Congraduations!
May 1st, 2008From my inbox:
Subject: Dissertations
Dear Dr. Prada and Dr. Smith,
Signed, sealed, delivered! You are now “official” and can use your title. You should receive your diploma at graduation.
Congratulations!!
Debbie
_________________________
Deborah A. Boehm-Davis
Professor and Chair, Psychology Department
George Mason University
MSN 3F5, Fairfax, VA 22030-4444
phone: 703-993-8735 fax: 703-993-1359
http://archlab.gmu.edu/people/dbdavis
How compassion saved and broke the internet
March 19th, 2008
Jon Postel, the late computer science guru pictured above, is widely credited with the following dictum:
Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.
This has come to be known as Postel’s Law, and it’s not explicitly about how people should treat one another.
Instead, Dr. Postel was talking about the problem of interoperability between systems on networks. Since international standards for transmitting information are so complex, he figured the best thing to do would be for everyone to attempt to conform to the standards, but be forgiving of others who fail.
According to Joel Spolsky, this was a tremendously flawed approach because even though it allowed for a boom in networking, it also allowed syntax errors to propagate through the network unnoticed. His lengthy, but generally entertaining article explaining why this is keeping Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 team awake at night, is worth a read if you’re into techie stuff. Or simply if you have a thing for winter driving on Mars and ultra-orthodox Jewish communities. (Not kidding.)
Read the whole thing at Joel on Software (via Kevin Korpi’s Google Talk status bar).
Wow…
February 25th, 2008
A look inside the mind of a future Dr. Prada!
Congrats people!
January 31st, 2008Looks like a lot of us are experiencing big life events.
Congratulations!
Older doctors are more passionate?
January 6th, 2008Happened to be surfing the web and ran across the Prayer of Maimonides, which is sometimes recited by medical students instead of the Hippocratic Oath. It’s a beautiful prayer, really.
But one thing struck me about “Maimonides’” view of older colleagues:
Imbue my soul with gentleness and calmness when older colleagues, proud of their age, wish to displace me or to scorn me or disdainfully to teach me. May even this be of advantage to me, for they know many things of which I am ignorant, but let not their arrogance give me pain. For they are old and old age is not master of the passions. I also hope to attain old age upon this earth, before Thee, Almighty God!
I can’t decide if this advice is wise, unfair, or a promise of some kind of reward for withstanding the hazing of med school–someday, you’ll get to be arrogant too!
I wonder what a human factors oath would look like.
The legalization of Spam
October 24th, 2007In 2003, Congress passed a historic law known as the CAN-SPAM Act. Ostensibly an attempt to end unsolicited commercial e-mails, it was actually intended to weaken consumer protections against spam that were under consideration in the State of California. Under earlier state laws, consumers could sue spammers who sent unsolicited e-mails, usually for a few dollars per message. One famous example was that of Richard Scott, who won a $350 settlement and promptly posted a scanned copy of his check online along with instructions for others to emulate.
Fearing that these inexpensive lawsuits (about $60 , including an interstate warrant) might actually start working, the Direct Marketing Association lobbied Congress to rush the federal statute through. The CAN-SPAM Act outlaws deceptive e-mail routing and implements at least 20 day opt-out periods, meaning that if you click the “opt out” link, the spammer can simply postpone the next round of spam until next month. In exchange for these “protections,” Congress nullified all state laws, and forbade consumers from suing spammers directly, essentially legalizing and encouraging spam.
The law is now known informally as the “Yes, you CAN-SPAM Act.”
Dissertations, $12.75.
September 29th, 2007While working on my dissertation, AdSense thought my needs might be met by a certain company that specializes in writing term papers for lazy students. “No plagiarism” and “EXPERT writers” the ad promised.
How could I not investigate further? Here’s a screenshot.
E-mail: “But in reality, can it really work? Yes it can.”
July 23rd, 2007
Here’s a story from ‘89 about one of the first public demonstrations of the x.400 e-mail standard, which helped e-mail move across platforms. As with all old tech articles, the beauty is in the enthusiastic descriptions of what the new technology will bring.
[I]n a series of tests between Hughes Aircraft Company in Los Angeles, and Boeing in Seattle, electronic memos have taken only seconds to travel almost a thousand miles.
And now it takes “only seconds” to e-mail movies of my cat defiling a robotic litterbox from my mobile phone. That’s progress.
Click the image for .pdf. Thanks to Mark Nikolic @ Boeing and the Seattle Public Library.
Go west, young psychologists…
July 10th, 2007
Being from an east coast psychology program with deep–no, really deep–ties to Washington, D.C., I’m always saddened to see otherwise strong human factors students complaining about having to take internships at less-than-stellar Beltway companies.
No, people. Go west.
UCS: Science Idol
July 3rd, 2007
The Union of Concerned Scientists is holding its annual editorial cartoon contest. This year’s topic: Politics and Science.