Embedded Computing: May 2007 Archives
A number of our BSc in IT Support students undertook research projects in the area of storage and encryption. Both these areas are merging in a number of different ways.
At EMC World in Orlando Cisco and RSA launched Storage Media Encryption. It runs on a Cisco Storafe Blade and uses RSA’s Key Manager technology to control access and deployment of encrypted systems.
Storage Media Encryption is being touted as an alternative to appliance-based approaches from Decru, NeoScale, Vormetric and CipherMax.
Initially, Storage Media Encryption will be available only for magnetic tapes. Cisco expects to roll it out by the end of the year. A subsequent release will extend it for use with other storage media.
Cisco will also offer an open API to develop key management.
The RSA Key Manager will ease deployment, management and operation of enterprise wide encryption. It is used to generate, store and broker access to cryptographic keys, and manage their life cycle.
Jack Ganssle has an interesting article on embedded.com as to what a Superprogrammer is. He is quick to point out that programmers whose skills have been honed over decades of code terrorism, and have transcended any taming attempt by management are not in fact superprogrammers.
A superprogrammer in his book is someone who is very smart, adept with the tools of the trade, and are instinctively good at problem solving and structuring complex systems. Any "attitude" exhibits itself in strong biases about proper development strategies and a commitment to compromise neither elegance nor quality
This myth of the superprogrammer/hacker has been promoted by Hollywood and sometime in third level we see students who think they are superprogrammers when they enter first year. However, they quickly learn that to be a good programmer you need to be methodical and have a formal training in the art of problem solving. Coding flair does help but it requires the other constituents.
