From Erica Goode’s “Incompetent People Really Have No Clue, Studies Find: They’re blind to own failings, others’ skills” (The New York Times: 18 January 2000):
Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, worries about this because, according to his research, most incompetent people do not know that they are incompetent.
On the contrary. People who do things [...]
Posted on October 7th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Webster U: infosec management, commonplace book, science | Comments Off
From Bush, Kerry cross paths in Iowa (BBC News: 4 August 2004):
US President George W Bush and his Democratic rival John Kerry have spent the day hunting votes within blocks of each other in the state of Iowa.
Mr Bush met supporters at a rally in the town of Davenport, while Mr Kerry held an economic [...]
Posted on June 14th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, business, politics, security | Comments Off
From electricnews.net’s Internal security attacks affecting banks (The Register: 23 June 2005):
Internal security breaches at the world’s banks are growing faster than external attacks, as institutions invest in technology, instead of employee training.
According to the 2005 Global Security Survey, published by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, 35 per cent of respondents said that they had encountered attacks [...]
Posted on June 14th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Webster U: infosec management, business, law, security | Comments Off
From Clay Shirky’s “File-sharing Goes Social“:
The RIAA has taken us on a tour of networking strategies in the last few years, by constantly changing the environment file-sharing systems operate in. In hostile environments, organisms often adapt to become less energetic but harder to kill, and so it is now. With the RIAA’s waves of legal [...]
Posted on May 9th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: social software, Wash U: tech in changing society, business, law, technology | Comments Off
From Robert X. Cringely’s “Patently Absurd: Why Simply Making Spam Illegal Won’t Work“:
Nobody can deny that the Wright brothers were pioneers. Their use of a wind tunnel helped define the science of aerodynamics and had influence far beyond their time. But their secrecy and litigious nature held back the progress of flying, and [...]
Posted on May 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, history, law, technology | Comments Off
From Technology Review’s’ “Face Forward“:
To get around these problems, OmniPerception, a spinoff from the University of Surrey in England, has combined its facial-recognition technology with a smart-card system. This could make face recognition more robust and better suited to applications such as passport authentication and building access control, which, if they use biometrics at all, [...]
Posted on May 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, security, technology | Comments Off
From Technology Review’s’ “Creepy Functions“:
Consider one example of function creep. The Electoral Commission of Uganda has retained Viisage Technology to implement a face recognition system capable of enrolling 10 million voters in 60 days. The goal is to reduce voter registration fraud. But Woodward notes that the system might also be put to work fingering [...]
Posted on May 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: social software, Webster U: infosec management, security, technology | Comments Off
From “Operations of the Western Flotilla” by Henry A. Walke, Commander of the Carondelet, describing the Battle of Island Number Ten:
Having received written orders from the flag-officer, under date of March 30th, I at once began to prepare the Carondelet for the ordeal. All the loose material at hand was collected, and on the 4th [...]
Posted on April 23rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history | Comments Off
From The Telegraph’s “Skeleton woman’ dead in front of TV for years“:
A woman’s skeleton was discovered in her flat three years after she is believed to have died, it emerged today.
Joyce Vincent was surrounded by Christmas presents and the television and heating in her bedsit were still on.
The 40-year-old’s body was so decomposed that the [...]
Posted on April 15th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, true stories | Comments Off
From Bruce Schneier’s “Trusted Computing Best Practices“:
The language [in the Trusted Computing Group's best practices document] has too much wiggle room for companies to break interoperability under the guise of security: “Furthermore, implementations and deployments of TCG specifications should not introduce any new interoperability obstacles that are not for the purpose of security.”
That sounds good, [...]
Posted on April 2nd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: security | Comments Off
From “Phone pirates in seek and steal mission“:
MOBILE phone technology is being used by thieves to seek out and steal laptops locked in cars in Cambridgeshire.
Up-to-date mobiles often have Bluetooth technology, which allows other compatible devices, including laptops, to link up and exchange information, and log on to the internet.
But thieves in Cambridge have cottoned [...]
Posted on April 2nd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: security | Comments Off
From “World’s oldest ship timbers found in Egyptian desert“:
The oldest remains of seafaring ships in the world have been found in caves at the edge of the Egyptian desert along with cargo boxes that suggest ancient Egyptians sailed nearly 1,000 miles on rough waters to get treasures from a place they called God’s Land, or [...]
Posted on March 21st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, history | Comments Off
From The New York Times‘ “They Stole $92 Million, but Now What?“:
Just one week ago, Colin Dixon, the manager of a depot where bank notes are stored, was driving home on a quiet Tuesday evening when what he thought was a police car with flashing blue lights pulled him over.
It was the beginning, as it [...]
Posted on March 2nd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, security | Comments Off
From MSNBC’s “75-year-old jewel thief looks back“:
When Doris Payne went to work, she stepped into her fancy dress, high heels and donned a wide-brimmed hat. Her creamy, mocha skin was made up just so, her handbag always designer. Sometimes a pair of plain gold earrings would do. Always, she looked immaculate, well-to-do. …
New York. Colorado. [...]
Posted on January 28th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, fiction | Comments Off
From The Age:
Scientists running a pioneering experiment with “living robots” which think for themselves said they were amazed to find one escaping from the centre where it “lives”.
The small unit, called Gaak, was one of 12 taking part in a “survival of the fittest” test at the Magna science centre in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, which [...]
Posted on November 29th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: cool stuff, science, technology | Comments Off
From “William Caxton“, at The Science Show:
More than 500 years later a copy of Caxton’s first edition of Chaucer became the most expensive book ever sold, knocked down at auction in the 1990s for 4.6 million pounds. But in the 15th Century, the obvious appeal of the newly printed books lay in their value for [...]
Posted on September 29th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, commonplace book, history, technology | Comments Off