Posts tagged Information Technology
IT Quote of the Week: Carl Sagan
Jun 14th
Geeks everywhere grew up watching and listening to Carl Sagan. He was a noted astronomer, physicsist, television host, and author. As such, he becomes the first satirist to join our other worthy additions to our IT Thought of the Day Quote of the Week Series
I like Information Age quotations. I find some of them very inspirational and like to carry a new one around about every week. I thought that i could share mine with you from time to time. This week it will be a funny quote. You can read more about the author at Wikipedia.
“We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.”
What did you think of the quote? Did you like it? Do you know of any other similar ones? Please share.
That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for June 9, 2010.
quote credit: BrainyQuote
image credit: Ano Internacional da Astronomia | 2009
News Commentary: The Bit.ly Challenge
Jun 7th
As an active twitterer, I can certainly appreciate the value of a URL shortener – that is a service that takes a thousand character web link and shrinks it down to 10 or so for Twitter. However, I also am concerned that it violates one of the
fundamental value propositions of the world wide web – that of linking plain text, man readable, and enduring hyperlinks.
On Mondays I offer comments on some of the most interesting information technology stories that I have found on the web that week. Please feel free to join in the discussion or suggest other stories.
Today’s comments were generated after I read a CNN story. It is all about the rise of Bit.ly as the greatest URL shortener of them all. I recommend it to you. Give it a read below.
CNN.com – Clicking small links on bit.ly keeps getting bigger
“The rise of Twitter and instant messaging has been good to bit.ly — the URL-shortening service that has become a go-to tool for users across the web.
On Thursday, while announcing a host of new partners for its premium pay service, bit.ly trotted out a big number for a service based on little links.
Bit.ly is nearing 5 billion clicks per month, according to a post on the company’s official blog.”
There are many many hyperlinks that items that I have posted online that are still good links after 15 years. I know that they are good because I made them, I own them, and I pay to keep them live. The problem with URL shortener is that they are simply spreadsheets and look-up tables linking real hyperlinks to a shortened version that is in no way related to the original. They are great for ease of use, saving space on Twitter, and replacing overly cumbersome URLs with easy to remember ones. What they are not good at is being enduring, reliable, or permanent. If the URL shortener service goes away, so go the links. That is why, as a web author, I love to hate them.
I am resigned that they are a necessary evil for the time being, but I still am uneasy with how fragile the link to so much of what I have created really is on today’s web.
What do you think about this topic? Do you agree or disagree with me? Do you have a recommended news story for next week? Please share your ideas below.
That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for June 7, 2010 by Scott Coughlin.
Image Credit: VEED.in – Tech News
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Book Recommendation – Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do about It by Richard A. Clarke
Jun 11th
Posted by Scott Coughlin in Books
No comments
I have a book recommendation for all Information Professionals, military buffs, and historians. It is ‘Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do about It’ by Richard A Clarke and Robert K. Knake. The book is about exactly what
the title says. It is written at exactly the right technical and intellectual level to be relevant, accurate, and thought provoking. I highly recommend it to Information Technology Professionals everywhere.
It is available in print and kindle editions from major book sources, including Amazon.com. I appreciated it so much that I also added it to The Information Technology Thought of the Day Webstore, permanently.
I will try to get a full review up in the next couple of weeks, as I finish it. I can already tell though that it will be a modern day classic for the niche that it is targeted at as well as statisticians and current event geeks.
The opening chapter alone is worth the price of admission and really demonstrates well how much the world of warfare has changed in the past 20 years due to the Internet and Information Technology. I especially appreciated how the author makes the case that Cyber War is real whether you think that it is or not. I also valued the parallels that were drawn between the dawn of cyber war and the coming of naval aviation and nuclear weapons. Considering that the author is a leading expert on Nuclear War policy, I figure that he probably knows what he is talking about.
Image Credit: Tesco Books