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New Thayer School Dropbox

Ever need to send a file to someone that was just a bit too large for an e-mail attachment? There are a few options – put it in your web space, use Dartmouth’s ftp dropbox, etc. But any of these can take lots of extra steps, especially when you just want to get your file out. So, what to do? Thayer School Dropbox to the rescue…

The new Thayer School Dropbox is a way to quickly and easily get your file sent. Once you visit the site and authenticate, you just choose the file and upload it to the server. You’ll then be given a link to send to the recipient – or just have the Thayer School Dropbox do it for you. The recipient can then visit the link and download your file.

Right now, files can only be uploaded by Dartmouth community members (although anyone can download). Soon, we plan to add the capability for Dartmouth community members to generate a “slot” where an outside person could upload to them.

To use the Thayer School Dropbox, just visit https://dropbox.thayer.dartmouth.edu/ and follow the easy instructions. We hope you find this to be a useful service and welcome your comments on how it could be improved and expanded.

Posted 20 February 2009 † mdailey § News and Announcements § Software ‡ Comments (0) °

ThayerFS quota bump

We’ve bumped the default ThayerFS disk quota from 512 MB up to 1 GB. We also doubled the, “no questions asked”, maximum quota for undergraduates to 2 GB.

The “no questions asked” maximum quotas for graduate students remains at 5GB and 10GB for faculty and staff. As always, if you have reasonable case for needing more space, just let us know.

Full details about ThayerFS quotas are here.

Posted 17 February 2009 † jared § File Storage ‡ Comments (0) °

Enforcing Data Security Policies: one approach

Choosing which sessions & presentations to attend at a conference like EDUCAUSE is a bit like being led to a table for dinner set with 20 times more food than you can eat.

And each dish is hidden underneath a towel.

And written on the towel is only the broad food group that the meal underneath belongs to: Meat, Grain, Pudding — I’m pretty sure pudding is a food group, no?

And you aren’t really looking at the actual dishes, but a black & white photograph of them. And . . . well, you get the idea.

So when it comes time to actually eat the meal you’ve chosen, sometimes it doesn’t taste quite as you’d envisioned. And this isn’t always a bad thing.

Take the Tuesday afternoon session titled simply Information Classification. The paragraph description promised a tale of how Prince George’s Community College in Maryland undertook the process of classifying and assigning security rights to all data gathered and maintained by the school.

Not quite heart-quickening stuff. But I was intrigued enough by the daunting scope of such a thing to want to hear more. Also I was curious to see how relevant the take-away would be to Thayer’s own data security efforts. So I tucked in . . .

Ajay Gupta, the Director of Security at PGCC, is engaging and funny, and spoke quite eloquently about their mammoth endeavor with a deep grasp on subtle (& not so) implications that are inherent in applying a rational order to chaos and madness.

Amazingly they did it. & he showed the spreadsheet to prove it. Wow. Lots and lots of data records to classify, let me tell you.

But he said something very interesting during the question session. He had talked a lot of the classifying and assigning ownership and abstract access rights, but almost nothing on enforcing the policies. What were the plans and tools in play for this brass-tacks part of the whole affair? Because for me, as primarily technical & support-focused, this was the filling of the pie. Yes, I am very dessert-driven.

His answer was short: “We’re not allowing any data to reside outside of the ERP system.”

I swear I could hear the needle slide off the phonograph.

Oh well. So much for my dessert.

By the way, just what the heck is an ERP system anyway? (Kidding!)

Posted 01 November 2008 † dricker § Security § educause2008 ‡ Comments (0) °

What EDUCAUSE 2008 was _really_ like

Every presenter is required to deliver their talk in the persona of a dead rock star. This was Janis Joplin giving an in-depth summary on methods of digital lab security and monitoring. For the record, she advocates moving toward a “big brother” surveillance approach:

And this was a group of multi-media technologists, demonstrating the Guns N' Roses method of lecture capture:

As you can see this was a popular session. (They apologized for not quite adhering to rules as Axl Rose is technically in Malibu, CA, which is not quite the same as being deceased.)

(Aw you got me! These were actually from the Lenovo-sponsored halloween end-of-conference party at an artificial bar-and-music theme-park midway called Universal CityWalk. The scene was replete with costumed stilt-walkers and stunningly bad celebrity impersonators (except the John Belushi-as-Blues-Brother, who was dead-on). Sadly, it was much to dark too take any more iPhone photos of the event. But who knew education technologists could let loose so?)

Posted 31 October 2008 † dricker § educause2008 ‡ Comments (0) °

Shortlist: EDUCAUSE 08 days v. 2.0 thru 3.0

Dricker’s conference itinerary over the previous two days:

(I’ll be picking out a few sessions that particularly stand out to write about in more detail, but I didn’t want anyone to think all I was doing was napping or playing iPhone Labyrinth.)

  • Generalized Exhibition Hall wanderings
  • Library: REPLAY: An Integrated and Open Solution to Produce, Handle, and
    Distribute Audiovisual Lecture Recordings
  • Meeting: EDUCAUSE/Internet2 Computer & Network Security Task Force (Open
    Meeting)
  • Teaching and Learning: Tomorrow’s Students, Today’s K–12 Digital Learners: Are You Ready for Them?
  • Teaching and Learning: The Future of Instructional Computing Labs
  • Discussion Session: Openness
  • Leadership and Management: Breaking Through Technology Barriers: Creating
    an Effective IT Communications Program with a Limited Budget
  • General Session: Why IT Matters: A President’s Perspective on Technology
    and Leadership
Posted 31 October 2008 † dricker § educause2008 ‡ Comments (0) °