote for the second time in six weeks this Sunday amid fears that the country could be forced out of the euro if they reject the strict austerity measures taken in return for billions of euros in rescue loans from other European countries and the International Monetary Fund. (AP Photo/Kostas Tsironis)

Supporters of Conservative "New Democracy" party chat inside an election kiosk one day before general elections in Athens, Saturday, June 16, 2012. Greeks vote for the second time in six weeks Sunday amid fears that the country could be forced out of the euro if they reject the strict austerity measures taken in return for billions of euros in rescue loans from other European countries and the International Monetary Fund. (AP Photo/Kostas Tsironis)

A woman casts her shadow on a wall as she walks by a poster of leftist party (ANTARSIA) one day before general elections in Athens, Saturday, June 16, 2012. The poster reads " Bread Education Freedom - Down with the memorandum - Cancel the debt" . Greeks vote for the second time in six weeks Sunday amid fears that the country could be forced out of the euro if they reject the strict austerity measures taken in return for billions of euros in rescue loans from other European countries and the International Monetary Fund. (AP Photo/Kostas Tsironis)

ATHENS, Greece (AP) ? Elections are supposed to determine the will of the people, to set a nation on a new course with a government that enjoys the mandate of the majority. In splintered Greece, the vote on Sunday is shaping up as a challenge to this time-honored rule of democracy.

For Greeks are in a collective state of depression, burdened not just by the shriveling of their finances, but also political divisions with deep roots in history and confusion over their identity and the very concept of statehood. And yet an anxious world is looking to this tiny actor on the international stage for clues to whether the global economy will cling to a path of gradual recovery, or veer toward another destructive scenario like the one that followed the 2008 collapse of the Lehman Brothers investment bank in the United States.

A street scene in Athens on Saturday symbolized the sense of despair, tinged with defiance, which pervades a country battered by five years of recession after years of easy credit and consumption. A homeless man slept in a doorway, a cardboard box beside him, a slit cut in its top in hopes that passers-by would drop in a few coins. "We don't need the euro," read a slogan on the campaign posters of a small far-left party, plastered on an adjacent wall. Polls indicate that most Greeks want to stay in Europe's monetary union, but years of austerity with few signs of improvement have deepened their sense of isolation.

"People are in agony about their savings; their jobs, their safety, their future (and their children's future)," Stathis Psillos, a philosophy professor at the University of Athens, wrote in an email.

Sunday's election is seen as pivotal in determining whether Greece pitches deeper into economic chaos, and is forced to return to its old currency, the drachma ? an eventuality that amounts to, at least in the short term, a journey into an economic and social void ? and whether Europe fragments or eventually becomes more unified. The frontrunners are a traditional party, New Democracy, that wants to modify an international bailout plan that has kept Greek finances afloat, and a left-wing party, Syriza, that surged in popularity because it opposes the old political order and wants to tear up the bailout deal in protest over the cutbacks it requires.

Abroad, there is concern that a victory for Syriza could trigger market panic and drag down other economically vulnerable countries such as Spain and Italy, and then ripple across other continents. The Greek outcome will be watched closely by leaders of the world's 20 most important economies, who are meeting this weekend in Mexico. However, neither Syriza nor New Democracy are projected to win enough votes to form a government alone, meaning Greece will have to form a coalition if it wants to avoid another election.

Elena Athanassopoulou, a political science professor at the American College of Greece, predicted "painful negotiations" among parties that would lead to a government after the vote, and said political stability was vital to prevent Greece going "any further down the slope."

An earlier round of elections in May failed to deliver a clear winner, and coalition talks collapsed. Even if New Democracy, led by Antonis Samaras, emerges on top, there is no guarantee that Greece's creditors, including other European countries and the International Monetary Fund, will accede to his desire to dilute the multi-billion dollar bailout terms, or that Greece can stick to austerity measures imposed by creditors. Also, the strong showing in the last elections of a far-right party, Golden Dawn, and accusations that its supporters have attacked immigrants encapsulate the wider mood of alienation and uncertainty.

"Right now in Greece, everybody gets to say everything, you get to listen to many opinions," said Paris Mexis, a designer for Beetroot, an award-winning firm based in Thessaloniki, Greece's second-biggest city. "We have a community that doesn't work as a community. We have renegade units, we have random units, we have people who produce and the production doesn't go anywhere. Everybody is alone. We need to go back to philosophy."

He said Greeks need to recover the basic principles that hold a society together and help it flourish, including organization, creativity and communication. Right now, the reality defies such ideals. Unemployment is about 22 percent, crime is up and public services are failing. Greece is not in full-blown disintegration ? that assessment might apply to the civil war between its Western-backed government and communists in the 1940s ? but even the idea of a state, in which a social contract exists between a government and its citizenry, is under strain today.

Widespread tax evasion, for example, was one of the failings that got Greece into its current financial mess. The government has sought to tighten up on the crime, but many Greeks, once accustomed to generous state handouts and public sector salaries, bridle at the idea because their daily circumstances are deteriorating.

"People are losing faith in the institutions," said Reto Foellmi, professor of international economics?at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. He said Greeks need to see a link between revenue collection and spending, and suggested that the decentralization of control over finances, whereby local authorities have more say in how funds are raised and spent in their districts, could benefit the country in the long term.

Psillos, the philosophy professor, said European leaders fail to see that Greece's "real problem" is that the traditional parties, dominant for generations, are no longer capable of creating consensus. He noted that Syriza, while untainted by association with austerity measures and past policy failures, offers a somewhat contradictory narrative that seeks balance "between an old left tradition and a need to accommodate within it tens of thousands of new voters who pin their hopes on it."

Many of Syriza's new supporters are civil servants who lost benefits under the former socialist government, that struggled to impose wage cuts and structural reforms and suffered as a result at the May polls. At present, many Greeks, disillusioned with politics, think their society has reached a dead end, but feel they don't have the tools to overhaul it, or recover what they once had. Psillos, who believes Syriza offers hope but needs time to hone its platform, summarized this ominous state of limbo by citing Alexander Herzen, a 19th century Russian intellectual.

"The death of the contemporary forms of social order ought to gladden rather than trouble the soul," Herzen wrote after the failure of European revolutionary movements in 1848. "Yet what is frightening is that the departing world leaves behind it, not an heir, but a pregnant widow. Between the death of the one and the birth of the other, much water will flow by, a long night of chaos and desolation will pass."

Associated Press

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In many statehouses, GOP confronts dissension

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) ? Republicans set out a bold conservative agenda after taking control of state capitols across the Midwest and South in the last general election. They wanted to cut taxes and spending, put new limits on labor unions, crack down on illegal immigrants and give parents more alternatives to traditional public schools.

But after a series of notable achievements last year, the largest Republican wave in statehouses since the Great Depression is now splintering and action on key issues is stalled despite little meaningful opposition from outnumbered Democrats.

In Kansas, GOP lawmakers worked into the wee hours of a recent weekend to resolve serious differences after the most acrimonious legislative session in recent memory. Nebraska's governor sent his GOP-dominated Legislature home this spring with an angry press conference after issuing a barrage of vetoes and seeing his tax cut plan gutted. In Missouri, a Republican senator who held up the budget derisively referred to a rival GOP faction with the worst of party epithets ? liberals.

Across the expanded Republican heartland, party leaders confronted the uncomfortable reality that it's easier to propose ideas than to act on them, and that they may have run through most of the issues they agree on.

"We had 50 years of pent-up good ideas," said former Missouri House Speaker Catherine Hanaway, who led the initial Republican takeover a decade ago but was gone by the time Republicans achieved their largest majorities in 2010. "It is a lot easier to have consensus on an agenda when you haven't had control for 50 years."

Heading into the November elections, Republicans who captured a majority of legislatures and governorships in 2010 are now confronting a new set of questions.

Can they continue to shrink government while simultaneously boosting businesses? How much can they cut without jeopardizing services that people have come to expect, such as a quality education and a safety net for the poor and disabled?

Finding answers is complicated by deep divisions inside the party between those who want to use government to advance conservative goals and those who want it to stop meddling.

"There's a war," said Senate President Steve Morris, a moderate Republican who fought with more conservative members during Kansas' turbulent session. "It's not unprecedented to have animosity. ... (But) it's probably as bad as I've seen it."

The Republican frictions are not unique. Democrats were split between liberal and more conservative members before Republicans took control.

But the GOP conflict has been especially sharp over the government's role in spurring the economy, which is still lagging in many states after the recession. Some GOP governors and lawmakers ? backed by established business lobbyists ? wanted to reward particular businesses for creating jobs or expanding their plants. Others opposed such specialized raids on the treasury and demanded broad-based tax cuts benefiting nearly all businesses or individuals.

On social issues, Republicans generally rallied behind relaxed gun laws, but clashed over education. Advocates of charter schools, for example, found their ideas blocked in Alabama and Mississippi by Republican lawmakers more loyal to their local public school districts.

"I've been disappointed in a lot of things the Senate has done or not done," said a deflated Robert Bentley, Alabama's new Republican governor, whose centerpiece job creation program was killed in the Republican-controlled chamber.

As legislatures wrapped up this spring, Republican leaders often emerged with limited, incremental steps. Some settled for small cuts in taxes and programs or just a pledge to try again next year. In Nebraska, Gov. Dave Heineman got less than a third of his tax cut plan approved. In Oklahoma, Gov. Mary Fallin, who proposed cutting the income tax from 5.25 percent to 3.5 percent, wound up with nothing.

Republicans' ability to advance a sweeping agenda may now hinge on whether the 2012 election gives one faction the upper hand. In many states, hardline conservatives are challenging moderates in primary elections.

The 2010 elections, held amid public dissatisfaction about the economy and the large federal deficit, left Republicans with 29 governorships and their most legislative seats since 1928. The surge was especially dramatic in the middle of the country, where Republican governors replaced Democrats in Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio.

But by this spring, the push for a larger conservative agenda was sinking into disputes about philosophy and details. In Missouri, which elected more Republican lawmakers in 2010 than at apparently any point in state history, members fought over how to cut spending, with the Senate killing a plan to eliminate a blind health care benefit and the House spiking a plan to pare back tax credits to developers. Other long-cherished conservative ideals, including an anti-union right-to-work initiative and tax breaks for students to attend private schools, went nowhere.

Tensions got so bad that near the end of the session, conservative Sen. Jason Crowell took to the Senate floor to publicly denounce certain Republicans as unworthy of the name.

"There's a few of us who went through the bad years ? the foxhole years ? who actually believe in what Republicans stand for," Crowell declared.

Conservatives did rack up some accomplishments. Despite the deep Republican divisions, Kansas' new governor, Sam Brownback, enacted one of the largest income tax cuts in state history. And Gov. Mitch Daniels proudly signed a measure making Indiana the Rust Belt's first right-to-work state, where paying union fees cannot be a condition of employment. Most notably, Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker won a recall election that amounted to a referendum on limiting labor union power.

In the hope of prodding more action on the conservative agenda, the American Conservative Union, which for years has rated the conservative credentials of members of Congress, now has begun doing the same for state lawmakers.

But until the balance of power shifts, policy changes in some GOP capitals may be limited.

In Minnesota, where GOP lawmakers approved a $1 billion stadium financing deal and a $500 million public works bill, conservative state Sen. Sean Nienow was left shaking his head. "We ended the session this year with two products not that different than what Democrats would have come up with if they were in charge," he said.

___

Associated Press writers Phil Rawls in Montgomery, Ala.; Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Miss.; Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City; Patrick Condon in Minneapolis; Grant Schulte in Lincoln, Neb.; Melinda Deslatte in Baton Rouge, La.; John Hanna in Topeka, Kan.; Lucas Johnson in Nashville, Tenn.; and Bill Kaczor in Tallahassee, Fla., contributed to this report.

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Fire threatens houses south of Athens; 4 arrested

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JenniferLukas: "The road from Beijing to London has been an obstacle course." Nice line from this story on @tribrentmcmahon http://t.co/xc1WlX6l

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Chou University builds hybrid NAND-ReRAM unit that's faster than a speeding SSD

A team from Chuo University, has reportedly developed a hybrid SSD that's reportedly 11 times faster than your average solid state unit. Combining NAND Flash with ReRAM, the magical union consumes 93 percent less power and lasts nearly seven times as long as pure-NAND products. Despite the high cost of ReRAM, if it enables data centers to save on continuously replacing worn-out SSDs, and could very be rapidly adopted if worked into a commercial system. The findings will be unveiled at the Hawaii Symposium on VSLI Circuits through tomorrow -- after which time, the team can reasonably expect to spend some time on the beach.

Chou University builds hybrid NAND-ReRAM unit that's faster than a speeding SSD originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Jun 2012 18:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Zombie Defense 101 Or US Air Force Students? [Wtf]

This is either Zombie Defense 101 at Palmetto Senior High or some students at an Air Force Rifle/Carbine Qualification Course taking "a moment to adjust their rifles so that they can sight the weapons with gas masks at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida." [Flickr] More »

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David P. Angel: Peter Thiel's Message Is Simply Wrong

A recent 60 Minutes segment profiled billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel's "20 Under 20" fellowship program in which he pays selected students $100,000 apiece to forgo college and devote their time to working on their inventions. Thiel contends that college is a debt-fueled waste of time for many, and points to innovators like Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates who have achieved success without the benefit of a college diploma. While I admire the entrepreneurial spirit driving Mr. Thiel's venture, his message is simply wrong when considered as a blueprint for young adults considering whether to invest in a college education.

Are there, across this country, young entrepreneurs who have the kernel of a new innovation ready to be developed into a product or market opportunity? I do not doubt that the answer to that question is yes. Could some of those entrepreneurs, working with others, succeed in bringing their ideas to market while bypassing college? The answer to that question is also yes. After all, as Peter Thiel has noted, there are innovators who have done exactly that. And it may be that the "20 under 20" fellowship program is a way of identifying a few of these young entrepreneurs who are likely to succeed.

But this does not mean that forgoing college is the wise choice for the vast majority of young adults. For the majority, such a decision is akin to buying a lottery ticket because somebody else just won a million-dollar prize. The luck of one lottery winner does not predict your likelihood of success. Indeed the odds are stacked against you. And the risks of dispensing with a college education in the hope of winning the entrepreneurship prize are very high. The income discrepancy between those with a higher education degree and those without is substantial -- according to the U.S. Census Bureau the holder of a bachelor's degree will on average earn about $1 million more in the course of his or her working life than a high school graduate.

How do emerging adults across this country view the link between college and successful careers? According to the Clark University Poll of Emerging Adulthood, 82 percent of respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 agree that one of the most important keys to success in life is a college education.

The Clark University Poll, which is associated with the research of Clark University Psychology Professor Dr. Jeffrey Arnett, who coined the term "emerging adulthood," also notes a paradox among this demographic group. Despite the clear value they place on a college degree, 66 percent of those surveyed believe they can find a good job even without a college education. This is consistent with Dr. Arnett's research, which reveals that emerging adults are adamantly optimistic about the world and their place in it. Even during bleak times, they maintain a positive outlook about their personal prospects.

The best colleges fuse students' optimism with their big ideas and channel them into successful outcomes. It is in this process of college student growth and transformation that innovation and entrepreneurship have something to teach us. Part of Peter Thiel's message is that there are skills and capabilities important to career success that are most effectively nurtured and deployed in demanding true-life situations. Capabilities such as resilience, the ability to analyze risk and make effective decisions in fast-changing environments, the ability to mobilize others behind important ideas, are all effectively developed when a student's classroom education is closely linked to creative problem-solving in the world.

The good news is that colleges and universities across this country are developing programs to provide more of these opportunities for our students. Indeed, with gathering pace higher education is reconsidering the links between the classroom and the world, implementing a wide variety of creative ways for students to gain the knowledge and perspective that comes from knowledge, theory and understanding while building up capabilities of effective practice. In some cases this takes the form of entrepreneurship programs, such as Clark University's program in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. But it also involves placements in existing businesses, hospitals, art museums and other organizations, cutting-edge student research conducted in the community and around the world, new study-abroad opportunities, and a fresh approach to student volunteerism and civic engagement.

As colleges and universities prepare their students for life after graduation, they do so with a keen sense that today's global economy requires its workers to be nimble, adaptable and resilient. I encourage students to look carefully at the opportunities colleges and universities provide to hone these skills and capabilities beyond the classroom. These robust opportunities enhance the return on education for our students, our country and our world.

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