MIT To Offer Internet of Things Training For Professionals (computerworld.com) 63
dcblogs writes: MIT is offering an online course about the Internet of Things, and this is what you need to know up front: It's going to require, perhaps, six to eight hours of study time a week, which includes watching videos of lectures, engaging with faculty and fellow students in forums and taking tests. It begins April 12 and continues through May 24. It costs $495, and unlike some online courses, there is no free option. Students who complete the program and pass the tests earn a certificate of completion and 1.2 Continuing Education Units (CEUs) in MIT's professional education program. In exchange for their time and money, students will get an introduction, a roadmap, into the IoT and hear from some of the university's top professors, including Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web. This professional program is a relatively new effort for the university.
End of lesson (Score:2)
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I listen to the Backstreet Boys.
You're right, that is cause for concern.
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MIT professionals need a course on Internet of things? One might expect that they already know about it if they are MIT professionals ;-)
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Indeed. Why don't we just call it what it really is ...
IoT
Internet of Trash
D.U.M.B.
Devices Unsecured Mostly Broken.
I.D.I.O.T.S.
Insecure Devices Internetworked Offering Trouble
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In fact,if they made the course entirely about security, the world would be better off.
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Hopefully this course includes a section on security. Doesn't look like it will
???
That page says:
Section D: Security in IOT
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Agreed. I have less devices connected now that I did few years ago, not more.
Lets see, I currently have my computer (one laptop), smart phone and roku. That's it. I have more devices that could connect, but they aren't, and they won't.
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well they had to get the I at the front.
and Things On Internet would have made too much sense.
so they decided to go with Internet of Things. maybe actually someone thought that they would put them on a separate network or that the things would network with each other. which would make a lot more sense than to have them all on internet.
your temperature sensors interacting with your temperature display for example makes perfect engineering sense. both of them interacting with a hardware manufacturers server o
A Continuing Education Unit is ... (Score:2)
"A Continuing Education Unit is a measure used in continuing education programs, particularly those required in a licensed profession. A CEU is not an academic credit; however, it is a nationally recognized method of quantifying the time spent in the classroom during professional development and training activities."
So in other words: "A Continuing Education Unit is ... worthless as shit for a software engineer or electrical engineer, since neither of these are licensed professions".
Good to know. Thanks fo
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It is learning for fun done be professionals. That is not a bad thing, that is in fact a great thing and far better than the stupidity of going to a strip club, or some lame island tourist trap or a sex cruise. All idiot narcissist marketing aside, something which main stream media thrives on, selling stupid to idiots to waste their money, this is a real and profound change or more accurately a reversion to more logical values espoused early in the last century prior to the advent of lead in fuels (screw yo
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So in other words: "A Continuing Education Unit is ... worthless as shit for a software engineer or electrical engineer, since neither of these are licensed professions".
Huh, software and electrical engineers aren't licensed? Does that mean it is possible to pay some online school a bunch of money to send you a bunch of emails and then you become an engineer? or does license refer to something else?
No. Licenses derive from professional or governmental organizations which grant licenses to allow you to practice in the profession. These professional organizations (for example: The New York Bar Association has to admit you to the bar in order to practice law in New York) have the right to regulate your participation in an industry, because they were granted that right by other members already participating in the industry.
In other words, it's like a trade union that exists to prevent "too many" practit
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Software is not one of these. It's not like bridge building. If a software program collapses, people don't end up dead.
I hope people making making pacemaker firmware or car brake-by-wire systems doesn't share your attitude about importance of software reliability
Most people who are calling for certifications for life support systems software (which is the technical term for what you are talking about here) are not sufficiently qualified as software engineers to be able to judge the quality of other software engineers.
They are certainly not going to be able to identify those people who are (or are not) qualified to be working on life support systems.
Generally, there are a small number of us who are at the top of our game, and then there's everyone else who should no
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My wife is a doctor and gets a $10k stipend each year for continuing education. The "IoT" is coming to medicine. It might be worth it to have some Doctors in the loop with that conversation.
It's apparent they didn't when designing electronic medical records.
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Doctors should at least be aware of the security implications of suggesting someone gets on IoT pacemaker, insulin pump, etc. Any medical device can (and will) be embedded with feedback on how it's performing rather than just doing it open loop.
Maybe worthless to you... (Score:2)
All other things being equal, I'd give raises and promotions to the people who demonstrate that they have a continuing interest in learning more and keeping abreast about subjects relevant to their field than someone who thinks that once they get their degree, they never have to learn anything else. So if you think that "quantifying the time spent in the classroom during professional development and training activities" = "worthless as shit", then hey, it's your résumé, good luck with that.
(Of co
already outdated (Score:2)
Yet more Internet of Things waffle .. (Score:1)
Internet Of Exploits (Score:5, Insightful)
They should name the course, "Internet Of Cheaply Made Shit With Built-In Exploits".
Hackers everywhere are wetting their pants in expectation of this enormous, unbounded gift of a billion new things to hijack, spoof, and abuse. Because we all know that "security" will be an afterthought, if it's thought of at all.
"I'll be in late today, boss, my refrigerator got hacked again and they made it order 10,000 gallons of soy milk off of Amazon. Oh, and while they were at it they took over my TV and it won't stop showing kiddie porn. And for some reason all of my internet-enabled toilets just keep flushing and flushing and flushing, I can't get 'em to stop...hey, why is my car blowing its horn over and over?"
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Or don't build a networked toilet. That's an option.
I'll never build one but someone decided it was a good idea [wikipedia.org].
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so give up and crawl back into your cave, apparently it's your only option
But my cave requires a dual-token, interweb-enabled authoritative sign in verified by a blockchain of restricted IP network thingys!
I long for the good ol' days of Cave 1.0.
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I keep on bumping into "developers" that keep on making swarms of WiFi things all on the same IPv4 subnet as everyone else and all trying to talk to the same access point instead of having a mesh - and they keep assuming they can have thousands of the things so long as they have routing hacks. They want to know how to deal with fifteen
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That's probably a good reason for such courses. At least warn them of the utter newbie mistakes that a competent software developer and starting sysadmin knows not to make.
I'd hope this would have some beneficial effects, but will the manufacturers (specifically, managers and bean counters) spend the money to implement secure networking and access controls? My guess is probably not, unless they get a lot of pressure from end users or security professionals.
They probably won't hire or listen to security professionals, and they won't hear from the end users until after they get hacked...so all in all, I'm not optimistic. It's just so much easier and cheaper to build something q
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Ten year in embedded space maybe but we've already had that and more in desktop space - it's a malware swamp. Cryptolocker should be science fiction but utter stupidity on the security front made it possible just by people clicking on an email at which point MS Outlook and IE work together to carry out the will of the malware distributors.
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...hey, why is my car blowing its horn over and over?"
I was once on a locomotive doing that. It blew the horn when approaching a crossing and then the valve jammed and didn't shut. Blowing the horn a few times to make it open and close fixed the problem. Even though the problem didn't repeat that day, the repair shop shop looked at it, but could not find the problem. If they did anything, it might have been lubing the moving parts (not sure about that), but the problem never repeated.
In addition to security issues, problems like this is actually my main concer
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Oooh...a Shiny Certificate! (Score:5, Funny)
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Before you can sell anything, you need to know who your potential customers are, right?
Suggest to your marketing department that they start a project called Identify Demographic - Internet Of Things. Team identity is important. Budget for T-shirts & hats.
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Slightly off-topic but...
Some years ago (when cloud was still to become a commonplace term) some of my colleagues were setting up a marketing initiative on the grounds of identifying opportunities, planning and doing initial analyses.
The internal name for this activity was Cloud Opportunity Workshop.
I was asked to create a rapid prototype** tool for tracking various actions before, during and after the go-to-market engagements. For want of a better name [OK due to my mischievous nature] I called it the Pla
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For want of a better name [OK due to my mischievous nature] I called it the Planning Analysis Tool.
If yours is an international company, fitting the acronym to a derogatory word in one of the languages of one of your foreign offices can help slip this through radar. These are usually pronounceable words which is often the goal of acronyms. It livens up company meetings considerably.
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Don't be so negative - just think of all the money you are likely to make from fixing problems with these thingies going wrong.
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Don't be so negative - just think of all the money you are likely to make from fixing problems with these thingies going wrong.
*Reaches over to unplug power cord from router*
"Fixed! My consulting bill will be arriving in the mail soon, payable within 30 days. You're welcome!"
*Jumps into limo for next consulting appointment*
Torrents (Score:2)
What's the over/under on how long after May 24 the classes appear on a torrent site?
His name... is Tim (Score:4, Funny)
Tim Berners-Lee
who I recently heard likes to refer to himself as "web developer."
Internet of Things and security .. (Score:2)
Schedule (Score:2)
Not keeping up with the times (Score:2)
Now, I would put down good money to become an expert on Internet of Things 2.0. But old fashioned Internet of Things? Get real!