Year: 2010
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CITP is a Google Summer of Code 2010 Mentoring Organization
The Google Summer of Code program provides student stipends for summer work on open source projects. CITP is thrilled to have been chosen as a mentoring organization for 2010, meaning that students will be working on some CITP projects this summer. We think that these projects are very interesting, and potential participants now have the…
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Side-Channel Leaks in Web Applications
Popular online applications may leak your private data to a network eavesdropper, even if you’re using secure web connections, according to a new paper by Shuo Chen, Rui Wang, XiaoFeng Wang, and Kehuan Zhang. (Chen is at Microsoft Research; the others are at Indiana.) It’s a sobering result — yet another illustration of how much…
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Domain Names Can't Defend Themselves
Today, the Kentucky Supreme Court handed down an opinion in the saga of Kentucky vs. 141 Domain Names (described a while back here on this blog). Here’s the opinion. This case is fascinating. A quick recap: Kentucky attempted a property seizure of 141 domain names allegedly involved in gambling on the theory that the domain…
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Round 2 of the PACER Debate: What to Expect
The past year has seen an explosion of interest in free access to the law. Indeed, something of a movement appears to be coalescing around the issue, due in no small part to the growing Law.gov effort (see the latest list of events). One subset of this effort is our work on PACER, the online…
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Global Internet Freedom and the U.S. Government
Over the past two weeks I’ve testified in both the Senate and the House on how the U.S. should advance “Internet freedom.” I submitted written testimony for both hearings which can be downloaded in PDF form here and here. Full transcripts will become available eventually but meanwhile you can click here to watch the Senate…
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Netflix Cancels the Netflix Prize 2
Today, Netflix announced it is canceling its plans for a second Netflix Prize contest, one that reportedly would have involved the release of more information than the first. As I argued earlier, I feared that the new contest would have put the supposedly private movie viewing and rating habits of Netflix customers at great risk,…
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Best Practices for Government Datasets: Wrap-Up
[This is the fifth and final post in a series on best practices for government datasets by Harlan Yu and me. (previous posts: 1, 2, 3, 4)] For our final post in this series, we’ll discuss several issues not touched on by earlier posts, including data signing and the use of certain non-text file formats.…
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Correcting Errors and Making Changes
[This is the fourth post in a series on best practices for government datasets by Harlan Yu and me. (previous posts: 1, 2, 3)] Even cautiously edited datasets sometimes contain errors, and even meticulously produced schemas require refinement as circumstances change. While errors or changes create inconvenience for developers, most developers appreciate and prepare for…
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Labeling Dataset Contents
[This is the third post in a series on best practices for government datasets by Harlan Yu and me. (previous posts)] When the government releases a dataset, citizens ideally will discuss the contents and supply educated feedback. The ability to reference facts and figures in a dataset supports a constructive dialog. Vague concerns are harder…
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Basic Data Format Lessons
[This is the second post in a series on best practices for government datasets by Harlan Yu and me. (previous post)] When creating a dataset, the preferences of developers may not be obvious to those producing the dataset. Seemingly innocuous choices by data providers can lead to major headaches for developers. In this post, we…