* WhyDoPeopleOrganize
o IsSearchThePanacea

* TheProblemWithHeterogeneousInformation
* PrinciplesOfGrok
* WhyIsDataSoHardToGrok
* LookingToThePhysicalWorld
o TheUseOfColor
o ChunkingOverTime
* OneUppingNature

* WhatDoesSuccessLookLike
* RelationshipToOrganizationalParadigms

* OrganizationalParadigms
o 2 and 1/2 classification systems
o The nature of Hierarchies
o The nature of Faceted systems
o Faking Facets in an Hierarchy
o Changing data and the element of Time
o How the cookie crumbles: Hierarchies in a state of nature
o How the cookie crumbles: Facets in a state of nature
o The nature of Tags

* ContentTypesVersusKindsOfItems

* ComplexityIsInTheEyeOfTheBeholder

Chandler - Paper Outline

The following is a story of the Second Law of Thermodynamics* as it applies to human efforts to represent knowledge in ontologies or classification systems...But with a twist...Because knowledge rarely exists in a closed system, because all things are never equal, the best laid plans for orderly arrangements of information disintegrate into disorder. The very structures we build to make Sense of our data turns into Nonsense when, as The Dude (aka Jeffrey Lebowski) would say, "New sh#$ has come to light! Man." And in our unending quest for more information and more knowledge, "New sh#$ is always coming to light...Man" faster than our stiff-legged classification systems can handle. As a result, the systems ultimately reject the new data and what we're left with is a regurgitated mess of bits and pieces strewn across the landscape of your variegated and uncoordinated information gathering and storage devices: email clients, web mail clients, documents, pdas, paper calendars, sticky notes, notepads, envelopes, napkins, the back of your hand and last but not least, your brain.

*The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that in a closed system, entropy or the measure of disorder, always increases. In other words, the end is nigh, so stop filing your email!

Chandler - Story

"I once asked Ivan, 'How is it possible for you to have invented computer graphics, done the first object oriented software system and the first real time constraint solver all by yourself in one year?" And he said "I didn't know it was hard."
    -- Alan Kay on Ivan Sutherland.

Lisa Rein's Tour Of Alan Kay's Etech 2003 Presentation

What Chandler is and isn't

* Chander is a PIM: Personal Information Manager
* Chandler is a platform for an integrated General Information Manager: Documents, Photos, Music
* Chandler is not a feature list or a set of tools for getting things done (ie. toolbar)
* Chandler is a way of getting things done
* Chandler is a way to manage your life information
* More of an approach to life, less of a diet pill

Chandler - Intro

Check it.

iTunes Remote Control (iTRC) is a network remote control for iTunes. It allows you to control iTunes on a remote machine with full track changing support and basic but functional playlist support. All you need to do it enable Remote Apple Events on the computer with iTunes on it and remember its network name.

iTunes Remote Control

IDGNS: What are the new threats that people aren't thinking about?

Drako: There has been a market change over the last five-to-six years, primarily due to Sarbanes-Oxley. It used to be that you actually trusted your employees. What's changed -- and which is really kind of morally and socially depressing -- is that now, the way the auditors approach the problem, the way Sarbanes-Oxley approaches the problem, is you actually put in systems assuming that you can't trust anyone. Everything has to be double-signoff or a double-check in the process of how you organize all of the financials of the company.

That is really the major shift, which has created a huge burden on how we operate any [publicly traded] organization.

Security chiefs see changes in identity theft

Think of the cell as operating system, and engineers taking the place of traditional biologists in retooling stripped down components of cells (bio-bricks) in much the vein as in the late 70s when electrical engineers were working their way to the first personal computer by assembling circuit boards, hard drives, monitors, etc. It's not an accident that the phrase "bio-hackers" is in the conversation, as this new crowd has a lot in common with the computer engineers who were around the homebrew computer club of the '70s leading the development of the personal computer.

...

What is the path from here to general fabrication? Is that creating too much power in the hands of the individual to be able to create whatever they want that is physical. (Right now they can create any software they want, pretty much, and that has risks; some people estimate up to a trillion dollars a year is lost; lost in some way due to hackers and viruses and spam and whatnot). We have been greatly empowered computationally, without much discussion in advance of whether we should or shouldn't. There's been considerably more discussion in advance about whether we should do recombinant DNA or gene therapy or genetically modified organisms.

Generally I think he's right about this. One major exception that jumps to mind is cryptography. Maybe the name Louis Freeh rings a bell?

But CALEA simply permits the FBI to maintain court-approved access to digital communications and stored data. Another technical challenge called encryption then and now threatens to make court-authorized interception orders a nullity. Robust and commercially available encryption products are proliferating and no legal means has been provided to law enforcement to deal with this problem, as was done by Parliament in the United Kingdom. Terrorists have been able to exploit this huge vulnerability in our public safety matrix.

Neither the Patriot Act nor any other likely-to-be-enacted statute even attempts to close this gap. Resolving this issue is critical to homeland security.

You'll find the above online.

You may also remember CRISIS:

In an age of explosive worldwide growth of electronic data storage and communications, many vital national interests require the effective protection of information. When used in conjunction with other approaches to information security, cryptography is a very powerful tool for protecting information. Consequently, current U.S. policy should be changed to promote and encourage the widespread use of cryptography for the protection of the information interests of individuals, businesses, government agencies, and the nation as a whole, while respecting legitimate national needs of law enforcement and intelligence for... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Constructive Biology | Edge

This is from last November but I hadn't seen it before now.

Recent years have witnessed many proposals for anonymous routing in overlay peer-to-peer networks. To provide both sender and receiver anonymity, the proposed protocols require the overlay nodes to have public-private key pairs, with the public keys known to everyone. In practice, however, key distribution and management are well-known difficult problems that have crippled any widespread deployment of anonymous routing. In this paper, we propose a novel protocol that uses a combination of information slicing and source routing to provide anonymous communication similar to Onion Routing but without a public key infrastructure.

Slicing the Onion: Anonymous Routing without PKI

This report fits neatly into the recent/ongoing thread about An Inconvenient Truth.

Disaster research, which has focused historically on emergency response and recovery, is incomplete without the simultaneous study of the societal hazards and risks associated with disasters, which includes data on the vulnerability of people living in hazard-prone areas. Historically, hazards and disaster research have evolved in parallel, with the former focusing primarily on hazards vulnerability and mitigation, the latter primarily on disaster response and recovery, and the two veins intersecting most directly with common concerns about disaster preparedness. It is vital, however, that future social science research treat hazards and disaster research interchangeably and view the above five core topics of hazards and disaster research within a single overarching framework (see Figure S.1). Such integration also provides the foundation for increased collaborative work by social scientists with natural scientists and engineers.

This report, conducted with support from the National Science Foundation, assesses the current state of social science hazards and disaster research and provides a set of recommendations that reflect opportunities and challenges in the field. Although research to date has revealed much about how societies respond to natural and technological disasters of various types, it is clear from the following report that we need to learn more. Among the most needed types of research are studies that compare systematically the unique circumstances of catastrophic events such as major earthquakes, hurricanes, and acts of terrorism. Such comparative studies will allow researchers to examine societal response in relation to variables such as the amount of advanced warning, the magnitude, scope, and duration of impacts, and the special requirements for dealing with chemical, biological, and radiological agents. Among the report's other recommendations is the need for systematic studies of how societies complement expected and sometimes planned responses with improvised activities. In the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, for example, first responders had to work around the loss of New York City's Emergency Operations Center, which was located in one of the towers.

Facing Hazards and Disasters: Understanding Human Dimensions | NAP

Two former AT&T employees say the telecom giant has maintained a secret, highly secure room in St. Louis since 2002. Intelligence experts say it bears the earmarks of a National Security Agency operation.

Is the NSA spying on U.S. Internet traffic?