The world through my eyes…
Green Fall, originally uploaded by jasonrr.
A walk through the trails at Breakneck in Cold Spring yielded this shot. I have to give props to my 18-200mm Nikon VR lens. The vibration reduction made taking the long exposure pretty trivial. A little bit of post-processing gave it some extra dimension.
Hiking those trails is always a pleasure. Anyone that travels to the area should make the effort to see them.
Lunch Time 2, originally uploaded by jasonrr.
Today, Jillian and I played hooky and headed up to the Dutchess County Fair. We had a blast walking around the livestock barns and watching the semi-pro jumpers competition. I snapped this shot as we were walking past a sow who was taking care of a bunch of another pig’s piglets. The simplicity of the scene and the entire day were both really refreshing.
DSC_2642, originally uploaded by jasonrr.
Another shot from my trip to the Mayan Riviera. This is part of a walled Mayan religious compound in the part of Mexico now called Tulum. This place was really amazing. The buildings standing for several thousand years have weathered the constant abuse of being directly on a stormy coastline.
A special building on the compound is designed with a window opening that lets the light through during sunrise on the summer solstice. This year, nearly 20,000 Mayans attended the spectacle. Now that would have been something to see.
DSC_2564, originally uploaded by jasonrr.
I recently returned from a trip to Playacar on the Mayan Riviera. I had forgotten the restfulness of listening to the ocean for several hours a day. This was the view from our cabana.
Black Moves Next, originally uploaded by jasonrr.
Taken at the Watson Research Facility this weekend in Hawthorne, NY. The building has an all-glass facade that just wants to be photographed. I was kind of surprised I didn’t get hassled by security.
Buttermilk Falls – Gorge Trail, originally uploaded by jasonrr.
The lighting along the Gorge Trail was just awesome. Nature literally conspired with me to allow for some cool photos. I love how the light here falls on the lower falls, giving your eye a place to go. The rock formations along the gorge were also really cool, and you can get a glimpse of them here.
Purple and Green, originally uploaded by jasonrr.
Since the world is waking up and turning all kinds of green, I thought it would be fun to start a Green and… series. Taken in Bryant Park again around 10am. The rest of the set will hang out here.
More Cherry Blossoms, originally uploaded by jasonrr.
On my way out of school I spotted this cherry tree in full bloom. The picture didn’t do it justice. What a beautiful day today turned out to be.
Tulips, originally uploaded by jasonrr.
This was taken around 6:30pm in Bryant Park this week. At that time the light in the park is reflected sunset from the surrounding buildings. This shot is appearing a bit desaturated, and I am still working on why that might be.
Update: The problem is my post process embedding Adobe RGB instead of sRGB. I haven’t fixed all of these yet, but you can see more shots from that day here.
While this isn’t wholly surprising, it was disappointing to have it confirmed. In a recent interview, David Cross, a program manager responsible for UAC made some seemingly tongue-in-cheek comments about the rationale behind UAC and its current impact on the average Vista user.
The reason we put UAC into the platform was to annoy users. I’m serious…UAC is not a perfect security boundary, but it [has helped us] move from ‘zero click’ exploits to ‘one click’ defense, said Cross.
Essentially, his position is that having a UAC prompt has made users aware of the dangers that they face in a connected world. In addition, those users have a better defense against exploits. This position was based, at least in part, on internal research that claimed that the vast majority of Vista users have UAC enabled and don’t receive prompts on a regular basis.
I wonder how much actual in-home observation time was included in that research. It has been my experience that UAC leaves non-technical consumers, think about your Mom, in essentially the same position they were in before. A UAC prompt basically gives the user a choice between allowing or disallowing an action which they don’t completely understand and almost certainly believe is happing at their request. In my limited observations, most people click “Allow” without carefully reading the prompt. Same risk as before, just more inane clicking around. It is the usability equivalent of your car asking you if you would like the engine to burn several chemical compounds, that you certainly don’t recognize, as they might be harmful to your car.
Mr. Cross would have us believe that the solution to Windows’ vulnerable code base is to force users to act as police for their computer’s activities. Isn’t this what software is supposed to be really good at? While I agree that there is no perfect solution yet, I think turning the human behind the keyboard into a filter for the “bad” things that are likely to happen on their computer sorely misses the mark. At the very least, more work on tightening down the core Windows code that is consistently exploited would be a good start.
