Data presentation can be beautiful, elegant and descriptive. There is a variety of conventional ways to visualize data - tables, histograms, pie charts and bar graphs are being used every day, in every project and on every possible occasion. However, to convey a message to your readers effectively, sometimes you need more than just a simple pie chart of your results. In fact, there are much better, profound, creative and absolutely fascinating ways to visualize data. Many of them might become ubiquitous in the next few years.

So what can we expect? Which innovative ideas are already being used? And what are the most creative approaches to present data in ways we’ve never thought before?

I've personally used IBM's Many Eyes and I'm thankful they make such a service freely available.

Also, I secretly have a crush on Fernanda B. Viégas; one of the researchers that worked on Many Eyes. Oops, I guess it's not a secret anymore.

Data Visualization: Modern Approaches

New Site Up
Fri, 08/03/2007 - 16:04 — mtrump

The new site is up. More content will be up shortly

IRC at #summercon on EFNet

Announcements | summercon 2007

This made me BIG LULZ and even EPIC LULZ.

They call themselves 'Anonymous'

DESTROY

They are hackers on steroids, treating the Web like a real-life video game, sacking Web sites, creating chaos and disrupting innocent people's lives.

DIE

Like an internet hate-machine.

ATTACK

FOX found out about 4chan.org. FOX, stop being a LULZ killer.

FOX Investigates: 'Hacker Gangs'

I was writing an application for creating a manifest for JavaScript. I was unable to do it using DOM; instead I wrote my own application for parsing JavaScript files. It is little tough to peek into JavaScript objects, initial I could only get the members and fields using for-in. but that was not enough, what if someone stored a file locally and I have to write code to execute it, I would be able to get only the members, just executing members without passing the required input parameter if any will not work. The code below will parse the file and give me the options as to what input is required and if something is returned what it could possibly be returning except primitive types. Knowing these things in advance makes it easier to execute the code. Well it worked for me; let’s see how it works for you. I know many people are looking for something like this.

JavaScript Reflection

First the Philippines abolishes capital punishment... now this.
You're on notice Philippines!

Inmates at central Philippines prison re-enact the moves from Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' music video.

Convicts boogie to 'Thriller'

KH:

We do not publicize how often the no-fly system stops people you would not want on your flight. Several times a week would low-ball it.

Almost 20,000 False Positives:

The Justice Department's proposed budget for 2008 reveals for the first time how often names match against the database, reporting that there were 19,967 "positive matches" in 2006.

19,967 / 52 = 383.9
What that really translates to approximately 350 people per week inconvenienced. If they were arrested, deported, or their plot foiled we would of heard about it in the news.

But remeber what KH said about why they use the no-fly list:

Because it works.

Schneier on Security: Conversation with Kip Hawley, TSA Administrator (Part 3)

The real danger is the gradual erosion of individual liberties through the automation, integration, and interconnection of many small, separate record-keeping systems, each of which alone may seem innocuous, even benevolent, and wholly justifiable.
-----U.S. Privacy Protection Study Commission, 1977

The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC) is a nonprofit consumer organization with a two-part mission -- consumer information and consumer advocacy. It was established in 1992 and is based in San Diego, California. It is primarily grant-supported and serves individuals nationwide.

The PRC's goals are to:
* Raise consumers' awareness of how technology affects personal privacy.
* Empower consumers to take action to control their own personal information by providing practical tips on privacy protection.
* Respond to specific privacy-related complaints from consumers, intercede on their behalf, and, when appropriate, refer them to the proper organizations for further assistance.
* Document the nature of consumers' complaints and questions about privacy in reports, testimony, and speeches and make them available to policy makers, industry representatives, consumer advocates, and the media.Advocate for consumers' privacy rights in local, state, and federal public policy proceedings, including legislative testimony, regulatory agency hearings, task forces, and study commissions as well as conferences and workshops.

A Chronology of Data Breaches for 2007

U.S. Customs needs a 24/7 process where their agents can escallate a disagreement to someone who is not a complete fucking moron.

Policies like this are only hurting the digilantis' out there and other security professionals like Halvar.

Digilanti
n. Combining digerati expertise with vigilante initiative, the digilanti anonymously police the Internet, exposing scams and fighting spam in the interest of making the Web safe without government intervention.

Hopefully some better policies come out of the EU discussion on cyber-crime.

Because what Germany is doing would be comparable to a U.S. State banning guns. "Guns don't kill people; people kill people"

I say "Hacker tools don't hack systems; hackers hack systems."

Halvar Flake tossed by U.S. Customs on way to BlackHat

Nice to see a corporation reaching out to academia in this fashion. I'm sure part charity, part if you want something done right (in this case developer education), do it yourself.

Lectures

Web Security Lecture #1 (Acidus referenced around 1:25:00)

Web Security Lecture #2

Coding Projects

Programming Problem Set

Google Code for Educators - Introduction to Web Security

Sounds MAD! Mutual assured destruction (MAD) is a doctrine of military strategy in which a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by one of two opposing sides would effectively result in the destruction of both the attacker and the defender.

Software patent does not have a universally accepted definition. One definition suggested by the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure is that a software patent is a "patent on any performance of a computer realized by means of a computer program".

There is intense debate over the extent to which software patents should be granted, if at all. Criticisms of software patents include:

* Whether software is patentable; and
* Whether the inventive step and non-obviousness requirement is too easily satisified for software.

The Coming Software Patent Apocalypse