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| compos mentis. Concision. Media. Clarity. Memes. Context. Melange. Confluence. Mishmash. Conflation. Mellifluous. Conviviality. Miscellany. Confelicity. Milieu. Cogent. Minty. Concoction. |
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The Hard Way to Learn That the Internet Is Not Disneyland |
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| Topic: Computer Security |
10:32 am EST, Feb 8, 2004 |
Average Americans tend to see the Internet as safer and more secure than it is partly because they operate under a simplified notion of what the Net is. As John Edwards might say, "Let's hear it for Average Americans!" The Hard Way to Learn That the Internet Is Not Disneyland |
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| Topic: Military |
9:59 am EST, Feb 8, 2004 |
If you want the antidote to all the creeps in that Super Bowl show, spend a day at Centcom. I promise you, you will walk away with one overriding feeling: We do not deserve these people. If you elect to watch the Grammy awards this evening, perhaps because you just can't get enough of above-average Americans like Justin Timberlake, let me know how many of the winners thank the troops, and whether they do so before or after thanking their A&R. The Home Team |
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Deconstructing the Commission on Iraq Intelligence |
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| Topic: Politics and Law |
3:54 pm EST, Feb 7, 2004 |
"On the one hand, the commission is charged with looking at prewar intelligence assessments on Iraq, but apparently not at exaggerations of that intelligence by the Bush administration. On the other hand, the commission is tasked to look at so many other areas that it will not be able to adequately focus on the paramount issue of the analysis, production and use of prewar intelligence on Iraq." ... The commission's makeup seems to have been influenced more by a quest for political balance than for depth of knowledge about the challenges facing the turf-conscious intelligence agencies. That is in sharp contrast to the last major investigative panel that the administration appointed, to examine the disaster involving the space shuttle Columbia. That panel had specialists on composites and propulsion, organizational dynamics and safety, along with experts who spend their lives thinking about the future of the space program. An equivalent panel in this case might have included experts in a variety of espionage specialties, in the difficulties of piercing secretive governments and terror groups, and in the way other nations have organized their intelligence agencies. A few days ago, David Brooks highlighted the crucial link between selecting the commissioners and achieving the desired results. I cannot help but feel disappointed. Deconstructing the Commission on Iraq Intelligence |
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Sensing and Modeling Human Networks |
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| Topic: Human Computer Interaction |
3:08 pm EST, Feb 7, 2004 |
Knowledge of how groups of people interact is important ... Existing studies have either been restricted to online communities or have been forced to rely on questionnaires, surveys, ... The aim of this thesis is to automatically model face-to-face interactions within a community. The "sociometer," a specially designed wearable sensor package, was built to address this problem. This thesis develops a computational framework for learning the interaction structure and dynamics automatically from the sociometer data. The full text of the thesis is available; follow the "PDF" link at the bottom. While only 100 pages long, the file itself is rather large. A Google search for "sociometer" offers a variety of short conference papers on the topic. Sensing and Modeling Human Networks |
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Video of Tenet's Speech at Georgetown |
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| Topic: Current Events |
11:36 pm EST, Feb 5, 2004 |
Courtesy of C-SPAN, this is a link to streaming RealVideo of George Tenet's speech today at Georgetown University. It may not work to click through directly. You may need to start RealPlayer and enter this URL directly: rtsp://cspanrm.fplive.net/cspan/archive/iraq/iraq020504_tenet.rm A transcript of the speech is online at http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/05/international/middleeast/05CND-ITEX.html?pagewanted=print&position= Including introductions and a follow-up Q&A session, the full running time is approximately one hour. Video of Tenet's Speech at Georgetown |
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The Capitalist Threat - George Soros |
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| Topic: Society |
1:02 am EST, Feb 4, 2004 |
What used to be a medium of exchange has usurped the place of fundamental values, reversing the relationship postulated by economic theory. What used to be professions have turned into businesses. The cult of success has replaced a belief in principles. Society has lost its anchor. I envisage the open society as a society open to improvement. We start with the recognition of our own fallibility, which extends not only to our mental constructs but also to our institutions. What is imperfect can be improved, by a process of trial and error. The open society not only allows this process but actually encourages it, by insisting on freedom of expression and protecting dissent. The open society offers a vista of limitless progress. This is Soros at his best -- an outstanding piece of work. The article is essentially a summary of his 2000 book, Open Society, a first edition hardcover copy of which sits on my book shelf. I hope that he returns to this message in the next ten months, rather than allow himself to get wrapped up in the Democrats' anti-Bush mania. His Bubble book was conceptually interesting in parts, but rather shrill in delivery throughout. The Capitalist Threat - George Soros |
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The CIA: Method and Madness |
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| Topic: Society |
9:56 am EST, Feb 3, 2004 |
After speaking to "innumerable" US intelligence officers, David Kay has concluded that Bush administration officials did not pressure analysts to exaggerate the threats posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. On Capitol Hill, the Senate Intelligence Committee staff has interviewed over 175 analysts and critics and reached the same conclusion. Leading the CIA's own internal review, Richard Kerr has apparently also concluded that there is no evidence that political pressures influenced the CIA reports. And this is precisely the problem. David Brooks is spot-on. I, too, hope the new commission will be chartered and staffed appropriately. One can hope, anyway. (Hope? In an election year?) The CIA: Method and Madness |
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| Topic: High Tech Developments |
8:40 am EST, Feb 3, 2004 |
The Hive Mind -- A New Way To Share Information -- Group Minds -- Social Networking on Steroids -- The Semantic Web Made Easy -- Knowledge Networks -- A New Way to Collaborate Radar Networks, Inc. is a software company that is pioneering the next layer of the Internet -- the Semantic Web. Our software products help people, groups, organizations and communities manage and share information in a new way. The company was started by Lucid Ventures and is located in New York City. We are presently in stealth-mode. Commentary from a contributor to Jeremy Zawodny's weblog: It's the biggest thing that has hit Silicon Valley since Netscape ... Nova Spivack has been working on this for years with his MIT genius CTO Kris Thorensen. The Radar Networks demo has literally blown Sand Hill Road out of their chairs and has become a thing of epic legend in the last month. XML cannot keep pace with info overload. It's about Metadata and allowing RSS/RDF to function semantically; this has enormous implications to existing database and router architecture. And if by adopting this we could solve spam, allow darknets and scale to billions of users ... Guess what, Google may need to rethink timing on S-1 filings and Microsoft may end-up [canceling] Longhorn or at least renaming it LongGone or LongGong. So yee want to see Social Networking really scale, intelligently? Jeremy, thou needest Radar! Posted by: Hugh J. Sloan III on January 30, 2004 10:17 PM Radar Networks |
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Restoring Trust in America |
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| Topic: International Relations |
9:45 am EST, Feb 2, 2004 |
On the cusp of a new book release, Zbigniew Brzezinski writes in the Post: America is preponderant in the world today, but it is not omnipotent. Thus America must have the capacity, when needed, to mobilize the genuine and sincere support of other countries, particularly of its closest allies. It can do so only if it is trusted. ... a worldwide drop in support ... manifest resentment ... pervasive distrust ... The sad fact is that US intelligence was not up to par. There are many reasons for that failure, but the most obvious one is the absence of an effective human clandestine intelligence service. I recall a conversation with Whit Diffie in the late 1990's (around the time that Tenet declared "war" on Al Qaeda). Although perhaps each for different reasons, we both agreed that HUMINT would/must be the central element of a 21st century national intelligence capability. I believe that we also agreed, implicitly, that this fact was intuitively obvious even to the most casual observer. Perhaps we should have written a memo. Restoring Trust in America |
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