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Friday, March 03, 2006 |
Ted Leonsis: "Whenever new media tries to replicate old media, it tends to fail. When it takes advantage of the unique social and personal behaviors of this new medium, it does pretty well." [Scripting News]
11:01:51 PM 
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What can you do with a science degree besides research?.
A reader asks me to dig up a post he thinks I might have written about various careers, other than research careers, that one might pursue with a science degree. As far as I know, I haven't written a post on this subject (although maybe he has a time machine and is remembering it from the future ...).
It's a very good question, though! Especially since one of my slogans is "Your major doesn't need to be your life path," I believe that science majors can do many, many things in the world of work (just like philosophy majors, only with fewer incredulous looks from bystanders).
But, it's been a long time since a science major who wasn't looking to become a philosopher has asked me for career advice. I'm a little rusty at this particular question.
Read the entire post
[Adventures in Ethics and Science]
10:48:25 PM
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Hitting the Grundlegung at 55 MPH (Edmundson).
In a remarkable video, "A Meditation on the Speed Limit," a group of Atlanta-area students asks whether those who observe the posted speed limit act in accordance with a maxim that they can at the same time will to become a universal law. Billed as "An Extraordinary Act of Public Obediance [sic]," five drivers poke along at 55 mph, side by side, as a plug of frustrated rational beings develops behind them. Some of the rational beings, unwilling to be treated as anything other than ends in themselves, make vivid their disapproval. (Thanks to Sean Devetter for the pointer.)
[Leiter Reports: A Group Blog (Jan. 23-May 31 2006)]
6:56:18 AM
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Cory: What would an MMORPG about healing be like?.
Master game designer Raph Koster ponders the thinness of the role of the healer in massively multiplayer roleplaying games, and noodles around with ideas for a healer-centric game:
Picture an MMORPG just like the ones today, but everywhere you see combat, replace it with healing. A six-man encounter would be a surgical operation that required teamwork. Soloing would be a brilliant doctor doing drive-by diagnostics. Raids would be massive experimental treatments.
Rather than spawning mobs, spawn ill people. Instead of weapons, have medicines. Instead of managing aggro, manage fever. Instead of armors, we have disinfectants.
Quests would include tasks to find and gather new plants for pharmaceuticals, and bespoke missions to fix the sanitation in a remote village. Puzzles might involve finding the standing water where the mosquitoes are breeding.
It goes on from there, every sentence a perfect mind-bomb of fun speculation. (via Negatendo)
[Boing Boing]
6:56:08 AM
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THE NEW NEW WORLD NOTES....
Continues here.
My deepest thanks to everyone at Linden Lab who made my journey to this point possible. And just as much gratitude to the Residents and readers who've made (and make) it a trip worth taking.
[New World Notes]
6:56:06 AM
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Manifesto for "blogjects" -- objects that blog.
The USC's Julian Bleecker has just published an astonishingly awesome paper called "A Manifesto for Networked Objects — Cohabiting with Pigeons, Arphids and Aibos in the Internet of Things," subtitled, "Why Things Matter." It's a paper about the coming wave of "blogjects" -- objects that blog -- which is to say, manufactured goods that emit a steady stream of information about their world and what they make of it, and take action to change it. The idea is high-falutin' big-brain academic stuff, but the approach is simply, folksy, plain-language and exciting as hell. I just devoured it and man am I jazzed.
Blogjects don’t just publish, they circulate conversations. Not with some sort of artificial intelligence engine or other speculative high-tech wizardry. Blogjects become first-class a-list producers of conversations in the same way that human bloggers do — by starting, maintaining and being critical attractors in conversations around topics that have relevance and meaning to others who have a stake in that discussion. If the contribution to that discussion happens through some seemingly mundane bit of networked dissemi- nated insight matters little in terms of their consequence. A Blogject can start a conversation with something as simple as an aggregation of levels of pollutants in groundwater. If this conversation is maintained and made consequential through hourly RSS feeds and visualizations of that same routine data, this Blogject is go- ing to get some trackback.
940K PDF Link (via Beyond the Beyond)
[Boing Boing]
6:55:40 AM
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"...Only Following Orders"?.
"A Gulf War veteran undergoing medical treatment said he was given placebos -- or sugar pills -- instead of real medicine.
Like thousands of other soldiers, Army veteran Mike Woods said he developed bizarre symptoms after serving in the first Gulf War -- blackouts, chest pain and numbness in the extremities.
Woods looked to the Veterans Administration for help. He said his VA doctor prescribed him a drug called Obecalp.
'She told me there was this new drug out that would really help me with all of my physical conditions, and my pain. She really wanted me to try it,' said Woods.
But when the pill provided no relief, Woods did some research and learned that Obecalp isn't a medicine at all, but a sugar pill. He was shocked to learn the word 'obecalp' is placebo spelled backward." (WSOC-TV thanks to Uncle $cam)
[Follow Me Here...]
6:55:29 AM
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The Psychology of Password Generation.
Nothing too surprising in this study of password generation practices:
The majority of participants in the current study most commonly reported password generation practices that are simplistic and hence very insecure. Particular practices reported include using lowercase letters, numbers or digits, personally meaningful words and numbers (e.g., dates). It is widely known that users typically use birthdates, anniversary dates, telephone numbers, license plate numbers, social security numbers, street addresses, apartment numbers, etc. Likewise, personally meaningful words are typically derived from predictable areas and interests in the person's life and could be guessed through basic knowledge of his or her interests.
The finding that participants in the current study use such simplistic practices to develop passwords is supported by similar research by Bishop and Klein (1995) and Vu, Bhargav & Proctor (2003) who found that even with the application of password guidelines, users would tend to revert to the simplest possible strategies (Proctor et al., 2002). In the current study, nearly 60% of the respondents reported that they do not vary the complexity of their passwords depending on the nature of the site and 53% indicated that they never change their password if they are not required to do so. These practices are most likely encouraged by the fact that users maintain multiple accounts (average = 8.5) and have difficulty recalling too many unique passwords.
It would seem to be a logical assumption that the practices and behaviors users engage in would be related to what they think they should do in order to create secure passwords. This does not seem to be the case as participants in the current study were able to identify many of the recommended practices, despite the fact that they did not use the practices themselves. These findings contradict the ideas put forth in Adams & Sasse (1999) and Gheringer (2002) who state that users are largely unaware of the methods and practices that are effective for creating strong passwords. Davis and Ganesan (1993) point out that the majority of users are not aware of the vulnerability of password protected systems, the prevalence of password cracking, the ease with which it can be accomplished, or the damage that can be caused by it. While the majority of this sample of password users demonstrated technical knowledge of password practices, further education regarding the vulnerability of password protected systems would help users form a more accurate mental model of computer security.
[Schneier on Security]
6:55:14 AM
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