Posts from — January 2007

College Student Jailed For Two Days After Reporting Rape – News:
A jail worker later refused to give her a second dose of a morning-after pill to prevent pregnancy because of religious convictions, said Vic Moore, the college student’s attorney. She was released from jail Monday only after Moore reported her plight to the local media. “Shocked. Stunned. Outraged. I don’t have words to describe it,” Moore said Tuesday of his client’s arrest and treatment in jail. “She is not a victim of any one person. She is a victim of the system. There’s just got to be some humanity involved when it’s a victim of rape.”

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religious convictions should not be able to impede a person’s right to their own body, right to their health and well-being. The judgement of the whole system that brought about this sorry state of affairs in american institutions is highly suspect.

Metropolis Magazine:

some cool ones

Don Norman’s jnd.org / Simplicity Is Highly Overrated:

as I’ve been known to say about simplicity… “it prevents people from thinking”, which it does. If something is so simple that you don’t have to think about it, to learn about it, then that thing loses a certain value to many people as Norman indicates. What he does not indicate because he is within the realms of efficiency… is that people do like challenges, they like to be tried and to learn from those challenges in certain circumstances. If we build everything with a mind toward simplicity with the “Don’t Make Me Think” attitude…. is the moral equivalent to, “Be a machine”

It’s just hardware!:
It’s just hardware, it will not change education, it will not make our students smarter, it will not make our lives easier unless we are willing to take a long deep look into our systems and change the way we do things. We are talking about a pedagogical shift in the way learning happens, in the way classrooms are set up, and the way we view our students in this new digital world.

It’s just hardware.
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it is just hardware… but the students are not using the the same as they might use a book, or a plow, or a tractor, or an elevator. it is a connection machine, somewhat like the book, but closer to the library, the real library, where you go in and talk to people, meet people with similar interests, ask for help, receive it, etc. etc. It is always there, always open, and usually not disfunctional, but yeah… sometimes it is.

GOP & Higher Education: “It’s about training a docile work force.” No. 1.28.2006. 19.:
“It’s not about liberal education and critical thinking,” says Dennis Baron, a former columnist for the Chronicle of Higher Education and commentator on education policy. “It’s about training a docile work force.”
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yep, that is basically what it is about…

Top 10 Online Databases for General Research « FMU Online:
When writing papers for school, it’s always good to start your research online. Many academic journals publish their articles online—which can give you a head start on research prior to heading to your local library.

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it is not always good to start online…. but these are good references to some extent.

Wikipedia Biography:
Kathryn Cramer proposes that ISFDB take back author biographies from Wikipedia.
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I agree, wikipedia is not the place for…. biographies, actually it is not the place for most things. it is really hard to maintain any sense of standards in wikipedia. you can basically find valid citations for nearly any minoritarian position in the world and support it. so you will find that wikipedia is full of things that just don’t quite fit…. full of arguments about minor things. this skews the whole project.

dmiessler.com | study | tcpdump:

Tcpdump is the premier network analysis tool for information security professionals. Having a solid grasp of this über-powerful application is mandatory for anyone desiring a thorough understanding of TCP/IP. Many prefer to use higher level analysis tools such as Ethereal Wireshark, but I believe this to usually be a mistake.
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yep, it is useful, but i do prefer ethereal most of the time. i’ve only used tcpdump when i wanted to capture then analyze.

Vint Cerf: one quarter of all computers part of a botnet:
Cerf told his listeners that approximately 600 million computers are connected to the Internet, and that 150 million of them might be participants in a botnet—nearly all of them unwilling victims. Weber remarks that “in most cases the owners of these computers have not the slightest idea what their little beige friend in the study is up to.”

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I think it is actually quite likely that this is a higher number than that having experienced dealing with this at several institutions.

A sad tale of technology dependence:
Fortunately, this particular laptop has a fingerprint
sensor. What a cool piece of technology! I still have no idea what my
password is, but every morning I simply drag my index finger over the sensor and
Windows logs me in.

Last night in the woodshop I sliced my index finger open while
attempting to see if a plane iron was sharp yet. (It was.)

Today, my &*%#$@! laptop thinks my fingerprint has
changed.

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Yes a sad tail indeed…. my right index finger is marked by a knife cut, has been since i was 8. fingerprints change, and they change permanently….. computer access by biometrics will always cause a problem because of the innate mutability of the human body.