When I am asked the question "Which is more secure, Mac or PC?" I find myself stumbling around for a response because I don't have a clear-cut answer.
I use both. And I use antivirus software with both. So I decided to conduct an informal survey of a bunch of security experts and see what they had to say in the hopes that people can use the information to help them come to their own conclusions. Before I provide quotes from the 32 experts who participated in
the survey, along with edited comments from an interview with a Microsoft representative and a link that Apple provided, I'd like to share some relevant research from antivirus vendor ESET...
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10 best IT jobs right now The top 10 IT jobs that are expected to increase in demand and links to more IT career opportunities for those who have flexible skills.
With many industry watchers speculating about a jobless economic recovery, IT job seekers could find work in a few key technology areas.
IT professionals looking to find new employment or upgrade their current positions should investigate job opportunities that address growing demand for technologies such as virtualization, cloud, network security and social computing skills.
Industry watchers report that while an economic recovery won't guarantee that IT jobs return to pre-recession levels, increased interest in emerging and existing technologies will drive internal training and external hiring decisions. "IT staffing got hit in 2009,...
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A new book shows you how to make usable items from old PCs, cell phones, scanners, printers, and other dead tech gear.
Earbud Speakers
If you're like us, you have an attic, closet, or garage stuffed with unused, outdated tech junk. Oh, you think you'll recycle it--but you don't, do you? Wouldn't you like to do something useful with them? A new book called 62 Projects to Make With a Dead Computer (and Other Discarded Electronics) gives you some good and some goofy ideas for DIY projects. For instance,...
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From streaming Netflix movies in Windows Media Center to eye candy desktop Themes to a calculator that does a lot more than arithmetic, here's a slideshow of cool but unappreciated Windows 7 features.
By this point if you're using Windows 7 you've Aero Snapped, Peeked and Shaken, you've jumped to Jump Lists and taskbar thumbnails, and shared photos and music using HomeGroup. But there's a plethora of hidden gems in Windows 7
that don't get nearly enough attention. Here's our photo collection of seven underrated Windows 7 features and instructions on how to use them...
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The value of project management certifications is hotly debated among IT professionals. CIO.com investigates whether certifications make better project managers and whether projects staffed by certified project managers are more successful than projects without PMPs.
Out of 13 advertisements for project manager jobs posted on CIO.com and Dice.com, eight ads either require or prefer project management certification. All eight ads are for mid- to senior-level IT project management positions that require anywhere from a minimum of five to 11 or more years of
experience. Five of the eight ads say project management certification is "highly desirable," "an advantage," "preferred," or "a plus." The three ads that require certification all specify the Project Management Institute's (PMI) Project Management Professional (PMP) credential. More and more CIOs
believe in the importance of project management certifications, according to research from...
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With Google real-time search and sites like Facebook and Twitter continuing to grow, it's more necessary than ever to monitor your online reputation. Here are steps you can take to ensure you're viewed professionally -- and advice on what to do if you're associated with harmful content.
Several months ago when Twitter introduced its lists feature, social media consultant Allen Mireles checked to see which lists included her. "I wanted to see if the lists I was on were a reflection of how I wanted to be viewed on Twitter," she says. She found two surprises: A porn star had included her on a
list and another user listed her under "people I've seen naked"—a surprise, she says, because she had never met the person. Mireles responded immediately. First she blocked the porn star on Twitter, which automatically removed her from the list. Then she sent a direct message to the owner of the other list
and explained that she uses Twitter for business purposes and didn't think it was appropriate to include her on it. "He very kindly took me off the list and apologized, saying he had been trying to make some of his lists 'more
interesting,'" Mireles says. Joe Laratro, president of Tandem Interactive, an online marketing solutions company, experienced a similar situation...
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Virtualization capacity planning tools are available all over, but sometimes the intangibles make a big impact on performance. Here's expert advice on proper sizing of physical servers for multiple VMs.
Choosing just enough virtual machines, but not too many, for a given server has always been a challenge. Running a set of virtual servers and the applications that they support on one physical server running just one operating system seems easy enough — at first. But making sure the hardware
can support that additional load is a real trick because of the almost infinite variety of the software that runs within the virtual environment — each application making a slightly different set of demands on the host OS and the hardware, says Chris Wolf, analyst at The Burton Group. Consolidating
physical servers into VMs should save money of course, but you can't scrimp too much on the hardware without dragging down the performance of the applications...
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BlackBerry devices used to be renowned for their impressively long battery lives. But with all the features and functionalities packed into modern RIM smartphones during the past couple of years, some of that battery longevity has vanished. CIO.com's Al Sacco offers up seven advanced tips that he
regularly employs to ensure his BlackBerry keeps on ticking...and ticking and ticking.
Ever wondered why your BlackBerry seems to get different battery life than your fellow smartphone users' devices? How long your BlackBerry smartphone lasts on a single charge depends on a variety of factors. Your specific device model, size of the battery pack, whether or not your handheld uses 3G
networks, if it employs Wi-Fi and/or Bluetooth, and whether or not you're using it in a strong coverage area are just a few parts of the equation. So how do you ensure that you're using your BlackBerry battery as effectively as possible? The true key to maximizing your BlackBerry battery-life is...
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With the release of Windows 7, companies are looking to upgrade their operating systems without overwhelming their IT departments. For corporations with hundreds or thousands of users this can be a daunting task. But it doesn’t have to be.
Traditionally, upgrading your OS involved having someone from IT upgrade each PC on site. This causes a lot of inconvenience and downtime, along with frustrated employees who are ripped away from their work. The process can take weeks or months depending on the size of the organization and the size and
skill of the IT department. Recently, VSM spoke with Citrix CIO Paul Martine about their transition to Windows 7 and gleaned some insights and strategies that can help ease the burden of an OS upgrade on your IT department...
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You're ready to advance, but your manager is asleep at the switch. Here's how to get ahead without a boost from your boss.
IT managers are often skilled computer experts, a trait any techie can respect. But when it comes to managing people and advancing their employees' career goals, many fall flat. Is it possible to get ahead when your boss is unwilling or unable to support your ambitions? Sure, says Eric P. Bloom, if
you're willing to take some initiative. Bloom, who has held senior executive positions at companies such as Monster Worldwide, Independence Investments and Fidelity Investments, tells the story of a quality assurance worker at one of his former companies who wanted to move into programming. Her manager wasn't
strong on team development, so the QA staffer took matters into her own hands... [The good news: Unless you're truly in a dead-end job, it is possible to get in on those big projects, get yourself noticed and ultimately get a
promotion without ticking off your manager in the process. Here are five strategies to help you get ahead when your boss isn't on board...]
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Help desks under siege A need to increase productivity, skills and talents may put help desk staff in good positions for better jobs when hiring does begin to happen.
Hit hard by the recession, corporate help desks remain woefully understaffed, with little relief in sight.
For corporate IT managers, the start of the new year brings hope that budgets will grow, workloads will return to normal and the worst of the recession might be over. Down in the tech department trenches, help desk professionals aren't feeling so optimistic. Struggling to support end users, help desk
employees say that staff reductions, aging technology and higher incident rates have pushed their jobs from bad to worse, although they acknowledge that they're lucky in this economy to have jobs at all. But is there a silver
lining to the long hours, reductions in pay and benefits, and job insecurity that help desk professionals are currently enduring? Perhaps,...
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The end of SQL and relational databases? SQL and NoSQL databases have different goals. Which type will dominate in the future of virtualization and cloud computing?
The road to SQL started with Dr. E.F. Codd's paper, "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks", published in Communications of the ACM in June 1970.
His colleagues at IBM, Donald Chamberlin and Raymond Boyce were working on a query language (originally named SQUARE, Specifying Queries As Relational Expressions) that culminated in the 1974 paper, "SEQUEL: A Structured English Query Language". Since that time, SQL has become the dominant language for
relational database systems. In recent years, frameworks and architectures have arrived on the programming scene that attempt to hide (or completely remove) the use of SQL and relational databases allowing developers to focus even more on user interfaces, business logic and platform support in our
application development. We have also seen the rise of alternatives to relational databases, the so-called "NoSQL" data stores. Are we witnessing the end of SQL and relational databases?...
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Windows 7 gains ground, XP sees drop As expected, the new operating system is gaining on old Windows versions, and at a faster pace than Windows Vista.
Mobile operating systems make more gains, Mac OS X up slightly.
Microsoft's Windows 7 took just three months to reach a penetration benchmark that Vista needed almost a year to make, Web measurement firm NetApplications.com said today. Windows 7 finished January with a 7.5% usage share, a mark the little-loved Windows Vista didn't attain until 11 months
after its January 2007 debut. "There's no slowing of the Windows 7 growth curve," said Vince Vizzaccaro, executive vice president with Net Applications, who also noted that on Sunday Microsoft's newest OS accounted for more than 10% of all machines that were online. Windows 7's share typically climbs on
weekends and holidays, as more of the people online are running home computers, which are more likely to run the new operating system. During January, Windows 7's weekly averages increased steadily...
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Cloud security: Try these techniques now What techniques work and what does not work; Division of labor and security sharing vs. isolation in the right ways and places.
From divvying up responsibility to using third-party tools, here's how some companies are approaching the problem.
For Logiq³ Inc., the decision to go with a cloud-based provider of IT infrastructure as a service (IaaS) was a matter of cost and flexibility. A start-up that began operations in 2006, the Toronto-based life reinsurance management firm could not afford to build and staff a data center from
scratch, according to David Westgate, Logiq³'s vice president of technology. So Logiq³ instead chose cloud computing and managed IT services provider BlueLock LLC to handle its data needs in the cloud. BlueLock's virtualized environment allowed data and volumes to move between systems in a dynamic,
low-cost way that would be impossible with a traditional, hosted environment, Westgate says. There were, however, security concerns to be addressed before Logiq³ would entrust its critical systems to BlueLock's cloud...
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How to spot -- and take down -- the six most nefarious adversaries of IT.
Everybody keeps a list of the people who make their jobs and lives more difficult, even if they never write it down. It's a safe bet that IT pros' lists are longer than most. You might think IT's greatest enemies are cyber criminals and malware authors. But far worse are those who make the lives of
these evildoers that much easier. In fact, the greatest enemies of IT are members of the community IT serves: from clueless suits to annoying power users, from miserly managers to those friends and family members who are always hitting you up for free tech support. Any one of them can keep you from
doing your best -- or getting anything done at all. Making an "enemies" list is not just a cathartic exercise but also a useful one, says Mark Kadrich, CEO of The Security Consortium. [Here are the classic enemies of IT, how to recognize them, and what you can do to keep them at bay....]
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In December, Facebook made a series of bold and controversial changes regarding the nature of its users' privacy on the social networking site. The company once known for protecting privacy to the point of exclusivity (it began its days as a network for college kids only - no one else even had
access), now seemingly wants to compete with more open social networks like the microblogging media darling Twitter.
Those of you who edited your privacy settings prior to December's change have nothing to worry about - that is, assuming you elected to keep your personalized settings when prompted by Facebook's "transition tool." The tool, a dialog box explaining the changes, appeared at the top of Facebook homepages
this past month with its own selection of recommended settings. Unfortunately, most Facebook users likely opted for...
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Oracle hacker gets the last word Nothing is unbreakable, as David Litchfield set out to prove with Oracle; but it can be improved.
David Litchfield exposes one last Oracle security bug before walking away from his database battles.
In 2001, Larry Ellison brashly proclaimed in a keynote speech at the computing conference Comdex that his database software was "unbreakable." David Litchfield has devoted the last nine years to making the Oracle chief executive regret that marketing stunt. At the Black Hat security conference
Tuesday afternoon, Litchfield unveiled a new bug in Oracle's 11G database software, a critical, unpatched vulnerability that would allow a hacker to take control of an Oracle database and access or modify information at any security level. "Anything that God can do on that
database, you can do," Litchfield told Forbes in an interview following his talk. The attack that Litchfield laid out for Black Hat's audience of hackers and cybersecurity researchers exploits a combination of flaws in Oracle's software...
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