Today’s batch of links:
- Alan Clarke. Saw a link to these brilliantly designed posters for the 2012 Olympic games on Twitter. I absolutely love the diving poster.
- Transformation in the Federal Sector: Data.gov Arrives!. Announcement from the consulting firm that built it.
- Sunlight Labs: Everything We Know About Data.gov. It’s a LAMP site.
- Jake Brewer: Data.Gov Launches: Why You Should Care and What You Should Do.
- Schneier on Security: On the Anonymity of Home/Work Location Pairs. Sort of like my post about the uniqueness of various phrases this week. Generally speaking, the amount of data required to uniquely identify something is smaller than we think.
- Anil Dash: Flags, Windows, Lucky Numbers and Hidden Mickeys. How the new Windows logo builds on the old Windows logo.
- Schillmania: Javascript Malware Analysis: A Case Study.
May 23, 2009 at 5:17 pm
My guess (maybe just “hope”) is that all downloadable executable code will be verboten by, say, 2019. Javascript is convenient but extremely dangerous. And the embedded scripting languages in Flash etc are no better (let alone Java).
What I think we will see to replace it are plugins that read purely declarative languages that define applications. (Not coincidentally, this is exactly what I am working on.) In those case extensibility can be done using components that implement standardized interfaces and can be either included in the plugin or signed and then downloaded from secure servers. The idea that some random website can download executable code to your computer and run it will seem like pure craziness. (And it is. It fundamentally takes away control over what you see and do. This is a really bad model to continue with, despite being convenient.)
May 23, 2009 at 6:08 pm
The posters are indeed brilliant. It’s a pity that they’re immediately followed by photographs of the cover for a book entitled I WAS DRAWN TO THIS BOOK BECAUSE OF IT’S DESIGN.