Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

May 16, 2019

Brzozowski derivatives – Invisible XML – Thinking, Wishing, Saying – Must be … Balisage 2019!

Filed under: Conferences,XML,XQuery,XSLT — Patrick Durusau @ 1:20 pm

Balisage 2019 Program Announced!

An awesome lineup of topics and speakers await Balisage 2019 goers. From the expected, standoff markup in browsers (yes, that usual fare at Balisage) to re-invention of markup “seen” when looking at a file with no markup (HyTime) and beyond, you are in for a real treat.

I saw several slots for late-breaking news so if you have something really profound and coherent to say, you’d best be polishing it now. Just looking at the current program gives you an idea of the competition for slots.

Why attend? General Eric Shinseki said it best:

If you dislike change, you’re going to dislike irrelevance even more.

Don’t risk irrelevance! Attend Balisage 2019!

February 18, 2019

r2con 2019 – A Sensible Call for Papers

Filed under: Conferences,Cybersecurity,Hacking,Radare2 — Patrick Durusau @ 2:20 pm

r2con 2019 – Call for Papers

The call for papers in its entirety:

Want to give a talk in r2con? Please send your submission to r2con@radare.org with the following information in plain-text format:

  • Your nick/name(s)
  • Contact information (e-mail, twitter, telegram)
  • Talk title and description with optional speaker bio
  • Length: (20 or 50 minutes)

Such a contrast from conferences with long and tiresome lists of areas included, implying those not listed are excluded. You know the type so I won’t embarrass anyone by offering examples.

For more details, check out r2con 2018, 22 videos, r2con 2017, 16 videos, or r2con 2016, 25 videos.

If after sixty-three (63) videos you are uncertain if your talk is appropriate for r2con 2019, perhaps it is not. Try elsewhere.

January 9, 2019

Summer is Coming! Balisage is Coming! Papers Due April 12, 2019!

Filed under: Conferences,XML,XML Database,XML Query Rewriting,XML Schema,XPath,XProc,XQuery,XSLT — Patrick Durusau @ 7:52 pm

From a recent email about Balisage 2019:

Some “Balisage: The Markup Conference 2019” dates are coming soon:

March 29, 2019 — Peer-review applications due
April 12, 2019 — Paper submissions due
July 30 — August 2, 2019 — Balisage: The Markup Conference
July 29, 2019 — Pre-conference Symposium – Topic to be announced https://www.balisage.net/

Balisage: where serious markup practitioners and theoreticians meet every August.

A colleague recently asked me to share the program for Balisage 2019 to help support a request to attend. What, I was asked, will we talk about at Balisage 2019. I replied “It will be a variety of topics relating to markup, but we won’t know the specifics until May.” “Why? It seems like you should know that now.” was the response. “Why don’t you just decide who you want to talk about what and assign topics?” “Because that would not be a contributed paper conference, it would be some other sort of event!”

Balisage *is* a contributed paper conference, and the submissions from people who want to speak drive the program, the hallway conversations, and the whole tone of Balisage!

If you want to speak at Balisage 2019, if you want to help shape the conversation, if you have an idea, experience, opinion, or question relating to markup, please submit a paper to Balisage 2019!

We solicit papers on any aspect of markup and its uses; topics include but ARE NOT LIMITED TO:

• Cutting-edge applications of XML and related technologies
• Integration of XML with other technologies (e.g., content management, XSLT, XQuery)
• Performance issues in parsing, XML database retrieval, or XSLT processing
• Development of angle-bracket-free user interfaces for non-technical users
• Deployment of XML systems for enterprise data
• Design and implementation of XML vocabularies
• Case studies of the use of XML for publishing, interchange, or archiving
• Alternatives to XML/JSON/whatever
• Expressive power and application adequacy of XSD, Relax NG, DTDs, Schematron, and other schema languages
• Invisible XML

Detailed Call for Participation: https://www.balisage.net/Call4Participation.html
Call for Peer Reviewers: https://www.balisage.net/peer/ReviewAppForm.html
About Balisage: https://www.balisage.net/

For more information: info@balisage.net or +1 301 315 9631

Papers are due for Balisage in a little more than 90 days.

Anyone doing a topic map paper this year?

“If you can point to it, we can identify it. If we can identify it, we can map it. If we can map it, …,” well, you know how the rest of it goes.

Data silos continue to exist because they are armor. Armor that protects some stakeholders from prying eyes. Up for a little peeping?

August 15, 2018

The Talk-First Strategy of Poster Design

Filed under: Conferences,Presentation — Patrick Durusau @ 1:22 pm

The Talk-First Strategy of Poster Design by Xanda Schofield and Prof. David Mimno.

From the post:

Posters are a great way to learn how to communicate your work, but designing and writing a poster is hard. Our group has developed a simple technique that works well, and we thought it could be helpful to others.

Presenting at poster sessions at conferences can be exhausting. You stand by your poster for several hours and, when people ask you for a description of your work, must give a tight three-to-five-minute talk. If you’re successful in grabbing the attention of passersby (and that in itself is a skill), this cycle could easily happen 10-20 times, each with a unique set of follow-up questions about what struck the listener as interesting or confusing. By the end of the session, we often find ourselves with a much clearer mental model of our work: you learn how to get someone’s interest quickly, what terms you need to define, what parts are confusing, and what the best examples are to illustrate successes and failures.

The problem with this pattern, of course, is that the great mental model arrives at the *end* of the process, when you are pulling out the thumb tacks and rolling up the poster. Oftentimes, we have presented posters that were full of things that we didn’t actually want to discuss. The clearest sign we had made this mistake was when we would find ourselves repeatedly pointing to one or two specific spots on the poster, and not really using anything else. It’s not that that content was bad or wrong; it may have been the key material of a longer talk. But in three to five minutes, there may not be space to actually explain everything.

So rather than spending a lot of time creating a poster in PowerPoint or OmniGraffle or something similar, and then figuring out what works and doesn’t at the poster session, we started what you might call the “talk first” method. The goal is to move away from thinking about a poster as a static document or a paper summary. Instead, we try to think of them as visual aids for mini-presentations — a series of things you want to point to as you are talking about your work. It’s not a bad thing for a poster to work as a self-contained, unattended unit. But it’s more important that it be the visual complement to your in-person description. By starting with that goal in mind, we have been able to design much more effective posters for our work,
… (emphasis in original)

Top three (3) lessons from Schofield and Mimno:

  1. Effective communication is NOT a matter of chance.
  2. People don’t luck into being good presenters.
  3. You can improve your presentation/poster skills. (with practice)

Schofield and Mimno provide a process for improving your poster presentation skills.

Caveat: You have to supply the practice on your own.

Good luck!

May 29, 2018

Balisage Late-Breaking News Deadline – 6 July 2018 – Attract/Spot a Fed!

Filed under: Conferences,XML,XML Schema,XPath,XQuery,XSLT — Patrick Durusau @ 7:10 pm

Balisage 2018 Call for Late-breaking News

From the post:


Proposals for late-breaking slots must be received at info@balisage.net by July 6, 2018. Selection of late-breaking proposals will be made by the Balisage conference committee, instead of being made in the course of the regular peer-review process. (emphasis in original)

The Def Con conference attendees play spot the fed.

But spot the fed requires some feds in order to play.

Feds show up at hacker conferences. For content or the company of people with poor personal hygiene.

Let’s assume it’s the content.

What content for a markup paper will attract undercover federal agents?

Success means playing spot the fed at Balisage 2018.

Topics anyone?

May 23, 2018

Balisage 2018 Program!

Filed under: Conferences,XML,XPath,XQuery,XSLT — Patrick Durusau @ 12:40 pm

The Balisage 2018 program has hit the Web!

Among the goodies on the agenda:

  • Implementing and using concurrent document structures
  • White-hat web crawling: Industrial strength web crawling for serious content acquisition
  • Easing the road to declarative programming in XSLT for imperative programmers
  • Fractal information is
  • Scaling XML using a Beowulf cluster

That’s a random sampling from the talk already scheduled!

Even more intriguing are the open spots left for “late-breaking” news.

Perhaps you have some “late-breaking” XML related news to share?

I haven’t seen the 2018 Call for Late-Breaking papers but if the 2017 Call for Late-Breaking papers is any guide, time is running out!

Enjoy!

April 11, 2018

Lagging on Balisage Paper? PsyOps Advice

Filed under: Conferences,Persuasion — Patrick Durusau @ 3:19 pm

Are you lagging on your Balisage paper for submission on 22 April 2018?

Robert Cialdini, Pre-Suasion, at pages 116-120, details how to build a persuasive geography that focuses you on a Balisage submission.

The “trick” is to create geography/surroundings that remind you of Balisage, along with the great people, papers and conversations.

How?

Go to the Balisage Social Pages to grab pics of people, social gatherings, etc., from Balisage and make them into screen savers, posters, make your work space a mini-Balisage den.

Try it! You will be thinking about and working on your Balisage paper nearly constantly!

PS: The same trick works for other things but I would reserve it for Balisage papers. 😉

February 9, 2018

XML Prague 2018 Conference Proceedings – Weekend Reading!

Filed under: Conferences,XML,XML Database,XPath,XQuery,XSLT — Patrick Durusau @ 9:13 pm

XML Prague 2018 Conference Proceedings

Two Hundred and Sixty (260) pages of high quality content on XML!

From the table of contents:

  • Assisted Structured Authoring using Conditional Random Fields – Bert Willems
  • XML Success Story: Creating and Integrating Collaboration Solutions to Improve the Documentation Process – Steven Higgs
  • xqerl: XQuery 3.1 Implementation in Erlang – Zachary N. Dean
  • XML Tree Models for Efficient Copy Operations – Michael Kay
  • Using Maven with XML development projects – Christophe Marchand and Matthieu Ricaud-Dussarget
  • Varieties of XML Merge: Concurrent versus Sequential – Tejas Pradip Barhate and Nigel Whitaker
  • Including XML Markup in the Automated Collation of Literary Text – Elli Bleeker, Bram Buitendijk, Ronald Haentjens Dekker, and Astrid Kulsdom
  • Multi-Layer Content Modelling to the Rescue – Erik Siegel
  • Combining graph and tree – Hans-Juergen Rennau
  • SML – A simpler and shorter representation of XML – Jean-François Larvoire
  • Can we create a real world rich Internet application using Saxon-JS? – Pieter Masereeuw
  • Implementing XForms using interactive XSLT 3.0 – O’Neil Delpratt and Debbie Lockett
  • Life, the Universe, and CSS Tests – Tony Graham
  • Form, and Content – Steven Pemberton
  • tokenized-to-tree – Gerrit Imsieke

I just got a refurbished laptop for reading in bed. Now I have to load XML parsers, etc. on it to use along with reading these proceedings!

Enjoy!

PS: Be sure to thank Jirka Kosek for his tireless efforts promoting XML and XML Prague!

February 5, 2018

Balisage: The Markup Conference 2018 – 77 Days To Paper Submission Deadline!

Filed under: Conferences,XML,XML Schema,XPath,XQuery — Patrick Durusau @ 8:46 pm

Call for Participation

Submission dates/instructions have dropped!

When:
Dates:

  • 22 March 2018 — Peer review applications due
  • 22 April 2018 — Paper submissions due
  • 21 May 2018 — Speakers notified
  • 8 June 2018 — Late-breaking News submissions due
  • 15 June 2018 — Late-breaking News speakers notified
  • 6 July 2018 — Final papers due from presenters of peer reviewed papers
  • 6 July 2018 — Short paper or slide summary due from presenters of late-breaking news
  • 30 July 2018 — Pre-conference Symposium
  • 31 July –3 August 2018 — Balisage: The Markup Conference
How:
Submit full papers in XML to info@balisage.net
See the pages Instructions for Authors and
Tag Set and Submission Guidelines for details.
Apply to the Peer Review panel

I’ve heard inability to submit valid markup counts in the judging of papers. That may just be rumor or it may be true. I suggest validating your submission.

You should be on the fourth or fifth draft of your paper by now, but be aware the paper submission deadline is April 22, 2018, or 77 days from today!

Looking forward to seeing exceptionally strong papers in the review process and being presented at Balisage!

January 11, 2018

The art of writing science

Filed under: Conferences,Science,Writing — Patrick Durusau @ 4:21 pm

The art of writing science by Kevin W. Plaxco

From the post:

The value of writing well should not be underestimated. Imagine, for example, that you hold in your hand two papers, both of which describe precisely the same set of experimental results. One is long, dense, and filled with jargon. The other is concise, engaging, and easy to follow. Which are you more likely to read, understand, and cite? The answer to this question hits directly at the value of good writing: writing well leverages your work. That is, while even the most skillful writing cannot turn bad science into good science, clear and compelling writing makes good science more impactful, and thus more valuable.

The goal of good writing is straightforward: to make your reader’s job as easy as possible. Realizing this goal, though, is not so simple. I, for one, was not a natural-born writer; as a graduate student, my writing was weak and rambling, taking forever to get to the point. But I had the good fortune to postdoc under an outstanding scientific communicator, who taught me the above-described lesson that writing well is worth the considerable effort it demands. Thus inspired, I set out to teach myself how to communicate more effectively, an effort that, some fifteen years later, I am still pursuing.

Along the way I have learned a thing or two that I believe make my papers easier to read, a few of which I am pleased to share with you here. Before I share my hard-won tips, though, I have an admission: there is no single, correct way to write. In fact, there are a myriad of solutions to the problem of writing well (see, e.g., Refs.1–4). The trick, then, is not to copy someone else’s voice, but rather to study what works—and what does not—in your own writing and that of others to formulate your own guide to effective communication. Thus, while I present here some of my most cherished writing conventions (i.e., the rules that I force on my own students), I do not mean to imply that they represent the only acceptable approach. Indeed, you (or your mentor) may disagree strongly with many of the suggestions I make below. This, though, is perfectly fine: my goal is not to convince you that I have found the one true way, but instead simply to get people thinking and talking about writing. I do so in the hope that this will inspire a few more young scientists to develop their own effective styles.

The best way to get the opportunity to do a great presentation for Balisage 2018 is to write a great paper for Balisage 2018. A great paper is step one towards being accepted and having a chance to bask in the admiration of other markup geeks.

OK, so it’s not so much basking as trying to see by star light on a cloudy night.

Still, a great paper will impress the reviewers and if accepted, readers when it appears in the proceedings for this year.

Strong suggestion: Try Plaxco’s first sentence of the paragraph test on your paper (or any you are reviewing). If if fails, start over.

I volunteer to do peer review for Balisage so I’m anticipating some really well-written papers this year.

The David Attenborough Style of Scientific Presentation (Historic First for Balisage?)

Filed under: Communication,Conferences,Presentation — Patrick Durusau @ 4:17 pm

The David Attenborough Style of Scientific Presentation by Will Ratcliff.

From the post:

One of the biggest hurdles to giving a good talk is convincing people that it’s worth their mental energy to listen to you. This approach to speaking is designed to get that buy-in from the audience, without them even realizing they are doing so. The key to this is exploitation of a simple fact: people are curious creatures by nature and will pay attention to a cool story as long as that story remains absolutely clear.

In the D.A. style of speaking, you are the narrator of an interesting story. The goal is to have a visually streamlined talk where the audience is so engaged with your presentation that they forget you’re standing in front of them speaking. Instead, they’re listening to your narrative and seeing the visuals that accompany your story, at no point do they have to stop and try to make sense of what you just said.

A captivating two (2) page summary of the David Attenborough (DA) style for presentations, but at first, since I don’t travel any longer, I wasn’t going to mention it.

On a second or third read, the blindingly obvious hit me:

Rules that work for live conference presentations, also work for video podcasts, lectures, client presentations, anywhere you are seeking to effectively communicate to others. (I guess that rules out White House press briefings.)

Paper submission dates aren’t out yet for Balisage 2018 but your use of DA style for your presentation would be a historic first, so far as I know. 😉

No promises but a video in “normal” style with the same presentation in DA style, for the same presentation, could be an interesting data point.

January 9, 2018

Sessions for XML Prague 2018 – January 10th, Early Bird Deadline!

Filed under: Conferences,XML,XQuery,XSLT — Patrick Durusau @ 8:03 pm

List of sessions for XML Prague 2018

The range of great presentations is no surprise.

That early registration is still open, with this list of presentations, well, that is a surprise!

January 10, 2018 is the deadline for early birds!

From the post:

Unconference day

Schematron Users Meetup
XSL-FO, CSS and Paged Output – hosted by Antenna House
Introduction to CSS for Paged Media
XSpec Users Meetup
oXygen Users Meeup
Creating beautiful documents with the speedata Publisher
eXist-db Community Meetup
XML with Emacs workshop

Friday and Saturday sessions

Bert Willems: Assisted Structured Authoring using Conditional Random Fields
Christophe Marchand and Matthieu Ricaud-Dussarget: Using Maven with XML Projects
Elli Bleeker, Bram Buitendijk, Ronald Haentjens Dekker and Astrid Kulsdom: Including XML Markup in the Automated Collation of Literary Texts
Erik Siegel: Multi-layered content modelling to the rescue
Francis Cave: Does the world need more XML standards?
Gerrit Imsieke: tokenized-to-tree – An XProc/XSLT Library For Patching Back Tokenization/Analysis Results Into Marked-up Text
Hans-Juergen Rennau: Combining graph and tree: writing SHAX, obtaining SHACL, XSD and more
James Fuller: Diff with XQuery
Jean-François Larvoire: SML – A simpler and shorter representation of XML
Johannes Kolbe and Manuel Montero: XML periodic table, XML repository and XSLT checker
Michael Kay: XML Tree Models for Efficient Copy Operations
O’Neil Delpratt and Debbie Lockett: Implementing XForms using interactive XSLT 3:0
Pieter Masereeuw: Can we create a real world rich Internet application using Saxon-JS?
Radu Coravu: A short story about XML encoding and opening very large documents in an XML editing application
Steven Higgs: XML Success Story: Creating and Integrating Collaboration Solutions to Improve the Documentation Process
Steven Pemberton: Form, and Content
Tejas Barhate and Nigel Whitaker: Varieties of XML Merge: Concurrent versus Sequential
Tony Graham: Life, the Universe, and CSS Tests
Vasu Chakkera: Effective XSLT Documentation and its separation from XSLT code:
Zachary Dean: xqerl: XQuery 3:1 Implementation in Erlang

I’m expecting lots of tweets and posts about these presentations!

December 20, 2017

Offensive Security Conference – February 12-17 2018 // Berlin

Filed under: Conferences,Cybersecurity — Patrick Durusau @ 8:09 pm

Offensive Security Conference – February 12-17 2018 // Berlin

If you haven’t already registered/made travel arrangements, perhaps the speakers list will hurry you along.

While you wait for the conference, can you match the author(s) to the papers based on title alone? Several papers have multiple authors, but which ones?

Enjoy!

December 15, 2017

KubeCon/CloudNativeCon [Breaking Into Clouds]

Filed under: Cloud Computing,Conferences,Cybersecurity,Security — Patrick Durusau @ 8:48 pm

KubeCon/CloudNativeCon just concluded in Austin, Texas with 179 videos now available on YouTube.

A sortable list of presentations: https://kccncna17.sched.com/. How long that will persist isn’t clear.

If you missed Why The Federal Government Warmed Up To Cloud Computing, take a minute to review it now. It’s a promotional piece but the essential take away, government data is moving to the cloud, remains valid.

To detect security failures during migration and post-migration, you will need to know cloud technology better than the average migration tech.

The videos from KubeCon/CloudNativeCon 2017 are a nice starter set in that direction.

December 8, 2017

Haystack: The Search Relevance Conference! (Proposals by Jan. 19, 2018) Updated

Filed under: Conferences,Relevance,Search Algorithms,Search Analytics,Searching — Patrick Durusau @ 5:16 pm

Haystack: The Search Relevance Conference!

From the webpage:

Haystack is the conference for improving search relevance. If you’re like us, you work to understand the shiny new tools or dense academic papers out there that promise the moon. Then you puzzle how to apply those insights to your search problem, in your search stack. But the path isn’t always easy, and the promised gains don’t always materialize.

Haystack is the no-holds-barred conference for organizations where search, matching, and relevance really matters to the bottom line. For search managers, developers & data scientists finding ways to innovate, see past the silver bullets, and share what actually has worked well for their unique problems. Please come share and learn!

… (inline form for submission proposals)

Welcome topics include

  • Information Retrieval
  • Learning to Rank
  • Query Understanding
  • Semantic Search
  • Applying NLP to search
  • Personalized Search
  • Search UX Strategy: Perceived relevance, smart snippeting
  • Measuring and testing search against business objectives
  • Nuts & bolts: plugins for Solr, Elasticsearch, Vespa, etc
  • Adjacent topics: recommendation systems, entity matching via search, and other topics

… (emphasis in original)

The first link for the conference I saw was http://mailchi.mp/e609fba68dc6/announcing-haystack-the-search-relevance-conference, which promised topics including:

  • Intent detection

The modest price of $75 covers our costs….

To see a solution to the problem of other minds and to discover their intent, all for $75, is quite a bargain. Especially since the $75 covers breakfast and lunch both days, plus dinner the first day in a beer hall. 😉

Even without solving philosophical problems, sponsorship by OpenSource Connections is enough to recommend this conference without reservation.

My expectation is this conference is going to rock for hard core search geeks!

PS: Ask if videos will be posted. Thanks!

December 7, 2017

The Top-100 rated Devoxx Belgium 2017 talks (or the full 207)

Filed under: Conferences,Programming — Patrick Durusau @ 1:47 pm

The Top-100 rated Devoxx Belgium 2017 talks

The top-100 list has Devoxx Belgium 2017 talks sorted in voting order, with hyperlinks to the top 50.

If you are looking for more comprehensive coverage of Devoxx Belgium 2017, try the Devoxx Belgium 2017 YouTube Playlist, with 207 videos!

Kudos to Devoxx for putting conference content online to spread the word about technology.

December 6, 2017

INFILTRATE 2018 – Vote on Papers – Closes 14 December 2017

Filed under: Conferences,Cybersecurity,Security — Patrick Durusau @ 9:59 am

INFILTRATE 2018 – OPEN CFP

Cast your vote for the talks you want to see at INFILTRATE 2018.

As of today, 6 December 2017, I count 26 presentations.

The titles alone are enough to sell the conference:

  1. Energy Larceny-Breaking into a solar power plant
  2. Chainspotting: Building Exploit Chains with Logic Bugs
  3. Back To The Future – Going Back In Time To Abuse Android's JIT
  4. Windows Offender: Attacking The Windows Defender Emulator
  5. Bypassing Mitigations by Attacking JIT Server in Microsoft Edge
  6. A year of inadvertent macOS bugs
  7. L'art de l’Évasion: Modern VMWare Exploitation techniques
  8. Unboxing your VirtualBoxes: A close look at a desktop hypervisor
  9. Fuzzing the ‘Unfuzzable’
  10. How to become a Penetration tester – an attempt to guide the next generation of hackers
  11. Parasite OS
  12. Detecting Reverse Engineering with Canaries
  13. Discovering & exploiting a Cisco ASA pre-auth RCE vulnerability
  14. Synthetic Reality; Breaking macOS One Click at a Time
  15. Dissecting QNX – Analyzing & Breaking QNX Exploit Mitigations and Secure Random Number Generators
  16. Malware​ ​ tradecrafts​ ​ and nasty​ ​ secrets​ ​ of​ ​ evading​ ​ to escalating
  17. Sandbox evasion using VBA Referencing
  18. Exploits in Wetware
  19. How to escalate privileges to SYSTEM in Windows 10
  20. Pack your Android: Everything you need to know about Android Boxing
  21. How to hide your browser 0-days
  22. So you think IoT DDoS botnets are dangerous – Bypassing ISP and Enterprise Anti-DDoS with 90's techn
  23. Making love to Enterprise Software
  24. I Did it Thrawn’s Way- Spiels and the Symbiosis of Red Teaming & Threat Intelligence Analysis
  25. Digital Vengeance: Exploiting Notorious C&C Toolkits
  26. Advanced Social Engineering and OSINT for Penetration Testing

Another example of open sharing as opposed to the hoard and privilege approach of the defensive cybersecurity community. White hats are fortunate to only be a decade behind. Consider it the paranoia penalty. Fear of sharing knowledge harms you more than anyone else.

Speaking of sharing, the archives for INFILTRATE 2011 through INFILTRATE 2017 are online.

May not be true for any particular exploit, but given the lagging nature of cyberdefense, not to mention shoddy patch application, any technique less than ten years old is likely still viable. Remember SQL injection turned 17 this year and remains the #1 threat to websites.

Vote on your favorite papers for INFILTRATE 2018 – OPEN CFP
and let’s see some great tweet coverage for the conference!

INFILTRATE Security Conference, April 26 & 27 2018, @Fountainbleau Hotel

INFILTRATE is a deep technical conference that focuses entirely on offensive security issues. Groundbreaking researchers focused on the latest technical issues will demonstrate techniques that you cannot find elsewhere. INFILTRATE is the single-most important event for those who are focused on the technical aspects of offensive security issues, for example, computer and network exploitation, vulnerability discovery, and rootkit and trojan covert protocols. INFILTRATE eschews policy and high-level presentations in favor of just hard-core thought-provoking technical meat.

Registration: infiltrate@immunityincdotcom

Twitter: @InfiltrateCon.

Enjoy!

November 15, 2017

Call For Cyber Weapons (Arsenal at Black Hat Asia 2018)

Filed under: Conferences,Cybersecurity,Security — Patrick Durusau @ 11:46 am

Welcome to Arsenal at Black Hat Asia 2018 – Call for Tools Open

Deadline: January 10 at 23:59 Pacific

From the webpage:

The Black Hat Arsenal team will be back in Singapore with the very same goal: give hackers & security researchers the opportunity to demo their newest and latest code.

The Arsenal tool demo area is dedicated to researchers and the open source community. The concept is quite simple: we provide the space and you bring your machine to showcase your work and answer questions from delegates attending Black Hat.

Once again, the ToolsWatch (@toolswatch) team will work in conjunction with Black Hat for the special event Black Hat Arsenal Asia 2018.

The 16th session will be held at the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore from March 22-March 23, 2018.

The same rules to consider before applying to Arsenal:

  • Bring your computer (with VGA output), adapter, your tool, your stickers
  • Avoid stodgy presentations. Folks are expecting action, so give’em action.
  • No vendor pitches or gear!
  • Be yourself, be cool, and wear a smile.
  • Hug the folks at Arsenal :)
  • Above all, have tremendous fun!!

For any questions, contact blackhatarsenal@ubm.com.

*Please note: You may use the plaint text “Upload File” section if you wish to include whitepapers or research; however, this field is optional and not required.

Not as much advance notice as you have for Balisage 2018 but surely you are building new tools on a regular basis!

As you have learned from tools written by others, come to Arsenal at Black Hat Asia 2018 and enable others to learn from you.

Terminology: I say “weapons” instead of “tools” to highlight the lack of any “us” when it comes to cybersecurity.

Governments and corporations have an interest in personal privacy and security only when it furthers their agendas and none when it doesn’t.

Making governments and corporations more secure isn’t in my interest. Is it in yours? (Governments have declared their lack of interest in your privacy and security by their actions. Nothing more need be said.)

November 13, 2017

XML Prague 2017 – 21 Reasons to Attend 2018 – Offensive Use of XQuery

Filed under: Conferences,XML,XPath,XQuery,XSLT — Patrick Durusau @ 8:41 pm

XML Prague 2017 Videos

Need reasons for your attending XML Prague 2018?

The XML Prague 2017 YouTube playlist has twenty-one (21) very good reasons (videos). (You may have to hold the hands of c-suite types if you share the videos with them.)

Two things that I see missing from the presentations, security and offensive use of XQuery.

XML Security

You may have noticed that corporations, governments and others have been hemorrhaging data in 2017 (and before). While legislators wail ineffectually and wish for a 18th century world, the outlook for cybersecurity looks grim for 2018.

XML and XML applications exist in a law of the jungle security context. But there weren’t any presentations on security related issues at XML Prague in 2017. Are you going to break the ice in 2018?

Offensive use of XQuery

XQuery has the power to extract, enhance and transform data to serve your interests, not those of its authors.

I’ve heard the gospel that technologists should disarm themselves and righteously await a better day. Meanwhile, governments, military forces, banks, and their allies loot and rape the Earth and its peoples.

Are data scientists at the NSA, FSB, MSS, MI6, Mossad, CIA, etc., constrained by your “do no evil” creeds?

Present governments or their successors, can move towards more planet and people friendly policies, but they require, ahem, encouragement.

XQuery, which doesn’t depend upon melting data centers, supercomputers, global data vacuuming, etc., can help supply that encouragement.

How would you use XQuery to transform government data to turn it against its originator?

October 26, 2017

2nd International Electronic Conference on Remote Sensing – March 22 – April 5, 2018

2nd International Electronic Conference on Remote Sensing

From the webpage:

We are very pleased to announce that the 2nd International Electronic Conference on Remote Sensing (ECRS-2) will be held online, between 22 March and 5 April 2018.

Today, remote sensing is already recognised as an important tool for monitoring our planet and assessing the state of our environment. By providing a wealth of information that is used to make sound decisions on key issues for humanity such as climate change, natural resource monitoring and disaster management, it changes our world and affects the way we think.

Nevertheless, it is very inspirational that we continue to witness a constant growth of amazing new applications, products and services in different fields (e.g. archaeology, agriculture, forestry, environment, climate change, natural and anthropogenic hazards, weather, geology, biodiversity, coasts and oceans, topographic mapping, national security, humanitarian aid) which are based on the use of satellite and other remote sensing data. This growth can be attributed to the following: large number (larger than ever before) of available platforms for data acquisition, new sensors with improved characteristics, progress in computer technology (hardware, software), advanced data analysis techniques, and access to huge volumes of free and commercial remote sensing data and related products.

Following the success of the 1st International Electronic Conference on Remote Sensing (http://sciforum.net/conference/ecrs-1), ECRS-2 aims to cover all recent advances and developments related to this exciting and rapidly changing field, including innovative applications and uses.

We are confident that participants of this unique multidisciplinary event will have the opportunity to get involved in discussions on theoretical and applied aspects of remote sensing that will contribute to shaping the future of this discipline.

ECRS-2 (http://sciforum.net/conference/ecrs-2) is hosted on sciforum, the platform developed by MDPI for organising electronic conferences and discussion groups, and is supported by Section Chairs and a Scientific Committee comprised of highly reputable experts from academia.

It should be noted that there is no cost for active participation and attendance of this virtual conference. Experts from different parts of the world are encouraged to submit their work and take the exceptional opportunity to present it to the remote sensing community.

I have a less generous view of remote sensing, seeing it used to further exploit/degrade the environment, manipulate regulatory processes, and to generally disadvantage those not skilled in its use.

Being aware of the latest developments in remote sensing is a first step towards developing your ability to question, defend and even use remote sensing data for your own ends.

ECRS-2 (http://sciforum.net/conference/ecrs-2) is a great opportunity to educate yourself about remote sensing. Enjoy!

While electronic conferences lack the social immediacy of physical gatherings, one wonders why more data technologies aren’t holding electronic conferences? Thoughts?

October 12, 2017

XML Prague 2018 – Apology to Procrastinators

Filed under: Conferences,Cybersecurity,Security,XML,XPath,XQuery,XSLT — Patrick Durusau @ 10:49 am

Apology to all procrastinators, I just saw the Call for Proposals for XML Prague 2018

You only have 50 days (until November 30, 2017) to submit your proposals for XML Prague 2018.

Efficient people don’t realize that 50 days is hardly enough time to put off thinking about a proposal topic, much less fail to write down anything for a proposal. Completely unreasonable demand but, do try to procrastinate quickly and get a proposal done for XML Prague 2018.

The suggestion of doing a “…short video…” seems rife with potential for humor and/or NSFW images. Perhaps XML Prague will post the best “…short videos…” to YouTube?

From the webpage:

XML Prague 2018 now welcomes submissions for presentations on the following topics:

  • Markup and the Extensible Web – HTML5, XHTML, Web Components, JSON and XML sharing the common space
  • Semantic visions and the reality – micro-formats, semantic data in business, linked data
  • Publishing for the 21th century – publishing toolchains, eBooks, EPUB, DITA, DocBook, CSS for print, …
  • XML databases and Big Data – XML storage, indexing, query languages, …
  • State of the XML Union – updates on specs, the XML community news, …
  • XML success stories – real-world use cases of successful XML deployments

There are several different types of slots available during the conference and you can indicate your preferred slot during submission:

30 minutes
15 minutes
These slots are suitable for normal conference talks.
90 minutes (unconference)
Ideal for holding users meeting or workshop during the unconference day (Thursday).

All proposals will be submitted for review by a peer review panel made up of the XML Prague Program Committee. Submissions will be chosen based on interest, applicability, technical merit, and technical correctness.

Authors should strive to contain original material and belong in the topics previously listed. Submissions which can be construed as product or service descriptions (adverts) will likely be deemed inappropriate. Other approaches such as use case studies are welcome but must be clearly related to conference topics.

Proposals can have several forms:

full paper
In our opinion still ideal and classical way of proposing presentation. Full paper gives reviewers enough information to properly asses your proposal.
extended abstract
Concise 1-4 page long description of your topic. If you do not have time to write full paper proposal this is one possible way to go. Try to make your extended abstract concrete and specific. Too short or vague abstract will not convince reviewers that it is worth including into the conference schedule.
short video (max. 5 minutes)
If you are not writing person but you still have something interesting to present. Simply capture short video (no longer then 5 minutes) containing part of your presentation. Video can capture you or it can be screen cast.

I mentioned XSLT security attacks recently, perhaps you could do something similar on XQuery? Other ways to use XML and related technologies to breach cybersecurity?

Do submit proposals and enjoy XML Prague 2018!

October 4, 2017

Procrastinators – Dates/Location for Balisage: The Markup Conference 2018

Filed under: Conferences,JSON,XML,XPath,XQuery,XSLT — Patrick Durusau @ 12:48 pm

Procrastinators can be caught short, without enough time for proper procrastination on papers and slides.

To insure ample time for procrastination, Balisage: The Markup Conference 2018 has published its dates and location.

31 July 2018–3 August 2018 … Balisage: The Markup Conference
30 July 2018 … Symposium – topic to be announced
CAMBRiA Hotel & Suites
1 Helen Heneghan Way
Rockville, Maryland 20850
USA

For indecisive procrastinators, Balisage offers suggestions for your procrastination:

The 2017 program included papers discussing XML vocabularies, cutting-edge digital humanities, lossless JSON/XML roundtripping, reflections on concrete syntax and abstract syntax, parsing and generation, web app development using the XML stack, managing test cases, pipelining and micropipelinging, electronic health records, rethinking imperative algorithms for XSLT and XQuery, markup and intellectual property, digitiziging Ethiopian and Eritrean manuscripts, exploring “shapes” in RDF and their relationship to schema validation, exposing XML data to users of varying technical skill, test-suite management, and use case studies about large conversion applications, DITA, and SaxonJS.

Innovative procrastinators can procrastinate on other related topics, including any they find on the Master Topic List (ideas procrastinated on for prior Balisage conferences).

Take advantage of this opportunity to procrastinate early and long on your Balisage submissions. You and your audience will be glad you did!

PS: Don’t procrastinate on saying thank you to Tommie Usdin and company for another year of Balisage. Balisage improves XML theory and practice every year it is held.

May 17, 2017

Balisage: The Markup Conference 2017 Program Now Available

Filed under: Conferences,XML,XML Schema,XPath,XQuery,XSLT — Patrick Durusau @ 3:42 pm

Balisage: The Markup Conference 2017 Program Now Available

An email from Tommie Usdin, Chair, Chief Organizer and herder of markup cats for Balisage advises:

Balisage: where serious markup practitioners and theoreticians meet every August.

The 2017 program includes papers discussing XML vocabularies, cutting-edge digital humanities, lossless JSON/XML roundtripping, reflections on concrete syntax and abstract syntax, parsing and generation, web app development using the XML stack, managing test cases, pipelining and micropipelinging, electronic health records, rethinking imperative algorithms for XSLT and XQuery, markup and intellectual property, why YOU should use (my favorite XML vocabulary), developing a system to aid in studying manuscripts in the tradition of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Highlands, exploring “shapes” in RDF and their relationship to schema validation, exposing XML data to users of varying technical skill, test-suite management, and use case studies about large conversion applications, DITA, and SaxonJS.

Up-Translation and Up-Transformation: A one-day Symposium on the goals, challenges, solutions, and workflows for significant XML enhancements, including approaches, tools, and techniques that may potentially be used for a variety of other tasks. The symposium will be of value not only to those facing up-translation and transformation but also to general XML practitioners seeking to get the most out of their data.

Are you interested in open information, reusable documents, and vendor and application independence? Then you need descriptive markup, and Balisage is your conference. Balisage brings together document architects, librarians, archivists, computer scientists, XML practitioners, XSLT and XQuery programmers, implementers of XSLT and XQuery engines and other markup-related software, semantic-Web evangelists, standards developers, academics, industrial researchers, government and NGO staff, industrial developers, practitioners, consultants, and the world’s greatest concentration of markup theorists. Some participants are busy designing replacements for XML while other still use SGML (and know why they do).

Discussion is open, candid, and unashamedly technical.

Balisage 2017 Program:
http://www.balisage.net/2017/Program.html

Symposium Program:
https://www.balisage.net/UpTransform

NOTE: Members of the TEI and their employees are eligible for discount Balisage registration.

You need to see the program for yourself but the highlights (for me) include: Ethiopic manuscripts (ok, so I have odd tastes), Earley parsers (of particular interest), English Majors (my wife was an English major), and a number of other high points.

Mark your calendar for July 31 – August 4, 2017 – It’s Balisage!

March 16, 2017

Balisage Papers Due in 3 Weeks!

Filed under: Conferences,XML,XQuery,XSLT — Patrick Durusau @ 9:04 pm

Apologies for the sudden lack of posting but I have been working on a rather large data set with XQuery and checking forwards and backwards to make sure it can be replicated. (I hate “it works on my computer.”)

Anyway, Tommie Usdin dropped an email bomb today with a reminder that Balisage papers are due on April 7, 2017.

From her email:

Submissions to “Balisage: The Markup Conference” and pre-conference symposium:
“Up-Translation and Up-Transformation: Tasks, Challenges, and Solutions”
are on April 7.

It is time to start writing!

Balisage: The Markup Conference 2017
August 1 — 4, 2017, Rockville, MD (a suburb of Washington, DC)
July 31, 2017 — Symposium Up-Translation and Up-Transformation
https://www.balisage.net/

Balisage: where serious markup practitioners and theoreticians meet every August. We solicit papers on any aspect of markup and its uses; topics include but are not limited to:

• Web application development with XML
• Informal data models and consensus-based vocabularies
• Integration of XML with other technologies (e.g., content management, XSLT, XQuery)
• Performance issues in parsing, XML database retrieval, or XSLT processing
• Development of angle-bracket-free user interfaces for non-technical users
• Semistructured data and full text search
• Deployment of XML systems for enterprise data
• Web application development with XML
• Design and implementation of XML vocabularies
• Case studies of the use of XML for publishing, interchange, or archiving
• Alternatives to XML
• the role(s) of XML in the application lifecycle
• the role(s) of vocabularies in XML environments

Detailed Call for Participation: http://balisage.net/Call4Participation.html
About Balisage: http://balisage.net/Call4Participation.html

pre-conference symposium:
Up-Translation and Up-Transformation: Tasks, Challenges, and Solutions
Chair: Evan Owens, Cenveo
https://www.balisage.net/UpTransform/index.html

Increasing the granularity and/or specificity of markup is an important task in many content and information workflows. Markup transformations might involve tasks such as high-level structuring, detailed component structuring, or enhancing information by matching or linking to external vocabularies or data. Enhancing markup presents secondary challenges including lack of structure of the inputs or inconsistency of input data down to the level of spelling, punctuation, and vocabulary. Source data for up-translation may be XML, word processing documents, plain text, scanned & OCRed text, or databases; transformation goals may be content suitable for page makeup, search, or repurposing, in XML, JSON, or any other markup language.

The range of approaches to up-transformation is as varied as the variety of specifics of the input and required outputs. Solutions may combine automated processing with human review or could be 100% software implementations. With the potential for requirements to evolve over time, tools may have to be actively maintained and enhanced. This is the place to discuss goals, challenges, solutions, and workflows for significant XML enhancements, including approaches, tools, and techniques that may potentially be used for a variety of other tasks.

For more information: info@balisage.net or +1 301 315 9631

I’m planning on posting tomorrow one way or the other!

While you wait for that, get to work on your Balisage paper!

January 29, 2017

Up-Translation and Up-Transformation … [Balisage Rocks!]

Filed under: Conferences,XML,XPath,XQuery,XSLT — Patrick Durusau @ 8:48 pm

Up-Translation and Up-Transformation: Tasks, Challenges, and Solutions (a Balisage pre-conference symposium)

When & Where:

Monday July 31, 2017
CAMBRiA Hotel, Rockville, MD USA

Chair: Evan Owens, Cenveo

You need more details than that?

Ok, from the webpage:

Increasing the granularity and/or specificity of markup is an important task in many different content and information workflows. Markup transformations might involve tasks such as high-level structuring, detailed component structuring, or enhancing information by matching or linking to external vocabularies or data. Enhancing markup presents numerous secondary challenges including lack of structure of the inputs or inconsistency of input data down to the level of spelling, punctuation, and vocabulary. Source data for up-translation may be XML, word processing documents, plain text, scanned & OCRed text, or databases; transformation goals may be content suitable for page makeup, search, or repurposing, in XML, JSON, or any other markup language.

The range of approaches to up-transformation is as varied as the variety of specifics of the input and required outputs. Solutions may combine automated processing with human review or could be 100% software implementations. With the potential for requirements to evolve over time, tools may have to be actively maintained and enhanced.

The presentations in this pre-conference symposium will include goals, challenges, solutions, and workflows for significant XML enhancements, including approaches, tools, and techniques that may potentially be used for a variety of other tasks. The symposium will be of value not only to those facing up-translation and transformation but also to general XML practitioners seeking to get the most out of their data.

If I didn’t know better, up-translation and up-transformation sound suspiciously like conferred properties of topic maps fame.

Well, modulo that conferred properties could be predicated on explicit subject identity and not hidden in the personal knowledge of the author.

There are two categories of up-translation and up-transformation:

  1. Ones that preserve jobs like spaghetti Cobol code, and
  2. Ones that support easy long term maintenance.

While writing your paper for the pre-conference, which category fits yours the best?

December 11, 2016

4 Days Left – Submission Alert – XML Prague

Filed under: Conferences,XML,XPath,XQuery,XSLT — Patrick Durusau @ 7:53 pm

A tweet by Jirka Kosek reminded me there are only 4 days left for XML Prague submissions!

  • December 15th – End of CFP (full paper or extended abstract)
  • January 8th – Notification of acceptance/rejection of paper to authors
  • January 29th – Final paper

From the call for papers:

XML Prague 2017 now welcomes submissions for presentations on the following topics:

  • Markup and the Extensible Web – HTML5, XHTML, Web Components, JSON and XML sharing the common space
  • Semantic visions and the reality – micro-formats, semantic data in business, linked data
  • Publishing for the 21th century – publishing toolchains, eBooks, EPUB, DITA, DocBook, CSS for print, …
  • XML databases and Big Data – XML storage, indexing, query languages, …
  • State of the XML Union – updates on specs, the XML community news, …

All proposals will be submitted for review by a peer review panel made up of the XML Prague Program Committee. Submissions will be chosen based on interest, applicability, technical merit, and technical correctness.

Accepted papers will be included in published conference proceedings.

I don’t travel but if you need a last-minute co-author or proofer, you know where to find me!

December 5, 2016

Clojure/conj 2016 – Videos – Sorted

Filed under: Clojure,Conferences,Functional Programming,Programming — Patrick Durusau @ 3:08 pm

Clojure/conf 2016 has posted videos of all presentations (thanks!) to YouTube, which displays them in no particular order.

To help with my viewing and perhaps yours, here are the videos in title order:

  1. Adventures in Understanding Documents – Scott Tuddenham
  2. Audyx.com 40k locs to build the first web – based sonogram – Asher Coren
  3. Barliman: trying the halting problem backwards, blindfolded – William Byrd, Greg Rosenblatt
  4. Becoming Omniscient with Sayid – Bill Piel
  5. Building a powerful Double Entry Accounting system – Lucas Cavalcanti
  6. Building composable abstractions – Eric Normand
  7. Charting the English Language…in pure Clojure – Alexander Mann
  8. Clarifying Rules Engines with Clara Rules – Mike Rodriguez
  9. Clojure at DataStax: The Long Road From Python to Clojure – Nick Bailey
  10. A Clojure DSL for defining CI/CD orchestrations at scale – Rohit Kumar, Viraj Purang
  11. Composing music with clojure.spec – Wojciech Franke
  12. In situ model-based learning in PAMELA – Paul Robertson, Tom Marble
  13. Juggling Patterns and Programs – Steve Miner
  14. Overcoming the Challenges of Mentoring – Kim Crayton
  15. A Peek Inside SAT Solvers – Jon Smock
  16. Powderkeg: teaching Clojure to Spark – Igor Ges, Christophe Grand
  17. Production Rules on Databases – Paula Gearon
  18. Programming What Cannot Be Programmed: Aesthetics and Narrative – D. Schmüdde
  19. Proto REPL, a New Clojure Development and Visualization Tool – Jason Gilman
  20. Simplifying ETL with Clojure and Datomic – Stuart Halloway
  21. Spec-ulation Keynote – Rich Hickey
  22. Spectrum, a library for statically "typing" clojure.spec – Allen Rohner
  23. Using Clojure with C APIs for crypto and more – lvh
  24. WormBase database migration to Datomic on AWS: A case Study – Adam Wright

Enjoy!

November 16, 2016

XML Prague 2017, February 9-11, 2017 – Registration Opens!

Filed under: Conferences,XML,XQuery,XSLT — Patrick Durusau @ 3:22 pm

XML Prague 2017, February 9-11, 2017

I mentioned XML Prague 2017 last month and now, after the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, registration for the conference opens!

Coincidence?

Maybe. 😉

Even if you are returning to the U.S. after the conference, XML Prague will be a welcome respite from the tempest of news coverage of what isn’t known about the impending Trump administration.

At 120 Euros for three days, this is a great investment both professionally and emotionally.

Enjoy!

October 16, 2016

XML Prague 2017 is coming

Filed under: Conferences,XML,XQuery — Patrick Durusau @ 9:18 pm

XML Prague 2017 is coming by Jirka Kosek.

From the post:

I’m happy to announce that call for papers for XML Prague 2017 is finally open. We are looking forward for your interesting submissions related to XML. We have switched from CMT to EasyChair for managing submission process – we hope that new system will have less quirks for users then previous one.

We are sorry for slightly delayed start than in past years. But we have to setup new non-profit organization for running the conference and sometimes we felt like characters from Kafka’s Der Process during this process.

We are now working hard on redesigning and opening of registration. Process should be more smooth then in the past.

But these are just implementation details. XML Prague will be again three day gathering of XML geeks, users, vendors, … which we all are used to enjoy each year. I’m looking forward to meet you in Prague in February.

Conference: February 9-11, 2016.

Important Dates:

Important Dates:

  • December 15th – End of CFP (full paper or extended abstract)
  • January 8th – Notification of acceptance/rejection of paper to authors
  • January 29th – Final paper

You can see videos of last year’s presentation (to gauge the competition): Watch videos from XML Prague 2016 on Youtube channel.

December the 15th will be here sooner than you think!

Think of it as a welcome distraction from the barn yard posturing that is U.S. election politics this year!

July 18, 2016

ApacheCon – Seville, Spain – Week of November 14th, 2016

Filed under: Conferences — Patrick Durusau @ 8:48 pm

You have relied on Apache software, read its documentation, contributed (flamed?) on its lists. Attend ApacheCon and meet other members of the Apache community, in full bandwidth, real time.

The call for papers (CFP) for this event is now open, and will remain open until September 9th.

The event is divided into two parts, each with its own CFP. The first part of the event, called Apache Big Data, focuses on Big Data projects and related technologies.

Website: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/apache-big-data-europe

CFP: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/apache-big-data-europe/program/cfp

The second part, called ApacheCon Europe, focuses on the Apache Software Foundation as a whole, covering all projects, community issues, governance, and so on.

Website: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/apachecon-europe

CFP: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/apachecon-europe/program/cfp

ApacheCon is the official conference of the Apache Software Foundation, and is the best place to meet members of your project and other ASF projects, and strengthen your project’s community.

If your organization is interested in sponsoring ApacheCon, contact Rich Bowen at evp@apache.org. ApacheCon is a great place to find the brightest developers in the world, and experts on a huge range of technologies.

I lifted this text from an email by missywarnkin@yahoo.com.

Enjoy!

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