Today was the first full technical day of the conference. It started with an excellent distinguished practitioner talk by Lori Faith Cranor about some usability testing they did in the CUPS lab at Carnegie Mellon. Quite interesting work, and it explains a lot about why the messages we get are often so poor, and interfaces are perceived so badly (and in many ways, it echoed the talk MEZ gave a few years ago). After that was a good session on government research needs — I took a lot of notes and gathered a lot of information at work. During lunch we had a short talk by Peter Neumann, filled with the requisite number of puns (if you know Peter, you know of what I speak). After lunch was more researchy stuff — this time a panel on where security should be by 2020. The late afternoon brought the first classic paper review: a look back at Matt Bishop’s paper on Unix Security. It brought back memories of the old days.
Before I turn to the dinner activities, a thought from the research panel. Doug Maughan from DHS brought up the issue of how do we get students interested in Computer Security and Computer Science in middle and high school. It’s a subject I discussed many times when I was on the IAB at CSUN. I’m wondering whether the California State Science Fair might be able to do something: if there was a small prize for the best Computer Security-focused science project, might it entice students to think about the problems? I’m curious on your thoughts, O readers of mine, on how to get our middle school and high school students interested in the area.
Dinner was a luau. I was a bit out of it, as a migraine was starting (I took my Maxalt at 630p). The food was good, although I think we should have saved the poi for tomorrow night’s poster session. As always, I look at the entertainment with a reviewers eye. The sound left a lot to be desired — it was muddied and we could hardly hear the main speaker for the music group. The hulu dancers were good dancers, but were a bit mechanical. On the other hand, the fire dancer played to the audience and had a lot of fun with it. All in all, a reasonably good show, although I still remember the luau during my honeymoon when the pig was actually buried on the beach and dug up.
