IT Insights Blog — TestOut Pro Certifications

Once upon about five tons of hair gel and many, many dope threads ago, a vocal quintet from Boston (more specifically from Dorchester) burst onto the late-1980s music scene with the release of smooth ditty called "Please Don't Go Girl." Thus was the origin of New Edition. Or was it N Sync? Or maybe that's how Backstreet Boys came to be. Or it perhaps could have been 98 Degrees. The point is not what they called themselves, but that they were part of a teen boy band new wave.

It was poet, biographer, and three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Sandberg who wrote, "Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come," a charming witticism that has echoed down through the ages. Here at TestOut Continuing Education, we enjoy a piquant commentary as much as the next bystander

Hackers have a pretty tarnished reputation and, if you think about it, that's probably always been the case. Has "hacking" anything really ever been looked on as being productive, positive, or beneficial? Prior to the information age, "hacking" was probably most often something done with machetes and, before that, swords. And unless you were say, hacking your way through dense jungle foliage, there's a pretty good change that what was getting hacked was human limbs.

Just like the song says, when you read you begin with A-B-C, when you sing you begin with do-re-mi, and when you start learning about computers you begin with, well, what exactly? For most kids these days, it's probably a smartphone or tablet that belongs to Mom or Dad, or maybe even one that is their very own. Today's children have technology in their hands at an age that would have been essentially unthinkable just 40 or 50 years ago.

Almost exactly six years ago, British researchers announced the creation of the first crash-proof self-repairing computer. We know what you're thinking: A "self-repairing" computer could either manufacture or correctly identify needed replacement parts, remove failed hardware, and properly install new components. As often happens, however, the headlines announcing this groundbreaking scientific leap forward exaggerated the reality somewhat.