The Nexus of 2024

Author: jon

A bumper crop o’ Slashdot security threads

Apr 16, 2008

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by

jon

in Professional

In RSA: “It feels like somethingâ€™s missing” earlier this week, I mentioned that I found myself wondering whether what I was seeing at the show responded to security problems as experienced by users. Coincidentally enough, when I checked Slashdot today there were several of interesting security-related threads. So while it’s far from a statistically-valid sample,…
RSA, part 2: static analysis

Apr 15, 2008

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by

jon

in Professional

A continuation of RSA: “It feels like something’s missing” RSA’s a tough show for static analysis companies, but several were there. Ounce had the largest booth and an excellent message (“listen to your code”); Veracode, Armorize, and Fortify had smaller presence. However, I didn’t actually spend much time at the booths or looking at the…
RSA: “It feels like something’s missing”

Apr 14, 2008

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by

jon

in Professional, social sciences

The last time I was at the RSA conference/expo in 2004, Bill Gates talked about PREfix and PREfast in his keynote — he even went off and started talking about Microsoft’s acquisition of PREfix! Hard to top that … but it’s a great place for shoozing and to get a feel for the market, so…
A Carnival of Allies

Apr 13, 2008

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by

jon

in political, Tales from the Net

From The Angry Black Woman: I call a Carnival. The Carnival of Allies. Where self-identified allies write to other people like themselves about why this or that oppression and prejudice is wrong. Why they are allies. Why the usual excuses are not good enough. I figure allies probably know full well all the many and…
A note to my many Muses

Apr 12, 2008

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by

jon

in Personal

i woke up this morning thinking about Muses and realized that i should apologize for the focus of my writing over the last several months.
Asbestos underwear, fair information principles, and security

Apr 3, 2008

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by

jon

in privacy, Professional, Tales from the Net

Tales from the Net co-author Deborah Pierce’s Into the Lion’s Den — a privacy advocate’s work is never done (on her tribe.net blog) talks about a panel she was just on at ere expo, “the nation’s leading recruiting conference.” She was there for a debate with the CEO of a company whose mission is “to…
Strategy, security, and static analysis: what’s next for me

Apr 1, 2008

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by

jon

in Personal, Professional

Fourteen years ago today was my last day at Digital Equipment Corporation before leaving to work on the technology today became PREfix and the company I started with a few friends that became Intrinsa, so it seems especially appropriate to post about this today … I’m delighted to announce that I’m starting a part-time strategy…
TSA forces woman to remove nipple rings — with pliers

Mar 29, 2008

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by

jon

in political

Yes, really; and then defends the “thoroughness of the Officers involved”. Don’t you feel safer now? Our tax dollars at work … From AP’s coverage of Mandi Hamlin’s press conference: The female TSA agent used a handheld detector that beeped when it passed in front of Hamlin’s chest, the Dallas-area resident said. Hamlin said she…
Best baseball movie ever? Don’t delay, vote today!

Mar 27, 2008

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by

jon

in entertainment, Personal

MLB.com says, “It’s March, time for madness and brackets and… baseball movies!” Fans can choose “the best baseball flick ever” from 64 possibilities in four categories — Comedy, Drama, Old School and Left Field. My brother’s movie, Little Big League, is in “Left Field”, up against The Hank Greenberg Story in the first round, and…
pwn2own: the stakes just got higher

Mar 26, 2008

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by

jon

in Professional, social sciences

Update, March 27: Macbook Air pwned and owned — in two minutes! Update, March 28: Vista laptop pwned via an Adobe Flash vulnerability. Update, April 16: Apple issues Safari patch. Props to the winners — and to Ubuntu Linux, which emerged unpwned!
My new bio-in-progress, 2.0

Mar 26, 2008

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by

jon

in Personal, Professional, social computing

It’s amusingly difficult for me to write professional biographies, especially for print publications. Not only do I have a hard time reducing my career to the paragraph you’re usually allowed, at some level it feels like it forces me to reify my identity. Nonetheless, it has to be done; right now, I’m on the hook…
Kinetic 3, at the Pacific Science Center

Mar 22, 2008

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by

jon

in entertainment

Dancing with the dinos … how cool is that? Infinite Connections does a great job with these parties.Â As always,Â nwtekno has the details.Â I’m psyched!
“If Ann Coulter had liveblogged the Gettysburg Address”

Mar 19, 2008

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by

jon

in entertainment, political

by Mark Kleinam on The Reality Based Community: Old Abe is approaching the podium, looking even more like a badly-dressed and ill-proportioned scarecrow suffering from a depressive disorder than he usually does. I mean, if you’re going to be an empty suit, couldn’t you at least find a suit that fits? And as usual, he’s…
Intersectionality 2.0

Mar 18, 2008

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by

jon

in political, Professional, social computing, social sciences

I’ve been working on a couple a potential proposal a keynote for this year’s Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference related to the topic of intersectionality and social networks. Here’s an overview: Since first being developed by KimberlÃ© Crenshaw in the 1970s, theories of intersectionality have become a powerful lens for examining questions of race and…
Indeed! The Economist on “computer science as a social science”

Mar 12, 2008

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by

jon

in Professional, social computing, social sciences

The Economist’s Technology Quarterly has an excellent article on Software bugtraps: software that makes software better. This is something of a followup to an article they did a few years ago; most people quoted think that the situation is improving, although of course as Capers Jones points out it depends on your metrics. And why…
“Election falsification” and other voting issues in Ohio (updated)

Mar 11, 2008

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by

jon

in political, social sciences

Update, March 27: The Columbus Dispatch reports statewide officials say prosecution for Limbaugh is very unlikely: “lying through your teeth and being stupid isn’t a crime.” Ari Melber’s Limbaugh’s Lying Voters Under Investigation on The Nation’s Campaign Matters blog has a lot more. Kim Zetter’s The Mysterious Case of Ohio’s Voting Machines, on Wired’s THREAT…
When I’m right, I’m right: Geraldine Ferraro and “The day after”

Mar 11, 2008

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by

jon

in Uncategorized

The Obama campaign’s response to Geraldine Ferraro’s attack perfectly illustrates several things I talked about last week in The day after. Campaign strategist David Axelrod emphasizes the pattern: Axelrod said Ferraro’s comments were part of a “pattern” of negative attacks aimed at Obama. He pointed to Clinton’s former New Hampshire co-chairman Bill Shaheen, who questioned…
Cognitive diversity and the 2008 US election

Mar 9, 2008

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by

jon

in political, social sciences, Tales from the Net

Originally posted as a comment about The Day After. There’s an interesting thread started on Feb 8 in the One Million Strong for Barack group on Facebook, How many Political Cards Hillary has played and whats more to come? I went back and looked at it today seeing how accurate it was; here was my…
Facebook flakiness: reliability problems, or an attack?

Mar 8, 2008

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by

jon

in political, Professional, social sciences

Facebook once again is in the middle of major flakiness right now: links to nowhere, spontaneous logouts. The best thing to do when something like this happens is to treat it as a sign that it’s a good time to take a break from Facebook for a little while. So I decided to write this…
Oddaptation: Horton Hears a Who

Mar 7, 2008

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by

jon

in entertainment, Personal

My brother, aka Gregory K of Gottabook (best known for his Fibs) also does Oddaptations, which he describes as “Cliff’s Notes/Spark notes of picture books… but with some attitude (and rhyme) thrown in.” Here’s the start of his latest, which I’d describe as something of a Seussian mashup: HORTON HEARS A WHO by Dr. Seuss…