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| Estel E. Dillman MM2c aboard ship, ca. 1929 |
This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
Monday, July 18, 2011
Maritime Monday - Aboard Ship
This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Wordless Wednesday - Blanche Bieger & Alta Day
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| Blanche Bieger & Alta Day ca. 1929, hand colored. |
Wordless Wednesday – a great way to share your old family photos! Create a post with the main focus being a photograph or image. Some posters also include attribute information as to the source of the image (date, location, owner, etc.). Wordless Wednesday is one of the longest running “memes” in the blogosphere and is an ongoing series at GeneaBloggers.
This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History - Vacations
Week 27. Vacations. Where did your family go on vacation? Did you have a favorite place? Is it still there? If not, how has the area changed?
I remember a number of vacations to various places. One benefit of having family scattered all over the country is plenty of choices of where to go on vacation to visit family! I recall several trips to Louisiana, one to Washington D.C. when I was about 11, many to South Dakota to my grandparents' house.
One vacation I remember well was the trip to Mount Rushmore back when I was about 12. We drove from home in Minnesota down to Sioux Falls, SD, where we picked up I-90 and drove across the state to Rapid City. We camped at a campground on the side of a hill. It had an outdoor pool, which was nice, as the weather was hot! It being on the side of the hill overlooking part of Rapid City, the view was nice, especially at night. Although we did stop and see the Corn Palace at Mitchell, SD, I don't remember doing too much other than swimming in that pool and visiting Mount Rushmore once we got to Rapid City. There are tons of tourist traps and things to do in that area of South Dakota, but for some reason, I don't think we did many of them when I visited as a child.
When my kids were about the same age as my brother and I were on that trip, we decided to make the same trip. Being much more recent, I remember more of what we did, of course, and I think we took the opportunity to do more things. First, we stopped and saw the car museum at Murdo, SD. Then we bypassed the Corn Palace at Mitchell, which is vastly over-rated in my opinion, even though we did stop to eat at Mitchell.
We stayed in Hill City, in a really nice motel with a great view of mountains, and deer in the meadow at dusk. There was a large deck outside the doors of our motel room where we could sit and look at this view. It had a picnic table and a grill so we could cook out and eat. There was also a pool which the kids used to beat the heat. We rode the 1880 train to Keystone and back, an old coal-fired locomotive and train. There's a neat dinosaur museum at Hill City as well, and my kids have always been interested in the dinosaurs, so we spent an afternoon visiting that.
We did of course go to Mount Rushmore, being the prime attraction of the region. We walked the paths under the presidents in 100 degree heat (which we had all week!) and stayed for the evening lighted show. We drove around and saw the Crazy Horse monument, which looked about the same as it did when I was young, but I am informed that there has been some progress on it since I was a kid.
We visited a gold mine, and got to pan for gold in the mine tailings outside, and bring home our gold we panned. Did I mention it was 100 degrees out? We visited Reptile Gardens. I recommend it, there's lots of critters to see! These little blue frogs are toxic, from the jungles of Central America. There were also frogs of other bright colors like yellow, orange and green. Loads of snakes, a 21 foot crocodile, and giant tortoises you can feed were some of the other attractions at Reptile Gardens. Well worth the time.
On the way back from Rapid City, we drove through the Badlands, a very scenic area of canyons. The road is winding, and it takes a bit of time to get through, so plan accordingly if you go. And hope for a sunny day, as the sun really brings out the colors in the layers of rock in the canyons. We were there on an overcast day, and it wasn't as beautiful as it could have been, but still fun to see. On the way out, there was a Pioneer Sod House attraction. I would like to have gone through, but we were all tired and hot and wanted to get home at that point, and didn't feel like spending the money to go through it, but I did get a picture. Some of my ancestors lived in houses not unlike this on the South Dakota prairie. We do have it nice now!
What vacations did you go on? What vacation did you want to do, but never got the chance?
This an all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
I remember a number of vacations to various places. One benefit of having family scattered all over the country is plenty of choices of where to go on vacation to visit family! I recall several trips to Louisiana, one to Washington D.C. when I was about 11, many to South Dakota to my grandparents' house.
One vacation I remember well was the trip to Mount Rushmore back when I was about 12. We drove from home in Minnesota down to Sioux Falls, SD, where we picked up I-90 and drove across the state to Rapid City. We camped at a campground on the side of a hill. It had an outdoor pool, which was nice, as the weather was hot! It being on the side of the hill overlooking part of Rapid City, the view was nice, especially at night. Although we did stop and see the Corn Palace at Mitchell, SD, I don't remember doing too much other than swimming in that pool and visiting Mount Rushmore once we got to Rapid City. There are tons of tourist traps and things to do in that area of South Dakota, but for some reason, I don't think we did many of them when I visited as a child.
When my kids were about the same age as my brother and I were on that trip, we decided to make the same trip. Being much more recent, I remember more of what we did, of course, and I think we took the opportunity to do more things. First, we stopped and saw the car museum at Murdo, SD. Then we bypassed the Corn Palace at Mitchell, which is vastly over-rated in my opinion, even though we did stop to eat at Mitchell.
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| Meadows and mountains at Hill City |
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| Mount Rushmore at night ca 2006 |
We did of course go to Mount Rushmore, being the prime attraction of the region. We walked the paths under the presidents in 100 degree heat (which we had all week!) and stayed for the evening lighted show. We drove around and saw the Crazy Horse monument, which looked about the same as it did when I was young, but I am informed that there has been some progress on it since I was a kid.
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| Blue frogs! |
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| Pioneer Sod House, South Dakota Badlands |
What vacations did you go on? What vacation did you want to do, but never got the chance?
This an all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
Wordless Wednesday - Reva (Dillman) Fulkerson
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| Reva (Dillman) Fulkerson b. 26 Sep 1916, d. 16 Mar 2006 |
Wordless Wednesday – a great way to share your old family photos! Create a post with the main focus being a photograph or image. Some posters also include attribute information as to the source of the image (date, location, owner, etc.). Wordless Wednesday is one of the longest running “memes” in the blogosphere and is an ongoing series at GeneaBloggers.
This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
A Brick Wall In My Tree
I came across this image this morning, and immediately had a different thought about how I would caption it:
Which of our trees does not have a brick wall in it somewhere? In fact, most of us probably have several.
How would you caption this picture? Post yours in the comments below!
This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
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| from verydemotivational.com, part of the Cheezburger Network of websites. |
Which of our trees does not have a brick wall in it somewhere? In fact, most of us probably have several.
How would you caption this picture? Post yours in the comments below!
This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
Monday, July 4, 2011
Dropbox Update
As a user of Dropbox, I received an update in my e-mail (and you probably did, too) attempting to clarify the recent uproar over their Terms of Service (TOS). I think they've done a pretty good job of stating their terms in more clear language, and further, of explaining why they need the rights they are claiming through your agreement to use the service. That said, I still stand by my earlier positions in that they DO have access to your data, and you DO need to evaluate what you choose to store on your Dropbox, and whether the risk of abuse of your data is low enough to feel safe storing it with Dropbox.
Here's a bit of the statement Dropbox released on their blog:
They have gone to great lengths to state clearly that under normal circumstances they will not access your data, and that data they collect is to better operate the service. I'm not a lawyer, I don't know how well that would stand up in court if it were part of a lawsuit, but it does look pretty reassuring when reading it as a layman. They have not clarified how they deal with potential abuse of your data by individual Dropbox employees. One would assume they have provision in their terms of employment to deal with that, but the likelihood of abuse is highest from disgruntled (ex-)employees who are likely not concerned with remaining employed by Dropbox, and once your data is exposed, there's no stuffing the genie back into the bottle.
So, Dropbox (and really, all cloud computing services) remain a security risk that you need to evaluate for yourself. A lot of family history data is probably just fine on Dropbox, especially if it's also posted to online trees such as Ancestry.com or MyHeritage.com as well. Just be careful of data you wish to remain private.
And I'm still not a fan of the Cloud...
This an all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
Here's a bit of the statement Dropbox released on their blog:
Some of you have written us with very understandable concerns about the legal-sounding parts. In particular, our new TOS talks about the licenses we need to run Dropbox. We want to be 100% clear that you own what you put in your Dropbox. We don’t own your stuff. And the license you give us is really limited. It only allows us to provide the service to you. Nothing else.
We think it’s really important that you understand the license. It’s about the permissions you give us to run the service, things like creating public links when you ask us to, allowing you to collaborate with colleagues in shared folders, generating web previews or thumbnails of your files, encrypting files, creating backups… the basic things that make Dropbox safe and easy to use. Services like Google Docs and others do the same thing when they get these permissions (see, for example, section 11.1 of Google’s TOS).
We wish we didn’t have to use legal terms at all, but copyright law is complicated and if we don’t get these permissions in writing, we might be putting ourselves in a tough spot down the road. Not to bore you with the details, but please take a look at the license term in the TOS. We think it’s fair and strikes the right balance: “This license is solely to enable us to technically administer, display, and operate the Services.”
They have gone to great lengths to state clearly that under normal circumstances they will not access your data, and that data they collect is to better operate the service. I'm not a lawyer, I don't know how well that would stand up in court if it were part of a lawsuit, but it does look pretty reassuring when reading it as a layman. They have not clarified how they deal with potential abuse of your data by individual Dropbox employees. One would assume they have provision in their terms of employment to deal with that, but the likelihood of abuse is highest from disgruntled (ex-)employees who are likely not concerned with remaining employed by Dropbox, and once your data is exposed, there's no stuffing the genie back into the bottle.
So, Dropbox (and really, all cloud computing services) remain a security risk that you need to evaluate for yourself. A lot of family history data is probably just fine on Dropbox, especially if it's also posted to online trees such as Ancestry.com or MyHeritage.com as well. Just be careful of data you wish to remain private.
And I'm still not a fan of the Cloud...
This an all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Dropbox, Revisited
It would seem the Dropbox issue is ruffling some feathers out there. Not just in the genealogy blogging world, but in the tech sector as a whole as well.
Some people are reading the news, and pointedly highlighting the phrase, "...to the extent which we think it necessary for the Service." to justify the whole thing as being necessary to run Dropbox.
It's not an exclusion of any kind! The wording is so vague as to be useless. WHO gets to decide what is necessary for the service? Which specific employees of Dropbox have access, and how is that controlled? Is there a two or more person interaction that needs to take place, to place even a small check on access? Or can a disgruntled employee with a little time on their hands go fishing? If the access is possible, then it's also possible for that access to be abused. How does the company work to prevent such abuse?
I'll agree that Dropbox as a company, and even their employees as individuals, do not have time to randomly rummage through everyone's data all the time. I've been in IT for well over a decade, and I've had administrative access to all manner of data. I know from experience that I didn't have time to just dig through the president of the college's e-mail, for example. But had I wanted, or had reason to do it, I could have. What stopped me was my integrity, and training. It's simply not something I would do. But I've seen many news reports of where the integrity of people has failed, and they have snooped when in a similar position. It happens far too often when an employee feels mistreated or undervalued. It's one reason why many employers will simply pay an IT worker to stay home after they give two weeks' notice - it's better than letting them maintain access to data and possibly abuse the privilege.
The fact remains your data is out of your direct control, and therefore vulnerable to examination and misuse by the third parties you trusted to hold it safe. For some data, that's of little importance. But some data we as genealogists gather can be sensitive, such as family medical issues, the data that we don't publish, especially while those described are still alive.
I've never been a fan of Cloud Computing. It's not Dropbox, specifically, it's that segment of IT as a whole that I have issues with. Data security was one of the things I was educated about, and trained to deal with, ever since I started in the field. The whole concept of Cloud Computing, especially Cloud Storage like Dropbox, flies in the face of all of that. This is just a particular example that highlights why we need to be extremely careful of what we put out there, and how it is controlled and accessed, and by whom.
I'm betting this isn't over...
This an all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
Some people are reading the news, and pointedly highlighting the phrase, "...to the extent which we think it necessary for the Service." to justify the whole thing as being necessary to run Dropbox.
It's not an exclusion of any kind! The wording is so vague as to be useless. WHO gets to decide what is necessary for the service? Which specific employees of Dropbox have access, and how is that controlled? Is there a two or more person interaction that needs to take place, to place even a small check on access? Or can a disgruntled employee with a little time on their hands go fishing? If the access is possible, then it's also possible for that access to be abused. How does the company work to prevent such abuse?
I'll agree that Dropbox as a company, and even their employees as individuals, do not have time to randomly rummage through everyone's data all the time. I've been in IT for well over a decade, and I've had administrative access to all manner of data. I know from experience that I didn't have time to just dig through the president of the college's e-mail, for example. But had I wanted, or had reason to do it, I could have. What stopped me was my integrity, and training. It's simply not something I would do. But I've seen many news reports of where the integrity of people has failed, and they have snooped when in a similar position. It happens far too often when an employee feels mistreated or undervalued. It's one reason why many employers will simply pay an IT worker to stay home after they give two weeks' notice - it's better than letting them maintain access to data and possibly abuse the privilege.
The fact remains your data is out of your direct control, and therefore vulnerable to examination and misuse by the third parties you trusted to hold it safe. For some data, that's of little importance. But some data we as genealogists gather can be sensitive, such as family medical issues, the data that we don't publish, especially while those described are still alive.
I've never been a fan of Cloud Computing. It's not Dropbox, specifically, it's that segment of IT as a whole that I have issues with. Data security was one of the things I was educated about, and trained to deal with, ever since I started in the field. The whole concept of Cloud Computing, especially Cloud Storage like Dropbox, flies in the face of all of that. This is just a particular example that highlights why we need to be extremely careful of what we put out there, and how it is controlled and accessed, and by whom.
I'm betting this isn't over...
This an all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
Dropbox Warning!
We all know and love Dropbox, the web-based service that lets us share files between our computers using 'Cloud' technology, right? Just drop your files in the Dropbox folder, and you can access them from any other Dropbox connected computer. Great concept!
Here's the problem: By using a 'Cloud' service, you essentially allow someone else to hold your data for you, and you are subject to their whims as to what they can do with it. Previously, Dropbox had a pretty decent statement of how they would hold your data. It was all supposed to be totally private, not even Dropbox employees could get at it. Until the US Government demanded some data that Dropbox was holding. And then it turns out that Dropbox employees could indeed access data if it was necessary, such as to comply with a court order. Or if some bored, disgruntled employee decided they wanted to snoop.
Now it's worse. Dropbox just changed their Terms of Service (TOS), and there's some worrisome language in there that essentially assigns full copyright to all of your data to Dropbox:
This is one of my biggest problems with 'Cloud Computing'. It's like handing someone your wallet, and trusting them to just hold it, not let anyone else access it, and not access it themselves. The pressure is just too great for them to just snoop a little, or give in to demands from others to get access for various reasons. This has always been my problem with Cloud Computing, but the market was all gung ho with a new buzzword, a new (not really) concept, and a huge marketing push to drive customers. What providers like about Cloud Computing is that it's portable. They can build new data centers anywhere it's cheap to do so. Cost of doing business in Hong Kong getting too high? Let's move the datacenter to Thailand. Somewhere that labor and rent is cheap.
Dropbox is very convenient. But is it worth giving away your data?
This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
Here's the problem: By using a 'Cloud' service, you essentially allow someone else to hold your data for you, and you are subject to their whims as to what they can do with it. Previously, Dropbox had a pretty decent statement of how they would hold your data. It was all supposed to be totally private, not even Dropbox employees could get at it. Until the US Government demanded some data that Dropbox was holding. And then it turns out that Dropbox employees could indeed access data if it was necessary, such as to comply with a court order. Or if some bored, disgruntled employee decided they wanted to snoop.
Now it's worse. Dropbox just changed their Terms of Service (TOS), and there's some worrisome language in there that essentially assigns full copyright to all of your data to Dropbox:
'By submitting your stuff to the Services, you grant us (and those we work with to provide the Services) worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable rights to use, copy, distribute, prepare derivative works (such as translations or format conversions) of, perform, or publicly display that stuff to the extent we think it necessary for the Service.'Oh, and sublicenseable, meaning they can let anyone else use your data as well. Is that what you signed up for? Is that okay with you?
This is one of my biggest problems with 'Cloud Computing'. It's like handing someone your wallet, and trusting them to just hold it, not let anyone else access it, and not access it themselves. The pressure is just too great for them to just snoop a little, or give in to demands from others to get access for various reasons. This has always been my problem with Cloud Computing, but the market was all gung ho with a new buzzword, a new (not really) concept, and a huge marketing push to drive customers. What providers like about Cloud Computing is that it's portable. They can build new data centers anywhere it's cheap to do so. Cost of doing business in Hong Kong getting too high? Let's move the datacenter to Thailand. Somewhere that labor and rent is cheap.
Dropbox is very convenient. But is it worth giving away your data?
This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
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