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Tuesday, May 28, 2002 |
Brain language. If you could read minds, would language matter? In other words, could a Spanish person who reads minds read the mind of a Russian?
What I mean is, I wonder if our thoughts are made of the language we speak, or if there’s a universal brain-language we all use. Or maybe there’s a brain language but it’s individual. I can’t seem to catch any one thought long enough to look at it; it turns into language when I look at it. [inessential.com]
7:44:11 PM 
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Someone Hack the California State Employees Database.
This Just In Department
Holy Shit! KCRA in Sacramento is reporting that someone hacked the State of California Controller's computer system and have made off with the names and Social Security numbers of all 265,000 state employees, from the Governor down to the DOT clean-up crews. The Wiz-kids in the Controller's office along with state officials and the FBI have determined this has been going on for some time. Of course there are no suspects, but the FBI's real Wiz-kids say they have tracked the hacker to a Lycos email account and has broken into over 2500 other computers around the world.
Lovely. Couldn't they have played with the Department of Equalization's records and given them a couple spare bucks into my account? Jeeze.
However the quote of the day goes to California Highway Patrol Commissioner D.O. "Spike" Helmick, who said
"I would not be overly concerned. However, I don't think it would be improper to go ahead and use these safeguards that we're going to put up on the Internet and do some double checking."
Yeah. I can see it now. Some poor state employee goes to buy a new car, gets their credit checked and all of a sudden they're broke or the cops come to nail them for credit fraud. This could get really nasty. This could be about as much fun as dealing with a IRS auditor having a bad hair day. yesss-sir. And everyone wonders why I love this State sooo much. [Mary Wehmeier's Blog Du Jour]
2:05:40 PM
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After the knowledge problem?.
Matrix Overload..
Jeff and Alwin talk about information overload.
Jeff: "the problem is that even with the news aggregators we're drinking from a firehose. Organize the information, cross-index it, make it searchable/linkable/available 24/7 and GOOOOOSHHH!"
I think it was "sipping from a firehose" playing on the idea of sipping from a garden hose. Lately it feels like being at the bottom of Niagara Falls.
A Neal Stephenson story called a descendant of the Internet "The Spew." I sometimes think of it as "The Cacophony" with all those voices muttering and shouting into the river.
Why do water metaphors work?
[a klog apart]
Because we're pretty sure we're drowning?
Appropriate that this is number 165 in the list of items in my aggregator that somehow still deserve attention as I try to dig out from the hole I've fallen into as I rebuild my system (thanks for the various sympathetic comments - the gremlins are still lurking).
When I first got into the information systems field in the 70s I thought the goal was to collect and manage the data better so that managers could make better decisions (I was young and naive). Lately, I've been thinking of Gerry Weinberg's observation (or perhaps it was Russell Ackoff) that whenever you solve your most important problem, your second most important problem gets a promotion. Most of what I've seen and read around the topic of KM seems to forget this particular piece of wisdom.
I don't accept that you can eventually get enough data to make the decisions self-evident and eliminate judgment, nor do I accept the notion that you can retreat into faith in intuition. For me the answer, such as it is, lies in trying to be a better thinker and to help others become better thinkers. To understand the limits of data and information and to understand that the job always demands judgment. I don't ever expect to see a Wisdom Management System.
One quote that I like and have used before in this context comes from Samuel Butler (AFAIK):
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises. [McGee's Musings]
1:17:29 PM
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More blogging insights from 5th constituency.
A really useful set of postings on blogging from John Sumser over on 5th Constituency
Blog Notes 5: For Whom The Blog Flows.
Embedded in most current blogging software is an odd notion. Because the systems are self-referential and the overall audience is in its early growth stages, there is an interesting assumption that one "blogs" for oneself or other bloggers. Conventions, like blogrolling (a cross linking scheme that builds traffic within the blogging community), have a nearly religious fervor associated with them.
Blog Notes 4: Categories.
NoAudience is Interested in Everything You Produce
Blog Notes 3 - Blogging Is A Way of Thinking.
Blogging is a way of thinking. Rather than simply absorbing information, as in passive consumption of broadcast information (including the passive web), Blogging requires that the blogger act as an active filter.
Blog Notes 2 - A Dozen Things We Know
Blogging is in a primitive form. The heavy users only know that it is possible. "Why?" is a question that awaits a claifying "How?"
Blog Notes 1
It's exactly why techies don't fare well as marketers. The single most obvious flaw in Weblog design is that the full newsfeed (the home page) is seen as the most important component of the game. It certainly makes infinitely more sense for the full xml feed to be hidden so that readers pick form categories. [McGee's Musings]
1:15:43 PM
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RSS aggregators.
Personal RSS aggregators. A few years ago there were only a handful of RSS aggregators. They were centralized services: Netscape, UserLand, Meerkat. Now aggregators are many and decentralized. We haven't yet seen the full effect of this, I'm sure. ... [Jon's Radio]
Someone asked about RSS aggregators in class on Tuesday night. Here's a good list of currently available alternatives. Radio's aggregator certainly has changed my use of the web as a research and awareness tool. It's also beginning to change my writing habits as I now have to think about how a posting here will appear not only on my weblog but flowing into someone's aggregator feeds. [McGee's Musings]
9:42:18 AM
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www.KMWorld.com: Storytelling.
Quote: "This is the first of a two-part series in which author Tom Reamy discusses the need for organizations to create a 'knowledge architecture' that captures the knowledge stories are a fundamental means that humans use to structure the world. Our brains seem to be wired to easily and almost automatically organize information into stories. Listen to small children play and you hear the most wonderful stories being created, all without the benefit of major skills acquisition programs. Storytelling seems to develop along with language skills and perhaps even before a sense of causality fully develops.transmitted through storytelling."
[Serious Instructional Technology]
Some extracts to pique your interest:
...stories are a fundamental means that humans use to structure the world. Our brains seem to be wired to easily and almost automatically organize information into stories. Listen to small children play and you hear the most wonderful stories being created, all without the benefit of major skills acquisition programs. Storytelling seems to develop along with language skills and perhaps even before a sense of causality fully develops....
...stories exist in the realm of knowledge, not information. First, stories convey not information, but meaning and knowledge. The information they contain is seamlessly incorporated into the story through the use of context. And since stories create clusters or chunks of information, they are easier to pay attention to and to remember. It may be harder to codify knowledge than information, but it is easier for humans to remember knowledge rather than strings of unrelated bits of information....
...one answer to both the fears of semi-mystical storytelling rituals taking over the board room and the difficulty of truly capturing and representing the deep knowledge within stories is to create a rich and powerful knowledge architecture. This knowledge architecture must be organizationally powerful enough to overcome the flaky image of storytelling circles and, at the same time, rich and flexible enough to represent the multidimensional nature of stories, allowing the knowledge in stories to be captured and indexed and made reusable across multiple contexts...
Worth looking at if the role of stories in Km interests you (and it should. [McGee's Musings]
9:41:15 AM
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Apparently it's illegal to sell dildos in the state of Texas. Worse yet, having more than six dildos constitutes the intent to distribute them, so zealous dong ownership alone is against the law. No wonder Bush is such a tight-ass! [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]
9:39:52 AM
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Runaway bus wheels imperil public. MTA logs 16 instances in Baltimore since August; Cause still under investigation; 15 riders and 5 drivers have claimed injuries [SunSpot.net News Headlines]
Rear wheels have fallen off Maryland Transit Administration buses at least 16 times since August in a series of accidents that have baffled MTA officials, resulted in injury claims from bus drivers and passengers, and imperiled pedestrians and motorists in the path of the 200- pound wheels.
I always wonder about local politics when I see something like this... [jenett.radio]
One day we were driving home(south) on Hwy. 169 and ahead of us a dual real wheel of a truck or trailer of some sort feel off a vechile going north. I saw the wheel bounce once on the north bound side, bounce again in front of my van and then it came down and hit the two cars behind us. I had the cruise control on at the time and kept going, there wasn't a car behind us for a long time. It really stopped traffic. Had I not had the cruise on I may have slowed down and been the one that got hit, you never know in those situations. I never did hear any more about it.
9:35:08 AM
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I Volunteer!. Diskless in Detroit: Why Your New Car Doesn't Have a Built-in PC
"Last week in Detroit, there was a two-day conference all about Telematics, which is a made-up word meaning the business of putting computers and digital communication into cars. Telematics is supposed to be a hot area of technical development because we've run out of places to put computers outside our cars, so the next logical place to put them is inside. Except it doesn't seem to be working that way, because at last week's conference, most of the participants seemed to be complaining. Progress was slow, business was illusory, customers just weren't coming in the expected numbers. In short, the car industry was complaining that they'd been 'dot-com'd,' which is apparently a very bad thing. Telematics is a bust this year, we're told, and might not even deserve to have its own name.
There are only two real hopes for telematics. First is the aftermarket industry. If we ever do get a hard disk drive in our cars, the first one will probably be installed at a car stereo shop, not at the factory. Alas, that isn't a big enough market to entice the beleaguered hard disk makers, who can't afford to lose even more money designing for what would initially be a very small volume business. The second hope for telematics, though, is that the car makers could bring themselves to think literally outside of the box. Instead of seeing the car as something to put intelligence in, they could see it as a platform to put intelligence ON -- intelligence that might have nothing at all to do with transportation.
Cars are the perfect Trojan horse for distributed communications, for example.
Cars are everywhere people are, they are generally outside, they have their own power source, and they have extra places to stash black boxes.
A really smart car company might take a look at Mesh Networks, for example. Mesh is a Florida company that is about to introduce a proprietary 2.4 GHz wireless network that offers dramatic advantages over 802.11 WiFi. Mesh nodes act as routers and repeaters so communication can be extended far beyond normal Internet access points. Mesh networks support tens of thousands of router/repeaters.
Mesh networks offer Quality of Service (802.11 doesn't) and support Voice-over-IP. An enlightened car company -- or better still EVERY car company -- should put a Mesh node in every car they make whether the owner wants it or not. In a couple of years, when 20 million Mesh'd cars are on the road and the car companies (I'd suggest a consortium of car companies, since this is a new field for them and anti-trust is not a concern) could light that network and, in one stroke, take a big chunk of the U.S. telephone, Internet, and mobile phone markets. Just buy space on cellphone towers and tie it all together with cheap fiber from a Global Crossing or Williams Communications.
Of course, it isn't really that simple. My ideas never are. But it is simple enough that Toyota is considering doing exactly this in Japan. Watch out NTT DoCoMo. [I, Cringely: The Pulpit, via Slashdot] [The Shifted Librarian]
9:26:24 AM
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I Gotta Go.
Unfairly Used
"There's a strange battle being fought in Congress right now between Hollywood and Silicon Valley over who will define and control digital rights management technology. While it's a little early to say who will win, I think I can predict who's going to lose: consumers. And what consumers stand to lose is the very concept of fair use.
That our fair use rights are under siege should come as no news flash. As iMac users recently discovered with a Celine Dion CD, not only may you not be able to play the CD or DVD you just bought on your computer, the copy protection may even damage your system if you try. And Jamie Kellner, the CEO and Chairman of Turner Broadcasting, was recently quoted as saying he feels viewers who skip television commercials are thieves who are guilty of stealing network programming. So if the media giants have their way, fair use won't even extend to using the bathroom during the commercial breaks.
You might think Congress, which wrote the copyright laws that created the concept of fair use, would be stepping in to put a stop to this abuse. On the contrary, so far Congress seems eager to sell consumers' fair use rights down the river, and it's just a matter of determining who will be the highest bidder....
Even assuming the consumer side is ignored or booted out (von Lohmann has been threatened with exclusion for discussing the BPDG at http://bpdg.blogs.eff.org), any consensus the BPDG reaches is likely to be fragile. Von Lohmann fears that means Congress won't risk subjecting the group's findings to public discussion and will instead just mandate that the FCC implement them in its rules.
It's anyone's guess what the outcome of this process will be, or even when the outcome will be made clear to the public at large. But it is a fair guess that fair use doesn't have a fair chance." [InfoWorld, via Tomalak's Realm]
Question: if Jamie Kellner implies that you shouldn't be taking bathroom breaks during commercials because it's theft, then when are you supposed to go to the bathroom? During the shows? But wait - if you do that, aren't you then stealing from the company that produced the show? And the actors, director, and writers that worked on the show? Can they now sue Kellner for advocating that people watching TV steal their content by going to the bathroom during the show? [The Shifted Librarian]
9:25:50 AM
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Google Me This, Batman!.
"My trip to Google on Friday was great. First I took the tour. Lots of geek toys. Lots of press clippings. A nice graph showing flow. Then we sat down and talked software. This is not Netscape. They're playing long-term, they've got real technology (Netscape's was all quick hacks). I pushed six things and gave them a heads-up on an seventh. Here they are. 1. Spell-checker web service. 2. Pings from CMSes for more currency. 3. Google On The Desktop. 4. An API to access page rank. 5. OPML and directories (instead of two or three directories, millions). 6. RSS feeds for their news flows. 7. Gnutella as a decentralized distribution method." [Scripting News]
But not just Google for the desktop (although, I really, really, really want that, too). I need an affordable Google for my forthcoming RCS server for my distributed network of blogs and k-logs for librarians. I hope they follow through on Dave's suggestions, a couple of which I'm guessing were already in the development pipeline. [The Shifted Librarian]
9:22:27 AM
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If You Find Comments in Radio Slow (Internet Explorer, PC, Windows) then Close Browser Windows.
If You Find Comments in Radio Slow (Internet Explorer, PC, Windows) then Close Browser Windows
Here's something something I recently discovered. I'm starting to get a bunch of comments on my blog entries. And that's cool. But, for me, all too often I'd click the comment link and I'd wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. Now I normally run about 20 different IE windows (don't ask) and I tried it again with only 2 or 3 windows open -- wicked fast. Keep it in mind. This alone is a good reason to keep Opera around. Or, better, Mozilla. [The FuzzyBlog!]
9:10:40 AM
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WSJ. This is a very scary report. "Mad Deer" or chronic wasting disease (CWD) has scientists baffled. Deer and Elk infected with prions, the cause of Mad Cow disease, have spread throughout the US and Canada. This infection is using a vector unknown to scientists and seems to spread like a flu (in contrast, livestock feed was the source of "Mad Cow" problem).
>>>Some laboratory studies suggest CWD could theoretically infect people. Byron Caughey, a prion researcher at the National Institutes of Health's Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Hamilton, Mont., found that CWD prions could convert human prion proteins to their deadly form in a lab dish. However, the efficiency of such "conversion" was extremely low, evidence of a substantial species barrier.<<<
A prion is a protien with no genetic information that can't be easily destroyed like bacteria and viruses (it is resistant to radiation, high heat, and disinfectants). When it comes into contact with a brain of the species it is harmful to, it bends active biological protiens into replicas of itself, causing lessions and eventually death. There is no known cure. The combination of this new active vector of transmission, its ability to leap species boundaries, its small size, and its resistance to all known treatments-decontanimation could mean that this will be our first nano-plague. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
8:17:28 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Mark Oeltjenbruns.
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