Disappointments, seductions, and resentment.

Comment: Seductions of Modern Culture

Précis of Self-Knowledge and Resentment

The term ‘privileged access’, on the lips and keyboards of philosophers, expresses an intuition that self-knowledge is unique among the knowledges human beings possess, unique in being somehow more direct and less prone to error than other kinds of knowledge such as, say, our knowledge of the physical world or of the mental states of others. These notions of ‘directness ‘ and ‘immunity to error...

Research in Iran: Hopes and Disappointments

Richard Stone wrote a report regarding selling theses and research articles in Iran. There are noteworthy points in this report which truly disturb the Iranian scientific community, but the present report is not the whole truth about the Iranian scientific community. Iran's scientific infrastructure was destroyed in the eight-year imposed war by Saddam Hossein in a way that production of Irania...

Seductions of risk and school cyberspace

Drawing upon the cultural risk perspective and writings on risk taking, this paper seeks to develop ideas relating to the effective use of school cyberspace. It is argued that some individuals respond to exaggerated, yet seductive, discourses of online risks by over-blocking, unreasonably restricting students’ Internet activity. At the same time, there are sensible, even compelling, motivations...

Secure Software Updates: Disappointments and New Challenges

A client can use a content distribution network to securely download software updates. These updates help to patch everyday bugs, plug security vulnerabilities, and secure critical infrastructure. Yet challenges remain for secure content distribution: many deployed software update mechanisms are insecure, and emerging technologies pose further hurdles for deployment. Our analysis of several pop...