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Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
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Book Reviews
Recently
Copy This! The Story of Kinko's
Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society
EULA-based Deep Root Spying On Blizzard Entertainment Customers
How Do We Know When the Police State Arrives
Byzantine Generals - How Many Liars Can You Tolerate
delicious Add-on Service Ranks the Sources of Your Links
Using Multiple e-Mail Addresses with LinkedIn
Monday, October 17, 2005
The Art of The Quick Study
Some good suggestions on finding the structure and meaning of complex subjects – be they new markets, new philosophies, or new strategies. The idea of learning the language – a concept called coming to terms in the classic reading text How To Read A Book – is central to learning any new subject. Having a framework and good tools for doing so gives you consistency and reduces errors. [via Jim McGee]Becoming a better quick study of new markets and technology
Tim Oren offers his process for coming up to speed on a new market or technology. Although it's oriented towards his specific needs as a VC evaluating potential investments, it is general enough to offer an excellent starting point for any of us whose lives are characterized by having to make sense out of new environments on a regular basis. Certainly, there have been times in my career as a consultant when it seems that the primary skill requirement is to be an adept quick study on anything.
Here's Tim's key graf:There are two observations behind this methodology. First, every technology and market has a private language. It's built of terms of art, but also names of landmarks such as products, famous papers and projects, labs, and researchers and other experts. To begin to understand the market you need to learn this language. Fortunately, such a distinctive use of language and interlinkage of people and information artifacts is the very best thing you can have to feed Google or other modern search tools. The second observation is that the best way to learn a field is to watch experts argue about it. [Due Diligence]I would add two suggestions to his approach. First, give some thought to using a mindmap or something similar to manage your growing knowledge base. I'm a fan of MindManager for this kind of effort, and the newest version adds a number of new features to support this kind of organic research strategy. Jerry Michalski is a fan of a product called Personal Brain. I used it a few years back and, while I liked it, ultimaely concluded that mindmaps suited me better. Second, give some thought to how you want to manage the collection of electronic resources (links, captured webpages, pdf files, etc) you will ultimately collect. Lately, I've been having success with a combination of MindManager and Onfolio.
Terry Frazier at 7:16 PM
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Sunday, October 16, 2005
Copy This! The Story of Kinko's
Kinko's founder Paul Orfalea offers a practical, pragmatic, and entertaining view of starting, growing, and running a multi-billion dollar business from the perspective of a guy who had to rely on his people skills and ability to listen in order to learn.
[More...]
Terry Frazier at 8:29 PM
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Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society
In short: A self-absorbed and rather shallow attempt to claim the invention of a new metaphysics around a repackaging of Buddhism, New Age emotionalism, and a variety of radical change philosophies from the 1970s onward. [More...]
Terry Frazier at 12:00 AM
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Friday, October 14, 2005
EULA-based Deep Root Spying On Blizzard Entertainment Customers
If you play Warcraft, World of Warcraft, or any other Blizzard Entertainment game you need to read this. You probably have no idea how much personal info the cretins at Blizzard are collecting from you. [via Copyfight]I Spy With My Little EULA (Donna Wentworth)
You may recall that Blizzard is the videogame company that sued three software programmers for creating BnetD, a free, open source program that allowed gamers to play games they purchased with others on the platform of their choice. Blizzard claimed that the programmers violated several parts of the company's End User Licensing Agreement (EULA), including a provision on reverse-engineering. But it turns out that's not all that Blizzard's lawyers have inserted in the fine print. As Bruce Schneier reports, the company is also using its Terms of Use agreements to justify spying on gamers' computers.
Writes Greg Hoglund, co-author of Exploiting Software, How to Break Code:
I watched the [software] warden sniff down the email addresses of people I was communicating with on MSN, the URL of several websites that I had open at the time, and the names of all my running programs, including those that were minimized or in the toolbar. These strings can easily contain social security numbers or credit card numbers, for example, if I have Microsoft Excel or Quickbooks open w/ my personal finances at the time. ...[The scanning] certainly will result in warden reporting you as a cheater. I really believe that reading these window titles violates privacy, considering window titles contain alot of personal data. But, we already know Blizzard Entertainment is fierce from a legal perspective. Look at what they have done to people who tried to make BNetD, freecraft, or third party WoW servers.
As Schneier says, this is truly scary stuff. Yet even a few of the security-savvy readers at Schneier's weblog are downplaying its significance. Why? Annalee Newitz has a theory that rings true to me: people think of routine spying as normal. […]
Terry Frazier at 11:11 PM
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How Do We Know When the Police State Arrives
This quote from |Matt| on the state of Great Britain’s police state:Followed by this from the 18.35 issue of EFF’s EFFector:You get the police state you deserve
Paul Craig Roberts writes:Police states are easier to acquire than Americans appreciate.Here in Britain I hope we're not as far down the track but I think we kid ourselves if we think there's no risk. Just ask Benyam Mohammed.
[…] But the most interesting part of the Government's response is what it reveals about the DOJ's expansive use of the All Writs Act in other cases. Without citation to any cases supporting the invasive surveillance of credit cards without probable cause, the Government notes:When the government claims telling you what it’s doing to protect you will prevent it from protecting you, the main thing you need protection from is the government.Currently, the government routinely applies for and upon a showing of relevance to an ongoing investigation receives "hotwatch" orders issued pursuant to the All Writs Act. Such orders direct a credit card issuer to disclose to law enforcement each subsequent credit card transaction effected by a subject of investigation immediately after the issuer records that transaction.
This is a revelation, and a disturbing one at that, since these so-called "hotwatch" orders have not been previously mentioned in court cases, law review articles, or DOJ materials. While the cell phone tracking case is still ongoing, our litigation has unveiled yet another step taken towards the surveillance society.[…]
Terry Frazier at 8:05 PM
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Byzantine Generals - How Many Liars Can You Tolerate
I came across this paper at the National Institute of Standards and Technology while following links looking for something else. I wonder if anyone is working on a way to apply this to politics?Byzantine generals
(classic problem)
Definition:The problem of reaching a consensus among distributed units if some of them give misleading answers. To be memorable, the problem is couched in terms of generals deciding on a common plan of attack. Some traitorous generals may lie about whether they will support a particular plan and what other generals told them. Exchanging only messages, what decision making algorithm should the generals use to reach a consensus? What percentage of liars can the algorithm tolerate and still correctly determine a consensus?
Terry Frazier at 10:38 AM
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delicious Add-on Service Ranks the Sources of Your Links
I found this via Pubsub – a new web service for collecting and ranking the sources of your delicious bookmarks. Could be useful for identifying your own top sources of info.Nivi - Done: Attention-Mining del.icio.us
I recently offered a bounty of $50 for a web service that would rank my sources of del.icio.us bookmarks.Ask and ye shall receive, they say.
The (soon-to-be) famous Pascal Van Hecke has developed the service and calls it Top sources of del.icio.us links. It rocks and I left him comments on how the service could be improved.
You can find my top sources of del.icio.us bookmarks at the bottom of this article. It has a big-ass tail: 50% of my bookmarks are from sources that I have bookmarked only once.
Using Multiple e-Mail Addresses with LinkedIn
Another helpful LinkedIn tip from Quantum Gardener David Buchan. Linked in continues to be dominated by the left coast/Silicon Valley contingent, at least here in the US. But over time I’m seeinga slow increase in the number of people I know from other areas on the network.Update your LinkedIn emails addresses
If you have a LinkedIn account then make sure you have registered all your email addresses. When someone uploads their contact list, LinkedIn matches their contacts against registered email accounts. If a past colleague or friend has an old or a personal address and you're only using the new one, the little 'already LinkedIn' icon won't appear and you may miss a chance of reconnecting.
As they say, "Extra email addresses are useful if you expect to be invited at more than one address."
Go to your profile and select add/edit email. Simple as that.
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