Tales from the Technoverse

Commentary on social networking, technology, movies, society, and random musings

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Four Negative Rules of Life

January 16th, 2011 · education, life

In todays complex world it seems that many of us are looking for structure and guidance on how to make decisions.

Years ago I remember reading (or hearing) about four negative rules which if in their explicit form or derived implication deal with all decisions that we might face.

I hope everyone enjoys my contribution to the discussion, in no particular order of importance:

*    Never get involved with someone who has more problems than you do

*    Never help a friend move

*    Never order the seafood combination

*    Never play cards with someone named Doc

There you have it, follow these rules and your life is guaranteed to be improved.

I leave as a homework assignment to further interpret the broader meanings of each of these.

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WikiLeaks

December 29th, 2010 · cyber-security

Since the latest set of releases associated with US diplomacy through WikiLeaks there has been endless commentary on all aspects of the leaks. I have read through many of the comments and columns and been thinking about whether I had any particularly new insights to offer.

My conclusion is that I do not and therefore wanted to reuse a few old ones.

While there will be a lot of closing the barn door after this particular horse has left action steps, in my opinion the bigger message is to reinforce the premise that the battle between information protection and information sharing is over and done with. Information protection has lost. I remain convinced that security planning focused purely on protection, in particular focusing on periphery protection, is a waste of time and money.

The underlying reason remains that the value of sharing information, or conversely the penalty of not sharing information, is so great for any organization of any type today that this need will drive decision making. Unless an organization is prepared to make the kind of investments that the Government does in setting up a structured set of security levels, e.g. confidential, secret, top secret, and so on, then it not possible to cause corporate culture to both share and protect very well at the same time. And even the Government security apparatus with its enormous associated investments leaks information, WikiLeaks being only the most recent example.

If I ran the security world I would focus on the following:

  • Security hygiene
    • Achieving situational awareness
    • Implementing security policies associated with situational awareness, see my post https://www.ourownlittlecorner.com/2010/12/18/brief-thoughts-on-security-and-other-it-policies/
    • Identify the data I really want to protect and focus only on that limited data, if more than ‘limited’ rethink what you want to protect
    • Create a strategy that takes into account that no individual component of your system is impenetrable
      • If concerned about availability – consider a biological construct with multiple copies of your applications and data available; e.g. the human body works fine, mostly, even with viruses all over the place
      • If concerned about penetration – consider increasing your OODA loop speed, observe-orient-decide-act, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop

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Run Lola Run, Brief Comments

December 26th, 2010 · Entertainment, movies

Finished Run Lola Run, http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/run_lola_run/, Lola Rennt (literally Lola runs).

I guess this is one of those films I had to see in the theatre to really appreciate rather than my usual 20-30 minutes at a time on the elliptical walker down in the basement.

Got high marks on Rotten Tomatoes, I remember the noise when it first came out. I had some difficulty getting involved with a young woman who dates a guy who considers doing drug deals a step up, has to beg money from her banker-father who is having an affair and has evidently gotten a member of the Board of Directors pregnant, and who has what seems to be Raggedy Ann orange-red hair. Well, I did like the hair.

I guess it was considered clever integrating a bit of animation into the middle of the film and having repetitions of the plot with different endings, each cycle punctuated with the young woman shouting loud and high enough to break glass. There was even a tiny bit of Donny Darko, with at least the young woman seemingly remembering what happened from the previous repetitions.

I found it uninvolving and thought the boyfriend should have ended up in jail. If one of my daughters showed up with that twit, it would make me very unhappy.

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Thoughts on Tron Legacy

December 25th, 2010 · Entertainment, movies

I sometimes reserve weekend and/or holiday mornings for seeing movies my wife, Ellen, will not see with me. There is no particular rhyme or reason as to which movies she is interested in going with me to see and those not, with the one mild exception perhaps of quality – the lower the quality the more likely she won’t go. Thematically, other than that quality thing, films that tend to be science fiction and/or contain violence of some sort are often on the do not go with Dan list.

The movie theatre that starts showing movies earliest, at least the one that is close to us, is the AMC Movie theatres at Tysons Corners. Since they also have an IMAX theatre, they are my most likely to be the go-to-a-movie-theatre-by-myself location.

Anyway, that is why I found myself, by myself, at Tysons, for the 10am showing of Tron Legacy, http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/10011582-TRON_legacy/, in 3D IMAX, Christmas morning.

I suspect that anyone who is particularly likely to see Tron has already done so. And since I don’t really do movie reviews, I will note that if I accidently write a spoiler or two I apologize in advance for doing so.

For those who haven’t seen Tron Legacy, I will say that having only read about, but not seen, the original, http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/tron/, I suspect I didn’t really understand all of the references.

My quick summary is that if you like relatively mindless, loud, cgi-intensive movies Tron Legacy provides a few hours of distraction. Though, I kept thinking I was watching a version of The Big Lebowski, http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/big_lebowski/,  versus the Super Mario Brothers.

So Jeff Bridges in the original evidently went into a digital world, created a copy of himself called CLU which stands for three words that being with C-L-U, and a helper called Tron. Whatever happened in that original one, he never returns to ‘real life’. I could call real life, off-grid but evidently you can be on the grid inside the digital world or off the grid, so we will call the outside world off-off-grid.

The movie starts off-off-grid, where Bridges son has grown up and has lost control of the company that Bridges owned/founded (whatever) and which the son, Sam, is the largest shareholder in. The company is called Encom, which is an interesting name though the original movie was released years before the Enron scandal.

The obligatory Hollywood poke at everything capitalistic, except that is in Hollywood, is gotten over with at the beginning of the movie when it is announced that Encom is releasing its newest, most secure operating system called version 12 (I guess five is better than seven?). When the CEO is asked what has been changed about the new operating system, the answer is we put the number 12 on the box. There is lamenting about how the operating system should be open and free to the public; coincidentally Sam has copied and released the operating system to the world during the course of this conversation. My supposition is that Encom at this point represented Microsoft, which it seemed to me hasn’t been doing well enough these days to be represented as such an evil organization.

In any event, after a while, Sam through the help of an old friend of his father, imported from the original Tron movie, played by Bruce Boxleitner, who I liked better in Babylon V, enters the grid, where he wanders from the grid to off-grid and back on the grid. I cannot summarize, or in fact even afterwards entirely understand the plot from that point until the end of the movie.

While in the grid, Sam meets Clu who evidently is an actor with Jeff Bridges face looking like it did in the original film, which was a bit creepy and his actual father, played by Jeff Bridges with his current face, who as I mentioned earlier is channeling The Dude. I noticed that in the key age old question as to whether the male hero should end up with the blonde, Beau Garnett in this case, or the brunette, Olivia Wilde, Tron Legacy came down on the side of the brunette. This is always a key issue in fanboy movies.

My favorite performer was Michael Sheen who played a nightclub owner pretending to be Martin Short. Michael Sheen is wonderful in every movie I have ever seen him. Even when my younger daughter, forced me, to see Twilight New Moon, he represented the one part, and I emphasize in that case, the only part of the movie I found more than drivel.  Well, in the interests of honest disclosure the reality is that I wasn’t forced, I went because of my endless need I have to spend even a few minutes with either or both my daughters; though if asked to go to another Twilight movie would be the ultimate test of that need.

In any event, another movie checked off. I suspect if it stays in movie theatres long enough, my next by-myself movie will be Rare Exports, http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/rare_exports/.

BTW, does anyone know why the Tysons in Tysons Corners has an s and no apostrophe?

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Brief Thoughts On Security and Other IT Policies

December 18th, 2010 · cyber-security, government 2.0

I am finishing up grading final papers for my Syracuse University class on security policy.

Each semester I find I learn a great deal from reading the papers and interacting with the students about them.

I have drawn three conclusions about policy creation from my past experience at the Department of Transportation, modified slightly from the current set of papers:

(1) Policies whose impact cannot be measured cannot be enforced.

(2) Measurements which are not created in some kind of automated fashion will not persist.

(3) Measurements which are not made visible don’t exist.

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Signature Lines on Email

December 4th, 2010 · General, technology

Apropos of nothing in particular and to take a brief break from grading research papers from my University of Maryland class I teach, I was again reminded of one of the problems I have with signature lines from emails (have I mentioned this before?).

Many people have a permanent signature that has some generic sign-off like “Gratefully yours” or “Many thanks” or  “Respectfully yours” or something like that and then their first name on the final line.

However, there are tons of emails where this signature ends up being jarring.

“Dear Second Rate Person,

You have been unreasonable for ever. You don’t return calls, you don’t respond to emails.

Your company provides lousy customer service.

Your children are ugly.

I can’t even believe you found someone willing to mate with you for money let alone be a fellow parent.

Respectfully yours,

– Me”

And such is the electronic world we live in today.

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Cloud Computing Thoughts – Part II

November 11th, 2010 · cloud computing, government business

In my previous entry regarding Cloud Computing, I discussed briefly one of the major reasons why organizations are turning to the cloud, saving costs. I pointed out some of the issues involved in achievable that goal.

While I also consider the possibility of cost savings associated with Cloud Computing important, I believe other implications are more important in the long-term. I discuss a second one today, and will touch on two more in the next few blog entries.

When we start thinking about moving applications to the cloud it leads us to reconsider how we develop applications. This change in thinking has, as a foundation, the move to object oriented design, and has been encouraged by  a change in conceptual ownership. I talk about both of these in this post. [Read more →]

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Cloud Computing Thoughts – Part I

November 8th, 2010 · CIO, cloud computing, cyber-security, government 2.0, government business, technology

The Cloud Computing freight train roars on, if not with a lot of motion, at least with a lot of noise and tumult.

I have been part of a number of panels over the last few months which focused on the subject of Cloud Computing, the current state of the’art’, and as usual what barriers exist that need to be dealt with to make it easier to utilize. There certainly has been much written about it both pro and con and it remains a high-priority focus for the current Administrator and, in particular, Vivek Kundra, the Federal CIO.

For one of the graduate classes I am teaching this semester at the University of Maryland University College, the subject is touched upon as part of a broad look at technology changes and implications. The topic generated much comment by my students.

It seems to me that the subject starts from the wrong side of the discussion, the technology side. When the discussion turns to the impact, it starts at an important but not the most important concern, that of return-on-investment (ROI).

Today and in a number of future blog entries, I will talk about what I think are the current important issues associated with cloud computing. Today I start with what I perceive as a foundational issue, cost, but later in the week will move to what I believe are more important considerations and goals.

Note: I do not plan to rehash what cloud computing is, or is not, there are too many other write-ups that do this. Look at the National Institutes of Standards work on such definitions, I think it is pretty good. [Read more →]

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Remember to Vote

November 2nd, 2010 · cyber-security, education, international

Two events happened today that are at least in my mind related.

First when I woke up I checked my emails for the two classes I am teaching through distance learning, at the University of Maryland University College, a capstone class for an IT Master’s program, and at Syracuse University, about Cyber-Security Policy.

One of my students at Syracuse University was taking the class for a second time because he was unable to finish it the first time. The reason he could not the first time was because he had been stationed in Afghanistan and he wasn’t able to juggle the time he had to spend out in the field with the time necessary to complete the class assignments. This, coupled, by the intermittent Internet access meant he was unable to finish the work. As a result I arranged with Syracuse University for him to take it again this year without additional cost and with no negative grade consequences (small things for a large sacrifice on his part).

This morning his email confirmed that he will have to redeploy back to Afghanistan this coming week. Since he will be based in Bagram, he is much more confident that he will have sufficient Internet access and thus will be able to finish the final weeks this time. His role is to provide IT support for Forward Operating Bases, which doesn’t sound like something most of us would want to do.

He thanked me for being so flexible. I thanked him for his service, I told him it was a continuing honor to have him in my classes.

After reading his email, I went and voted.

All of us should, people like my student are the reason we can.

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So there is an American, a Russian, a Chinese, and an Israeli …

October 31st, 2010 · joke

standing on a steet corner, my wife reads to me from a book she is reading, Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miraclehttp://www.amazon.com/Start-up-Nation-Israels-Economic-Miracle/dp/044654146X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1288525742&sr=8-1.

A reporter comes up and asks “Excuse me, what is your opinion about the meat shortage.”

The American asks “What do you mean by  ‘shortgage’?”

The Russian asks “What do you mean by ‘meat’?”

The Chinese asks “What do you mean by ‘opinion’?”

The Israeli asks “What do you mean by ‘excuse me’?”

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