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By Jay Savage | June 11, 2008
I’m Voting Republican [Not]
I’d say this about sums it up. It’s too bad there is no mention of the RIAA/MPAA, though.
[via 1FPS
Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »
This is why I don’t blog as much as I used to
By Jay Savage | May 7, 2008
Topics: blog, engatiki, life | 2 Comments »
Savage’s Theorem
By Jay Savage | April 14, 2008
I don’t remember where or when, now, but but a few years ago I came across a piece of advice from a respected security expert that ran something like this: “If you treat your users like criminals, they will invariably prove you right.” Even though I don’t remember who said it or where (I think it may have been an article somewhere by Rob Fickenger), it’s stuck with me, because there are a several important ideas packed into it.
The first has to do with administrator mindset: The network exists for the users, and you should be protecting it for them, not from them. If your users are in your threat model, the problem is probably you, not them (of course, we’re talking about sysadmins, not webmasters of public sites, here). If you’re suspicious and go looking for trouble, though, you’ll probably find it. We’ve all worked with admins like that–and at some point, some of us have probably fallen into the trap of being admins like that–so most of us can recognize why that attitude isn’t productive.
The second idea is potentially transformative: policy and attitude influence user behaviors as much as they respond to them. Part of it has to do with the path of least resistance. If the policy makes it difficult for regular users to do their jobs because of fear that some users will abuse their privileges, then even normal users will start looking for ways to circumvent the system. This is why the RIAA approach to copyright fails so miserably. But part of it also has to do with fostering an general spirit of trust, and with the way technocultural knowledge is disseminated. Users look to policy to establish norms. If the policy implies that most users are devious hackers attempting to subvert the system to their own uses, then that is what users will assume they should be. If, on the other hand, the cues point toward a norm of responsible use, the majority of users will pick on that, too.
This is why CYA is a horrible guiding principle for any organization, and why one of the worst things policy makers can do is write policy for corner cases. There will always be bad apples, but write the policy for the general case–for how to use the system, not for how not to use the system–and deal with the exceptions as exceptions.
This insight, of course, has a much wider application than computing systems. It applies in almost any social setting. It is closely related, for instance, to the problems we see throughout the academy with “helicopter parents” and the resurrection of in loco parentis on campus: if you treat students like they’re not adults, they’ll never start to act like adults.
We talk about people “rising to the challenge,” but we never stop to realize that the reverse is also true. Thus, Savage’s Theorem:
People will generally meet your expectations of them.
Topics: life, security, tech, usability | No Comments »
Puerto Rico Trip
By Jay Savage | March 20, 2008
I don’t usually talk about work per se here, but so much time and effort has gone into this that I want to mention it.
It’s been a busy, international week for me and my staff. As I was getting back from San Salvador, one of my technologists was heading off to Puerto Rico to accompany one of our biology classes on a field trip to study tropical ecology. Trying to wrap up the details from a continent away was a bit of a logistical challenge, especially since equipment problems and arcane airline regulations (who knew you needed media credentials to travel with more than 100 lbs. of A/V equipment?) caused some last-minute panic; I really don’t know how we functioned before Skype. In the end, though, we got everything and everyone we needed down there in working order.
The goal was to do daily video podcasts starting last Sunday, but a hectic production schedule and unreliable network have meant we didn’t get the first episode up until today. It’s up now though, and the rest should be following soon, so you can follow the adventure at home at http://itac.edublogs.org/category/podcast/tropical_ecology/.
Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »
AJCU/AUSJAL/DACE San Salvador Postmortem
By Jay Savage | March 20, 2008
I just finished organizing the photos from the San Salvador trip, and that seems as good an excuse as any to finally talk a little bit bit about the conference itself. The problem, of course, is that I really don’t have a lot to say about it, mostly because I spent the bulk of the weekend completely out of my depth.
I was expecting it to be heavily focused on professional development, best practices, and other practical aspects of distance learning, and that turned out not to be the case. Instead, it was really three conferences in one, all focused on how to leverage communication infrastructures to to improve the quality of life and education for students throughout the Americas. The discussion centered on things like the development of an international course on Central American poverty, opportunities for student and faculty exchange, and delivering education to remote an impoverished communities using radio and television. One session featured a coordinator from Australian Catholic university making a plea for faculty from the Americas to get involved with delivering a certificate in business to students in Burmese refugee camps in Thailand. The Friday afternoon schedule was essentially scrapped in favor of extending that discussion about organizing a social network to foster coordination of Social Justice initiatives among the organizations represented, and the Jesuit community at large. The entire conference left me dumbfounded, in a good way. It was a far cry from the discussions of Blackboard administration tricks and other shop talk I was expecting, and it really would have taken longer than the few days we had to wrap my head around it.
Attending the conference, though, was a tremendous experience. I met some amazing people who I won’t soon forget, and with whom I hope to work more closely in the future. Simply being around so many people actively dedicated to making the world a better place was inspiring and, I’d like to hope, motivating. And in the end, there were some good practical pedagogy chats, too.
(*The picture is from dinner the last night. It is the second half of a ham and cheese sandwich that came out of the kitchen as an unexpectedly battered, deep fried, and absolutely massive ham and cheese sandwich. In the hands of two of my fellow conference goers, it became first a piece of dorm furniture, then a volcano–that’s cole slaw spewing out the top–and then, with the addition of some strategically-placed sugar, a ski slope, and left be literally laughing so hard I was in tears. That so much was accomplished with so little material is, I think, a fitting metaphor for the entire weekend.)
Topics: life | 1 Comment »
GTD: Email in reverse
By Jay Savage | March 19, 2008
I’ve heard this email tip before, but I always forget to use it, even thought it’s probably the best single productivity enhancer I could implement on a daily basis. The advice? Write your email in reverse. If resist the temptation to just hit “reply all” and instead compose the body of the message, then write a descriptive subject, and then add the recipients, you’ll be less likely to hit send prematurely, and less likely to needlessly cc people who don’t really have a stake in the conversation. Making sure you get it right the first time, and don’t have to send a correction later or get bogged down in a long convo with people who don’t need to be involved will save both you and your readers time. [via @steverubel]
Topics: life, tech | No Comments »
Volcano Movie
By Jay Savage | March 16, 2008
Volcano MovieNot quite sure what happened, but YouTube only took :15 of video before. The full movie is above.
Topics: life | No Comments »
Last Day
By Jay Savage | March 16, 2008
Last round of pics from San Salvador are up over at . We visited the volcano and the Mayan Ruins at Joyas de Cerén and San Andrés–as well as the chapel where Óscar_Romero was killed, and his home–yesterday. The Volcano was stunning, the ruins were fantastic, and the Romero’s home was very moving, particularly the wall of plaques sent by people from all over the world thanking him for miracles.I also shot some video, below, of the volcano, which was absolutely breathtaking. It includes some shot of the small (farms? orchards? I’m not really sure what a small collection of coffee trees is) we passed on the way up where people grow coffee on the side of the volcano. The camera didn’t really capture what were were seeing–the street was too narrow and the lans angle wasn’t wide enough, but all I can say is this: the next time you’re in Startbucks, think about the people who grew that latte.
Topics: life | No Comments »
Birdsong
By Jay Savage | March 13, 2008
BirdsongShort video (of nothing much) with the birdsong I was listening to outside at lunch today.Also posted a few pics
Topics: life | 1 Comment »
In San Salvador
By Jay Savage | March 12, 2008
This will probably be of interest to about two people (Hi, mom!), but I’m in El Salvador at the moment for the Annual Distance and Continuing Education (DACE) conference hosted by the association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. Today was mostly travel, but I’ve posted a few things to the Flickr stream, along with a little video I shot on the way into town. It doesn’t really give a sense of what we were driving through, but there are some closeups of a great-tailed grackl, which they have here like we have pigeons in New York.I’ll probably have more to say as the Weekend progresses. But for now, just a few random pics.
Topics: life | 4 Comments »
Wanderlust
By Jay Savage | March 6, 2008
Watching Lee Lefever’s ignite presentation from last Feb. Every time I see something that came out of the year that went into The World Is Not Flat, I’m more amazed.
Topics: life, tech | No Comments »
How I learned to stop worrying and love XSLT
By Jay Savage | March 4, 2008
With a little help from the folks on the Literature and Latte forums, I have been gently massaging Scrivener into something I might want to write a dissertation in. Or, rather something I can write a dissertation in. A big part of that has been learning XSLT, since Scrivener uses Fletcher Penny’s Multimarkdown for LaTeX export. I am agaog. I am aghast. I am a number of other descriptors that imply the combination of unpleasant surprise and simple stupefication.
Who designed this monstrosity? As a culture, programmers share two main features. We’re lazy, and we’re creatures of habit. Whence, then, XSLT? Just because it transforms XML doesn’t mean it has to look like XML. In what world does this:
<xsl:with-param name="substring">
<xsl:text>~</xsl:text>
</xsl:with-param>
<xsl:with-param name="replacement">
<xsl:text>\ensuremath{\sim}</xsl:text>
</xsl:with-param>
make sense? Most text processing (or, if you prefer, “transforming”) lanuages have an idiom for this, and usually it looks more like s/~/\\ensuremath{\\sim}/ or maybe sub('\ensuremath{\sim}', '~'). Where’s the laziness, XSLT? And why are you reinventing the wheel–and a square wheel at that?
Topics: LaTeX, tech, usability | No Comments »
Leaders and Best: University of Michigan and Google Scan Millionth Book
By Jay Savage | February 5, 2008
Not quite sure how I missed this, but apparently U-M’s collaboration with Google to put its works in the public domain online hit a major milestone on Friday: one million books scanned and put online.
Topics: copyright, tech | No Comments »
Going unpro: that blog won’t hunt
By Jay Savage | January 14, 2008
DSCN2806-bw.JPG
Originally uploaded by daggerquill
Watching the flood of CES and Macworld posts the last few weeks has really brought it home that, really, I’m not a professional blogger anymore. It’s been a long time since my name showed up in a byline on Download Squad, or anywhere else.It’s a shame; I really enjoyed working on DLSQ, and before that TUAW and DPGuru, and I’m proud that I was even a small part of making TUAW and DLSQ what they are today. I feel extremely honored to have worked with so many wonderful people in the time I spent with Weblogs, Inc. I also feel far less up-to-date than I did when part of my income depending on have tech news to post at regular intervals.Lately, though, despite my telling myself I’ll get back to it, it’s become increasingly clear that the increased responsibilities that came with the new job mean I don’t have time for both DLSQ and and chipping away at the dissertation. And in that situation I know what the choice has to be. I haven’t told Gant or Victor officially (not that they haven’t noticed), but I don’t see how much longer I can postpone the inevitable.
Topics: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Are you designing for actual users?
By Jay Savage | January 7, 2008
If you have anything to do with web design, you really need to put Yet Another Girl’s <Wax></Wax> blog on your reading list. Why? because she is one of the very, very few people out there talking about web design and “usability” in terms of, well, actual usability. Her latest post, “Are You Designing for These Users?” is a great wakeup call for anyone who wants to increase their traffic, or who sees their user base as “the public,” for any arbitrary value of “public.” In it, she reminds us that public access points, in particular public libraries, still provide millions of users with their main link to the internet, and that the sessions those users initiate violate most of the accepted “norms” that most web designers, particularly “Web 2.0″ (can we kill that phrase now, please?) designers seem to assume hold true everywhere and always. The important thing to keep in mind, is that she’s using library sign-ons as an example of an entire class of users. Most of what she says holds true for any public access site, including internet cafes and airports. And increasingly, her observations apply to corporate environments, as well.
Some highlights of her common sense observations that people seem to forget:
- Not everyone can choose or upgrade their browser, flash version, JavaScript, or Java VM;
- Not everyone can turn off pop-up-blocking;
- Not all monitors are larger than 800×600;
- Not everyone can override bad SSL certs, or change security settings;
- Not everyone can change their proxy settings;
- Not everyone can wait for forgotten passwords to be emailed; sometimes access is limited to 30, or even 15 minutes;
- Not everyone can accept cookies.
I’ll add a few of my own reminders:
- Not everyone has broadband, particularly not in the US;
- Not everyone has the most current OS, let alone browser;
- Users expect the back button to work; this is a legitimate expectation.
Image copyright DrewVigal
Topics: design, usability, web | 1 Comment »
