This is a handout I wrote to support I talk I gave March 18, 2009 to the Security class at the Metropolitan State College of Denver. The professor Steve Beaty was the one who had introduced me to Nmap when I took the class in 2007. The talk covered neat new features of Nmap, security assessment tips, free software, and getting a job.
I once attended Edward Tufte's one-day class on presenting data and information. In that class, he gave the following advice, also present on page 69 of Visual Explanations:
No matter what, give everybody in the audience one or more pieces of paper, packed with material related to your presentation.In "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint" he says, "From now on your presentation software is Microsoft Word." I wanted to try this advice in my presentation. I didn't have any slides, but a projector was running the whole time, showing live demonstrations under BackTrack. I made the handout in Scribus, a page layout program, because that's what Tufte means when he says "Microsoft Word." The handout is meant to be printed on 11″×17″ paper, folded in half, which is how I gave it to the class.
During the one-day class I believe Tufte quoted Picasso (or was it T. S. Eliot?) in saying, "Good artists copy. Great artists steal." Lacking inspiration on how to design the handout, I imitated the design of Tufte's own handout from his class, right down to the Gill Sans. By the quotation itself, the fact that Tufte borrowed it, and that it was he who borrowed it, I feel trebly justified in ripping off his layout.
Also see New developments in Nmap.