Dark clouds on the horizon:the challenge of cloud forensics

We introduce the challenges to digital forensics introduced by the advent and adoption of technologies, such as encryption, secure networking, secure processors and anonymous routing. All potentially render current approaches to digital forensic investigation unusable. We explain how the Cloud, due to its global distribution and multi-jurisdictional nature, exacerbates these challenges. The latest developments in the computing milieu threaten a complete “evidence blackout” with severe implications for the detection, investigation and prosecution of cybercrime. In this paper, we review the current landscape of cloud-based forensics investigations. We posit a number of potential solutions. Cloud forensic difficulties can only be addressed if we acknowledge its socio-technological nature, and design solutions that address both human and technological dimensions. No firm conclusion is drawn; rather the objective is to present a position paper, which will stimulate debate in the area and move the discipline of digital cloud forensics forward. Thus, the paper concludes with an invitation to further informed debate on this issue

Community tracking in a cMOOC and nomadic learner behavior identification on a connectivist rhizomatic learning network

This article contributes to the literature on connectivism, connectivist MOOCs (cMOOCs) and rhizomatic learning by examining participant interactions, community formation and nomadic learner behavior in a particular cMOOC, #rhizo15, facilitated for 6 weeks by Dave Cormier. It further focuses on what we can learn by observing Twitter interactions particularly. As an explanatory mixed research design, Social Network Analysis and content analysis were employed for the purposes of the research. SNA is used at the macro, meso and micro levels, and content analysis of one week of the MOOC was conducted using the Community of Inquiry framework. The macro level analysis demonstrates that communities in a rhizomatic connectivist networks have chaotic relationships with other communities in different dimensions (clarified by use of hashtags of concurrent, past and future events). A key finding at the meso level was that as #rhizo15 progressed and number of active participants decreased, interaction increased in overall network. The micro level analysis further reveals that, though completely online, the nature of open online ecosystems are very convenient to facilitate the formation of community. The content analysis of week 3 tweets demonstrated that cognitive presence was the most frequently observed, while teaching presence (teaching behaviors of both facilitator and participants) was the lowest. This research recognizes the limitations of looking only at Twitter when #rhizo15 conversations occurred over multiple platforms frequented by overlapping but not identical groups of people. However, it provides a valuable partial perspective at the macro meso and micro levels that contribute to our understanding of community-building in cMOOCs

Postsecular instruments of acculturation : Czesław Miłosz's works from the second American Stay

The article raises the question about the ways in which religious tradition can become an ally in the process of acculturation while serving the modern subject both as a springboard for innovative, creative work and as a tool of self-improvement. Czesław Miłosz's selected works from his second stay in the United States (1961-1980) are analysed from the postsecular perspective which recognises religion as a full-fledged actor in the process of modern transformations that may broaden the field of artistic choice but remains vulnerable to artistic resemantizations or even profanations (Agamben). Such an analysis allows us to interpret the poem From the Rising of the Sun as a form of reconciliation of Miłosz's American and Lithuanian experience (as well as of maturity and childhood, centre and periphery, modern and pre-modern cultural formation) through textual practices inspired by his private Liturgy of the Hours. In this light, the translations of the Books of the Bible on which Miłosz worked, his novel The Mountains of Parnassus, as well as his essays from Visions from San Francisco Bay emerge as instruments of shaping the communal identity with the use of pre-existing rituals, which are, nonetheless, also negotiated in the act of writing

What Next for Chaos Theory? From Metaphor to Phase Space

In the management and social sciences literature, chaos theory has been used primarily as a metaphor to understand organizational phenomena. Using metaphors to understand organizations is a novel idea that has gained much acceptance, thanks to the pioneering work of Morgan (1986). However, chaos theory\u27s value as a metaphor has been overused and offers little that cannot already be explained using existing theories and frameworks. Because chaos theory is a mathematical theory, we believe its mathematical principles offer the greatest application to the management literature. In this paper, we offer the use of phase space, a tool of chaos theory, as a way to analyze firm performance

Landscape as mediator, landscape as commons: an introduction

Il contributo propone una trattazione dei due temi chiavi che si intersecano nel volume, andando a costituire non solo una introduzione ai saggi ivi contenuti, ma una pi\uf9 ampia trattazione delle questioni attorno a cui questi si muovono: le potenzialit\ue0 del concetto di paesaggio considerato come intermediario/mediatore e come bene comune/commons. Il volume raccoglie i migliori contributi internazionali presentati nelle sessioni sul paesaggio del congresso Eugeo 2013 (Roma) coordinate dai curatori dell'opera, e si conclude con una approfondita postfazione redatta da Kenneth R. Olwig, che ha partecipato come discussant ai lavori congressuali

'Resources to Needs': A Paradigm for Addressing the Potentiality of the Urban Volume

Underground resources are often addressed only out of necessity, leading to conflicts between uses and missing opportunities for productive synergies. The Deep City project is exploring a paradigm of ‘resources to needs’, which considers resource potentials prior to specific urban projects or plans. Mapping is central to the project and has been explored in several cities around the world. The ‘resources to needs’ paradigm, however, has received little theoretical or philosophical attention. To think resources before needs challenges common urban normative models and the process-oriented thinking of mechanical and ecological paradigms popular today. Where current methods for mapping the underground tend to enroll elements in a particular performance or resource use, Deep City seeks to facilitate an intermediate stage in which resource potentials can coexist without any pre-existing interaction or relationship. To think about the urban volume this way, this article works with the informational motor proposed by French philosopher Michel Serres. The logics of substitution and circulation of the map and its contents helps to think an alternative form of mapping in which the map itself becomes a reservoir of potentiality for thinking the urban volume less in terms of predefined functions and processes than a mass to be collectively cultivated

Linking Audiences to News: A Network Analysis of Chicago Websites

The mass media model, which sustained news and information in communities like Chicago for decades, is being replaced by a "new news ecosystem" consisting of hundreds of websites, podcasts, video streams and mobile applications. In 2009, The Chicago Community Trust set out to understand this ecosystem, assess its health and make investments in improving the flow of news and information in Chicagoland. The report you are reading is one of the products of the Trust's local information initiative, Community News Matters. "Linking Audiences to News: A Network Analysis of Chicago Websites" is one of the first -- perhaps the first -- research projects seeking to understand a local

Kazakhstani management culture : perception of french managers

The purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding of how French managers perceive major aspects of the business culture of Kazakhstan. This country, rich in natural resources, recently became open to the world. To succeed in a highly competitive environment of foreign companies installing in Kazakhstan, one should be aware of how to deal with a new market, how to deal with people, how to cope with cross-cultural differences. To describe culture, the paper uses the cultural dimensions developed by the best known researchers (Hofstede, Schein, Hall, Trompenaars, Adler, etc.) and summarized by Schneider and Barsoux (1997) in general schema. The study uses a qualitative research method - an adaptation of the critical incident technique (Flanagan, 1954) - to explain the peculiarities of Kazakhstani management culture that create problems and difficulties for French managers. The results support the argument that the most important differences for French managers are differences in language and nature of reality and truth dimensions. The findings of this study indicate that French managers consider Kazakhstani management culture as a being rather than doing culture with a higher degree of uncertainty avoidance; a more collectivist (family-oriented) and more particularistic culture where social orientation prevails over task orientation. The differences in human nature are significant. Results also suggest that Kazakhstani management culture is considered by French managers as a diffuse rather than specific involvement culture. Lastly, the differences in hierarchical dimension are only moderately significant for French managers.Culture; management; Kazakhstan; France