From the category archives:

Distributed Systems

Oxford Launches Research Data Management Website

16 November 2010
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The following announcement was posted to the Research Data Management listserv on 14 November 2010 via S. Hodson. I thought it might be on interest to some of you.

The University of Oxford has recently launched a new Research Data Management Website: www.admin.ox.ac.uk/rdm
The development of this resource was ‘a close collaboration between Research Services, Computing [...]

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Preservation Policies, Forbes, and an Email Time Capsule

12 November 2010
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I’m often asked why the preservation of digital materials is so complicated. After all, isn’t it simply about the storage and migration, or emulation, of digital objects and metadata? Why do you need all of these policies and procedures around a data or digital archive? Why can’t you just store the digital files and leave [...]

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War Data: a Short Profile of WikiLeaks

25 October 2010
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What happens when your data is leaked online? What happens when that data contradicts the official reports of a powerful government? What happens if that data is about a war, and the war is currently being fought?
Welcome to Wikileaks — an online site used by journalists and whistleblowers that provides public access to very private [...]

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The Internet of Things and a System of Systems

21 October 2010
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We are drowning in a sea of data. There are more things on the Internet than there are people; currently about 1 billion people use the Internet.
We are learning to take data, create information, gain knowledge, and achieve wisdom. We are able to do this by using The Internet of Things to create a [...]

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Google Not Being Evil

20 October 2010
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Why does Google want to know so much about you?
The company provides us with services ranging from maps to email, phones to video, books to social media — all free. Why do they do this, and how can the company afford to do this?
The more products and services the company provides for [...]

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Denial of Service Attacks — Cyber Vandals and Cyber Activism Explored

19 October 2010
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When a Denial of Service attack occurs, is it vandalism and mischief, an act of war, or a new form of democratic protest? The answer to that question might depend on which side you are on — it is a bit like the quote that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter“. Regardless of [...]

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How Advertisers Use Internet Cookies to Track Your Online Habits

18 October 2010
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What is behavioral targeting? Is it a violation of your privacy for businesses to track your movements online via cookies? What are cookies, anyway? Are cookies helpful, or do they provide too much information? Should you worry about how much digital exhaust you trail?
Christina Tsuei of the Wall Street Journal explains how advertisers use cookies [...]

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The Internet’s Black Holes by Reporters without Borders

20 August 2010
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Where on earth can data roam free, and where is it filtered, controlled, and contained? Where are the black holes of information flow on the Internet?
According to Reporters without Borders, the Internet’s “Black Holes” are Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Iran, Libya, Maldives, Nepal, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. How do [...]

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The State of the Internet

2 March 2010
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The creative agency Jess3 created this video on “The State of the Internet” for AIGA Baltimore. It reminds me of the video, “Is Information Management Hype?“, in that the authors of the video throw a lot of facts and figures at the viewer.
I found it interesting that there are 247 billion emails sent every [...]

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Cloud Computing in Plain English

6 January 2010
Cloud Computing in Plain English

While certain committee members at NIST work on the 16th version of the standards document that defines cloud computing, I decided to to do some (simplistic) research of my own regarding the term. What exactly does cloud computing mean? And how is this different/how has it evolved from an Application Service Provider (ASP)? I used [...]

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