Blog of Random Thoughts and Pictures

Protecting privacy in this social networking age

April 28th, 2009

I must admit I’m an avid reader of Bernie Goldbach’s blog and his most recent acertion in regards to protecting personal privacy online rings true.

This goes hand in hand with some recent material coming from the EC in regards to privacy in the digital age [pdf]. The theme coming through here is clear “European privacy rules are crystal clear: a person’s information can only be used with their prior consent”.
Its the rule ….. but then I wondered how would this be enforced? Which lead me to find this site on what the EU is doing in regards to Social Networking sites.
There’s a document that makes for interesting reading off the site on “Safer Social Networking Principles for the EU [pdf]“. Here are the 7 principles SN’s should consider:

  • Principle 1: Raise awareness of safety education messages and acceptable use policies to users, parents, teachers and carers in a prominent, clear and age-appropriate manner
  • Principle 2: Work towards ensuring that services are age-appropriate for the intended audience
  • Principle 3: Empower users through tools and technology
  • Principle 4: Provide easy-to-use mechanisms to report conduct or content that
    violates the terms of service
  • Principle 5: Respond to notifications of Illegal content or conduct
  • Principle 6: Enable and encourage users to employ a safe approach to personal
    information and privacy
  • Principle 7: Assess the means for reviewing illegal or prohibited content/conduct

  • There are some pretty compelling signatories to these principles.
    SaferSocialNetworkingPrinciples.jpg

    Scientific bibliography reference management software

    April 19th, 2009

    A great question appeared on the TSSG mailing list the other day, a recommendation for reference management software.
    Photo Credit: freelina2 on flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/freelina
    I’ve started to use Connotea and with the handy bookmarklet option for my browser I have found it really easy to add papers and there are tons of export options to re-store the reference material.

    A draft FI architecture framework

    April 17th, 2009

    The 4WARD deliverable D2.2 Draft Architectural Framework [pdf] is available for public review and comment.
    A short summary of the content of this document and the 4WARD macroscopic architectural view (Stratum) and microscopic architectural view of network infrastructure and its resources can be seen off this link to the TSSG 4WARD blog.
    With the Future Internet being envisioned as different network architectures coexisting and sharing a common infrastructure, we have been wondering here at the TSSG, well Patsy and Zohra specifically have been asking the questions of how these network architectures could/would/can be specifically tailored to a particular user or application requirement and can take into account the characteristics of the available networking resources and infrastructure.
    Photo Credit: fratella on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/fratella/
    We’ve looked and thought about a possible FI design processes, representing the workflow ranging from a business idea as a starting point to the design of network architecture models (NAM) and software architecture models (SAM). We’ve followed this with looking at the instantiation and operation of a network architecture fulfilling the detailed technical requirements derived from the business idea.
    Given that we believe complex software design will have a big part to play in the realisation of this FI vision, Component Based Architecture (CBA) is an approach we have used to
    To provide support for the development of systems as assemblies of components.
    To support the development of components as reusable entities.
    To facilitate the maintenance and upgrading of systems by customising or replacing
    their components.
    We have attempted to marry a design process with CBA in mind to define FI architectural components, their relationships and their functionalities, and to place these artifacts within a FI Design Repository.
    In this way the component specifications (listing of contracts) of available components are stored within the design repository.
    Why is this important? Patsy believes that the component contract forms the basis for interoperability and composition. The contract provides the formal mechanism by which interoperability between components can be measured. This interoperability then becomes the basis for composition as you can only compose components that are interoperable. The contract meta-data may also be used to construct anthologies of contracts and associated components, these anthologies when linked to functionalities such as QoS, mobility can be used to guide a designer from a functional requirement to possible contracts that fulfil the requirement and ultimately associated components.
    At the higher abstraction level of Strata, CBA is providing the functional blocks (components) and units of interoperability (contracts) that can be used during the composition process. While at the CBA level is providing a link to development and deployment.
    Okay this is the overview, some finer detail can be found in the deliverable D2.2

    FP7 ICT Call 4 is over … and out now for Call 5

    April 5th, 2009

    Photo Credit: jamesdale10 on flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/31910792@N05/

    Trust within network enabled relationships and software security errors

    April 5th, 2009

    2 reports to mention in this quick post, firstly this ISOC report [pdf] which looks (briefly) at the trust and identity issues that are to tackled on/for/with the Internet. The key point I took from it is that we should “incorporate trust as a core element of the Internet design and deployment process” and in doing so we should look at
    What are the alternative futures for trust and the Internet?
    Where do you see the boundaries between technology and policy?
    Photo Credit Visentico / Sento on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/visentico/
    Moving on I found the following classification of coding errors from Fortify Software intriguing. ColdFusion, C/C++, C#/VB.NET/ASP.NET, HTML, Java/JSP, JavaScript, PHP, PLSQL/TSQL,VisualBasic/VBScript/ASP, Webservices, XML are covered, although I think some effort should also be placed on Python, Perl, Delphi and Ruby.
    TIOBE Programming Community Index Chart for March 2009

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