A recent ZDNet article highlighted an event where two United Kingdom officials demonstrated just how vulnerable a new, but not updated, Microsoft Windows system can be.
It took one official from the Serious Organized Crime Agency a mere 11 minutes to discover the target computer on a wireless network, crack into it using open source tools that are commonly available on the Internet, and steal password files.
Why should a database professional care about such demonstrations, especially when its stated purpose was to edify consumers and small businesses on security practices?
Well, consider this. Many organizations have...
One of the things I really like about teaching technical classes is getting to know and talk with students, learning of the challenges they face and how they've addressed them. Frequently, I can learn from their experiences, too. So, it works out well for both student and instructor.
In a custom Visual Studio/SQL Server class last week, I made a passing comment about Visual Studio being a very good text editor, but that it lacked one feature that I really like in other editors - block copy and paste. I lamented that the Visual Studio editor doesn't allow you to select a rectangular...