Thursday, June 24, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Deus Ex Malcontent: Picture of the Week - Says it all....
Picture of the Week
From the ocean floor, directly off the Alabama coast. That brown crust you see coating everything -- including the crab in the foreground? That's oil.
Social Networking Bill Of Rights
Social Networking Bill Of Rights Released
Privacy advocates seek comments on a 14-point plan for protecting users' personal information online.
By Alison Diana InformationWeek
June 23, 2010 11:51 AM
Computers, Freedom, and Privacy (CFP) conference spent last week creating a Users' Bill of Rights that is now available for public consumption, feedback, and approval.
1. Honesty: Honor your privacy policy and terms of service.
2. Clarity: Make sure that policies, terms of service, and settings are easy to find and understand.
3. Freedom of speech: Do not delete or modify my data without a clear policy and justification.
4. Empowerment: Support assistive technologies and universal accessibility.
5. Self-protection: Support privacy-enhancing technologies.
6. Data minimization: Minimize the information I am required to provide and share with others.
7. Control: Let me control my data, and don't facilitate sharing it unless I agree first.
8. Predictability: Obtain my prior consent before significantly changing who can see my data.
9. Data portability: Make it easy for me to obtain a copy of my data.
10. Protection: Treat my data as securely as your own confidential data unless I choose to share it, and notify me if it is compromised.
11. Right to know: Show me how you are using my data and allow me to see who and what has access to it.
12. Right to self-define: Let me create more than one identity and use pseudonyms. Do not link them without my permission.
13. Right to appeal: Allow me to appeal punitive actions.
14. Right to withdraw: Allow me to delete my account, and remove my data.
In simplicity great depth....
| If My Voice Is Not Reaching You | ||
| by Afzal Ahmed Syed | ||
| If my voice is not reaching you add to it the echo— echo of ancient epics And to that— a princess And to the princess—your beauty And to your beauty— a lover's heart And in the lover's heart a dagger | ||
Poets.org | ||
Monday, June 21, 2010
David Byrne...Building up the house...
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Saturday, June 19, 2010
Site Filtering By DNS
David Douthitt over at Unix Administratosphere offers a well thought out and rational criticism of "Site Filtering By DNS" ... for a geek. However, the small town librarian Ms Marple is being pressured (back in the stacks) by Rev. Harrumph to protect those sweat innocent library patrons from such filth and degradation. On a shoe string budget. With no technical support. While trying to fend of Rev's advances.
Well-meaners and do-gooders, in keeping with the current aire of righteousness, simply have to protect little Jimmy and Susan from the scourge of the Internet. By the force of LAW no public entity will knowingly allow our innocents to be at risk of ... exposure. Well, at least not at the library.
The same Meaners and Gooders would repeal the Law of Gravity believing that in doing so they might prevent lil' Jim and his squeeze Suez from falling off their bicycles.
Full reference link: Why Site Filtering By DNS Fails
Friday, June 18, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Time and Culture
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Saturday, June 12, 2010
Fuggettabout the music, send us the musician...
Sitka Summer Music Festival cellist Armen Ksajikian plays for the resident bears at the Fortress of the Bears bear sanctuary in Sitka, Alaska. Ksajikian was inspired by the acoustics at the converted pulp mill clarifier tank and played a selection of music, including a composition by Hector Berlioz for the bears With Ksajikian is Les Kinnear director of the sanctuary. JAMES POULSON | AP (via Day in Pictures - Sacramento Bee) Friday, June 11, 2010
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Monday, June 07, 2010
fringe community helmet craze
AbstractAmong a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. We investigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a sample group of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government's invasive abilities. We speculate that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason.
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
High-Frequency Dog
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS: Lou Reed's High-Frequency Dog Concert
Even for Lou Reed, this is pretty bizarre. This June, the former Velvet Underground frontman plans to perform a concert specifically for dogs. Most of the concert won't even be audible to humans ears. The "avant-garde" performance will be delivered at ultra-high, dog-friendly frequencies. According to the BBC, Reed's wife, Laurie Anderson, got the inspiration for the show when she was backstage at a concert. She thought to herself: "Wouldn't it be great, if you were playing a concert and you look out and you see all dogs?"
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
A Bill of Privacy Rights for Social Network Users | Electronic Frontier Foundation
A Bill of Privacy Rights for Social Network Users
Commentary by Kurt Opsahl
Social network service providers today are in a unique position. They are intermediaries and hosts to our communications, conversations and connections with loved ones, family, friends and colleagues. They have access to extremely sensitive information, including data gathered over time and from many different individuals.
#1: The Right to Informed Decision-Making
Users should have the right to a clear user interface that allows them to make informed choices about who sees their data and how it is used.
#2: The Right to Control
Social network services must ensure that users retain control over the use and disclosure of their data. A social network service should take only a limited license to use data for the purpose for which it was originally given to the provider.
#3: The Right to Leave
[A] user should have the right to delete data or her entire account from a social network service. And we mean really delete. It is not enough for a service to disable access to data while continuing to store or use it. It should be permanently eliminated from the service's servers.
Monday, May 31, 2010
What is your pet peeve about a poor website?
LinkedIn Groups |
The results are in! With over 30 respondents tallied, here is a collated version of the replies. If you'd like a doc version of this list to give to your company's web development team, just email me. (Note: there is some overlap in the Navigability/Information categories.) A. Navigability1. When I can't find the information that I NEED!!! 2. Navigation that takes me 10 clicks to find the information I need. 3. Lack of a "Home" button on the menu. 4. Poor navigation 5. Landing pages where you have to click through to get to the home page 6. Lack of easy navigability 7. All comprehensive websites should have a USABLE search engine so I can find the content I'm looking for quickly and efficiently. Don't waste my time. 8. Useless search engines. 9. Sometimes you just need to send the company an email. Don't hide the contact information. 10. Corrupted or expired links to archival documents. 11. Like most, I want to grab and go. I hate it when the most obvious information is hidden or missing. Like store hours. 12. There's no search engine or there's a search engine that can't find anything 13. Vertical menu bars 14. Difficult to navigate 15. The inability to discover how to speak to someone ties in to poor navigability. 16. There is a flow that people are familiar with on websites telling us where to find contact information, where to look for job opportunities etc. Some site creators have the mentality that by moving things around they are creating a unique feel, but ultimately what this does is potentially prevent them from gaining business. Clients can miss important sections of the website, or become frustrated with the lack of ease and simply move on. 17. Need to be BlackBerry friendly. 18. Sites that lack consistent navigational tools. 19. Poor navigability! I see more and more sites without a link back "home." 20. It shouldn't take me 5 clicks to get to a phone number or address or other basic information! 21. Phone friendly is a must. 22. Every website should have a link to Home, along with one to Contact Us and one to About Us. Those are almost standard features today. No website should leave you wondering about what to do next or where to go next. You should be able to tell where you are at all times and how to get to where you want to go. Navigation takes planning and testing and thinking like the user, not like the maker. 23. Sites that show up in searches, but really have no way to find the information on the page. Posted by Alan Headbloom |
R.I.P. Peter Orlovsky
Peter Orlovsky
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Peter Orlovsky (July 8, 1933 – May 30, 2010) was an American poet best known for his lifelong relationship with Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsberg.
Biography
Orlovsky was born to Russian parents Oleg and Katharina Orlovsky in the Lower East Side of New York City . Orlovsky was raised in poverty and was forced to drop out of high school in his senior year so he could support his impoverished family. After many odd jobs, he began working as an orderly at Creedmoor State Mental Hospital known today as Creedmoor Psychiatric Center.
Orlovsky was drafted into the Army for the Korean War in 1953 when he was 19 years old. Army psychiatrists ordered his transfer off the front to work as a medic in a San Francisco hospital.
He met Ginsberg while working as a model for the painter Robert La Vigne in San Francisco in December 1954. Prior to meeting Ginsberg, Orlovsky had made no deliberate attempts at becoming a poet.[1] With Ginsberg's encouragement, Orlovsky began writing in 1957 while the pair were living in Paris. Accompanied by other beat writers, Orlovsky traveled extensively for several years throughout the Middle East, Northern Africa, India, and Europe.
In 1974, Orlovsky joined the faculty of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, teaching poetry. In 1979 he received a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to continue his creative endeavors.
In May 2010 friends reported that Orlovsky, who had been battling lung cancer for several months, was moved from his home in St. Johnsbury, Vermont to the Vermont Respite House in Williston. He died there on May 30, 2010.
How (and Why) to Stop Multitasking - Peter Bregman
First, it was delightful.
Second, I made significant progress on challenging projects, the kind that — like writing or strategizing — require thought and persistence.
Third, my stress dropped dramatically. Research shows that multitasking isn't just inefficient, it's stressful.
Fourth, I lost all patience for things I felt were not a good use of my time.
Fifth, I had tremendous patience for things I felt were useful and enjoyable.
Sixth, there was no downside.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
David Lehman :: Bravo!
French Movie
by David Lehman
I was in a French movie
and had only nine hours to live
and I knew it
not because I planned to take my life
or swallowed a lethal but slow-working
potion meant for a juror
in a mob-related murder trial,
nor did I expect to be assassinated
like a chemical engineer mistaken
for someone important in Milan
or a Jew journalist kidnapped in Pakistan;
no, none of that; no grounds for
suspicion, no murderous plots
centering on me with cryptic phone
messages and clues like a scarf or
lipstick left in the front seat of a car;
and yet I knew I would die
by the end of that day
and I knew it with a dreadful certainty,
and when I walked in the street
and looked in the eyes of the woman
walking toward me I knew that
she knew it, too,
and though I had never seen her before,
I knew she would spend the rest of that day
with me, those nine hours walking,
searching, going into a bookstore in Rome,
smoking a Gitane, and walking,
walking in London, taking the train
to Oxford from Paddington or Cambridge
from Liverpool Street and walking
along the river and across the bridges,
walking, talking, until my nine hours
were up and the black-and-white movie
ended with the single word FIN
in big white letters on a bare black screen.
Brought to you by Poets.org Poem-a-Day: David Lehman
by David Lehman
I was in a French movie
and had only nine hours to live
and I knew it
not because I planned to take my life
or swallowed a lethal but slow-working
potion meant for a juror
in a mob-related murder trial,
nor did I expect to be assassinated
like a chemical engineer mistaken
for someone important in Milan
or a Jew journalist kidnapped in Pakistan;
no, none of that; no grounds for
suspicion, no murderous plots
centering on me with cryptic phone
messages and clues like a scarf or
lipstick left in the front seat of a car;
and yet I knew I would die
by the end of that day
and I knew it with a dreadful certainty,
and when I walked in the street
and looked in the eyes of the woman
walking toward me I knew that
she knew it, too,
and though I had never seen her before,
I knew she would spend the rest of that day
with me, those nine hours walking,
searching, going into a bookstore in Rome,
smoking a Gitane, and walking,
walking in London, taking the train
to Oxford from Paddington or Cambridge
from Liverpool Street and walking
along the river and across the bridges,
walking, talking, until my nine hours
were up and the black-and-white movie
ended with the single word FIN
in big white letters on a bare black screen.
Brought to you by Poets.org Poem-a-Day: David Lehman
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