Category: Predictions 2014

Vindication …

With due respect, but vindication is a beautiful thing…
As I had delivered a lecture over five years on all the places that risk management of the Basel II/II style, using quants and all to model (an übercomplex combination of scores of) human behaviour thus sublimating one’s model errors and one’s misunderstanding of how the world turns, not even mentioning the risk of the 15.5 risk; necessarily (if you’d had got It) speculative about what’s next, the evaluation was heaviliy tilted from quite (UK style) positive to mediocre by one bad review, that had as only comment “not based in evidence”. See the latest pres’s in my LinkedIn profile; without much by way of speaker notes, the ones on e.g., Blind Alley et al. can be readily understood qua intent.
Recently then, finally, this arrived. Maybe spinning off in an adjacent direction; veering off or running in parallel? But definitely touching the sore spot.
To the point where the dish is sweetest served cold.
But hey, would have liked all the business (and ~travel…) opportunities that could’ve been…

Now, let’s all go study Basel IV’s methodology and learn (e.g., as in the above-linked article). Maybe there is a future for risk management. Even if not as a separate discipline; see my posts of management-in-general. Plus:
000003 (8)
[Once was my ‘work’ location; worth re-pursuing Trois Islets, Martinique]

TLD: Shoo! Shoo!

Awwww was reminded today that the fallacy of Three Lines of “Defence” is a stubborn one. Debunked by a great many, among others on this blog over a year+ ago, but still much too much alive. So let me remind you with the following picture that speaks for itself (or …):
Van plank misslaan naar spijker op de kop v0.3
[No high-class design frenzy, just the blot-down in an angered jolt]

Yes, that’s right, still, and is until y’all ditch the TLD idea on the rubbish heap of history: the lines DO NOT stand between the threats and the vulnerabilities. And Boards et al can bypass the circus at their leisure. The lines (aren’t) of defense (aren’t) only stand between all that has gone wrong, and the regulators so the latter are placated with three rounds of white washing and window dressing.

In the past, everyone I discussed this with, agreed the whole thing’s a joke. A sour, very expensive, delusional one. Everybody reacts, nobody responds… Which will need to change or massive damage will occur.

OK, I’ll stop now before my language over the totalitarian, mind- and ethics-genocidal bureaucracy gets out of hand.

Postdictions 2014-IV and Final

A progress report on the Predictions 2014 I made in several posts here, at the end of the year. So, going for final verdicts. And quite a score and end result…
I gathered some evidence, but probably you have much more of that re the items below. Do please raise your hand / comment with links; I’ll attribute my sources ;-]

First, of course, a picture:
20141027_131258_HDR[3]
[Yes this one one more time, as the future’s the flip side of the past …]

So, there they are, with the items collected from several posts and already updated several times before hence I’ll just highlight a few things:

Trust ✓ And double-check. Maybe the issue slowed in attention over the course of the year, but… intermediate and final kickers make this one a true ✓
Identity Hmmm, recurrent issues with strength of pwd methodologies, but for the rest… oh there’s XYZcoin with its trust-through-maximum-distribution-and-maximum-anonymity …! ✓
Things Oh absolutely ✓ Or you’re surfing blind. Is that an expression, yet ..?
Social Ello, Viv, etc., and for the rest, it has all been Business As Usual. Which makes it a ✓
Mobile Has truly gone to the Expired phase when all-platform(-agnostic) design has come and gone as a hype and has turned into a basic requirement. ✓
Analytics After the evangelists, now into the BAU lands. ✓
Cloud Mehhh! ✓ It’s Docker that will be next year’s Thing. Note that.
Demise of ERP, the Have almost heard nothing let alone ‘exiting’ about this. So ✓
InfoSec on the steep rise Even if we haven’t seen enough on this!

On APTs: Almost the only interesting thing aaround, still. ✓
On certification vulnerabilities: In hiding. Still there. Ssssht, will hit. Suddenly. ✓ without you knowing it.
On crypto-failures, in the implementations: Quite some news in the underwires… you may not have noticed, but the in-crowd has. Definite ✓
On quantum computing: – still not too much – which is something of a surprise. No ✓ here. Despite this late entry.
On methodological renewal; as it was: Some progress here and there, close to a ✓
Deflation of TLD As per ERP above. ✓ as the logical and methodological failures have prevented anyone to attach oneself to it for risk of looking dumb. Except for the ones still clinging to it, where the risk has materialized…
Subtotal Well, let’s call it an off the cuff 95%+, being an A+ indeed.

The faint of heart wouldn’t necessarily want to speak the bold characters out loud. And my nerw predictions are out there already; see the December 9th post.
Which leaves me to a link that you may want to get for me, for ‘winning’ my own predictions contest. Thank you!

Repeat: The Top 2000 or 2214 of 2014

[After apparently, some at @Top2000nl / @NPORadio2 decided that #Top2000 entries and votes were valid until yesterday this repost was in order – but the below had been out there, of course, as the definitive results already a month ago…]

OK … There it is: The definitive this year’s Top 2000.
Without argument or doubt, herewith…
First, downloadable in plain Excel, for your own tinker and play, in this file; checked and clean (no subversive content).

Next, a few little notes:

  • “That’s odd! The usual numbers 1 to 50 aren’t where they’re ‘supposed’ to be by common standards!” Correct. Because I‘m ‘Rekt. The list is mine; why put the Mehhh songs high up there? They’re in there somewhere, but its my list, my preferences..! yes I do like some almost-forgotten songs better, sometimes much, much better, than the expired old hands.
  • Especially.. see the notes, when the clip (much) enhances the song(s). Wouldn’t that mean the song in itself isn’t fully complete ..? No, it means in (since) the age of video, songs with clips (‘integrated’) can much surpass mere songs by themselves, for a cubed sensory experience.
  • There’s more than 2000 yes. Because, already after the first 500 or so, determining the relative rankings becomes awkward. Hence, the cut-off would be random …! (why not 2048, that would make more sense in this digital (i.e., binary) age).
  • If you would still have some (preferably wacky) songs you miss, please do comment them to me. I’ll see whether I’d want to include them still, or not. Hey, it’s my list so I decide, geddid?
  • When dabbling with the Excel file yourself, feel free to play around with the ranking mechanism. What worked for me, was to first split the songs into bins of about 250 size (designate some song to be in the first bin that will end up being ranks 1-250, another song to bin 5, which is around the 1000-1250 mark, etc.), then sizing down bin 1 etc. to 8 smaller bins. Then, numbers 1-50 get a personal treatment one by one to their end rank, the rest gets (got) a random allocation within their bracket. After this, sort and re-apply number 1-whatever. Through this, actual intermediate bin sizes aren’t too important.
  • Huh waddayakno, before the below is published, I have a Challenge for you: To give Frizzle Sizzle, Luv and Erik Mesie some rightful places. If you’re Dutch otherwise you might just not get it. Others, may include the B52’s somewhere; Love Shack. And DÖF’s Codo. ☺ and oops forgot Thomas Dolby.
  • [Edited to add: I’m now working on an extended list, with the How Could I Have Missed These!? so the total keeps rising. For next year’s list.]

Then, as a long, very long list. With a Moar tag otherwise it would be ridiculous… [i.e., for the complete list in the post, follow the link:]

Continue reading “Repeat: The Top 2000 or 2214 of 2014”

Clustering the future

Was clustering my themes for the future of this blog. Came up with:
Future trend subjects[Sizes, colours, or text sizes not very reflective of the attention the various subjects will get]
Low sophistication tool, eh? Never mind. Do mind, to comment. On the various things that would need to be added. As yes I know, I have left much out of the picture, for brevity purposes. But will want to hear whether I missed major things before I miss them, in next year’s posts. Thank you!
And, for the latter,
DSCN0924[Bah-t’yó! indeed]

Top 2000 or 2214 of 2014

OK … There it is: The definitive this year’s Top 2000.
Without argument or doubt, herewith…
First, downloadable in plain Excel, for your own tinker and play, in this file; checked and clean (no subversive content).
Next, a few little notes:

  • “That’s odd! The usual numbers 1 to 50 aren’t where they’re ‘supposed’ to be by common standards!” Correct. Because I‘m ‘Rekt. The list is mine; why put the Mehhh songs high up there? They’re in there somewhere, but its my list, my preferences..! yes I do like some almost-forgotten songs better, sometimes much, much better, than the expired old hands.
  • Especially.. see the notes, when the clip (much) enhances the song(s). Wouldn’t that mean the song in itself isn’t fully complete ..? No, it means in (since) the age of video, songs with clips (‘integrated’) can much surpass mere songs by themselves, for a cubed sensory experience.
  • There’s more than 2000 yes. Because, already after the first 500 or so, determining the relative rankings becomes awkward. Hence, the cut-off would be random …! (why not 2048, that would make more sense in this digital (i.e., binary) age).
  • If you would still have some (preferably wacky) songs you miss, please do comment them to me. I’ll see whether I’d want to include them still, or not. Hey, it’s my list so I decide, geddid?
  • When dabbling with the Excel file yourself, feel free to play around with the ranking mechanism. What worked for me, was to first split the songs into bins of about 250 size (designate some song to be in the first bin that will end up being ranks 1-250, another song to bin 5, which is around the 1000-1250 mark, etc.), then sizing down bin 1 etc. to 8 smaller bins. Then, numbers 1-50 get a personal treatment one by one to their end rank, the rest gets (got) a random allocation within their bracket. After this, sort and re-apply number 1-whatever. Through this, actual intermediate bin sizes aren’t too important.
  • Huh waddayakno, before the below is published, I have a Challenge for you: To give Frizzle Sizzle, Luv and Erik Mesie some rightful places. If you’re Dutch otherwise you might just not get it. Others, may include the B52’s somewhere; Love Shack. And DÖF’s Codo. ☺ and oops forgot Thomas Dolby.
  • [Edited to add: I’m now working on an extended list, with the How Could I Have Missed These!? so the total keeps rising. For next year’s list.]

Then, as a long, very long list. With a Moar tag otherwise it would be ridiculous… [i.e., for the complete list in the post, follow the link:]

Continue reading “Top 2000 or 2214 of 2014”

Rank Title Artist Notes
1 Hustle Vann McCoy Yes, the original
2 Easy Livin’ Uriah Heep To power it up
3 Heart Of Gold Neil Young Hits the heart
4 Hide and Seek Howard Jones Same, if you listen well
5 Peter Gunn Emerson Lake & Palmer Just for the intro alone
6 She Elvis Costello Personal nostaliga
7 White Room Cream Nicely powerful, doesn’t wear out too easily
8 74-’75 (+Video) Connells The video sublimates the message
9 Windowlicker (+Video) Aphex Twins Incomplete, as a work of art, without the video
10 Nice ‘n Slow Jesse Green Calm down again
11 One Of These Days Pink Floyd Hidden pearl
12 Smoke On The Water Deep Purple Of course
13 The Man With One Red Shoe (+Video) Laurent Garnier Incomplete, as a work of art, without the video
14 You’re So Vain Carly Simon I think this song is about me!
15 Dancing Barefoot Patti Smith Hidden treasure
16 Right Here Right Now Fatboy Slim Oft forgotten, defined an era
17 The Great Gig In The Sky Pink Floyd Appealing complexity
18 All I Need Air Mindfulness in musical form
19 Dream On Aerosmith Heartburn
20 You Got To Fight For Your Right to Party Beastie Boys Appealing. Simply that.
21 California Dreamin’ Mamas & The Papas

It Happens

It starts with Taoism. But I recognize bureaucracy, software development and economics. In:

Taoism Sh.t happens
Confucianism Confucius say: “Sh.t happens”
Buddism If sh.t happens, it is not really sh.t
Zen What is the sound of sh.t happening?
Hinduism This sh.t has happened before
Islam If sh.t happens, it is the will of Allah
Protestantism Let the sh.t happen somewhere else
Catholicism If sh.t happens, you deserve it
Judaism Why does sh.t always happen to us?
Mysticism Just experience sh.t happening
Ascetisim If sh.t happens, renounce it
Agnosticism Nobody knows why sh.t happens
Gnosticism I know why sh.t happens but will not tell you
Atheism Sh.t happens and that is all there is to it
Cathesianism Sh.t happened to me, therefore it exists
Platonism There is ideal sh.t happening somewhere
Stoicism I do not care if sh.t happens
Epicureanism Let us party while sh.t does not happen
Cynism Of course sh.t happens
Occultism Sh.t materializes from other planets of existence
Terrorism Sh.t will happen unless you do as I say
Puritanism S… can happen all day as long as you do not call it that
Behaviourism You are conditioned to having sh.t happen
Freudianism If sh.t happens, it is your mother’s fault
Parapsychology Sh.t happens without material causes
Surrealism Purple sh.t happens near melting clocks
Cubism If sh.t happens, you will not recognise it
Optimism If sh.t happens, we will find a way to use it
Pessimism If sh.t happens, there will not be enough for everybody
Tabloid sensationalism Green sh.t from Mars happens to Elvis clone
Biblical creationism Sh.t happens because God created it
Scientific obscurantism Sh.t happens because it evolved from primitive sh.t
Bureaucracy I do not care if sh.t happens as long as you fill out the forms
Feminism Women demand to have sh.t happen
Ecology If organic sh.t happens, it is OK
Capitalism Let us profit from sh.t happening
Socialism If sh.t happens, let us distribute it evenly
Patriotism Our sh.t is better than your sh.t
Conservatism They don’t make sh.t happen like they used to
Liberalism Sh.t should not happen tomorrow
Classical physics Sh.t does not “happen”, it just moves around
Quantum physics Sh.t happens but you can not say both where and when
Sh.t happens in discrete quanta called shitons
Holistic physics If sh.t happens, it happens everywhere at once
Software development If sh.t happens, we will fix it in the next version
Applied mathematics The probability of sh.t happening approaches unity
Engineering When sh.t happens, paint over
Medicine If sh.t happens, take two aspirin and call me in the morning
Economics Sh.t happens because there is a great demand for it
Politics If sh.t happens, make a deal with it
Diplomacy Let us pretend sh.t does not happen
To which I can already add:
Accountancy However bad, sh.t can be left hidden from sight as long as you can ‘prove’ to not have seen the pile of it that you’re drowning in

If you would have any to add, please do …

Postdictions 2014-III

A progress report on the Predictions 2014 I made in several posts here, at the end of Q3.
I gathered some evidence, but probably you have much more of that re the items below. Do please raise your hand / comment with links; I’ll attribute my sources ;-]

First, of course, a picture:

[Iron fist, not often seen (by tourists anyway), Pistoia]
So, there they are, with the items collected from several posts and already updated once and twice before in this:

Trust Well, there’s this, and this on the financial penalties of trusting your assurance provider…
Identity See previous re the value of certificates. Otherwise, not much news this quarter.
Things The hackability of all sorts of home appliances has already become some sort of Mehhh… And apparently, there’s a spin-off in the IoBT …?
And there’s progress in the auxiliary channels/architectures… as here and here.
Social Not much. Some Ello bits, though. And more in the AI arena, as this shows.
Mobile Has gone to the Expired phase.
Analytics Wow, this one’s moving into the Through of Disillusionment quickly! Now get it to jump out at the other hand, as quickly.
Cloud Mehhh, indeed. May be in the Through of Disillusionment, or has gone into been there, done the grit work, no-one’s interested anymore.
Demise of ERP, the Turns out it’s very hard to fill vacancies in this arena, isn’t it? Due to the boredom to death surrounding them.
InfoSec on the steep rise Even if we haven’t seen enough on this!

On APTs: Only the most interesting hack attacks get into the news these days. Turns out they’re all this kind.
On certification vulnerabilities: In hiding. Still there. Ssssht, will hit. Suddenly.
On crypto-failures, in the implementations: Not much; passé.
On quantum computing: – still not too much –
On methodological renewal; as it was: Some progress here and there, but no ✓ yet.
Deflation of TLD See second link of Trust; Fourth line didn’t work, even.
Subtotal Already, with the previous follow-ups, clearly over 80% as we speak, when discounting for some fall-back here and there.

The faint of heart wouldn’t necessarily want to speak the bold characters out loud.
See you at the end of the year ..!

Mo’Data, Mo’Problems

Some time ago, I was triggered by this tweet (by @meneer; no surprise in that):

that somewhat-translates (i.e., manually, however clunky still better than machine translation as that doesn’t get Dutch unstructuredness…) to: “Bizarro weather picture again: forecast #somechannel/app from the South-East to the North-West, #someotherchannel/app from the North-East to the South-West” referring to some predictions about clouds and (turned out quite torrential) rain passing over the minute geography of the Netherlands.

And another about this article – that explains, in a more scientifically styled prose, that having ever more data makes it ever more difficult to connect the dots you’d want to connect…

Both of which are poignant reminders that:

  • Big Data is not a tool but a mere tool, to be used very carefully even (or in particular?) by the few that have really big data sets. If you collect focusedly, it can hardly be called Big, rather ‘Smart-‘ or just plain ‘data analysis’, no more; if you collect as much as you can, you are destroying objectives achievement – the required method destroys the results;
  • If, very big if, Big Data would result in anything, why haven’t weather predictions improved ..? The enormity of data that had already been around in that arena for decades, will have exploded over the past one, and should have resulted in far better predictions instead of the worse that the predictions seem to have gotten. And we’re talking patterns, not even the zoom-in to tinier details that one commonly associates with BD (the major patterns are usually skipped for being too well known already). Hence, what hope would we have for other areas..?
  • Reliance on apps for info is getting more and more dangerous, almost literally so far, but in an indirect sense, already, widely. What if… when now as already well-known, some search giant might have monopolized Search and skews the results you get…? That would theoretically be a disaster. Oh.

So, think again, be ever more critical of Shallows app usage and reliance… I’ll leave you with:
??????????[Lucca: ‘modern’ Italian parade]

IoTsec as expected

Yawn. A decade of humongous growth in Information security is coming. To tackle the likes of this.
Think of where the somewhat organized, somewhat budgeted, somewhat up to it corporate world now is. (With the public organization world lagging, seriously, on all counts.) Then think of what it would take to make the general public ‘safe’.

And then think of how many InfoSec professionals would be needed. Yeay! Indeed, as in:
DSCN0449[Onto Val d’Orcia, as you spotted]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord