It's designed to handle up to 15 petabytes of data per year. Data transfers from 11 data centers around the world are handled via 10 Gbps point-to-point optical links.
Noticeable shaking on the 3rd floor of a concrete building in Cambridge, MA. Some people evacuated. Being a former LA resident, I deemed it minor and didn't bother.
It depends how you define "secure." There are numerous weaknesses of 2G (GSM) security that were addressed in the 3G (UMTS) standards. The major ones: 1) GSM supports one-way authentication only (handset to network), so man-in-the-middle attacks are possible; 2) encryption is optional, and when turned on by the carrier, only covers the air interface between the phone and the basestation, leaving base transceiver station (BTS) to base station controller (BSC) connections, often a microwave links, effectively unprotected; 3) GSM encryption keys are not long enough to make brute force attacks impractical (A5/1, the strongest version of GSM encryption, has a 64-bit key); 4) GSM does not support data integrity protection, making false BTS attacks like Paget's DEFCON demo possible; and 5) encryption keys and authentication data are transmitted in the clear within a network and between networks when the phone is roaming. (Ref.: 3GPP TS 33.120, 3GPP TS 21.133).
A 3G-only phone isn't susceptible to attacks that attempt to coerce a handset into 2G operation and exploit the weaknesses of GSM security. However, UMTS networks, because they're packet-based, still have to contend with DoS attacks and other Internet headaches.
Oh come on, BostInnovation is not a misnomer. There are plenty of certifiably innovative startups and several well-known VCs on the Right Bank of the Charles. Runkeeper and Cloudant are on the same floor of my former office building in the South End. Flybridge and Spark Capital both have offices in the Back Bay. There's a cleantech incubator called Greentown Labs in the Fort Point Channel district that houses some very innovative companies, as well as all of the Mass Challenge finalists in the Seaport (editorial comments about Mass Challenge aside, many of these companies are IMHO quite novel and interesting). A new ed-tech startup and a micro-VC firm have recently set up shop in the Leather District near South Station. Oh yeah, and there's Skyhook Wireless and Where.com, and well, the list goes on...
Happily not the case in my family. The Apple II Plus was my Christmas present in 1980. My younger brother (now an MBA) was content playing video games when I wasn't hunched over the keyboard writing BASIC programs with alarming numbers of GOTO statements.
Do you really think that girls are discouraged from using computers in this day and age? I'm always excited to meet women who can code or who show even the slightest interest in learning how to actually program a computer because there don't seem to be very many of us (even in a place like Boston). That being said, most women that I know who are approximately my age or younger are at least reasonably adept at using software that other people wrote.
I spent 2.5 years at CERN as a grad student in experimental particle physics in the 1990s. I never experienced anything like the condescending head patting or bad pick-up lines the OP refers to. In fact, those years at CERN were the closest thing to a meritocracy that I've experienced in my adult life. I suspect that being a non-physicist is a far bigger impediment to fitting in at CERN than being female. I spent countless hours talking physics over coffee, skiing down mogul-infested inclines in Chamonix, and drinking beer/yelling at the TV during soccer matches with the guys in my (otherwise all male) research group and never felt like I didn't belong. On the rare occasions that guys said or did things that I found to be in poor taste, I called them out on it in a non-confrontational way. Most of the time they weren't intentionally trying to be misogynist swine, they just needed someone to point out to them that they were being insensitive. I've been in the unique position of existing in male-dominated environments for as long as I can remember and have always wondered why more women don't seem to realize how much male behavior can be explained by a combination of cluelessness and insecurity-- it would save my gender much emotional angst.
My knee jerk reaction to this story was "do any women work at this company"? (I'm female and do pushups every day as a component of marathon & triathlon training, so I'm not whining about the hypothetical possibility of feeling excluded.) I understand the intent, but the implementation seems misguided for many of the reasons that others have mentioned. If you want to encourage your employees to stay in shape without marginalizing anyone, offer to subsidize gym memberships or the athletic activity of their choice (e.g., karate classes, participation in a soccer league, yoga etc.) And there are plenty of teambuilding activities that have virtually no threat of joint damage.
Definitely my experience. I still have vivid nightmares about the general exam more than 10 years later. It was an 3 day x 8 hours per day written test with no breaks. If you wanted to eat, you had to bring food with you into the test room. Then there was the dreaded oral inquisition. Although I didn't appreciate it at the time, having survived the abject misery of the first 2 years of a physics Ph.D., everything else has seemed manageable in comparison. A few years ago, they changed the format of the written exam to a single 8 hour day. My thesis defense was a total cakewalk. Scheduling it late on a Friday afternoon was probably the single smartest thing I ever did in grad school.
The fact that "Joey" was annoyed with someone willing to clue him in on social norms that he could easily glean through careful observation is a sad commentary on what seems to be an increasingly pervasive lack of common sense and misplaced feelings of entitlement amongst entrepreneurial wannabes. A frothy market only amplifies the effect. I wonder if it's partially a regional/generational thing. As a native Bostonian on the youngish side of Generation X, this interaction makes me cringe. Another trend that irks me is the use of blog comments for blatant self-promotion. The sage advice to JFDI and establish credibility is basically the translation into startup speak of the mantra of my high school English teacher in 1989: show don't tell.
It's designed to handle up to 15 petabytes of data per year. Data transfers from 11 data centers around the world are handled via 10 Gbps point-to-point optical links.