Interesting Reads – 2018-08-06
Contents
Articles
- Apple co-founder who sold his 10 per cent share for $800 lost out on $100 billion
- Huge List of 65 Computer and IT Certifications
- Jeff Bezos’s $150 Billion Fortune Is a Policy Failure
- Critical Infrastructure Sectors
- Tim Berners-Lee is Depressed about the Web
- 10 must-read books: Broaden your perspective, leaders
- How Virtual Reality Will Impact Businesses In The Next Five Years
- Incontinence affects more than 200m people worldwide, so why isn’t more being done to find a cure?
- Drink, drank, drunk: what happens when we drink alcohol in four short videos
- Healthcare Is Only The Beginning: 15 Big Industries CRISPR Technology Could Disrupt
Events / Announcements
- International Conference on “Emerging Trends in Librarianship: Role of Libraries in the Learning Environment”
- ACM India Joint International Conference on Data Science and Management of Data (CoDS-COMAD) 2019
- World Congress on Nature and Biologically Inspired Computing
- Web seminar and panel discussion on IEEE's Blended Learning Program (IEEE-BLP)
- InfoComm India Show
=======================================================
Articles
Apple co-founder who sold his
10 per cent share for $800 lost out on $100 billion
Owning
a tenth of Apple today would net you $US100 billion ($A135 billion). But Ron
Wayne sold that same share for just $US800 four decades ago.
The
little-known Apple co-founder sold his 10 per cent stake in the company back in
1976 — never guessing that the company would be worth its August 2018 high of
$US1 trillion ($A1.35 trillion).
Huge List of 65 Computer and
IT Certifications
Becoming
IT certified in a specific skill or product is a way to prove that you have the
necessary knowledge to perform a job in a given field or a job that uses
specific technologies. Earning certification is a good way for computer science
graduates and entry-level IT professionals to improve their resume. Employers
often look at a candidate's computer and technology certifications in order to
assess whether or not the individual is a viable candidate for a position. From
Official Microsoft certifications to cyber security and Linux exams, Webopedia
compiled this alphabetical list of different certifications related to computer
technologies with a brief explanation of each certification and links to help
interested learners find additional information.
Jeff Bezos’s $150 Billion
Fortune Is a Policy Failure
Last
month, Bloomberg reported that Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and owner of
the Washington Post, has accumulated a fortune worth $150 billion. That is the
biggest nominal amount in modern history, and extraordinary any way you slice
it. Bezos is the world’s lone hectobillionaire. He is worth what the average
American family is, nearly two million times over. He has about 50 percent more
money than Bill Gates, twice as much as Mark Zuckerberg, 50 times as much as
Oprah, and perhaps 100 times as much as President Trump. (Who knows!) He has
gotten $50 billion richer in less than a year. He needs to spend roughly $28
million a day just to keep from accumulating more wealth.
This
is a credit to Bezos’s ingenuity and his business acumen. Amazon is a marvel
that has changed everything from how we read, to how we shop, to how we
structure our neighborhoods, to how our postal system works. But his fortune is
also a policy failure, an indictment of a tax and transfer system and a
business and regulatory environment designed to supercharging the earnings of
and encouraging wealth accumulation among the few. Bezos did not just make his
$150 billion. In some ways, we gave it to him, perhaps to the detriment of all
of us.
Critical Infrastructure
Sectors
The
Office of Infrastructure Protection (IP) leads and coordinates national
programs and policies on critical infrastructure security and resilience and
has established strong partnerships across government and the private sector.
The office conducts and facilitates vulnerability and consequence assessments
to help critical infrastructure owners and operators and State, local, tribal,
and territorial partners understand and address risks to critical
infrastructure. IP provides information on emerging threats and hazards so that
appropriate actions can be taken. The office also offers tools and training to
partners to help them manage the risks to their assets, systems, and networks.
There
are 16 critical infrastructure sectors whose assets, systems, and networks,
whether physical or virtual, are considered so vital to the United States that
their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on
security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any
combination thereof. Presidential Policy Directive 21 (PPD-21): Critical
Infrastructure Security and Resilience advances a national policy to strengthen
and maintain secure, functioning, and resilient critical infrastructure. This
directive supersedes Homeland Security Presidential Directive 7.
Tim Berners-Lee is Depressed
about the Web
Web
inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee doesn’t like the web any more. As his creation
celebrates its 29th birthday, TBL laments its lifestyle choices.
Unlike
the happy, carefree, dancing and singing cool kid it once was, today’s web is
mean-spirited, overweight, snoopy, and obsessed with money. Hallmark web projects like Wikipedia – all about donating
free labor for the benefit of humanity – are unthinkable today.
While
the web was once a decentralized, anarchic mess of quirky little sites with
dozens (or maybe hundreds if you were lucky) of visitors each day, it’s now a
fiefdom. A handful of dominant firms have messed it all up:
The
web that many connected to years ago is not what new users will find today.
What was once a rich selection of blogs and websites has been compressed under
the powerful weight of a few dominant platforms. This concentration of power
creates a new set of gatekeepers, allowing a handful of platforms to control
which ideas and opinions are seen and shared.
TBL
wants those platforms and gatekeepers off his lawn, but they’re not going
anywhere. And we wouldn’t like it if they did.
Related story: Saving
the Web from Humanity
10 must-read books: Broaden
your perspective, leaders
Here are ten picks that will help CIOs and other
leaders gain new perspective on topics including Silicon Valley's
"brogrammer" culture, AI, blockchain, team building, and navigating
culture change.
How Virtual Reality Will
Impact Businesses In The Next Five Years
Although
not yet in the hands of everyday consumers, virtual and augmented reality are
gaining traction.
From
the Oculus Rift becoming a well-known name to other products showcasing at
major conferences, VR and AR are finding their place in the market. And from
virtual meetings to robust new ways of prototyping, both have the potential to
impact the business world in the near future.
To
learn what we can expect, 13 technology executives from Forbes Technology
Council offer their insights into the next five years of VR and AR technology.
Related
story: 9 Powerful Real-World Applications Of Augmented Reality (AR) Today
Incontinence affects more than
200m people worldwide, so why isn’t more being done to find a cure?
For
a chronic health condition that causes shame and misery for countless people
and costs billions, urinary incontinence keeps a low profile.
Media
reports about chronic health conditions appear with alarming regularity, but it
is rare to read about the debilitating impact of the involuntary leakage of
urine. Nevertheless, urinary incontinence is a condition which, next to
Alzheimer’s or strokes, is reported as most negatively affecting
“health-related quality of life”.
The
reasons for this are not too hard to fathom. Urinary incontinence, of course,
elicits some embarrassment. And there also seems to be a feeling this is a low
priority condition: urinary incontinence does not directly bear up against the
terrible impacts of life threatening conditions and illnesses.
But
to those who suffer urinary incontinence, it can be a tragedy. This condition
is often associated with shame, loss of self-confidence, and low quality of
life. It is a condition that increases with older age – approximately half of
nursing home residents suffer from urinary incontinence.
The
financial cost to society is also great. The total cost of urinary incontinence
in the US is estimated to exceed US$80 billion by 2020, according to one
report. Another study shows that the treatment costs associated with
incontinence in general exceeds those connected to treating pneumonia,
influenza and breast cancer.
Related story: Urinary
incontinence: Treatment, causes, types, and symptoms
Related
story: Technology for incontinence hasn't developed that much since ancient
Egyptian times
Related
story: Why we need to talk about incontinence
Drink, drank, drunk: what
happens when we drink alcohol in four short videos
Alcohol
is a depressant, a diuretic, and a disinfectant. These generally aren’t
pleasant attributes, but people have been drinking alcohol for thousands of
years – some of the earliest written texts mention or contain recipes for beer,
and pottery shards from China show people may have been making alcohol as far
back as 7,000BCE.
So
what is this special chemical that we’ve loved to drink for so long?
Well,
there are many types of alcoholic drinks – fizzy and flat, hot and cold,
fermented and distilled – but all of the alcohol we drink as humans is ethanol
based.
Healthcare Is Only The
Beginning: 15 Big Industries CRISPR Technology Could Disrupt
Gene-editing tool CRISPR is changing the ways we develop new medical treatments, power our vehicles, and even brew our beer. Here are the industries this cutting-edge technology could disrupt.
From
treating diseases like HIV and sickle cell to designer babies and custom-made
pets, CRISPR has the potential to affect nearly every area of our lives.
While
still in the fairly early stages of development, the gene-editing tool’s price
tag and flexibility makes it widely accessible and applicable, allowing
scientists to edit genes with unprecedented ease and precision. Essentially,
researchers can use CRISPR (often in the form of CRISPR-Cas9) as a pair of
“molecular scissors” to cut into and alter DNA.
While
the most well-known applications of CRISPR are in the medical field, with the
first human trials for CRISPR focused on cancer, the technology’s applications
are much further-reaching than just healthcare.
Below,
we highlight 15 industries — from fertility to biofuel to food preservation to
bioweapons — that could be fundamentally altered by CRISPR.
Related story: What
Is CRISPR? A primer.
Events / Announcements
International Conference on
“Emerging Trends in Librarianship: Role of Libraries in the Learning
Environment”
IIM
Trichy is organising the MANLIBNET 2018 International Conference on “Emerging
Trends in Librarianship: Role of Libraries in the Learning Environment” in
collaboration with theMANLIBNET from December 10-12, 2018 at IIM Trichy.
Conf.
website at http://manlibnet2018.iimtrichy.ac.in/
For
details pl. contact: Dr. K. Elavazhagan,
Librarian & Chief Knowledge Officer, IIM Trichy.
Email
: manlibnet2018@iimtrichy.ac.in Phone : 0431 2505045/46
ACM India Joint International
Conference on Data Science and Management of Data (CoDS-COMAD) 2019
ACM India
Joint International Conference on Data Science and Management of Data
(CoDS-COMAD) 2019 (6th ACM iKDD CoDS and 24th COMAD) will be held in Kolkata, India, during January
3-5, 2019.
For details
relating to Call for Papers, Registrations & Travel Grats, pl. visit the
conf. website at http://www.cods-comad.in/2019/
World Congress on Nature and
Biologically Inspired Computing
10th World Congress on Nature and Biologically Inspired Computing (NaBIC
2018) is being held at VIT University,
Vellore, India during December 6-8, 2017. NaBIC 2018 is organized to provide a
forum for researchers, engineers, and students from all over the world, to
discuss the state-of-the-art in machine intelligence, and address various
issues on building up human friendly machines by learning from nature. The
conference theme is “Nurturing Intelligent Computing Towards Advancement of
Machine Intelligence”.
Paper submission due: September 30, 2018
For more details pl. visit the conf website at http://www.mirlabs.org/nabic18/
Web seminar and panel
discussion on IEEE's Blended Learning Program (IEEE-BLP)
IEEE's
Blended Learning Program (IEEE-BLP) is an initiative in the direction of
technical education from IEEE in conjunction with industry thought leaders. The
IEEE-BLP is a set of skill-based training in the field of VLSI, IOT, IPR, POSH
and alike. The first web seminar and panel discussion will be held on 24th
Aug 2018 at 3 p.m. (IST).
The
Event number is 630 516 938 & the Event password is 123abc
To
participate in this event, pl. register at: https://ieee.webex.com/ieee/onstage/g.php?MTID=e197fe6388278dc435883abfc9aa39f23
InfoComm India Show
InfoComm
India Show will be held at Mumbai during 18-20 Sep 2018. The exhibition will
showcase 200 + Global companies & their cutting-edge Pro-AV &
Integrated Experience Technology solutions. The 3-day Summit program
highlights industry trends and expert share valuable knowledge. For more
information please visit: http://www.infocomm-india.com/
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