|
 Monday, January 27, 2003
Microsoft fails Slammer's security test. Internal memos show that the software giant hadn't patched its own network against the Slammer worm, causing many of its services to fail. [CNET News.com]
Oh. The Irony! They have lots of excuses for why their servers were not patched; at the same time they denigrate others who fell victim to the worm. Typical. 10:57:06 PM 
|
|
Study says boys do read, they just don't read books [elearningpost]
WHile my sn does read a lot, I am constantly impressed with his knowledge garnered from baseball statistics, competitive card games and video games. Games such as Magic or Yugioh require the ability to understand the ramifications of a wide set of properties that vary from card to card. Then these cards must be placed into a deck that accentuates the potential usefulness of each card. Then, since the cards are drawn at random, these games require a rapid adaptibility. All this comes from reading about the cards and possible strategies. It may be that for many boys, reading fiction is not easy while reading books about game strategies would be much easier. Of course, this also gets into why we read? Although many schools no longer do this, I believe that there should be certain books that everyone read, that provide a common basis for our culture. But usually these books are hard for everyone to read, which is one reason they are no longer in the curriculum. But if reading is to provide basic skills permitting one to read a bank statement or a supeona, then why not use alternate approaches? 10:41:00 PM
|
|
Innovation as a Deep Capability [elearningpost]
While this article is mostly right on track, it still requires people who have succeeded in a heirarchical compnay to actually be able to identify radical solutions. Most middle managers are selected for being able to effectively deal with small, evolutionary changes. If they were really capable of finding truly innovative projects, they would probably be gone from the company, creating innovation for themselves. Where is the reward for identifying creativity and keeping it in the company? Companies that naturally innovate tend to select for people that enjoy the creativity and find their rewards in that. If a company has to pay extra to find creativity, I think it is likely not to have a huge wellspring of the sort of radical innovation described. I could be wrong though and it is worth doing rather than doing nothing. It will be interesting to see just what happens. I do like the idea of having some fraction of your time devoted to any creative idea you have. At Immunex, we could spend 15% of our time on any individual project we wanted to. 10:28:48 PM
|
|
|
It has gotten to the point that if a letter to the editor contains any actual figures and statistics, I figure it is an astroturfed letter. It also invalidates much of the media if their filtering systems for publication can so easily be subverted. Their models are all 'filter, then publish'. But if this can now so easily be shown to fail (previously it was not as simple to show this), then the 'publish, then filter' approach of the Internet will gain even more creedence. If these letters had been sent to Internet sites, the obvious astroturfing would rapidly been discovered and the perps easily found. Oh wait. That is EXACTLY what happened. In just a few hours. The major media, as well as political action groups of either stripe, need to take this as a warning. The Internet facillitates transparency. 2:51:10 PM
|
|
|
A very interesting viewpoint. I don't understand why Pete Townsend is arrested with big fanfare but you hear nothing about any prosecution of the web site he supposedly visited. I expect we wmight see a similar type of spedtacle when the RIAA starts getting people arrested for having a pirated MP3. 2:38:27 PM
|
|
|
|
|
