Who Says Its Not Easy Being Green?

Ten months ago we finally moved into a brand new building here at Thomas Jefferson School of Law.  This is a building that had been in planning and construction for years.  A building that by design and in practice was to set a tone for a commitment to environmental responsibility. This commitment can be seen from the Gold LEED status of the construction project to the reduction printer waste to the banning of space heaters in offices.

And the big solar array on our roof. (more on that after the link…)

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Humans: The Weakest Link in Computer Security

Ain’t that the truth.  Watching various hacker/cracker/mayhem groups posting large amounts of personal data over the last few months it is interesting to note how we humans are at fault.  The number of passwords released as a result of the data collected during these “hacks” continues to demonstrate that most people fail to follow any kind of strong password policy either personally or at work.

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A Book Apart – Responsive Web Design

At the 2011 WWDC Apple made a point of demonstrating that for many of us, the PC is becoming a secondary device.  Additionally, it is clear that we want our content experience to function across all the devices we are using.  This doesn’t mean that they have to act the same on a mobile as on a desktop but it does mean one or the other shouldn’t be broken.

From mobile browsers to netbooks and tablets, users are visiting your sites from an increasing array of devices and browsers. Are your designs ready?

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What A Difference A Decade Makes

Hmmph, some interesting statistics here about how much certain things have ‘improved’ and others deteriorated over the last 10 years.

 

So what’s changed? Technology has gotten unimaginably smaller and better — just look at the differences between an iMac in 2000 and an iPad in 2010…

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The Incredible Shrinking Mac

10 years ago my pocket wasn’t nearly big enough to carry an iMac around in.  After spending 10 years looking for a bigger pocket, it would appear that technology has made this unnecessary.  If technology continues to accelerate at current rates, future devices will either be so small and disposable they’ll be unrecognizable or I’ll have a CRAY super computer in my pocket.

geekosystem.com

Making Statistics Fun (and Pretty)

There are an awful lot of ‘infographics’ floating around the interwebs these days.  It seems its all the rage and any one with two numbers and a couple circles thinks they are somehow adding value.  This is not the case.

However, here’s something cool - a free interactive way of playing with some very interesting stats about the world population, health, technical prowess, etc…  I stumbled upon Gapminder.org via this article in The Economist about Hans Rosling’s new BBC TV show all about statistics.  Boring right? Nope, just the opposite. Check out the included video to see the possibilities.

Hans Rossling – The Joy of Stats

I’m Now Using a Windows 7 PCoIP Virtual Machine

Super cool.  Finally got my virtual desktop hardware setup with the VM server. We have converted nearly all of our servers to a virtual environment already and are prepping to setup 200 virtual desktops.  I’ll admit I’m a bit nervous about it but so far the experience is great.

I have a 24″ Samsung nc240 connected to our VMWare host via PCoIP.  The machine is wonderfully fast (faster than my new Mac Mini with 4 GB of RAM) and, so far, very stable.

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Magazines On The iPad

One of the primary reasons I bought the iPad was my addiction to The Economist.  I had partially justified the purchase by canceling my print subscription under the assumption that reading it online would work out great on the iPad.  That was only partially true.  Reading the Web page was possible (I have an online subscription through work) but a pain in the rear at the same time.  Finally, The Economist launched a true magazine app last week.

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