Seven Deadly Sins

It is that time of year when people think about the 7 deadly sins.

• Envy
• Lust
• Sloth
• Pride
• Wrath
• Avarice
• Gluttony

Here is a list of seven deadly IT sins.

For example, Fisher says this year's mortgage debt crisis might not have been so severe if the IT organizations in lending institutions had paid more attention to data quality and accuracy.

"A lot of the data collected from mortgage buyers was incorrect," says Fisher. "There are easy technical ways to validate this information and incorporate it into the system, but it was never done. They just took the information provided at face value. The mortgages were wrapped up in financial packages and sold to mutual funds and banks, but without any attempt to validate whether they were good financial purchases. Whether this was the fault of the business or IT is hard to say. But it's a problem technology could have solved."

Reverse Polich Notation

RPN is of course the logic used in HP calculators. A very nice comparison of RPN with DAL is here.

Good Ideas, Through the Looking Glass - By Nick Wurth

Extremistan and black swans

Interview with thinker and investor Nassim Nicholas Taleb on measuring risk and why it is so difficult.

Alan Greenspan lowered interest rates thinking it would help the economy. All it did was push banks to take risks—hidden risks. Do you realize that we don't understand globalization? Globalization increases Extremistan. That's one problem with this Tom Friedman guy—he [the bestselling author of The World Is Flat, which argues the advantages of globalization in the internet age] didn't seem to understand the very simple dynamics that globalization forces redundancy out of the system. And whenever you don't have redundancy, you have Extremistan. Things are way too efficient, so the smallest mistake blows up. We depend so much on the internet. Tomorrow, if there's a problem in Bangalore, we're toast for a long time, you see?

Taleb's take on the business world "...I found nothing interesting about the details of the business world – inelegant, dull, pompous, greedy, unintellectual, selfish, and boring.”

Another article about the financial crisis

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7073131.stm

The Financial Crises

Well I guess the good news is that it has kept terror off the front page.

Noting original from me so just a link to this great post about the financial crises.

The Financial Crises explained in pictures.

Sub Prime Cartoon

View SlideShare presentation .

Gaming the banks

Greed is the incentive that drives hedge funds, those that don't make profits go bankrupt and die. Here is a nice article about how the Hedge funds are gaming current market conditions as controlled by US Treasury. The smartest people in the room have worked out that the US Government will pay the ransom of a Treasury bailout every time the viability the of a large corporation is threatened . We all understand that paying a ransom only helps in the short term, in the long term another hostage will be taken. Why don't the people in US treasury understand this?

Why avoiding harm is dangerous

Time to round up those sacred cows for some slaughter! This post highlights (with graphics) how organisations come to be paralysed by risk aversion.

Pictures that tell and sell

Most people are very visual so it makes sense to use graphics to sell your message.

I just loved this post that includes a raft of clever images.

The clever people at commoncraft show that complex ideas can be presented in a form that is easy to digest.

Executive or not?

Dick Cheney is arguing that the office of Vice President is not part of the executive and therefore does not have to transfer records to the national archives. Some might wonder what would happen if the Vice President has to act as president? This will make a good study for future archivists, is it easier to shred paper or delete files?

Google causes United to crash

If it's in the paper it must be true? Does anyone believe this any more? How about what you read on the internet?

A reasonable person might wonder just how much research is done before so called experts make financial decisions. But if you are a financial fund manager it seems you can bet your clients money on an article you see on google without checking.

What this does show is the amount of credibility that Google has. I wonder how long it will be before scammers decide to game this for their own benefit?

The story from google perspective here.

Three little pictures

Nice but not particularly clever









This is much better
















And this is awesome!

Blu Ray will live on - Sony

Nice to read that Sony believes that Blu-Ray is here to stay. Their argument seems to be that just as paper would not die and leave a paperless office, movies will remain on some form of physical media. That media will be Blu-Ray according to Sony.

The best part is Sony claiming that "movie fans won". Yes, no doubt the interests of movie fans was top of the list when Blu-Ray standards were developed.

Education.au seminar- keynote speaker Jimmy Wales

23 April 2007

On 23 April Education.au presented a seminar with Jimmy Wales as the keynote speaker. Jimmy Wales is the founder of Wikipedia. The theme was how knowledge is created.

http://www.educationau.edu.au/jahia/Jahia/challenging

Jimmy provided an interesting overview of his vision to give every person on the planet access to the sum of all human knowledge. The history of Wikipedia is interesting; (according to his Wikipedia entry) Jimmy Wales made his money trading on the currency market. He is now independently wealthy.

Accessibility verses gatekeeper model. Wikipedia is open for anyone to edit and change. This is a major shift from traditional models based on control and limited access where a limited group of people are responsible for updating information. Wikipedia by contrast lets anyone make changes, each change being recorded in a history so anyone can see previous changes. Errors are washed out by the sheer weight of numbers. This change in authority was presented as one of the main factors of resistance to Wikipedia. Some of the teachers and students present indicating that Wikipedia is banned in schools.

He made the point that Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia and as such should never be regarded as more than a summary of the existing knowledge in an area.

Wikipedia policy prohibits original research and requires that article be verifiable, ie have links to other works.

Pushed the idea that textbooks would become free, out of copyright texts would be put online and then updated. The cost would be from printing not creating.

Neutrality of articles is maintained by having a diverse group of administrators.

Much discussion on why people contribute, Jimmy showed a graph of Wikipedia usage with a sharp upward spike corresponding to substantial negative press of Wikipedia in the US. Suggests that any press good or bad is actually good for raising interest and hence contribution. The alternative to Wikipedia, Citizenopedia was mentioned.

Much discussion on rights ownership, Wikipedia using creative commons license to enable free use of its material.

Next billion internet users will be from China/India. Already one of main websites is Chinese Google competitor. In general take up linked to broadband take up in countries. Alexia.com puts Wikipedia as 9^th most popular site.

Wikipedia is banned in China, does not intend to offer a filtered version as does Google.

Cost of running Wikipedia low, 1 million per year, raising to 2-3 million next year. Bandwidth cost given as $25,000 a month- figures in USD.

Not a lot on folksonomies- except for mention in Nel’s address to the audience.

Repeated several times that problems should not be solved ahead of time- don’t look for problems. Much easier to solve as they arise. Any publicity is good publicity.

Key take away points were trust, accessibility and initiation.

Mad Men on Twitter

I have never seen the TV show Mad Men although the stills look pretty cool. Of more interest is this story about how DMCA wanted to kill of a lot of free advertising on twitter.

Who could imagine that? Can you imagine going to Executive and saying, lets spend a lot of money to kill a load of advertising and simultaneously generate bad will from our most loyal fan base. No worries mate, they would go for that.

Success in a Web 2.0 world

Recently I heard a very interesting talk by Victoria Carrington. One of the ideas she raised was that communication is vital. In fact she argued that success in a culture is determined by your ability to communicate. That statement is full of meaning.

I am pretty sure that McCain who does not use the web won't read this. However one of the factors that really sets Obama apart from McCain is how he is using the web to comunicate. Will it lead to success?

Who is Queen ?

Helen Mirren provides more than just beauty and acting ability, in an interview she gives what must be the best reason yet to give up cocaine.

Briefly, like many vices, outlawing drugs only puts the supply outside of the law and reach of regulations. In this wild environment anything goes and in true Darwinian fashion the most ruthless rise to the top buy removing the less ruthless/able competitors.

Not even the Queen can stop human nature.

Why managers cheat

Evolutionary theory predicts that if there is an advantage in cheating a system then, cheating will happen. This experiment shows how that might have implications for real world managers.

...when we measure everything by rate of return on investment and profit, we're going to be measuring the capability of managers to cheat the system.

In other words they don't cheat, they are simply gaming the system.

The answer is in having carefully thought out tests. For example an anatomy course aims to teach students the name of every bone in the body. How to test? Ask each each student to name 4 bones pointed out at random by the examiner. The only way to pass this exam is to know the names of every bone in the body. Knowing the exam format will not help and there is no need for obscurity to ensure the exam process is fair.

Some might argue that such behaviour makes corporate executives no different to criminals.

Rubbish Olympic coverage from Ch7

Really have to wonder what the people who run Channel 7 are thinking. After spending all that money on extra digital channels it seemed a no brainer to use them to show different events. Obviously too hard to do. Or more cynically no competition meaning no need to innovate. SBS anyone?

http://www.zdnet.com.au/blogs/fullduplex/soa/How-Seven-blew-the-internet-Olympics/0,139033349,339291224,00.htm

Pursit of the snail

Tom Coates debunks the idea of rapid change taking over the world in this blog.

My sense of these media organisations that use this argument of incredibly rapid technology change is that they're screaming that they're being pursued by a snail and yet they cannot get away! 'The snail! The snail!', they cry. 'How can we possibly escape!?. The problem being that the snail's been moving closer for the last twenty years one way or another and they just weren't paying attention......

The only way that snails catch you up is if you're too self-absorbed to see them coming.