Uncategorized – Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord

Plusquote: Short length

Today’s episode of Plusquotes, the sayings that are both inspirational and True, if only because they’re my invention (if there is such a thing), is about length and since I’m very confident by support of fact of my self, my own in this (not even bluffing like the other 80% does), without much ado let alone proof already of the more mundane meaning of the very thing I’d like to discuss, herewith:

Short sentences, little minds.

… Hey were you (M) so generically insecure by actual, or shortfall on your bluff on, some body part length ..?
What I mean is that only little minds will ask for short sentences. When reproached that according to (any) good language, a sentence should convey a logically coherent set of concepts and their relations. Hence, when the set (~ and of relations) is large or complex, so will the sentence be period

Those of little minds, have trouble with that, mostly content-wise. But then, when one writes large or complex sets of concepts, one hardly ever does so for the pleasure (or main target) of the hoi polloi of mind [to note, to be found in all ‘money classes’, in varying degrees of aggressiveness in the overshouting denial of their dimness]. When then, the little minds feel left out and want you to write for the ‘other ones’ as if they’re not part of that very simpleton set, they reveal themselves as belonging to it by their ill understanding of both your intentions and their comparative wit. And do not believe that only once you truly have a right to write as you have truly understood a subject only if you can make your large and complex set and relations simple by writing them up in short sentences. You should make things as simple as possible, yes, but as the Wise included for very good reason: but not simpler; some things defy simple explanation. What you’d get is something like this .. not very helpful eh?
Little minds don’t ‘get’ Joyce or Nietzsche but do those two care ..?

So, when you write, write like you want and can. If then, some might want you to change your lines to fit their perception of readership’s comprehension, do not do that but consider that your audience seemingly is not them. And certainly, they will not be representative of your true audience, that is. Maybe not all of the global humanity, a bit less possibly, but still, there is an audience for your texts — that will not show itself (to not be) by complaints about your sentence length.

Hm, that seemed to be not so motivational, as a plusquote, did it? Well, still it is; if you seize the freedom. And:

[Boaty McBoatface at the Rijksmuseum]

Your valued info at risk

Ah, just noted: A great many of you may have switched (or, c’mon don’t be a laggard or too late, will soon switch) to self-assessments of risks, even to the level of detail of data security (as part of information security, part of IRM, part of ORM, part of ERM, part of just-freakin’-perfectly-normal-or-are-you-kiddin’-me mundane run-of-the-mill average daily management of which ‘governance’ is the most preposterous windbag label).
Which is all very well, to determine at the shop floor levels, that apparently are the last hold-outs of actual business knowledge beyond the mumbo-jumbo of meddle management (sour joke intended), what the risks, and particularly also, Value of information (data…) processed might be.

But … You’d miss half or more of the picture, then. The value you attach to the info, may very well be what you’d be prepared to fork out to protect it (balancing estimated frequencies of intermittent losses versus continuous costs flying out the window), but you then forget that the attacker isn’t after the value you attach, but the value to the cracker. Which may be completely different. Think, e.g., Sony (and the many others alike): comparatively, there was hardly a nickel value in the ‘stolen’ (exfiltrated, or egressed since it was lying around so obviously) data from the Sony perspective. But the value was enormous from the hacker perspective — whatever the innocuous data was, the mere exposure was of such import that APT’ ing around apparently was worth it.

Now, how’zat (women have deliveries, men have Balls) for all the other info throughout your glocal enterprise/empire ..? Similar to same, I presume.
So, … what about the budgets to be made available to counter data theft/robbery/whatever comparison to physical-world expropriation you’d like to use? And still not trying to overshoot in comparison to the value you yourselves establish for yourselves by yourselves, or you’d run the risk (chance close to 1) of splattering any flexibility and usability under tons of ‘controls’ (quod non, BTW). But then, not protecting ‘regular’ data enough, might expose it too easily — which might be rational but will cost you, e.g., through EU data protection fines … ;-|

So, you’ll not only have to do the multiplication of this and this, but extend in other dimensions as well…
Oh well, the world gets more complicated every day… and:

[Your data protection; Noto]

The end of blockchains ..?

Some thought on where ‘money’ is going.

On the one hand, there will still be the fear that the ultimate-spread of blockchain’s control could quite easily devolve into coalitions and cliques, if not worse, when the heavyweights out there put their (computing) power to it — and what damage would quantum computing do, or could that (be made to …!?) turn the tables in the absolute opposite direction ..?
We’d be back at square one, with the general public having to trust some ‘trusted’ third party/parties and how dismal is what we have produced in terms of ‘governments’ through the ages. Or, in the opposition, trust nirvana nears ..?

On the other hand, we have the (d!)evolution of money through the ages already, when after barter trade money was introduced as neutral intermediary — in the form of value-preserving, rare hence very difficult to (re)produce and hopefully hard to fake goods like gold. Then, we switched to more abstract money media, with an intellectual exchange-ability to back to gold through the gold standard. Then, even further off, that link was released and we ended up with thin air as cover for our ‘money’ as it stands today. The cover, convertibility, is some vague notion of some abstract constructs (and as said, very often failed before or slowly is, as we write) like ‘the government’ that would repay all ‘money’ lost with … drum roll … ‘money’!
And, with blockchain technology and trust, we’re moving even further off. Combine this with Graeber’s Debt, and we have an even thinner notion of where we are and are going with the whole concept. ‘Money’ being no zero-sum game as it is created by (almost) full-sum net debt increase to start with. No wonder other initiatives spring up, time and time again following the latest possibilities created by, e.g., decreases in transaction costs (including agency theory style) by the birth of the Internet. All focused on Trust in one way or another, to do business in order to satisfy one’s Maslovian needs. (Or not; see some previous posts e.g. here.)

Well, I’ll leave you to consider your sins, with:
20150911_173935
[Sheltering under bare money-making, for fun; Amsterdam]

First take on 10

… Oh I didn’t mean to mean actual #first, just that the dust clouds around the official Win10 launch should have subsided and the first indicators of near-future trends should have become clear.
’cause I recall this tweet (?) about some peer that posted: at home, ten years ago (M$) PCs were for business and Macs for fun and now things had changed around but started to reverse again. And I wondered — are there indicators that this would be a trend, due to Win10 ..?

That wouldn’t do much for M$ as the basic first …(double digit)% of business machines still did run on, well, maybe not quite NT-to-XP but still something theirs, and Macs had made some in-roads (in design corners) but not much, and the explosion that caused a relative decline of M$ had been on Other platforms on Other devices. But if we now see Eple demand-push retreating from such a still very, very important market, it makes it, more than before (?) a narrowly-focused operator. Which is fine, in its own right, as the co would have to (innovation-)play on many less fields concurrently than M$ — that still is on anything from desktop, mobile, OS, software of a bewildering variety, business services (cloud et al), gaming world, etc.etc. how do they retain the overview and innovative power everywhere ..?

Anyway; we’ll see… And:

[Nothing special, NO! edits; just a camera test at Noordwijk beach]

Freeze or flight; you may not fight

A call for pointers to the state of analysis re ‘offensive defense’ or ‘pre-emptive infosec strike’ et al. #ditchcyber, of course.
The beginning of this year (avoiding memory skew as explained in this) there was some progress on the scale of ‘totally reactive defensive twitches after attack only’-to-‘all-out pre-emptive cybernuke mutual meltdown’. There was some work in the middle. But not much, I believe, just some early indications of research work.

Hence my request; whether and where progress has been made in (public-) readable format. Thank you!

Already:

[Out of nowhere, “Beware the Jabberwock my son!” creeps to mind. Dunno why. Does this still exist, in Berlin?]

Seth’s maybe slightly too positive

In one of his, almost always delightful and insightful blog posts, Seth Godin recently almost pulled me along into (yet another) “Yes indeed completely so” response.
But then I realised Truth might just tilt the picture a bit.

Well, first read said post: here. Then:

The point is: It is a common human error (e.g., by Hegel in particular (see below), and many others with better insights) to consider oneself or one’s generation(s) as being the pinnacle of human development; no generation or time before had seen such beauty of humanity’s glory in masterty of the universe.
But others agree less. Yes, there’s something that seems to be progress, but fallbacks are just as common throughout history, on all fronts. Yes, also in technology, as we even today haven’t quite figured out how pyramids were built, etc. – one source here of which I have no clue about the veracity of argument, but others having more (or less) of that, are widely available. But certainly in terms of general human condition and human peace and quiet, and possibly a piece of the rock.
So the resulting picture is maybe sawtooth (ratchet) shaped, around a horizontal line… Usually, I think for this area, too, some punctuated equilibrium kind of random (sic) or even silly walk figure is better representative.

Oh, and regarding Hegel’s eternal march towards Ratio glory, here (read past the pic please…) and here. No belief on authority.

For your patience:
DSCN8709
[Free shipping (no) Porto … from another than the usual angle]
[Yes, yes, technically hardly Porto but Villanova de Gaia. Meh.]

Needs repost / to be studied

In the section of short posts basically linking you to must-read posts on other sites, this time once again an interesting one on design for purrfaction. Or not. With some very worthwhile notes on risk management. Here, it is. Have fun!
Oh did I mention that perfection is utterly boring ..?

[At Le Fabrique, Utrecht. It works perfectly. Or …]

Company’s Maslow

I indicated earlier to want to develop some form of (being: my personal) Maslow pyramid for organisations. Well, it took some thinking, and here is … the very first attempt. I.e., not something simple like growth stages that are a great many around. And are mostly about organizational ‘internal’ development. But that’s not what I meant. Because reasons. One being they don’t map too well to either Maslow’s personal pyramid nor to practice. Where practice means organisations go through rough times as well as good ones, and aren’t monotonously rising (mathematically) let alone strictly. [If that is out of your league, well, never mind; it was just a show-off of acquired knowledge.]

Noooo, no such simple thing. I wanted to devise some hierarchy of being and needs (focus) actually comparable to the ‘personal’ psychological one, to use later in maturity models to be defined.
From which exercise I came up with:

Which altogether I consider somewhat self-explanatory.

But now, before adding further detail or writing up anything pertinent about all the levels, I’d like to hear your comments and contributions. You agree with the level designations; you agree with the focus / locus of attention / typical concerns ..? Please correct me where I’m wrong…

Interest-ing space/time travel problem(s)

On a more serious note, two articles instructing on ethics in space travel, and on space (and time) itself – exepelainifyed to be understood, for once.
Both for your Education and enlightenment; maybe not for immediate actionability but hey, isn’t this the decade of the return of the long-term investment, in yourself, too ..?

By now and after you read (?) the two pieces, you have deserved:
[Aye, captain! Wasa’up?]

Short note: Your fridge complains

This here piece is an excellent intro into the next steps for IoT in the C-internal (see the post of the day after tomorrow – negative time now; here it is) market re domotics.
Yes, may have warranted a full repost if it were available in such a format I mean html code…

Anyway, after the read, you may appreciate:
DSCN5466
[For no apparent or other reason. DC, yes.]