Ringtones on deaf ears

[Abridged repost; relevant again]
There seems to have been an explosion of (news over) ~mojis lately. Like, the past half year has seen a proliferation of subsets and niceties that, as a phenomenon, spell the end of interest in messaging.

As the phenomenon (not this which is great in any absolute measure) is so very much the same as we saw with ringtones
Arrrg! Yes indeed they spelled the end of the introductory phase of mobiles. The more it became a fad to have some peculiar ‘tone, the more one exposed oneself as a somewhat (?) pathetic Laggard, not quite knowing yet how to have and treat a phone as perfectly normal tool without having to brag how great one was for having one in the first place.

Can you see the same with messaging? If not, you may be the one that actually paid for the nicest ringtone you disabled in shame for not getting any but negative recognition after a couple of days again.

So, … next up in this series: How “Like us on Facebook” went the same way in the 2nd half of 2015, latest… And:
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[Siegfried& not quite]

IoThreat level rising

Oh the waxing and waning of the security (or not) that we understand and can see. In, traditional, actual security versus stupid’s attacks with AK-47s.
Oh the failure to see that the vulnerability surface grows much quicker, unseen, out of sight; and only partially, backlogging style, being managed somewhat. This surface expansion being in IoT, as the current implementations (in two ways, labelled such or not…!) are spreading much faster than the awareness, let alone proper implementation of, security is.

And oh yes, some are concerned. But their concerns appear to remain Boy Cried Wolfs compared to the clear and present dangers, that may be much smaller, qua chance and/or impact, than IoT risks. As in the physical, the class break aspect seems to be considered and covered reasonably well, by natural countering culture, the same may not be said about B/Society-CM planning for class breaks in the IoT sphere. Maybe already WWIII would be fought with sticks and stones (Einstein’ish).

Oh well. This post will not change the world. But still, be warned, and/or Be Prepared. And:
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[Maybe pray. For luck. Or salvation. Not your common altar piece; Noto]

We need another Blue (h)It

No, no IT;   It. Dean Kamen style.     Nor the It, Amsterdam style 😐
Now that the BttF hoverboard didn’t pan out as planned (qua planning, 21 October 2015) and first clumsy (but PoC?) prototypes having only recently surfaced (huh) and the halfway product of self-balancing two-wheel hoverboards are quite fancy but far from mainstream yet,
We do need something of the It hype and fuzz that surrounded the development / grand splash intro of the original Segway. Maybe, probably, in a completely different direction but something similar possibly pervasive.
And have all the excitement of the buzz; and maybe this time around, actual watershed roll-out; and as a far-fetched wish, something that may e.g., help the environment big time. The latter, may be the ideal for the world.

Oh, and now that we’re at it (sic); I did notice that in bygone days (like, a couple of years ago) before Disruption and its #fail aspects (Netflix yes, Uber no), all the talk was about Blue Ocean strategies. By incumbents. Not being jobless (re)growth. Et cetera. Is there a good comparison on all the aspects one can list for the one, for the other, and in comparison ..? Could both approaches be married or not, and what do we learn from that fact (or not)?

To leave you with:
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[Where the colourful life is; Zuid-As (contradictio)]

Common meltdown

Ah, indeed a meltdown is approaching; maybe not even of the common kind of just something breaking down in ‘IT’ — the inverted s… hits the fan scenario — but a larger-scale one. Being the lack of budget / approval for IT staff to do continuous education of all sorts. [As in here, in Dutch.]
Which will inevitably lead to ever larger of the small- to midsize collapses mentioned, possibly one triggering the other till past the critical point where the chain reaction feedback loop switches from negative to positive.

By which time it will be too late, much too late, to hyperventilatingly engage in counteractions. Both against the root cause problems in IT, as in the edjucayzional category within those. Because, au fond, so many of IT’s ails were and are, increasingly, driven by lack of (continued) education. Causing problems in the user’s specs (at the highest levels) and subsequently, 2nd Law of thermodynamics, spawning all of the subsequent complexity developing into unmanageability, and error stacking that breeds like viruses.

Even more poignantly in InfoSec corners. You know, the outposts of IT — yes, yes, I know that the I is of so much greater import than the T but get real, instead of 20% InfoSec is 85-95% T still, these days ..! — where the real commandos and fancy-dancy ‘Delta teams’/SEALs operate.

Can we all please get our act together ..? If we don’t turn this supertanker around quickly, we don’t even need to bother about global warming because we’ll have no industrialised world to worry about…

Après nous la deluge …
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[Mosquito hunt; Edinburg]

Software Defined Everything, not your monkey’s business

Lately, we have been reading a lot about Software Defined Everything (haven’t you …?), in particular sw-def networking. As the flexible way to the future.
Now, it turns out that humans may have had an edge over monkeys (and apes) by, for quite some time already, having had just that bit more software-defined Brain work than the competition. Though research is out also (since about half a year+) that apes using tools, have entered the Stone Age with that, for some 4300 years at least already. Now I will not refer here to the mix-up that your boss is, in this all.

But I will note that the Software Defined Everything, in similar vein is where the Singularity starts to take over, as the System evolves away from the human brain limitation to adapt to its environment. Yes, that’s a bit of thought stretch but you’ll manage. Still…

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[At least the apes among you might figure out the Three-Body Problem at the table …; Nicolaci, Noto]

Porter’s half “value” chain

The problem: Half an <undefined> chain isn’t much good.
Because … There’s no money anywhere in the ‘Value Chain’ oft portrayed. As it is in Starreveld’s model. [You’re out of luck, in Dutch only and even then, no pics .. oh, there‘s one]

Which points to an even bigger error: No clear(ly communicated) def of Value in the first place. Allsorts went off and did a lot of heavy lifting (they wished! The lightweight airheads the majority was!), but achieved … not much; little; nothing worth their salts.

Obviously. And also, obviously very much required, these latter days, that a proper all-inclusive and operable definition of Value still is created, leaving mere ‘money’ in the dust similar to the distance between ‘data points’ and ‘information’. But let’s start with completion of the core model not keep it in half.

Oh well…:
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[Capture that in moahnay…; at what translates to Eddie’s ‘hood]

The Season of Innovation

Anyone has stats on when, during the year, most actual innovations are dreamt up, or brought to light ..?

Just wondered, pondered, looking outside into a greyish dawn, and thought: Where are this year’s Innovations that make late fall / winter time more amicable ..?
Just because seasons are only a quarter of the year ;-| doesn’t sound like a good explanation; whereas any year, or innovation’s adoption wave, is a one-time thing only, seasons tend to re-appear quite regularly over and over again through the ages. So any real innovation might stick even better. [Will now halt this silly argument.]
Then again, can we pinpoint the exact moment an innovation is conceived, even when delivery may take some time (possibly, spanning a year) ..? Can we spot seasonal patterns ..? One could imagine that Nature’s recurrence and bloom, impacts the mind in similar ways. *waves.

So, if any of you Big Data lovers out there would have a nice graph, I’d welcome it. Plus:
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[Yes, that’s Spring, in Antwerp. Other corners are, in no particular order, Summer, Fall, and Winter]

Stealing others’ Innovation flag

On how one (organisation) can be truly innovative, but another gets all the credit — later on when History gets written down.
I mean, have you checked the innovation of Tesla ..? Which consisted, apart from the green(?)fields start of operations, with a simple copy of an iconic car. Indeed, not the S type, but the Lotus Elise. Yes, yes, I know, not many parts are the same but that misses the point..! What Tesla vehemently denies, is that buyers don’t give a single … [censored] about said parts, they buy a design. And well, on that point … is there a better summary than ‘carbon (body) copy’ ..?

And the all-electric part ..? Also, had many predecessors.
Apart from which, the actual innovation which as so many ‘Inventions’ of the past twenty centuries was a rediscovery of a lost art, was in the electric — and the grand prize for putting that on the serious market goes to Toyota for their Prius.

Just realise that it has all the characteristics of a true disruption… demonstrated on the outside by its (initial) design, that was of course ‘corrected’ by the photos of Cameron Diaz’ and others’ endorsement.

So… where’s T’s innovation at? The S type that’s too expensive (by far, if you add appropriate options) for most folk ..? It’s not overly innovative in design, nor in … everything else. Looks good, yes, but …
And why would I still not be able to drive to my holiday destination with refills in under 10mins only every 1000km ..?
And, if it were true and distinctive innovation, competitors would have followed big time. But hey haven’t; apparently easily keeping up with smaller-step improvements.

Though, I’m not negative, at least T’s CEO has the gusto to go after moon shots. Praise for that, would one not want many more of the 1% to follow suit so they’d spend their money wisely… And:
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[Bam! in Syracuse the Original]

A simple link to a profound article

Today, just a simple link to an article you’ll find interesting — or find yourself not that.
As in: this here piece.

After which:
ubx15

Uhhh okai then: The point of the matter is that here, we still have that idealistic vision in which AI would augment us, improve us, near-eugenetically though with prostheses, leaving so-hard-they-become-easy-by-not-being-recognized choices of the Hobson kind for the ones with least ethical scrupules, the early adoptors to collateral on the others. Early adoptors through the need for compensation of already lacking (basic…) capabilities…

Before becoming too negative, this:
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[Think, self-rule, et al.; Dunedin again]

Grendel’s mother

This indeed a repost. As matters in global politics made this material utmost relevant again, a couple of weeks ago. Has the news since addressed the below already, or will we learn from history that we don’t learn from history ..?

When the short summary doesn’t do justice to the core of the problem… Where the core is both a misreading of the depth and a misreading of its intentions.
As this here few little paragraphs have.
There’s no light way of putting this: Go read the … thing in its entirety and then, do understand it in all of its cultural superiority to today’s news accounts.

Yes, for the simplest of minds it may read like just a story. Hero, this, that, done. But to the slightest of more careful reader, it is overwhelmingly clear: The book contains so much profundity on the core of politics, societies, and clashes of war. Then you see that it’s not about slaying Grendel and some afterthought. It is about slaying the symptom, the fed, and only then can you get to fighting the real cause that (literally) both birthed and feeds the symptoms, the Mother of Evil. Pointing, too, at the continuity through generations of that concept.

Oh and did it mention anything about brothers or (maybe even worse ..?) sisters ..? Opening up all sorts of options for prolongation through the ages of this tension between what one (sic) could regard as Good and another (sic) as Evil? Mother doesn’t see Evil, she sees her pride, her son displaying the most beautiful (s)he can imagine. Yo don’t even know which side you’re on! Etc.

Yes indeed. It is simply not simple. It is The World As We Know It, and Man cannot change much about it…

For the latter, see how Western ‘powers’ led by the one, try to meekly and halfheartedly subdue Grendel in the Middle East; just enough to safeguard their own interests. Where they don’t see the full depth of mother’s lair, nor her issues. For those less ‘sues’, read this and see the eternity of the problem.

For now, this:
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[A museum. Hence, still very relevant; Edinburg.[Earth isn’t flat, you know…]] ]]]] ]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord