Managing a personal Website is a bit like gardening: there are always new items popping up and others dying off. During the break between the end of the fall semester and the start of the spring semester, I spent some time updating my Website by pruning some deadwood and adding new content.
Managing a personal Web site is a bit like gardening: there are always new items popping up and others dying off. During the break between the end of the fall semester and the start of the spring semester, I spent some time updating my Web site by pruning some deadwood and adding new content.
The pruning was pretty simple: I eliminated some of the html versions of documents that I think are better presented as PDFs. As my colleagues and I explain to freshmen in our IS100 course (Introduction to Computer Science and Information Assurance) at Norwich University, html files are instructions for an interpreter (the browser) and the stylistic details are entirely under the control of the reader, not the author. Authors cannot necessarily control the fonts, point sizes and colors of various text elements using ordinary html files – but we can get much closer to that control using PDF, which incorporates the necessary font components into the file itself as well as allowing layout to be exactly as the author intended.
More significant (at least, to me) is that there is a new section on the site: the NetworkWorld Archive containing all the original versions of the Network World Security Strategies newsletters from the start of 2000 to the end of 2010. In addition, I have created a PDF index (nwss.pdx) and its associated directory (nwss) so that readers can download a tool for locating any string in all of the posted articles. Finally, for fanatics, there’s a 30MB ZIP file containing all the materials in the directory that anyone can download for their own use. I hope that these materials will be useful to students, researchers and security-awareness officers. Feel free to circulate any of them among staff members or in schools.
Some of the materials updated or uploaded during 2010 that might interest readers include:
• An updated version of the guidelines in “Using E-mail Safely and Well,” now in its third version;
• An Excel file for teachers to help track and report on student grades;
• The 2010 edition of the “Intellectual Property Law Review” that I used for a three-hour workshop at the MSIA graduate symposium;
• Updated teaching materials in the IS340 “Introduction to Information Assurance” course — remember, anyone can use these PowerPoint and PDF files freely for non-commercial applications such as personal study, internal courses in organizations, or free training at conferences where there are no admission fees;
• Updated teaching materials in the CJ341 “Cyberlaw & Cybercrime” course;
• A new statistics textbook in progress that I am writing for the QM213 “Business & Economic Statistics I” course. I’m preparing the second version of that text for the spring semester; it may be useful to anyone wanting an introduction to or review of basic statistical principles and methods.
Finally, I’ve continued to update my “Political Action Blog” with what I hope will offend as many right-wing ideologues as possible. However, since only a dozen or so people visit my blog per month, my project to cause irritation isn’t getting very far. Perhaps you can help increase its visibility. There are lots of nice, offensive comments in the general Opinion section, too.
Happy New Year, everyone!
