Tag: Predictions 2014

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”

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 …

IoT to retail


[East South Bank]

I had these ‘predictions’ for retail. Now IoT comes along (though 2014 is way too early; 2016-2018 is more likely); would’ve had to include it. But may take a while. So enjoy, and stitch both together…

Predictions 2014 the InfoSec edition


[DUO Groningen (couple of years ago), where a leak led to many a student’s funds were defrauded. Looks original, is just chasing outer effects]

So, some of you have seen my Predictions 2014 including the update or two, and other posts on developments in the Information world at large.
But what you desparately needed, awaited before even starting on the Christmas decorations (for those in the West), and held out any shopping for food or beverage for, I know, I know [Heh, that’s the opposite of Unk Unk’s ;-], is my completely and utterly unpretentious predictions for the Information Security arena of 2014.

Well, here we go then:

Advanced Persistent Threats will blossom like weeds (not wiet!) in 2014. APTs being the ultimate blended threats to confidentiality of information. There may be cases of government-on-government espionage, that highlight the ‘modern’ squared or cubed variant of traditional intrusion & spying (information exfiltration) work. But moreover, there will be incidents much publicised where business-on-business espionage, possibly helped by shady government agencies, is outed as more than a theoretical possibility. Of course, you all know that this is nothing new, but the general public will demand an answer from some Board members and State secretaries here and there (literally) of victims and perpetrators (denial becoming less if at all plausible). These answers will be the definition of lame. The infosec industry will rush to develop (maybe not yet fully utilise) the market; contra but hush-hush, also pro…

Certificate vulnerabilities will be shown to be a factor of import. Yesterday’s unprotected printer WiFi, will be the current certificates being stolen or manipulated. Bot victimisation of clients will be less by trojan planting and more by means of hijacking certificates (‘Certjacking’? You read it here, first! [Update to add: well, in this spelling …]) to do … sort of low-level ID / trust theft. This will not be explained nearly well enough to the general public to get them concerned, but with tech-savvy CIOs and IT managers, this will give a stir. And major sweeps through the own infra. And not much by means of future better cert management.

Crypto-failures. Cryptography, as far as actually implemented at all (some ‘implementations’ may embarassingly be found out to be done on paper only!), will show to have failures in at least two ways: procedural errors will lead to (much publicly visible) non-availability of information, e.g., when asymmetry isn’t implemented well due to lack of understanding of bureaucrat procedures writing committees mumbling and fumbling about; and by public demonstration of bad technical implementation, the coding being so shoddy that the strength of crypto will drop to n-day crackability (with 0 < n < 2 I guess).

Quantum computing, on the plus side, for crypto, will see its first practical proofs of concept. Where the PoCs are used to protect the most secret of some government’s information, but with that information having to be used by the most bumbling-about officials hence the overall end user -to- end user effectiveness being close to zero and helping any and all attackers (rogues, organised or not; state(-sponsored) organisations, etc.) to learn about tentative, among them maybe class-hack, attack vectors.

Methodological innovation in information security. As already discussed earlier, and here, and here, and with OSSTMM, and before that in quite some other posts as well. Now, also Docco joined the fray, advising SMEs from the accountancy side … Which shows this prediction for 2014 is already hatching.
On this item, we will see much improvement. E.g., combining the OSSTMM framework with SABSA. Combining the rebooted CIA with the fresh install of the (alternative to the) ‘15.5 risk’ management approach via the OSSTMM framework. And so on. Interesting! Want to contribute!

I’ll leave these here for you to follow up. When (not if) I’m right on any of the above: Yeah, see? Told you so! And if (not when) not all five are square-on: Hey, they’re only predictions! Don’t shoot the messenger that only conveyed the message of the Great Engineer Behind The Scene.
Though I would like to receive a bottle of good (I mean, really good) red Bourgogne for each prediction that shows to be somewhat right; at the good side of 50-50. Any takers?
The opposite, I can unfortunately not do as it would have way too many takers…

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord