Anil Dash of dashes.com offers up this provocative companion to NMDNet’s subheading,
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Craig Dietrich
Aug 102010
Jul 132010
Admittedly, it’s the “Steven King” in this story that caught my eye, this being a UMaine blog and all. But beyond the fake name that isn’t the same spelling as Maine’s prolific author, this is a good resource for those interested in Internet non-security,
On the off chance someone might defeat that first bastion of security, Cavion® employs another fool-proof barrier: JavaScript.
Full text at http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Classic-WTF-Banking-So-Advanced.aspx.
May 172010
I’m a big fan of the John Cage | Fluxus Happening | guerilla urban architecture mashup Frozen Grand Central. I’m also a fan of public transportation. So you can imagine my delight when I stepped off the metro at UCLA’s Westwood & La Conte and stumbled upon this:
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May 062010
Viewers from a range of disciplines will get a lot out of this 30-minute interview with writer and digital humanist Cheryl Ball. Describing issues and concerns for new media education, Cheryl offers concrete solutions and examples from her work at Illinois State University and beyond.
(The UMaine community will recognize Cheryl; interview segments with her were featured preminantly in Magic, a Without Borders installation put together by Still Water‘s John Bell, Vanessa Vobis, and Craig Dietrich.)
For the last year, when I log into FirstClass1, I get a box prompting me to change my password. Unfortunately, the application doesn’t accept my old password. The fix? Ignore it; hitting cancel closes the box and I’m on my way.
Turns out this chagrin to system admins might not be so bad afterall. From a recent Microsoft Research2 study described by the Boston Globe:
… redoing [passwords] is not an effective preventive step against online infiltration unless the cyber attacker (or evil colleague) who steals your sign-in sequence waits to employ it until after you’ve switched to a new one, Herley wrote. That’s about as likely as a crook lifting a house key and then waiting until the lock is changed before sticking it in the door.
Important to note, the study’s primary consideration is the collective amount of time it takes employees to routinely change their passwords:
“A lot of advice makes sense only if we think user time has no value,” [Cormac Herley] said.
I’ll continue clicking cancel more than I type in a new password, though I would recommend staying on the course of having different passwords across multiple sites.
Footnotes:
1 It would be semantically incorrect to link the FirstClass text above to Dear FirstClass, so I’ll do it here: Dear FirstClass.
2 Resisting the obvious pun…
For those that golf at Sunnyvale Municipal Golf Course in Silicon Valley this is old news, but an interesting discovery for the rest of us: in the middle of the course are runway approach lights for the adjacent Moffett Field. Continue reading »
A high level programming language is one where a programmer doesn’t need to concern themselves with system-level operations such as memory management and code is generally re-usable across platforms. Continue reading »
Intermedia meets new media; performance meets documentation; from the archive: When Idols Die: An Ode to Robert Wilson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0Nos8tDCPc
Maybe Chris Dodd will look into these fraud cases. Or maybe he’ll blame the insurance companies. Or maybe he has other things on his mind.
An iPhone insurance carrier says that four in six claims are suspicious, and is worse when a new model appears on the market.
Full text at http://www.tomsguide.com/us/iPhone-Upgrade-Insurance-Hammer-Car,news-5845.html
This isn’t the first we’ve heard of this, but a very public instance: UCLA professors can no longer post videos on their educational media server. Copyright refugees can find a home at Critical Commons, a resource developed by Steve Anderson and Holly Willis from cross-town USC for media-based teaching and research. The site promotes media uploads under fair-use with scholarly examinations of each work.
Feb 012010
I’m not a Microsoft sympathiser, but I do think they’ve made a number of gains in the last year. Windows 7 has caught up with OS X (and even passed it: it’s fast and 64-bit, you can rotate images without attaching folder actions, and the taskbar now combines both the old Windows taskbar with behviors from OS X’s dock). And, Windows Live is an intruiging—if not yet completely useful—set of lightweight cloudware software, include Live Sync which can pass files between Windows to OS X computers.
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Jan 202010
Good Magazine’s GOOD.is alerts us to a grocer in London featuring no packaging — at all: “Within the beautifully designed shop, organic whole foods, dried fruit, nuts and seeds, herbs and spices, even refillable oils, vinegars and wines are all available to place straight into your own containers, that you will have brought along with you … if you haven’t then reusable bags are available.” More at http://www.good.is/post/london-s-unpackaged-grocery-shop-no-packaging-whatsoever
Jan 152010
Thanks to J.S. in Los Angeles (by way of Maine) for the heads up on this fantastic addition to the XML family. Tags include <brush>, <color>, and <dripVecRelativeToUp>
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From VentureBeat, a reminder that TV’s trend towards the Internet goes both ways:
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Dec 092009
- Digital Storytelling: Community Empowerment (Ana Boa-Ventura, University of Texas – Austin) – Digital Storytelling: Re-Defining the Role of the Academic Library (Sherry Tuffin, Wayne State University) – Digital Storytelling: Purpose, Practice, and Potential (Jeff Watson, USC School of Cinematic Arts)
The Scholars ask questions such as: – What is digital storytelling and how is it different than non-digital storytelling? – Can mobile and ubiquitous computing change the game when it comes to who gets to tell stories and who doesn’t? How does it change storytelling itself? – How can librarians best archive and present digital stories and storytelling technologies? How are librarians both gatekeepers of stories, as well as storytellers? – How does an archive also produce a story? What does it mean for a librarian, museum curator, graphic artist, or blogger to be a storyteller?
We also have some amazing guest speakers lined up to visit the forum.
You are very warmly invited to join us: http://www.hastac.org/scholars
Anyone is welcome to register with HASTAC and join the conversation.
This is the last forum of 2009! Coming up in 2010: Forum on Race/Ethnicity/Diaspora, another forum on Gender/Sexuality/Queer media spaces. Many others are in the works. If you haven’t visited HASTAC recently, drop by for just a minute to see all of their amazing work. The Scholars this year are developing an amazing, thoughtful, diverse, and interesting community. It is incredibly inspiring.