www.romanvenable.net: Clark's Weblog
All Books Conversant Family Huh? Ideas Investing Me Music News Newton MacOS X Politics RSS Sites Software Technology Toys Updates Work
XHTML 1.0? Not Yet
Pretty Good Privacy is a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) implementation that is, well, pretty good. Very good, in fact. The recent 8.0 release brings the full feature set to MacOS X in a commercial package (although GNU Privacy Guard, an open source implementation, has been available for a while). A free version is also available. I'm learning about this technology myself, and have made my public key available on this site (as well as on the PGP key servers).
Slashdot points to an article about how Scientists Don't Read the Papers They Cite. Anyone who has ever tried to use the references at end of an article knows that what the author says the article is about is often just not so (with exceptions).
The CC: as a warning shot across the bow
I work in a large medical center. I received an e-mail yesterday from an administrator reminding me that certain paperwork was due at another hospital (a security check by the Veterans Adminstration--they don't want anesthesiologists posing as terrorists to knock off any Veterans, I guess). Anyway, this e-mail was cc'd to my chairman. What was the purpose of that? Simple, I think. It's a proverbial shot across the bow. Gimme' a break. The people who do that sort of thing are the ones that never sleep at the hospital, who cannot be sued, who never wonder whether you could have done anyting better to save the patient. 'Squozen'. Is that a word? If it is, that's how I feel. And so do lots of other physicians. 'Squozen'
I was asked to write a summary of the different web sites we maintain in our Department of Anesthesiology today. Having to actually write it down made me realize a disturbing thing: it's not catching on.
I started with Manila in an attempt to make web content something anyone could create using the 'Edit This Page' button. I switched to conversant almost a year ago to allow people to participate by e-mail. I want to publicly thank the two people who have replied to my posts.
Since then, we have four new non-Conversant sites with their own usernames and passwords that don't work right on Macs. Users are confused. I'm discouraged. I have two faculty that have decided to author their own sites--one in FrontPage, the other in Dreamweaver despite offering to show them how in Conversant, to do much of the initial work for them, and show them how to effortlessly integrate it with our University Course Management System (Angel). It's not catching on.
Some trends I started are catching on. Laptops. 802.11b. Macs. Things that require no work, no change in habits, and facilitate doing what they've always done.
As I write this, I'm looking at my IM window. I see friends I've never met. Seth Dillingham, Steve Ivy, Mark Morgan. Guys who are teaching me how to do things I've never done. If I have a choice to make, I know which it will be. There's so much to explore!
It may be a losing battle, but it's the war that matters.