Electronic Emancipation aka The 1337NMEs

We'll be kicking off this year with a special look at what is regarded as probably the fastest-moving and most over-hyped sector of IT and networking these days - cybersecurity.  I say cybersecurity, but effectively it's just plain old "security" these days if your role/job concerns looking after or using pretty much anything that has a plug on one end and more than two buttons on the other.

We'll look at how security affects you, what you should worry about, and how worried you should be.  We'll look at some brief history, the changes over the years, and what the future might hold.  We'll also look at The Hacker ©, his many differing hats and the ethics of "non-Ethical" Ethical Hacking, and the Non-Hacking Ethical's Ethics.  Or something.  So yeah.

Today we kick off with how things have changed over the past quarter of a century (holy shit... I suddenly feel incredibly old having written that...)....

Why You Need To Think Very Carerfully Before Adopting A Service-Oriented Architecture Model

It's the latest craze - take whatever you can think of in IT and networking, and add "as a service" to the end of it.  Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) are the three main types, and all the other xxx-as-a-Service types and aaS abbreviations can be classified as Infrastructure-based, Platform-based or Software-based.

Gerry Cinnamon In Boscombe (Macdonalds)

Whilst waiting for my gourmet food order to be lovingly prepared, cooked and served, a fairly famous singing bloke attended Maccy D's.

Hollywank - Things The Movies Get Wrong

Some things in the movies just plain and simply piss me off because they are so wrong and just don't happen in real life.  Here are my (least?) favourite Hollywood cock-ups and second (least?) favourite in three categories: Health/Human Body, Guns/Weapons and Vehicles/Cars:

How To Create A Wormhole

In this step-by-step tutorial we walk you through the process to create your very own wormhole at home.  It should be noted that wormholes and Einstein-Rosen bridges are not fully understood and that time travel/dilation and apparent faster-than-light travel is potentially dangerous and care should be taken whenever dealing with gravity wells and point singularities.  Black holes can and do kill.

Programmers Are F%$!ing Lazy

It's true.  As Moore's Law still holds true after 50 years and processors double in speed every two years, hard drive density also loosely follows this trend with storage capacities generally also doubling every two years, programmers have just gotten plain lazy.

Grow Your Sysadmin-Fu

There are a few commands that the Linux sysadmin simply can't live without.  The need to see exactly what is going on with your army of *nixs and what any one is doing at any particular time is a must.  Here are a few commands that I would seriously miss, and ones that I make sure are installed on every box I administer.  So, in no particular order....