Jobs Rated 2010: 20 best and 20 worst jobs of the year

CareerCast's Jobs Rated 2010 Report has made a ranking for 200 jobs from best to worst using a comprehensive analysis methodology covering the aspects of:

• Environment
• Income
• Outlook
• Stress
• Physical Demands

The resulting 20 best jobs of 2010 are:

• 1. Actuary ($85,229)
  
• 2. Software Engineer ($85,139)
  
• 3. Computer Systems Analyst ($76,162)
  
• 4. Biologist ($71,279)
  
• 5. Historian ($62,226)
  
• 6. Mathematician ($95,161)
  
• 7. Paralegal Assistant ($46,152)
  
• 8. Statistician ($73,193)
  
• 9. Accountant ($59,176)
  
• 10. Dental Hygienist ($67,107)
  
• 11. Philosopher ($60,218)
  
• 12. Meteorologist ($81,226)
  
• 13. Technical Writer ($62,162)
  
• 14. Bank Officer ($88,217)
  
• 15. Web Developer ($60,090)
  
• 16. Industrial Engineer ($74,123)
  
• 17. Financial Planner ($59,353)
  
• 18. Aerospace Engineer ($93,133)
  
• 19. Pharmacist ($106,070)
  
• 20. Medical Records Technician ($31,150)
  

Click here to see the slideshow for The 10 Best Jobs of 2010 with their pros and cons information.

The resulting 20 worst jobs of 2010 are:

• 1. Roustabout ($31,133)
  
• 2. Lumberjack ($32,114)
  
• 3. Ironworker ($32,123)
• 4. Dairy Farmer ($32,114)
• 5. Welder ($34,122)
• 6. Garbage Collector ($31,183)
• 7. Taxi Driver ($22,113)
• 8. Construction Worker (Laborer) ($29,200)
• 9. Meter Reader ($33,170)
• 10. Mail Carrier ($50,041)
• 11. Butcher ($28,150)
• 12. Photojournalist ($28,275)
• 13. Firefighter ($44,227)
• 14. Sheet Metal Worker ($40,208)
• 15. Emergency Medical Technician ($29,158)
• 16. Stevedore ($38,182)
• 17. Reporter (Newspaper) ($35,285)
• 18. Sailor ($34,148)
• 19. Machinist ($36,150)
• 20. Choreographer ($39,272)

Click here to see the slideshow for The 10 Worst Jobs of 2010 with their pros and cons information.

The figure in the brackets above is the median income for the corresponding job.

Taiwan innovative handmade edible paper

For the 1st post in 2010, I would like to share with you an interesting and good news from Taiwan.

Taiwanese couple Huang Huan-chang (黄焕彰) and Wu Shu-li (吴淑丽) who own the Kuanghsing Paper Factory (广兴纸寮) in Puli (埔里) started to make new environmentally friendly and edible paper products from an incredible variety of plants since 2007.

The ingredients of their creative handmade edible papers include water bamboo, bittervine, okra, pineapple, coffee grounds, sugar cane dross, paddy waste, peppers, onions, carrots, moss, grass, etc.

They have just showcased over 100 types of edible paper varieties at the "Paper Loves Taiwan – Top 100" (纸爱台湾 - 荣耀 100) exhibition on 23 December 2009.

Huang says the bittervine (薇甘菊) has severely damaged Taiwan landscape like a "green cancer", a name by which it is known in Chinese. They have successfully transform it into lovely art paper suitable for handicrafts or wrapping gifts, and can also be used for making decorations, CD covers and other projects, turning the "green cancer" into "green gold".

The couple also turns okra, peppers, tangerines and even radishes into natural, edible wrappings, without adding any traditional paper pulp at all. This type of edible paper can be used to wrap food for deep-frying, yielding a product that is both safe and delicious.

GSM telephony communication hacked and shown insecured

GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) is the most widely used mobile communication standard nowadays, making up about 80% of the mobile market with about 4 billion users from 200+ countires worldwide.

GSM uses cryptographic algorithms for security and over-the-air privacy. Beside protecting the phone conversation privacy, GSM security is very important nowadays as services such as phone banking, mobile-commerce, SMS transaction, etc. are becoming more and more popular.

The bad news is, German computer security researchers Karsten Nohl has just shown to us in his talk at the 26th Chaos Communication Conference in Berlin that GSM encryption can be easily hacked with simple tools, and its telephone conversation or SMS text message can be intercepted by hackers.

Nohl presented 2 flavours of attack devices, which is able to do active intercept or passive key cracking.

Before this, security experts believe that decrypting the GSM signals will need at least hundreds of thousands of dollars and complicated technology. However, Nohl has shown the much cheaper and simpler way of hacking it, using hardware that cost as low as several thousand dollar and open source application such as OpenBTS.

This has definitely bring concerns to the whole world, especially those service providers and users of phone banking, mobile-commerce, SMS transaction, etc.

Click here to look at the slides of Karsten Nohl presented at the 26th Chaos Communication Conference.