As I always find a route of avoidance for getting actual work done when it comes to writing papers I have put a little work into my papers website. Take a look at the two images below. One is the prototype and the other is the real beta website that I’ve developed over the past week.
ANSWER: The real website screenshot is the first image. The prototype is the 2nd. My crappy bars and buttons gave it away, right?
I have decided to redesign my academic paper website. Shockingly, I have not actually written a single line of code for the new website. Instead, I have prototyped it in Adobe Illustrator. I guess you could say that I am procrastinating on working on real classwork, and you would be right. I’m not sure what to think of going to this new process of prototyping stuff before I write it. I guess I can blame my Human-Computer Interaction class for this new method. I am hoping to code the new site sometime during the summer and have it ready by fall. The coding and designing will not take me very long, but getting the abstracts, program affiliations and such assembled will be time consuming.
The current prototype appears below.
Posted from Charlotte, North Carolina, United States.
The Trust Center stuff in MS Office has been bugging me for a while now. I get sick of having to “enable editing” on documents that I created on another system, but may now be on a network drive location or floating about elsewhere. The thing that makes this more annoying is the part where I am a domain user in an Active Directory environment, so theoretically, there is a unique code that each installation of Office could use to validate me as the creator of the work. I know that my user-id is stored (as KULARSKI\curtis I believe) in the document’s meta data, but that isn’t reliable, so I understand why that isn’t validated to determine if the document can be assumed to be safe (because it originates from me). Each object (including users) in Active Directory has a unique ID, referred to as either an SID (cause they are like S-1-####), or a UID (for unique ID). It seems reasonable to me that perhaps Microsoft could have written Office to pick up on that ID (from a network OS model they designed) to help with eliminating redundant prompts for authorization to edit documents created by the user at a different location. Another thought that has occurred to me on this line is the idea that perhaps future versions of Windows should by default have the ability to carry a user certificate, without the aid of AD Certificate Services, for basic in-domain authentication tasks, such as automatically assigning a digital signature to documents or allowing a user a temporary login to a part-time connected domain client system utilizing a file on a removable storage device to authenticate. These implementations are things that I would consider to be “low security” situations. Obviously not a good practice for financial institutions, military or other high-security situations, but for situations where physical security is pretty well established or there is a low risk of falsification of the credentials, it is a workable solution that could make things a lot easier and avoid certain problems, such as verifying a document’s source (when you wrote it) or not being able to log into a domain system just because it can’t connect to a domain controller/global catalog server to authorize a login.
This is probably an irrelevant rant, but in some ways I feel like Windows security could be aided by adding some simple measures of authentication. It may be basic but it may help. If a low-security user-check stops users from disabling the security features all together, then maybe there is an overall increase in security?
I have no clue how Google selects what articles are included in Google Scholar, all I know is I currently have a paper listed and it makes me a lot happy. I’m quite surprised that it is in the index so quickly. Nice way to end my first graduate semester.
Posted from Charlotte, North Carolina, United States.
By this point, I suspect even the least techy of my readers has seen the little square barcodes… like everywhere. They are square for a reason, they are 2 dimensional barcodes, there is information stored both vertically and horizontally, whereas traditional barcodes only scan horizontal measures.
Below are 2 barcodes that related to resources in GITI. The first is a QR code, the 2nd, a standard code 39 barcode. While the initial reaction may be “wow, the QR barcode is huge!”, you would be correct. It is rather large as barcodes go, but it also contains the exact location inside GITI for me to retrieve the data it is pointing at, whereas the 2nd one only provides me a barcode for the assignment number. While initially the idea of using barcodes inside GITI was merely to facilitate end-of-semester grade updates and the like, it was designed with the intention of using a standard barcode reader, which in reality is quite annoying, and saves very little time, especially with numbers so small. QR codes on the other hand, will allow me to scan the code using a basic smart phone camera, or other such device and have direct access to the data I am looking for. On such a small device it is quite a handy thing to not have to type the URL and then the number to access what I’m looking for.
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On the other hand, there are serious culturally implications to the use of QR codes. The widespread use of QR codes is more infectious than the wide use of barcodes because of who they target. Barcodes target only “information personnel”, who serve a function in a data collecting system, such as sales clerks, librarians and hospital staff. QR codes affect a much larger number of people. The integration between human and machine has perhaps become too close. People already are very attached to their smartphones, whether staring mindlessly at the screen, letting it control their schedule or being directly connected to it by a Bluetooth headset. This takes it a step further and makes technology pervasive in all sorts of printed materials, advertising and product packaging. Barcodes at least have a human readable component, QR codes do not. So why are they presented so prominently in human view? To allow the human that is thoroughly integrated into their device to retrieve information more quickly, perhaps almost with machine-like precision.
So why would I want to use the evil little buggers? I am an information worker, and I enjoy geeky little things like this. I like to experiment with things like this. While I may include the QR codes occasionally on things, I don’t see it being something I take on with any seriousness. I have for the moment added the ability to use them to GITI for the view assignments action only. If they prove useful they may stay, if not, then [POOF]. My primary use for them, as I am considering their usefulness at the moment would be on printed materials that I produce (such as final papers), giving them a QR code for locating a PDF copy or some such craziness.
Posted from Bessemer City, North Carolina, United States.
In January 1985, Dr. Jonathan B. Postel, the Internet’s first IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers/Names Authority), set forth a new era in the Internet’s progress. He brought the DNS (domain name system) into existence, essentially giving form to what we today consider the very essence of the Internet. That first glimmer of light on a shapeless form.
In the beginning, there was .com, .net and .org. That was the public sphere of the DNS naming system, all that existed, all that could be outside of restricted space. Of course there were other TLDs, .gov, and .mil primarily. In February of 1985, in coordination with IEEE, Dr. Postel provisioned a ccTLD for each legally recognized country in the world. After this point there were no more additions to the Root Zone for over 15 years, give or take a few changes to the ccTLD space caused by trouble in the Russian territories and the UN requesting the creation of .INT.
In 2000, there was a movement to add additional General Purpose TLDs. The idea caused quite a stir in the Internet community. There were geeks absolutely thrilled with the idea of new TLDs, and of course the ever-conservative Internet Engineering Task Force had their concerns about the stability of the root zone network due to the additional delegations required. In June 2001, 7 new TLDs were permitted to be added to the root: .BIZ, .INFO, .NAME, .MUSEUM, .COOP, .AERO and .PRO. For a time .INFO and .BIZ (and .NAME to a lesser extent) had quite a bit of interest, until it was time for the registries to actually go live that is. How many websites do you frequent that actually use any of these TLDs? For myself, it is not many. In the 11 years since these TLDs went live, I have seen only a few domains in active use (for legitimate purposes).
We are presently in a 90 day window before the application process will begin for yet more TLDs. On January 27th, ICANN will allow any organization, corporation or individual register for whatever TLD they wish, so we can have TLDs that are as arbitrary as .PEPSI and .COKE. As long as the new registrant can prove that they have the competence to operate the TLD, their assignment of their registered name is guaranteed. With known registry operators such as VerisignGRS and Affilas offering their support and services (for a fee) to new registrants are on stable ground to be accepted.
There are several problems with these new TLDs, first of all, the last round of new TLDs did not shake loose the dependence on .COM, .NET and .ORG, so why should these new TLDs be any different? I do not believe that these new TLDs will pull any weight away from COM at all, and will simply add another level of complexity to the naming system. I think what we have learned based on the first 7 new TLDs is that the “powers” of the Internet have no idea what Internet users want, or what content providers want. Take for example the result of the opening of the ccTLDs of .ME (Montenegro) and .TV (Tuvalu). Those 2 ccTLDs had more of an impact on the landscape of the Internet than the creation of 7 new gTLDs. There is no way to anticipate reaction to new gTLDs, but there is one thing that seems pretty clear to me, no one seems want anything that is 3 characters or longer, everyone wants 2 character TLDs, especially ones that they can use in conjunction with their own names. The “powers” of the Internet do not seem to understand that in the current economic and political atmosphere, the Internet’s consumerist phase is past its climax, and the Internet is now becoming social (and of course, the Internet is for porn, that one hasn’t changed in 20 years). I also believe that this new round of TLDs will be directed at more consumerist ambitions, and will not add to the overall mission of the Internet. Not keeping the consumer space limited to .COM and .BIZ seriously changes the mission of the Internet.
On a philosophical level there are both benefits and problems with the opening of the TLD system. First, an opening of the TLDs is consistent with critical theory ideals concerning not categorizing things and not restricting the categories or identities. However, because of the large financial cost of registering a TLD (not to mention operation costs), it still is not possible for everyone to select their own identity. If I wanted to have the .kularski TLD for example, I would have to pay $185,000 to apply for the name, and then pay additional money to a registry operator to maintain infrastructure for the TLD. There is most certainly not an openness to the process.
There have been a few TLDs added through sponsorship applications in the past few years, but the process for their introduction was fairly restricted. .JOBS, .TEL, .MOBI and .TRAVEL were added as specialized TLDs for members of professional organizations. .JOBS and .TRAVEL specifically are restricted to members of those organizations. .TEL is a TLD that is highly restrictive in what content is allowed. The domains have no name servers other than those for the TLD itself, and in essence the TLD functions as an Internet phone book. .MOBI is restricted to mobile-enabled websites, targeting a specific audience (smart phone users). These TLDs are very specific and had an audience already established to receive them, unlike the creation of generic TLDs without specific sponsoring bodies that represent a specific community. Also this year the .XXX TLD will become operational. I have mixed feelings about the TLD, but there are many who believe it is a good TLD. I don’t see it as a move toward a more child-friendly Internet (nor do I care for a child-friendly Internet), but I do see it as an alternative to overloading .COM with more porn domains. Pornography is a big part of the Internet and its culture, so having its own space is not a horrible thing. On the other hand, having a TLD that is used to categorize a certain type of content or a certain group of people is not in the best interest of the culture of the Internet. I believe that in addition to the XXX TLD there should have been some type of ARTS TLD created to balance things and provide a space for more creative forms (including creative erotica) to exist.
At the present time, the Root Zone is still a very manageable thing, if you would like to see what makes the entire named Internet work, take a look at1: http://m.icurtis.me/blog/root.zone.txt
1The root zone file is a constantly changing file, and this copy, which is used for reference purposes should not be accepted as the authoritive Zone, for that, please download a copy at IANA.ORG.
Posted from Bessemer City, North Carolina, United States.
I have been using Zerigo’s DNS service on some of my domains for the past 4 days. These are the current statistics regarding number of queries. Obviously icurtis.me is the preferred location of the domains that I have started using here so far. Zerigo keeps track of # of queries because there is a max query quota of 1,000,000 queries per month. Obviously, I’m no where near that for this month yet, and won’t get anywhere close.
For as long as I have had domain names, I have wanted vanity DNS servers, but never had them, never even had a chance for them. Now after beginning a change of DNS providers I have 2 sets of vanity DNS servers. One for totally personal use (A-F.KULARSKI.ORG) and one for all other uses (A-F.NS.PCFIRE.NET). Just one of life’s simple pleasures I suppose 
Posted from Charlotte, North Carolina, United States.
I have been an active registrant and reseller with eNom since 2000. In that time I have witnessed eNom go from a small company in Seattle to a large firm with multiple divisions as part of Demand Media. I have gone from having a personal e-mail address for high level executives to having to resort to communicating with only a high-volume support system with support agents in countries I probably can’t even pronounce. There has also been a change from me paying about $8 per year for my domains to now being at $10.50 (or $19 for a .me). This is partially due to changes in fees in the ICANN fee structure, but also partially because other resellers have paid their way into higher positions in the hierarchy than me, and them getting my discounts. When I first opened my account, it didn’t matter how many domains you had, just as long as you were willing to keep money in your account to cover their renewals.
I have considered a good number of options for a possible move. The first option was the registrar that I had previously moved away from and developed a hatred for, GoDaddy, or in this case Wild West Domains, their wholesale domain counterpart. This seemed like an OK idea, most of their capabilities matched my needs, pricing is good, but still there was this feeling of sleaze that just goes wherever Bob Parsons has been. I don’t trust smaller registrars without a reseller program because they have variable pricing, and also variable availability. With a budget registrar you never know if your domain is residing with the next RegisterFly. At the moment I am strongly considering OpenSRS. OpenSRS has reasonable prices, and they will declare where every cent is going (they proudly claim that $3 of the fee is their profit). OpenSRS also features a very flexible reseller program that will allow me to control how they interact with my clients, if at all. The forms are also very straight-forward and do not have the marketing pitches that eNom has begun throwing in. There exists a problem though, OpenSRS for all of their features, do not support Dynamic DNS, the ability for computers to update their own IP addresses in the domain records. This is problematic for me because I have so many of them, but I can see the rationale from a security perspective. All it would take it one time of someone sniffing the security token and being able to hijack a host record, but with improved security mechanisms this has become less likely. If I opt to go to OpenSRS I would have to set up an alternate mechanism using their API to manage those host records, and I’m not sure I like moving to that from a trusted method of host management. The other issue I have is a slightly weirder quirk, sub-domain delegation. Also called NS records, a sub-domain delegation allows a managed DNS domain name to have a 3rd (or beyond) level record created and pointed at a different set of name servers, allowing greater administrative flexibility. eNom doesn’t have it, neither does OpenSRS (at the moment, but they hint at it coming, unlike Dynamic DNS which they give a snowcone’s chance in hell). OpenSRS is owned by Tucows, a long-established registrar, but one with a reasonable reputation of integrity and working with customers. Also, if there is something that doesn’t work for me, I know that support is just an email away to help, and during the day, I get a response in less than 2 hours.
GoDaddy’s managed DNS has the option for sub-domain delegation, and in fact I’m using it for cmkularski.net for an external hosting experiment that I am working with. They seem to be one of the few registrars allowing this, although other hosting providers support them fully. The other cool thing about GoDaddy is their capability to allow for uploading of a plain text BIND file, which means the idea of writing a zone file and then publishing it is very easy. There are no annoying fields to fill out, or anything like that, just write the file straight across and drop it into the box. Very simple. GoDaddy is one of the few registrars that seems to be actively updating their DNS control panels to be more robust and more useful. Sadly, GoDaddy themselves is still in a large corporate entity that seems to be doing every aspect of the Internet business including domains.
Things have changed a lot since 1999 when I registered my first domain name with Network Solutions, the successor to InterNIC.
Lately I have been spending a lot of time in Microsoft Word 2010 for various tasks that are academic, and I have noticed that the 3 installations of Word I run all seem to start off with great amounts of annoying.
To make Word more usable I have taken the following steps:
Just a few pet-peeves of word processing that I had to address today to make my world more functional.
