Enhanced Dictatation in Mavericks

Nice tip from Lex Friedman ...

Dictate without an Internet connection in Mavericks:

Starting with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, your Mac could take dictation. But, just as with the dictation feature on iOS, the OS X incarnation required an Internet connection, couldn't show its progress while you spoke, and could only listen for about 30 seconds at a time.

That all changes with a single checkbox in Mavericks (OS X 10.9). Fire up System Preferences and click on the Dictation & Speech pane. There, you'll find a checkbox for Use Enhanced Dictation. The first time you check it, you'll need to wait out a hefty download (between 700 and 800 megabytes), but once you're done, you can dictate a lot more freely.

Next-Generation Password-Cracking Software

Wow!

From Mark Frauenfelder ...Password-cracking software runs at 8 million guesses per second:

oclHashcat-plus is a 'password-recovery' tool that chews through 8-million guesses a second. It optimizes its guesses by trying phrases from 'the Bible, common literature, and in online discussions,’ and by formulating characters into websites' required 'password-construction protocols.'"

An example passphrase that was cracked:

“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn1,”

A Tough 5 Years for Nokia

Nick Bilton writing for the NY Times – The End of an Era in Mobile:

In the summer of 2007, Nokia was on top of the world. The company had a market valuation of around $120 billion, $10 billion more than Apple. Nokia’s share of the global smartphone market was an astounding 48.7 percent.

But by the third quarter of 2012 — just five years later — Nokia was worth a paltry $8.2 billion, $624 billion less than Apple, and its share of global smartphone sales had slipped to just 3.5 percent.

Take a look at the chart Bilton shares - scary!

10 Tech Skills Heading the Way of the Dinosaur

10 Tech Skills Heading the Way of the Dinosaur - 2013 Edition:

 

This year's top 10 skills that are going the way of the dinosaur (in no particular order) include the following.

1. Windows XP / 2003 and Earlier 

2. Silverlight 

3. Adobe Flash 

4. COBOL, FORTRAN, and other Mainframe Languages 

5. Lotus Notes Administrator 

6. Novell GroupWise Administrator

7. Traditional Telephony 

8. Those with only Server Administrator Skills 

9. Help Desk Technicians / Level 1 Support

10. PC Repair Technicians

 

A Quarter of Your Life Watching a Screen?

Seems low - especially for kids growing up with tablets, smartphones, DVRs, etc

From Andrew Laughlin … Average child born today 'to spend quarter of life watching a screen':

The average child born today in the UK will have spent almost a quarter of their life watching non-work-related screen technology by the time they reach 80, a new study has claimed. 

Office 2013

Peter Bright asks … Office 2013: Just what on earth has the Office team been doing?:

 

What I cannot fathom, however, is why Office 2013 exists. Or rather, why it exists in its current form. Just what Microsoft has been doing in that two and a half years, I couldn't tell you, because Office 2013 doesn't feel like it's had two and a half years of work on it.

 

Misinformed vs. Uninformed - Grammarist

Misinformed vs. uninformed - Grammarist:

Something that is misinformed is based on bad information. Something that is uninformed is based on no information or inadequate information.