Every now and then I have an application that is subject to a secrecy order by the government that restricts disclosure of the invention and prevents the publishing or granting of a patent. I noticed that a current application being held up really doesn’t seem to contain sensitive information but the application may have triggered the order itself by making a reference in the description that one of its many uses could be by the military. It would be analogous to an invention for an improved water bottle that you might describe as being beneficial to the military (a group that often needs bottled water in far away places) but that really is ordinary, everyday technology.

If you don’t know, the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951 requires the government to impose secrecy orders on certain patent applications that contain sensitive information, thereby restricting disclosure of the invention and withholding the grant of a patent. This requirement can be imposed even when the application is wholly created and owned by a private individual or company without government sponsorship or support.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) estimates that as many as 9.9 million Americans become victims of identity theft each year. These crimes involve personally identifying information (PII):

• Name and address
• Social Security number
• Credit card numbers
• Email or other passwords

Many people associate such crimes with online scams like phishing emails. However, most identities are stolen using low-tech methods. There are many ways thieves obtain your personal information:

These days, Debian seems to be enjoying a modest comeback among experienced users. Hardly a week goes by when I don't hear on social networking sites of two or three people giving Debian another look.

This renewed interest may reflect a growing disillusionment with Ubuntu, the Debian derivative that has partly replaced Debian in popularity among Linux users. Almost certainly, it reflects a growing willingness to experiment with distros after the last two years of user revolts against GNOME 3 and Ubuntu's Unity. As one of the oldest distributions—and one specifically focused on user choice—Debian looks reliable in the middle of such uncertainty.

Still, many users hesitate to switch to Debian. The distribution is surrounded by myths, many of them adding to an impression that it is an expert's choice and almost as difficult to use as Gentoo or Linux from Scratch.

The plumber comes to your home and asks: “What tool do you want me to use?”.

What will be your reply? “I don’t care! Fix the damn problem”.

That’s right. Everybody wants to get their work done, and get their problems fixed. They don’t care what tools you use. As a developer your job is to solve problems your costumers have in the most effective manner. This in turn means that you cannot use the same tool for every type of problem. Can you use an electric driller to fix a small leak in the pipes? No. You may want to use the duct tape for that.

Which language should I learn is a wrong question to begin with. Languages are tools in the bag of a software engineer. Before deciding upon the programing languages you want to learn, you should decide what type of problems you would like to work on. Would you like to work on web technologies? Would you like to work in the Linux ecosystem? Would you like to work in the mobile platforms? There are a million different niches in programming world and you have to ask yourself all those rhetorical questions that comes to your mind and then decide which language suites your choice.

This does not matter that the tools are not important. They are; but they are not more important than the problem at hand.

Here you will find ten of the best methods I have used in my organization for idea generation. They have worked for me very well. I now share them with you. I trust they will assist you in your endeavors as they have done with mine.

The vast majority of business websites out there tend to stay laser-focused on their goals. Whether they’re intended to sell a product or generate leads, it seems that all of the content placed on their websites works towards this end. While there’s something that can be said about the strategy, changes at Google, Bing, and social media sites makes it beneficial to post content that does nothing more than educate, entertain, or act as a resource for people without attempting to sell or generate a lead.

If you want to truly get ahead of your competitors this year, you should be willing to devote a little bit of time (or money if you choose to buy it) every month on content.

This isn’t the type of content designed to get ranked in the search engines, but it can help your important pages get ranked. It’s not the kind of content that will generate leads through social media, though you have opportunities every time someone lands on your site. It’s the type of content that is truly giving – you’re motives should be business-oriented but the content should be able to stand alone.

A good--or bad--project manager can make the difference between a project coming in on time and on budget and it being a failure. How can you spot a good project manager? CIO.com talked to experts and IT executives to find out.

CIO — Just because someone has the title of "project manager" does not mean he knows how to effectively manage projects, as many CIOs and other IT executives have learned the hard way.

So how can you tell a good project manager from a bad one? CIO.com surveyed project management experts and executives to learn what skills are required to successfully manage projects--that is, to ensure that projects are kept on track and stay on budget.

Here are seven skills project managers need in order to be effective and successful:

How effective are the tweets you send that are important to your business? How are you monitoring the effectiveness of these tweets?

By monitoring what happens to your important tweets you can begin to understand what works and what doesn’t work and make improvements.

Here are 8 tools that are useful for monitoring the effectiveness of your tweets.

Twitter is big. With over 140 million active users, and 340 million Tweets per day, the social network is one that brands cannot ignore. Indeed, few brands are ignoring Twitter. Our recent report with global research firm Booz and Co. shows that 77% consider Twitter a priority social media platform.

It's great that brands are active on Twitter, but it's crucial they know best practices for publishing engaging content. Reach and engament can vary drastically with minor tweaks, so between December 11, 2011 and February 23, 2012, Buddy Media analyzed user engagement from more than 320 Twitter handles of the world's biggest brands.

After Google's installation of super-fast fibre optic internet service in Kansas City, do you think will it usher in a new era in industry and society - or just enable faster web browsing and media downloads? For technology consultant Bret Rhodus, Google's newest venture is an amazing business opportunity.

"This can be a game-changer," he says. "The opportunity for entrepreneurs is significant." For art supply clerk Danni Parelman, however, it's just a chance to download more music.

The California internet giant has begun installing fibre optic cable that will give Kansas City residents download speeds of up to 1Gbps - about 100 times faster than the broadband internet service currently available to most Americans.

It is easy to infringe Copyright on the web. The tools we have at our disposal, in the form of web browsers, such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, and site copying programs like Web Whacker and Anawave WebSnake allow us to save pages or whole sites onto our computers with ease. Even email can be unwittingly used to breach copyright laws. Consider the following situations:

• I find a website which discusses copyright, perfect as a further reading for participants at a conference where I presented a paper. I copy the text from one page in the site and email it to all conference participants, with the suggestion that they visit this site to learn more about current copyright issues. It is probable that I have breached copyright.
• I see an image which would be perfect for the background of a number of pages on a site I am working on. I know that if I copy the image to my site I am infringing copyright so I decide to simply point to the URL of the image and include it in my pages this way. I know that this is less secure, as the image might be moved or deleted at any time, but I decide that this is better than breaking copyright. Unfortunately, including images in this manner still breaches copyright.
• I am creating a new site and need a cartoon for a page on coming events. I see the perfect image on another site so I write to the owner of the site to ask permission to use the image on the new site. I receive permission and happily insert the image in the web page. What I don't know is that the creator of the original website doesn't actually hold copyright in the image, making me in breach of copyright yet again.
• Having been made aware of the problem with the cartoon I used in the organisation's site, I search through some old publications of the organisation and find a cartoon that will work just as well. Fortunately, the cartoon was commissioned by the organisation for the journal it appeared in, so I reason that I can also use it on our website. However, a close reading of the agreement with our cartoonist shows that he has granted us the right to use the images he creates in paper publications only. If I wish to use it on our website I will have to negotiate a new fee with him.
• A school I am scheduled to visit next week informs me that their Internet connection is very slow. As I am going there to show staff how to use a particular website I make a complete, unaltered copy, without permission and save it on a floppy disk. I then use the disk version of the site in my presentation because it is much faster and more reliable than the school's Internet connection. By doing this I have almost certainly infringed copyright.

Takeaway: Myths, misconceptions, and confusion still plague the world of open source. Here’s the real scoop for anyone considering a move to an open source solution.

I remember a day when the mention of open source in a business setting — no matter the size of the business — was unthinkable.

The times they have changed, and open source is no longer considered a pariah. In fact, open source is often now considered first when a solution is needed. But when open source is being considered, certain things must be known. If you just dive in head first, there may well be some surprises waiting for you.

To keep new open source users from losing their sanity, I thought it might be helpful to list a few things everyone needs to know about open source before it’s put into place.