It’s a very retro moment that Sly Stallone has a new movie out in 2013 with Walter Hill! In 1984, almost 30 years ago, Hill had a big movie out that was also very retro at the time called  Streets of Fire. Here’s a clip from that film

While this HuffPo piece is about a new service from Vine, Twitter’s ‘Vine’ App Users Can No Longer Find Friends Via Facebook, it also has a great rundown of all the feuding going on between social media companies these days. For example…

(Facebook and Twitter) have been feuding since this summer, when Facebook announced it would buy Instagram for $1 billion despite Twitter’s reported prior offer, supposedly worth $525 million, for the photo-sharing service. Twitter responded to the snub by preventing Instagram users from syncing with their Twitter followers. Facebook followed up by making it impossible for Twitter users to embed Instagram pictures in their tweets.

Twitter and Facebook are certainly not the only feuding tech companies. In August, Craigslist stopped allowing search engines to index user’s ads in order to try to defeat competitors like Craiggers. In early January, Google experimented with blocking Google Maps on Windows phones, although that experiment didn’t take.

I expect alot more of these to go on over the next few years. Eventually there will be winners, but also the social media business will be disrupted and displaced by other technology waves (think: mobile platforms and cloud computing and that the social media companies will no longer be a central/go to place. It will happen: ask AOL and various portal sites left by the side of the road). Until that happens, expect sharing to get harder, not easier.

O’Reilly media is doing something I haven’t seen before: using github as a repository for a book. Github is a famous code repository, and I have seen it extended to include government data. But this sees like a new way to use it. Expect more non-traditional uses of github. In the meantime see: http://radar.oreilly.com/2013/01/open-government-files-released.html

There’s a fascinating study here highlighted in Nature News & Comment that dogs and their domestication may have been a result of farming. Key quote:

Most humans have also evolved to more easily digest starches². Lindblad-Toh suggests that the rise of farming, beginning around 10,000 years ago in the Middle East, led to the adaptations in both species. “This is a striking sign of parallel evolution,” she says. “It really shows how dogs and humans have evolved together to be able to eat starch.”

Another interesting fact is that dogs have a gene that allows them to digest starch, a gene that the wolf does not have.

Well worth a read.

Really? Really! Amy Webb was not having much luck (to put it mildly) with dating sites, so she applied her excellent data analytical skills to come up with the best way to redo her profile to find her perfect match. See Hacking the Hyperlinked Heart – WSJ.com, for the details on how she did it. Well worth reading.

I am not familar with what other companies — including IBM — are doing in this area, but I think this story is impressive: Microsoft Global Foundations Services Blog : Microsoft Recycles Waste to Provide Clean Power for Data Center R&D.

Essentially Microsoft is using manure/poop/call it what you will to deliver power that they use to drive their data centers. I think this is impressive. I hope this solution spreads (no pun intended) to other power users. Kudos to them.

George Benson used to be huge. And for good reason.

This video is not special, but this song is, to me. Here’s George Benson- Give Me The Night

It seems incredible, but you can see the results in the video below.

Details on how Ben Krasnow built the CT Scanner can be found via clicking through.

Even though it is only a chicken, it is amazing to think about it being hacked like this. It also points the way to lower cost scanners.

(Via Tim O’Reilly.)

Yes, the Royal Canadian Mint has produced a Million Dollar Coin.

There are not many of them (five in all). And “why did the Royal Canadian Mint make the world’s purest and largest gold bullion coin? Because we can.”.

If that’s a good enough reason for a million dollar coin, it should be a good enough reason for a trillion dollar coin. 🙂

…then you should read this: The Top Five Career Regrets – Daniel Gulati – Harvard Business Review. What’s the number one regret? I wish I hadn’t taken the job for the money.It’s a good article and one anyone looking at their career should read.

If you are like me, you are getting more and more spam with little in it but a request to open a file. There’s two reasons for this. First, the less text, the more likelihood the spam will get past spam filters. Second, the opening of that file will potentially infect your computer with any number of problems. For example, if you open a PDF file, this page – — PDF Security Issues — describes some of the problems that could occur. Here’s a snippet from that page:

Javascript: Adobe Reader (and possibly other readers) contains a Javascript engine similar to the ones used by web browsers, but with a slightly different API to manipulate PDF content dynamically or to control some viewer features. Potentially dangerous features are restricted for obvious security reasons. However, this means that PDF documents are not purely static, and for example some actions may be used to fool a user (popups) or to send e-mails and HTTP requests automatically. Furthermore, experience shows that many recent vulnerabilities have been exploited using Javascript in PDF.

Launch actions: a PDF file may launch any command on the operating system, after user confirmation (popup message). Different command lines may be specified for Windows, Unix and Mac. On Windows only, parameters can be provided for the command. Until Adobe Reader 9.3.2, the CVE-2010-1240 vulnerability made it possible to fool users by modifying the text of the popup message. Since Adobe Reader 9.3.3, a blacklist restricts file formats that can be opened, blocking executable files by default (but a way to bypass it has been found, and finally fixed in v9.3.4).

Embedded files: a PDF file may contain attached files, which can be extracted and opened from the reader. This trick may be used to hide malicious executables in order to bypass some antivirus and content analysis engines. Fortunately, Adobe Reader refuses to open embedded files if their extension is part of a blacklist, such as EXE, BAT, CMD, etc. However, this blacklist is not perfect and formats such as HTML or Python scripts may be embedded in PDF and launched from Adobe Reader.

This is for PDF files. Similar things can happen with other files that can launch actions or embed files.

If you don’t know the person sending you the email, don’t open the file, even if you are curious. Just delete it.

Over at the Root is a superb conversation between Quentin Tarantino and Henry Louis Gates on a wide range of topics, first and foremost being Tarantino’s new film, but also such things as:

A Django Unchained and Inglourious Basterds trilogy? The historical accuracy of the n-word in Django? The unlikely connection between the slavery-themed film and The Birth of a Nation? How Django fits into Hollywood’s overplayed, often offensive white-savior stereotype? You name it, and The Root‘s editor-in-chief, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Quentin Tarantino — whose latest film, Django Unchained, a “postmodern slave-narrative Western,” as Gates describes it, opened on Christmas Day — likely covered it in this exhaustive interview.

Well worth a look. But note: spoilers. They try to avoid them, but they appear in the interview.

Why? As this article shows:

In summary, files encrypted with BitLocker, PGP and Truecrypt are safe from this product as long as volumes are opened or mounted and then closed and demounted in an orderly way; doing this destroys the insecure memory dump. For extra safety, hibernation should be disabled.

In other words, to be safe, prevent as little as possible from being left hanging out in memory.

Taken from BitLocker, PGP and TrueCrypt encryption weakened by new attack tool – Techworld.com

There has been much talk about the violence in Quentin Tarantino’s new film, “Django Unchained”. I think two things should be mentioned.

First, Tarantino is no less violent than other directors such as Steven Spielberg. If anything, Spielberg can be more violent at times. I think Spielberg gets a pass on the amount of violence in his films for a number of reasons: the violence is seen as historic and not exploitive, he doesn’t have violence in all his films, and many of his films have an overall positive theme or message. That aside, when he uses violence, it is (at least to me) more shocking than Tarantino’s. For example, here is part of the Omaha Beach scene from “Saving Private Ryan”.

The actual scene goes on for much longer, culminating in the Americans slaughtering the Germans (or more like Romanians) coming out of the pill box. It’s a very long extended scene of hyper violence, and it is only one of many in the film. This can also be seen in his film, “Schindler’s List”. This is not to say the violence is wrong: it is very appropriate for the film he is making. But this is also true of Tarantino.

Second, as bad as it was in the film, the treatment of slaves and later freed slaves could be much worse than anything Tarantino depicted. As one example, this story of Henry Smith has stuck with me as a result of reading just how horrific it was. This passage is from Wikipedia, but if you follow the New York Times link at the bottom of the page in Wikipedia, you can read more detail of the story. Henry Smith was accused on killing a young white girl named Myrtle. He fled the town the crime occurred in, but..

was captured and brought back to Paris (Texas) by train, where a mob of an estimated 10,000 whites placed him on a carnival float and carried him through town and out into a prairie. There, he was placed upon a scaffold and tortured for fifty minutes by members of the girl’s family, who thrust hot iron brands into his flesh, starting with his feet and legs and working upward to his head. The family members involved included Myrtle’s father, uncles, and twelve-year-old brother. A February 2, 1893 article in the New York Sun stated that, “Every groan from the fiend, every contortion of his body was cheered by the thickly packed crowd.” Eventually, the hot irons were thrust into his eye sockets and down his throat. Afterwards, finding he was still breathing, the crowd poured oil on him and set him on fire. According to some newspaper accounts, Smith remained alive during the burning. He is said to have torn himself away from the post and fallen off the scaffolding, where he perished. The crowd then fought over the hot ashes to collect his bones and teeth as souvenirs.

Tarantino uses violence as part of how he communicates a story, as well as to viscerally engage his audience. It may seem shocking and excessive to some, but in the context of other filmmakers and in the context of the story he is telling, it makes sense in his latest film.

…then you likely should be very wary about what you share there too.

Randi Zuckerberg, Mark’s sister and former marketing director of Facebook, posted a photo to her Facebook. She was less than thrilled when someone reposted it to Twitter.

Yes, she is not just the CEO’s sister, but she worked there.

I like this photo, though I can see why she didn’t like to have it shared. She should talk to her brother, who is infamous for saying “Privacy is Dead – Deal With It” (Mark Zuckerberg – contentgroup).

For more, including the photo, see Buzzfeed’s article, Mark Zuckerberg’s Sister Complains Of Facebook Privacy Breach.

This is a must read story on how Jack Klugman used his TV show, “Quincy”, to overcome political opposition and help people with orphan disaeases get the medicines they desparately needed: Jack Klugman’s secret, lifesaving legacy. It’s an great story, well told.

Jack Klugman recently died. May he rest in peace and may he be remembered as much as for this as being a much beloved actor.

 

Yes it is, despite everything. And speaking of  It’s a Wonderful Life, it looks like the entire thing is posted on YouTube:

Merry Christmas and god bless.

It’s a Wonderful Life – YouTube

It’s December 20th. You need Christmas music. Good Christmas music. Here you go:

If you want to buy it, you can get it here.

The Civil wars “O Come O Come Emmanuel” – YouTube

This New York Times article has a good summary of where things stand with G.M. It starts with this: NYT: U.S. to Sell Stake in G.M., and it has this money quote

Nearly four years after what became a $49.5 billion bailout, the Treasury Department announced on Wednesday that it would sell 200 million shares back to the company for $5.5 billion, then sell an additional 300 million shares by early 2014.

Currently, the exit would produce a loss of more than $12 billion for taxpayers

It’s seems to me that while the timing of this is partly a post-electoral move, it is also a realization on the U.S. Government’s part that it was never going to get its money back from G.M. directly. It was time to cut the strings and move on. Also, I think Americans do benefit from the auto industry still being alive, and while Ford didn’t benefit directly the way G.M. did, Ford did indirectly benefit from having others in the automotive business besides themselves. I think Americans benefit from having Ford and G.M. competing, assuming that the latter can turn itself around. Finally, if G.M. does sink in the future instead of swim, then it has no one to blame but itself.

(Thanks to Jaimewoo for this link.)

Videos of robots created by Boston Dynamics have been circulating alot around the Web lately. Here’s one of them, an older one called RISE

Imagine that crawling up your balcony or nearby tree. Or imagine dozens of them, all over your house.

I find it interesting that Boston Dynamics, which is in the business of making military robots, is also very good at promoting themselves with their videos. People that would not watch videos of jet planes or artillery are fascinated by their videos, even if the former videos and weapons could be just as sophisticated as the latter. Boston Dynamics is good at downplaying the military role of their robots, but I am positive that the expectation of the military is that these robots could eventually be used in warfare. (The U.S. military is not funding these machines to help you clean your house.) We watch the videos, partly in admiration and partly in fear.

I think one of the reasons that these videos do well is the air of fear they possess. The robots aren’t doing domestic things. They look harmful, even if they aren’t shown doing anything harmful or potentially harmful. People that have commented on them note that. That’s not necessarily the fault of Boston Dynamics: humans have been worried about robots for along time. (Asimov’s Laws of Robotics are what they are for a reason.) But Boston Dynamics doesn’t do anything to dissuade us that we shouldn’t fear these robots, either. We fear robots, most of all for their potential to overwhelm us. The videos by Boston Dynamics show us that robots are well on their way to doing that.

It’s just a matter of time before we see videos of swarms of small robots or drones like in Minority Report. Or large troops of headless biped robots attacking an outpost. Or a pack of robot dogs pursuing soldiers. This, as much as anything, is the future.

This blog post, Stop your bitching; you’re not paying for it! – Sensei Blogs, is typical of some of the critics who argue that users of Instagram have no right to get mad. If you agree with the assumptions of the author, it makes sense. However, I am here to argue that you should not agree with those assumptions.

First off, I would argue that the title of this blog post could apply not to you, but to Instagram, Facebook, etc. They should be delighted they are getting such a sweet deal. Not only all this free content from you, but they are getting free promotion / advertising from you and they are getting your social graph…ALL FOR FREE.  Quite the deal, yes? Many companies would love all that free content and advertisers. Somehow social media sites feel that they have a right to it. They are wrong: they do not have a right to it. Look at MySpace, or Friendster, or any of the many start-ups trying to get your content and promotion and social graph. That stuff that you possess, that you create, has alot of value, and no one has a right to it.

You might then argue: my content is not valuable. First off, it is very difficult to say what is of value. I have blog posts that have only a few views, and blog posts that have tens of thousands of views. That’s just me. Multiply that by many bloggers and you have a Long Tail in action. And if your social media site (e.g. Instagram) is seen as valuable by a lot of people, then big name companies will flock to it and bring alot more value to it. Likewise, if no one cares about your site anymore (e.g. My Space), then you can forget about getting big name companies to your site unless you are willing to pay them a lot of money. That’s right: even those trivial blog posts and photos of cats add up one way or another.

Furthermore, the service that social media sites are providing is not all that valuable. I am sure their IT people work hard. But really, is there anything about the technology used by Instagram, or Facebook, or any social media company that is so advanced, so revolutionary, that you think: if I don’t use this site, my life won’t be the same? If anything, the sites that provide you email provide a much more valuable service than social media sites. Likewise, the technology of social media sites is not difficult to recreate. What makes Facebook powerful is not the souped up PHP code that they write: it’s the social graph you bring and the activity you engage in there. People use Facebook despite the technology, not because of it. People use Instagram not because of the filters, but because of the others that they want to share photos with.

You might argue: well, they need to make money. Sorry, but no one is entitled to that. Ask journalists and other quality writers: they provide a much more valuable service than social media sites, and they have a devil of a time making money. Same with many folks creating things on the web. Everyone is having a hard time making money, and social media sites are no more entitled to it than anyone else. Is that good? No. Is it the way it is for many at this time? Yes.

Which brings me to Apple and the App Store. Apple has a different model than social media sites. With Apple, you create content (i.e., an app) and if it is of good quality, you can put it in the App Store and make money from it. The chances of you making money are slim, but the chances of you making money on Instagram or Facebook is none. Likewise if you publish an e-book on Amazon. You have some chance of making some money from it. I think the way of the future is in content aggregators that pay content creators for their content. Aggregators that respect your content, not try and rip it off.

When people say: “if you are not paying, you are the product, not the customer”, tell them that they have it wrong. If you are not paying, you are the staff, not the product. And as the staff, you expect to benefit somehow.  Demand payment or good service, and if you don’t get it, go elsewhere. You aren’t beholden to any site, and the material you create has value to you and lots of other people. Expect more for it. Don’t settle for being taken advantage of and used. You deserve better.

Over time, the sites that provide more value to users will win over sites that don’t. Business models that rip off users will become archaic. You can be skeptical, but I would advise any start-up that wants to win work on developing a tangible rewards program. Over time those will companies will be the winners.

And while they are for a good cause, this is one more step to making drones acceptible. Read Google Drones Launch In Africa (from Fast Company).

Great late night driving music….

BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge continues to provide great music. Scour YouTube for more great covers and performances.

Rita Ora Frank Ocean Swim Good BBC Radio 1 Xtra Live Lounge 2012 – YouTube

It is how women in Egypt are using social media to prevent sexual assault during demonstrations in Tahrir Square. See this article in Al Jazeera English for more details: Tahrir’s bodyguards.

You can also follow @tahrirbodyguard on Twitter.

 

I love this piece of music, and now we are approaching Christmas, I can blog about it. 🙂

I came across this surrendipitously today on YouTube.  Sometimes the best things in life arrive that way.

Enjoy.

O Come, Emmanuel – (Piano/Cello) – ThePianoGuys – YouTube

A good article from Reuters on how IBM (my company) is building An operating system for cities. Each city is using a facility from IBM (Intelligent Operations Center (IOC)) to solve problems that they are having, be it water management, traffic management, what have you. If you’d like to know more about IOC, go here ( Intelligent Operations Center).

I got this today, and while it has the markings of being legit, the first question you have to ask yourself is why Yahoo! would use a web site other than Yahoo! in emails to you. Also, why would the email come from someone other than Yahoo! (And for you Gmail snobs, you may see them for Gmail as well). Needless to say, it is a phishing attempt and should be deleted.

—- Text below this line —-

Dear Account User,

Your mailbox has exceeded the limit of 30 GB, which is as set by your
manager, you are currently at 30.9GB, very soon you will not be able to
create new e-mail to send or receive again until you validate your
mailbox.To re-validate your mailbox, click on the link below and follow
the instruction for your upgrade.

http://4discorecords.com/templates/atomic/new/administrator_restore.htm

Sincerely,

Email Administrator.

Copyright © 2012 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.Copyright/IP Policy |
Terms of Service

What is this?

Well, if you guessed “minesweeper”, you’d be correct. Actually, reading about it here, Mine Kafon: The low-tech, high-design tumbleweed minesweeper – CNN.com, I got to thinking about something else. You can see the objections to the idea on the CNN article. It is a classic case, though, of someone being too conservative in their objections and missing the point. The creator of this recognizes the limitations. What the critic doesn’t recognize, though, is the limits of his criticisms. To me, any and all approaches should be taken to removing land mines. If this idea helps, so much the better.

When proposing new ideas, look out for those who are too conservative in their objections. Be it a small idea, or a big one like this.

Here’s the NYTimes.com obituary for Zig Ziglar, 86, Motivational Speaker and Author, who died recently. The obit is worth reading to get a sense of the man. He was a top notch motivational speaker, getting paid $50,000 for each one. And according to the NYTimes obit…

He had a formula: Prepare extensively every time, be funny (“Every seven to nine minutes I’ll have them laughing”), and frequently reinforce the broader message (“I make certain that every five minutes I’m giving them a concept, an idea, a process, a hope builder”).

It sounds obvious, but when I think of how many presentations that I have had to listen to over the years, it’s anything but. I think anyone giving a talk in the near future should review it and restructure it with this formula in mind. (Yes, anyone can be funny. Even trying to be funny in a self deprecating way can be appreciated by an audience.)

This version is particularly wonderful. Sarah Vaughn was so young and lovely at the time when this was filmed. And no one can do this classic better than her. Here’s Sarah Vaughn, The Nearness of You (YouTube)

How? By moving this way: Senate Judiciary Committee Approves Overhaul of Electronic Communications Privacy Act – NYTimes.com. As the Times says:

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved a bill that would strengthen privacy protection for e-mails by requiring law enforcement officials to obtain a warrant from a judge in most cases before gaining access to messages in individual accounts stored electronically.

Someone on Twitter said that we should thank General Petraeus for this, and they may be correct. His recent situation likely has lead to bipartisan support for updating the law and giving more protection to email (which is more or less the only mail people send or receive these days)

I believe laws for email and other IT need to be updated more frequently (this law was on the books in 1986). Not as often as tech does, but it should be regularly reviewed for relvance.

It’s good to see New York city taking advantage of existing infrastructure (pay phone pods) to make their city more digital: First of 250 internet-connected touchscreens replace pay phones in New York City | The Verge. It is not as novel as this use of the pay phone pods (How New York Pay Phones Became Guerrilla Libraries – Arts & Lifestyle – The Atlantic Cities) but it will be more useful.A great example of the city becoming a computer.

It is good to see New York leading in efforts to make theirs a digital city. See also this article, More NY Subway Stations Will Get Wi-Fi, Cell Service – Personal-tech – Wireless Technology – BYTE. Digital cities need user interfaces (like the touchscreens), but they also need infrastructure (the wireless network). Now they need more APIs and other components and subsystems if they are going to truly become something users can use and programmers can program. But it’s getting there.

While lots of cities will be pursuing such ideas, I think New York making progress like this will help propel alot of other cities to become more digital.

(Standard disclaimer: this post expresses my own thoughts and opinions and not those of my employer.)

..if you are this jellyfish

The NYTimes has an excellent article on the Immortal Jellyfish, here: Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality? – NYTimes.com.

Well worth a read. Maybe only Taxes are the only thing certain anymore.

It seems a universal thing to slam Black Friday. And the excessive of it is a bad thing, for certain. However, here’s six reasons why it is a good things.

1. It helps you get your Christmas shopping out of the way.
2. It helps you save on your Christmas shopping.
3. It gives you a chance to get away from your family on American Thanksgiving 🙂
4. It helps retailers plan their year. Retail is a tough business. This helps make it less difficult.
5. It’s forces retailers to compete for your business by offering you good deals.
6. It’s voluntary. No one is making you go and shop. Don’t like Black Friday? Don’t go.

It is very likely that Black Friday is eventually going to blow up. In Canada, Boxing Day sales (which used to happen on December 26th and are just as bad if not worse than Black Friday) have become diluted over time. Now it’s Boxing Week sales, and sales before Christmas, etc. in Canada. I expect the same thing will happen with Black Friday. In the meantime, those keen to shop and save should get out there. The rest should enjoy the season and relax and unwind.

 

While lots of office space still conforms to cubicleland, more and more of it are looking like this: The new Google HQ in Toronto is better than your office. It’s a good article, and you should check it out to see what the new HQ looks like. (Yes, it has the ubiquitous foosball table, but it has a nice Toronto mural on the wall).

I think this is going to be the way it is or should be for offices of the future. For example, if you go and look up jobs at Medium (e.g., this one,Infrastructure Engineer — Work at Medium — Medium), you will see that they are promoting their stylish workplace at the same time they are looking for skilled people to work for them. And why not? Better work environments give companies competitive advantages when it comes to attracting talent. Even mobile work spaces like the ING DIRECT Canada Downtown Café in Toronto has a similar style to it.

If you want people to work for you now and in the future, you need to provide a similar if not better work environment. This is the new vernacular for the workplace.

It may sound ridiculous, “The upcoming robot infestation problem”, so consider this:

1. Build your own drones: iStrike Shuttle | Dream Cheeky
2. Wifi everywhere: More NY Subway Stations Will Get Wi-Fi, Cell Service – Personal-tech – Wireless Technology – BYTE

Mobile technology is going to be going in a new direction. It will no longer need to be held by you. It will be very cheap and very mobile. You can release it into the physical world and it can go places for you and monitor or deliver things for you, as #1 shows. Instead of stalking your ex on Facebook, you can stalk them by releasing a drone to circle their yard. Want to see if someone is doing something they shouldn’t? Send a drone (or 10).

The newer drones won’t continue to be as primitive as #1: they’ll be small and sophisticated. Just as handheld devices have become more and more sophisticated, so too will the new personal drones. And what will the drones use to communicate back and forth? Why the new wifi that will be built out in our cities. (See #2).  People will be able to release drones onto the ground, into the air, and they will send information back via metro wifi and determine future information based on feedback from their base.

Already there are primitive drone type devices for sale in electronic stores. About the only thing that will prevent drones from having more of a future will be cost or capability. But if the cost goes down, expect to see alot more drones in use and walking or flying in a neighborhood near you. What will people do with them? If they are general purpose enough, you will see all sorts of uses for personal and professional drones and robots.

Finally, there is no guarantee they will be harmless drones, either. More likely they could be like this:

Why? Two reasons at least. One, she has lots of great books on wine you can pick up as gifts, including ‘Unquenchable’ and ‘Red, White and Drunk All Over’. Her latest just came out in paperback.

Two, she can help you save money and get great wine if you go here: Wine Reviews and Food Pairings.

There’s lots of other good reasons to visit her site but those are two great ones to get you started.

Cheers!

P.S. Mobile phone users, check out her mobile app as well.

This: Facebook ‘Security’ Phone Number Being Sold To Advertisers – Business Insider

Yep. The phone number they said was security purposes is now being used to target you more effectively for advertisements

You should just assume that any information that you provide Facebook will be used against you. No wonder they are rapidly becoming the next version of MySpace.