Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

What material is essential on a Social Engineering Course?

I have heard many people talk about the fact that it is rare to find a course on social engineering, and those they have attended or heard about have not been that interesting. So I was wondering, in your opinion what would make a social engineering course worth attending. I have my opinion, but I would like to hear yours.
Thanks in advance. * This is second time lucky as the original plugin collected the data but wont spill the beans *

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Negative Emotions

Science Daily reports that toddler boys may have more trouble in coping with negative emotions than their girl counterparts.

Boys, more often than girls, display negative emotions and social fearfulness according to a new study performed by the University of Illinois.

Nancy McElwain, an associate professor of human development at the University, observed 107 children in gathering data on children’s social and emotional development and parent-child relationships.

Children were examined at 33 months and again at 39 months and their parents were asked how they would respond to their children’s behavior in several hypothetical situations.

“We investigated two types of parental reactions to children’s negative emotions.  One type was to minimize their child’s emotions; for example, a parent might say, ‘Stop behaving like a baby’.  Another type of reaction was punishing the child for these emotions.  A parent might send a child to their room or take away a toy” Engle stated.

Parents who punished their kids for fears and frustrations were more likely to have children who were anxious and withdrawn.  This type of response to punishing parenting styles was more prominent among toddler boys.

Engle observed, “When children are upset, it’s better if you can talk with them and help them work through their emotions rather than sending then to their room to work through their feelings on their own.  Young children, especially little boys who are prone to feeling negative emotions intensely, need your comfort and support when their emotions threaten to overwhelm them.”

My Newest Experiment – The Kindle Book

A few months ago, my friend Drawk Kwast released his first ebook on the Kindle store.   And he’s been having some great success (mostly because the book is awesome).  Shortly after, I got my first Kindle and was fascinated by all of the low-cost and interesting self-published books on there that I wouldn’t have found physical access to in the average book store.  It piqued my interest around the Kindle as a publishing platform.

But it wasn’t until I read this story on Slashdot that I really got fascinated.  From the story:

‘These days the buying public looks at a $9.95 eBook and pauses. It’s not an automatic sale,’ says Locke. ‘And the reason it’s not is because the buyer knows when an eBook is priced ten times higher than it has to be. And so the buyer pauses. And it is in this pause—this golden, sweet-scented pause—that we independent authors gain the advantage, because we offer incredible value.’

It was fascinating to me that we could be seeing a sea change in the world of books.

While I’ve been a great consumer of books on the Kindle, I hadn’t yet explored the seller’s side of this new world.

So, I took the ebook I wrote a few years ago (called “Forget the Parachute, Let Me Fly the Plane“) and re-formatted it for the Kindle.  In the process, I updated the content and added in some new material.

And it’s selling in the Kindle store for $2.99.  As of this writing, it’s in the Top 25 in the “Job Hunting” sales list.

My thought: would you trade a cup of coffee for some solid career advice?   I hope to find out.

Technorati Tags: career advice, forget the parachute, kindle