Employees waste two days per month surfing the Internet at work.

"irrelevant Web browsing." Known as "wilfing," and apparently people are wasting two days a month at work doing it.

 

Tens of millions of Internet users waste time surfing online at work and at home. And one-quarter of those time wasters spend as much as 33 percent of their time doing it.

 

There's a generation gap, too – those aged 25 and under were three times as likely to wilf away the hours as those over 55.

 

Wilf stands for "What was I looking for?" – as in "I went online to look up stock prices for the boss but found this really funny story at the Onion.com. And did you see that editorial at the Monitor site about Iraq? And then there was a super deal on iPods at apple.com, and I had to buy a few tunes when I was there … ah, hmmm, what was I looking for?"

 

"It's part of what I call the rise of the miscellaneous," he writes in an e-mail.

 

"The big disadvantage is that we get lost all the ... time," Weinburger continues. "It's artificial befuddlement, but we're being befuddled by abundance. That strikes me as better than never being able to lose your way because there's such a scarcity of ways to go." … now what was I doing again?

Human brain a marvel? Not if you ask this guy.

Newsweek: human brain from a Johns Hopkins neuroscientist: "A mouse brain with extra toppings,"and for that matter, the mouse brain is a lizard brain with some extra stuff, and the whole lot is a cobbled-together mess. That's evolution for you. The story is essentially a book review plus profile, and a refreshing break from the usual wonderful-mind stuff one reads. It also seeks to explain why dreams seem, sort of, to make sense. Thank reptiles for that, perhaps.

Is The Term Paper Dead?

The Washington Post has picked up a piece he wrote about cut-and-paste plagiarism: "Plagiarism today is heavily invested with morality surrounding intellectual honesty. That is laudable. But truly distinguishing plagiarism is a matter of intent. Did I mean to copy, was it accidental (a trick of memory), was it polygenesis[?] ... Young people today are simply too far ahead of anything schools might do to curb their recycling efforts. Beyond simply selling used term papers online, Web sites such as StudentofFortune.com allow students to post specific questions and pay for answers." The author argues that in the era we're entering, schools need to rely far less on term papers in assessing students.

Thin Clients are the New Black...

 ... on the ledger sheet, that is. Because according to a new report, it turns out that using these "super slimmed down" alternatives to the PC could reduce your cost of ownership by up to 25 percent, as compared to an office equipped with traditional desktops. Thin clients have been around for years; they are simply a computer that uses a central server for processing activities, where you send your keystrokes and mouse clicks to the server, and you see what is happening on a monitor at your desk. It's very much like having a desktop PC, except that thin clients typically have no almost no moving parts and little memory. This reduces their power consumption dramatically; according to the report, they can use up to 50 percent less energy than a typical PC. No word on the global impact of switching to thin clients, but if just the 10 million or so PCs in operation in the UK would be switched out for thin clients, businesses could save £78m a year and cut CO2 emission by 485,000 tonnes.

http://www.webitpr.com/release_detail.asp?ReleaseID=5616

 

30 Days With Vista - Shot me now

"Hardocp.com has published "30 days with Vista" — with the same author from "30 days with Linux" doing the evaluation. And he doesn't like it. From the article: 'Based on my personal experiences with Vista over a 30 day period, I found it to be a dangerously unstable operating system, which has caused me to lose data [...] Any consideration of the fine details comes in second to that one inescapable conclusion. This is an unstable operating system.'"

 

From: slashdot.org

PowerPoint Bad For Learning

"This article in the Sydney Morning Herald reporting on research done at The University of NSW suggests the use of Microsoft PowerPoint (and similar products) in lectures and meetings actually makes it harder to absorb facts, rather than being a reinforcement of key points."

 

From slashdot.org

PayPerPost - Ethics of Paid Blogging

There-goes-the-least-common-denominator ..
The LA Times accuses PayPerPost of paying bloggers to make up fictional testimonials. For instance, the Times reports that a law firm is using PayPerPost to pay bloggers to write that a certain birth control patch is killing and injuring young women. Rua does not deny these claims, but simply states they are the exception and not the rule. How long before the FTC follows through on their promise to enforce blogger disclosure?"

Link http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/27/2153205&from=rss

 

Unfocused multitasking makes you less productive and dumb

Beyond IQ: Focus on the Task at Hand, "Attention span and reasoning" may get higher marks than intelligence...

© Jorge Delgado/iStockphoto

Turns out that sheer intelligence is not enough.... It also takes a good attention span and training your mind to "self regulate" or focus on the task at hand.  This month's "Scientific American" article by Christie Nicholson points out,  "The measure for academic success for decades has been a person's intelligence quotient, or IQ. But new research published in the journal Child Development says that a thought process called "executive functioning," which governs the ability to reason and mentally focus, also plays a critical role in learning, especially when it comes to math skills."

Inhibitory control is the ability to halt automatic impulses and focus on the problem at hand. For example, people use inhibitory control when they decide to take different routes to their jobs, because they have to make a conscious effort to override the regular route they otherwise would almost automatically follow.

Children with good inhibitory control are able, in essence, to multitask, or use known solution strategies in new ways. In this study 141 healthy children between the ages of three and five years took a battery of psychological tests that measured their IQs and executive functioning. Researchers found that a child IQ and executive functioning were both above average was three times more likely to succeed in math than a kid who simply had a high IQ.

"[The fact] that executive function, even in children this young, is significantly related to early math performance suggests that if we can improve executive function, we can improve their academic performance," says Adele Diamond, professor of developmental cognitive neuroscience at the University of British Columbia.

 

The key to successful "multitasking" and executive functioning at any age is to "tune" out multiple distractions and "self regulate" or focus on the task at hand. 

---

"When people divide their attention, they react more slowly and make more mistakes, scientists say."  New York Times beats the whole "multi-tasking reduces productivity" horse to death,  citing that studies show young people are not better equipped to handle interruptions having grown up with digital distractions.... jumping every time their phone buzzes or a new message appears in their inbox, straying off to reply to messages or browse news, sports or entertainment Web sites.  Based on surveys and interviews with professionals and office workers, concluded that 28 percent of their time was spent on what they deemed interruptions and recovery time before they returned to their main tasks... estimating the cost of interruptions to the American economy at nearly $650 billion a year.

 

 

 

 

Want a higher I.Q. Hint: Start Playing Grand Theft Auto...

Why I don't think like Char....

Rising trend line in intelligence test scores. And that, in turn, suggested that something in the environment - some social or cultural force - was driving the trend.

FROM WIRED - "The best example of brain-boosting media may be videogames. Mastering visual puzzles is the whole point of the exercise - whether it's the spatial geometry of Tetris, the engineering riddles of Myst, or the urban mapping of Grand Theft Auto."

Twenty-three years ago, an American philosophy professor named James Flynn discovered a remarkable trend: Average IQ scores in every industrialized country on the planet had been increasing steadily for decades. Despite concerns about the dumbing-down of society - the failing schools, the garbage on TV, the decline of reading - the overall population was getting smarter. And the climb has continued, with more recent studies showing that the rate of IQ increase is accelerating. Next to global warming and Moore's law, the so-called Flynn effect may be the most revealing line on the increasingly crowded chart of modern life - and it's an especially hopeful one. We still have plenty of problems to solve, but at least there's one consolation: Our brains are getting better at problem-solving.

But something else in the data caught his eye. Every decade or so, "Every time kids took the new and the old tests, they did better on the old ones," Flynn says. "I thought: That's weird."

Flynn dug up every study that had ever been done in the US where the same subjects took a new and an old version of an IQ test. "And lo and behold, when you examined that huge collection of data, it revealed a 14-point gain between 1932 and 1978."

The classic heritability research paradigm is the twin adoption study: Look at IQ scores for thousands of individuals with various forms of shared genes and environments, and hunt for correlations.


This is the sort of chart you get, with 100 being a perfect match and 0 pure randomness:

The same person tested twice: 87
Identical twins raised together: 86
Identical twins raised apart: 76
Fraternal twins raised together: 55
Biological siblings: 47
Parents and children living together: 40
Parents and children living apart: 31
Adopted children living together: 0
Unrelated people living apart: 0

What part of our allegedly dumbed-down environment is making us smarter?
It's not schools, since the tests that measure education-driven skills haven't shown the same steady gains. It's not nutrition - general improvement in diet leveled off in most industrialized countries shortly after World War II, just as the Flynn effect was accelerating.

"And then I realized that society has priorities. Let's say we're too cheap to hire good high school math teachers. So while we may want to improve arithmetical reasoning skills, we just don't. On the other hand, with smaller families, more leisure, and more energy to use leisure for cognitively demanding pursuits, we may improve - without realizing it - on-the-spot problem-solving, like you see with Ravens."

When you take the Ravens test, you're confronted with a series of visual grids, each containing a mix of shapes that seem vaguely related to one another. Each grid contains a missing shape; to answer the implicit question posed by the test, you need to pick the correct missing shape from a selection of eight possibilities. To "solve" these puzzles, in other words, you have to scrutinize a changing set of icons, looking for unusual patterns and correlations among them.

This is not the kind of thinking that happens when you read a book or have a conversation with someone or take a history exam. But it is precisely the kind of mental work you do when you, say, struggle to program a VCR or master the interface on your new cell phone.

Over the last 50 years, we've had to cope with an explosion of media, technologies, and interfaces, from the TV clicker to the World Wide Web. And every new form of visual media - interactive visual media in particular - poses an implicit challenge to our brains: We have to work through the logic of the new interface, follow clues, sense relationships. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these are the very skills that the Ravens tests measure - you survey a field of visual icons and look for unusual patterns.

The ultimate test of the "cognitively demanding leisure" hypothesis may come in the next few years, as the generation raised on hypertext and massively complex game worlds starts taking adult IQ tests. This is a generation of kids who, in many cases, learned to puzzle through the visual patterns of graphic interfaces before they learned to read. Their fundamental intellectual powers weren't shaped only by coping with words on a page. They acquired an intuitive understanding of shapes and environments, all of them laced with patterns that can be detected if you think hard enough. Their parents may have enhanced their fluid intelligence by playing Tetris or learning the visual grammar of TV advertising.

But that's child's play compared with Pokmon.

Intellectual breakthroughs are what happen when you're busy making other plans. (J.Lennon)

Read full here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.05/flynn_pr.html

Why was Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) scrapped?

Noah's recent interview with DARPA's director, Tony Tether, the agency head emphasized progress in cognitive computing, saying:

We're on the verge of having computers with densities approaching a monkey's brain, and it won't be long before we'll have a computer with the density of transistors, or equivalent to neurons and almost human. What we're missing is the architecture. So it seemed like it was time. We had great advances in algorithms for reasoning and in algorithms that learned in general. At the same time, the computers, the actual intrinsic hardware, was really approaching the density of a human brain. And so it seemed like it was time to try again. We've had some great success.

Somehow, I doubt the agency is going to provide any more clues about why this research ended up on the chopping block.

 

Source: http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/03/darpas_brain_dr.html

The real NY-Times story of "Terry Tao"

I would have titled the "Terry Tao" NY - Times story...

 "Terry Tao" a normal "math genius" raised by smart father, Billy Tao

I think Billy's the really genius behind his families beautiful minds...

 

Dr. Billy Tao,"All along, we tend to emphasize the joy of learning," Billy Tao said. "The fun is doing something, not winning something."

 

Billy Tao knew the trajectories of child prodigies like Jay Luo, "I initially thought Terry would be just like one of them, to graduate as early as possible," he said. But after talking to experts on education for gifted children, he changed his mind.

 

"To get a degree at a young age, to be a record-breaker, means nothing," he said. "I had a pyramid model of knowledge, that is, a very broad base and then the pyramid can go higher. If you just very quickly move up like a column, then you're more likely to wobble at the top and then collapse."

 

"He probably was quietly learning these things from watching 'Sesame Street,' " said his father, Dr. Billy Tao, "We basically used 'Sesame Street' as a babysitter."

 

Pulled from private school... At age 5, he was enrolled in a public school, and his parents, administrators and teachers set up an individualized program for him. He proceeded through each subject at his own pace, quickly accelerating through several grades in math and science while remaining closer to his age group in other subjects. In English classes,"These very vague, undefined questions. I always liked situations where there were very clear rules of what to do."

 

The Taos had different challenges in raising their other two sons, although all three excelled in math. Trevor, two years younger than Terry, is autistic with top-level chess skills and the musical savant gift to play back on the piano a musical piece — even one played by an entire orchestra — after hearing it just once. He completed a Ph.D. in mathematics and now works for the Defense Science and Technology Organization in Australia.

 

The youngest, Nigel, told his father that he was "not another Terry," and his parents let him learn at his own pace.

 

Behind the mind is a family and father... Great job Dr. Billy Tao!

 

---

Original NY-Times story on "Terry Tao"

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/science/13prof.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin

Big surprise that most generation-Y's blame their parents

Amazing "blame, blame" do nothing game...Wow they sound just like thier "parents" parents ;-)

An overwhelming number of young readers not only rejected being compared to the boomer generation, but also blamed boomers for the social conditions that gave rise to narcissism.

"The boomers screwed people my age royally," medstudgeek wrote in a post titled Why don't you read 'Generation Debt' for starters. "Everything costs too much ... housing, college, health insurance, etc. If you're 100K in debt you're going to play along with the corporate masters to pay off your loans ... and is this an accident? ... [Y]ou boomers polluted the environment, drove the country into debt (twice!), outsourced our jobs to India, and made all of us narcissistic with your 'self-esteem' movement, and now you're blaming the victim. Young people have Myspace pages? The horror."

....the reasons for Generation Y's narcissism are abundant:

Lets start with our families. 50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce. Thats a lot of broken homes and step children. What are you saying to your child when you divorce his or her mother because 'things aren't working out between us'? You're saying that you don't care about anyone's problems but your own, and you'll take the easiest way out if possible. ...

...I haven't even begun to talk about the social pecking order that's been created because of this, or the materialism that helps feed it. We didn't create the world we've lived in thus far, it was created for us by our parents. We 'don't care' because we don't have time too, we're busy living up to everyone else's expectations. We're 'narcissistic' because we have no one to go to for support; we only have the groups of other kids that we made ourselves.

Full crap here:
http://www.alternet.org/story/49193/

New Study - Narcissist love themselves consciously and unconsciously

ScienceDaily: How Do I Love Me? New Study Presents A Twist On The Conventional Narcissist
We often attribute typical gen-y,x narcissist's shallow behavior to an unconscious self-loathing. However, new research suggests that narcissists actually view themselves the same on the outside as on the inside.

Previous studies have shown that narcissists' conscious self-views are not uniformly positive. Narcissists see themselves as being above average in areas such as status, dominance and intelligence, but not in areas such as kindness, morality, and emotional intimacy.

Yikes... he REALLY doesn't think he is a big jerk. REALLY ;-)

Devil's Advocate Really Just an Ass....

COLUMBUS, MO—Though area graphic designer Derek Sills says he plays devil's advocate to help his friends better understand opinions different from their own, sources close to Sills claim he takes on the dissenting role merely to be an asshole.

"Now, I don't actually believe this or anything but, for the sake of argument, let's say your girlfriend is just dating you for your money," Sills said at a party last Saturday, after asking a group of friends to consider that the telephone may have been a "stupid invention." "Just playing devil's advocate here, guys, but perhaps slavery is the reason African Americans are so successful in sports these days."

According to sources, Sills "crossed the line" when he asked if their friend Jamie's mother might have deserved to die.

Why a career in computer programming sucks

Temporary nature of knowledge capital

Let’s being by reviewing what I previously wrote about the four types of human capital.

Nice comments on this digg... reddit... whatever, social timewasting network of the month
"If making $130k a year sucks, there are plenty of people willing to take HS's place. This kind of talk really gets very little sympathy from the rest of America. If programming sucks, try working in a factory or any job that gets exposure to the weathers. How many patent lawyers do we really need?"

Computer programming is a job that’s heavily dependent on temporary knowledge capital. Only if you're bad at it.

Linux reduces e-waste by 50%

A research report says that Linux boxes get used for twice as long as Windows boxes (just think of all those PCs that'll be thrown out in favor of something fast enough to run Vista's crippleware!). That means that GNU/Linux machines save landfill sites!

 

"A typical hardware refresh period for Microsoft Windows is 3-4 years. A major UK manufacturing organization quotes its hardware refresh period for Linux systems as 6-8 years." A significant difference...a doubling even, of the lifetime of a computer.

Thus, a world using Linux would be a world with half the computer waste (and, admittedly, halved sales for Dell and the rest.)

A widespread switch to Linux could prevent millions of tons of waste from going into landfills. Every computer not needed would prevent the use of 240 kg of fossil fuels. Spread that out over the 17.5 million computers that wouldn't be going obsolete every year and Linux could deliver the world a much more sustainable future. Link (via Digg)

AlterNet: Hey Under-30s Crowd, Have You Overdosed on Narcissism?

That makes "current college students more narcissistic than baby boomers and Gen-Xers," its authors conclude. (Data points between 1982 and 1990 are few, says Professor Twenge, also the author of "Generation Me.")

That quality can be amplified when school's out.

"Gen-Y is the most difficult workforce I've ever encountered, because part of them are greatest-generation great and the other part are so self-indulgent as to be genuinely offensive to know, let alone supervise," says Marian Salzman, a trendspotter and senior vice president at JWT, the global advertising agency.

Read full here

Nice Free Video Conversion Program

Dr. DivX 2.5.1

Any video you download or play through the internet has been encoded, probably in one of the three key formats. However, if you want to put your own video online, but want control over the compression, how do you encode your video for online playback? Dr DivX is an encoding application that will enable you to encode your video in the popular DivX format so that most users can play your video either online or offline, on their computer. As the DivX codec is freely available for both the Windows and Mac operating systems, it is a wise choice for compressing your video. Dr DivX is very easy to use and you can compress your video in as little as three easy steps. Your audio is encoded too so, if you happen to have added surround sound audio to your video, this will be incorporated in to your compressed video.

> Read the full article

Dark Reading - Desktop Security - Vint Cerf: Father Knows Best - Security News Analysis

"Securing his baby won't be easy....
'Security is a mesh of actions and features and mechanisms,' he says. 'No one thing makes you secure.'"

Microsoft Vista, IE7 Banned By U.S. DOT

"According to a memo being reported on by Information week, the US Department of Transportation has issued a moratorium on upgrading Microsoft products. Concerns over costs and compatibility issues has lead the federal agency to prevent upgrades from XP to Vista, as well as to stop users from moving to IE 7 and Office 2007. As the article says, 'In a memo to his staff, DOT chief information officer Daniel Mintz says he has placed "an indefinite moratorium" on the upgrades as "there appears to be no compelling technical or business case for upgrading to these new Microsoft software products. Furthermore, there appears to be specific reasons not to upgrade."'"

 

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197700789 (VIA - Slashdot.org)

Specially challenged narcissists

NPR: That “I am special” mantra has created a collegiate wave of narcissists

A little news spike this week greeted word of a study of self-absorption, or narcissism, among college students. It’s from San Diego State University researchers based on trends in scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory test. Alex Chadwick is emphatic that college kids are getting too full of themselves. She wrote the book (literally). She blames it on schools, media, and parents in that order. The old “self-esteem” mania of the 80s and 90s gets its knocks. Among other ways kids get the idea they are entitled to prominence, she says, is a preschool ditty whose main lyric is “I am special.” Hence, You Tube. …. Man, wonder how professional major league athletes would score on that inventory.

Other stories: AP David Crary; LA Times Larry Gordon, Louis Sahagun; (VIA ksjtracker.mit.edu)

Opposing Net Neutrality a Political Third Rail

Together we won the first round in the battle for Net freedom. But the phone and cable giants are launching a counterattack. We need to raise the alarm and send a clear message to our new Congress: Make Net Neutrality the Law in 2007!

More Videos»

Washington Post: Opposing Net Neutrality a Political Third Rail
Opposing Net Neutrality has become a political third rail for candidates who seek elected office, according to a story today in the Washington Post. Post reporter Charles Babington praised SavetheInternet.com Coalition efforts to mobilize the netroots and...

Electroshock therapy for "Internet addicts"

The Chinese government is imprisoning and giving electric shocks to people it thinks have become addicted to the Internet.

Alarmed by a survey that found that nearly 14 percent of teens in China are vulnerable to becoming addicted to the Internet, the Chinese government has launched a nationwide campaign to stamp out what the Communist Youth League calls 'a grave social problem' that threatens the nation.

In terms of withdrawal: 'If you let someone go online and then he can't go online, you may see a physical reaction, just like someone coming off drugs.' And in terms of resistance: 'Today you go half an hour, and the next day you need 45 minutes. It's like starting with drinking one glass and then needing half a bottle to feel the same way.'"

Google's 'Sponsored Links' Threatens Internet Free Speech

EFF Asks Judge to Uphold Key Trademark Ruling- The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals today to uphold an important ruling allowing anyone to purchase Google's "sponsored links" tied to trademarks, arguing that the practice is legal under trademark law and provides a vital means for online speakers to connect with audiences on the Internet.

Google's "sponsored links" feature allows customers to buy advertisements attached to certain search terms. When a Google user types those terms into the search engine, the sponsored links appear along with the search results. However, a company named Rescuecom filed a lawsuit against Google over the program, claiming that selling sponsored links for the term "Rescuecom" infringed its trademark.

"On the Internet, trademarks aren't just identifiers. They are essential navigation tools and vehicles of expression," said EFF Staff Attorney Jason Schultz. "Quashing this speech goes against both the law and the public interest."

A judge dismissed Rescuecom's case against Google last year, but the company is appealing the decision.

"consuming more resources than you bring in"

Carol Sanford at MIT: "It’s a hell of a way to run a business -- consuming more resources than you bring in, selling off your assets, and cooking the books to make things look good. Yet that is precisely how humans are operating the vast enterprise of living on earth. The U.S. runs a particularly unsuccessful 'Business of Inhabitation', taking up four times more resources than any other nation [...] meeting regulatory requirements and adopting a sustainable approach 'fall short of what we need to do for the planet'. Our problem-solving minds break things down and seek ways merely 'to arrest disorder' or protect what appears valuable [...] We need an evolutionary leap into the 'wholeness mindset,' which involves asking how we regenerate and bring in more of what we need without degrading what is already there." She begins speaking at 5 minutes 22 seconds into the video. ::Video: Carol Sanford at MIT. See also: ::William A. McDonough Conference from 2000, ::Video: Amory Lovins on Winning the Oil Endgame, ::Video: Max Carcas of Ocean Power Delivery, ::Google TechTalks: Climate Change, Carbon Trading and Biofuels

THANKS! TreeHugger :-)
Video: Sustainability is Only Half the Solution, Regeneration is the Other Half

Goodbye - CF, the 3 watt LED bulb is here

Innovative Pharox LED Lamp Uses 3.4W: Replaces 40W Incandescent

In netherlands

An innovative LED lamp named Pharox has been launched in the Netherlands. Apparently, this 3 watt bulb is a serious replacement for a 40 watt incandescent bulb. It is rated at 60 lumens per watt. The bulb was created by Lemnis Lighting, by two members of the Philips family.

Thanks for post - TreeHunger

200 million Americans Are Scientifically Illiterate

While global empires leveraged their advanced at the expense of so-called “ignorant savages.”

The good news: America's science literacy rate is up from a pathetic 10 percent in 1988. The bad news: it's still only 28 percent."

The forces of ignorance have squelched science across history, to the present restrictions on federal funding for critical research.

Elites’ exploiting their scientific knowledge for power is also not new. Mayan elites, for instance, used their extraordinary knowledge of mathematics, engineering, and astronomy to build great cities and temples--and sumptuous palaces for themselves--and to awe and control the masses through a religion that included ripping the hearts out of sacrificial victims.

The good news - Americans are more science-literate than Japanese, Europeans
And what might the consequences of this illiteracy and ensuing cultural backwardness be? Nothing less than the destruction of civilization itself...

Answer to why we act like jerks online

This New York Times story on the psychopathology of flame wars has -- surprise! -- generated much heated discussion around the internet:

John Suler, a psychologist at Rider University in Lawrenceville, N.J., suggested that several psychological factors lead to online disinhibition: the anonymity of a Web pseudonym; invisibility to others; the time lag between sending an e-mail message and getting feedback; the exaggerated sense of self from being alone; and the lack of any online authority figure. Dr. Suler notes that disinhibition can be either benign — when a shy person feels free to open up online — or toxic, as in flaming.

Over on Metafilter, user scblackman rounds up links to some related web references:

What's behind those flaming hot e-mails or UseNet flame wars or MetaFilter comments?. Perhaps, as John Suler suggested, there are a number of factors, including dissociative anonymity, invisibility, asynchronicity, solipsistic introjection (altered self-boundaries), dissociative imagination, and minimzation of authority, as he discussed in his fascinating 2004 paper.

Link to that MeFi thread, in which several commenters said the NYT article reminded them of the timeless comic above.

Image: Penny Arcade.

Vista Upgrade Decision FlowChart

65% of Americans Spend More Time With Their PC Than SO

Why is your marriage & family falling apart? "PR Newswire reports that 65 percent of consumers are spending more time with a computer than with their significant other (SO). The "Cyber Stress" study confirmed consumers' growing relationship with technology in their everyday lives. In fact, more than 8 out of 10 Americans (84%) say they are more dependent on their home computer now than they were just three years ago."

I.T. Killed the Webmaster...

Who Killed the Webmaster? "With the explosive growth of the Web in the previous decade, many predicted the birth of a new, well-paying, and in-demand profession: the Webmaster. Yet in 2007, this person has somehow vanished; even the term is scarcely mentioned. What happened? A decade later I'm left wondering: Who killed the Webmaster?"

pig farms are some of America's worst polluters

"North Carolina's ten million hogs produce twice as much feces and urine as the populations of the cities of Los Angeles, New York and Chicago combined. Industrial farms, most with thousands of hogs each, store the waste in open-air pits, called lagoons. They spray the waste, untreated, as manure on adjacent fields."

 

While the title was true and the "story" an important topic... , completely WASTED my morning watching the kungfu bunnies and cowscapes form Web Zen... Yikes!

Dilberts mom in love with Linux distro?

Install and run Ubuntu without disturbing Windows

Want to take Linux for a spin? Forget partitions, dual-boot setups and live CDs: The new Ubuntu Windows installer lets you run the Linux distro while keeping the rest of your system intact. Just run the installer, Great way to run Ubuntu without the hassles of partitioning or burning a live CD! — via Rick Broida - www.lifehacker.com

HP beats Moore's Law with new chip architecture

According to the researchers, by 2020 using 4.5nm wires it should be possible to pack in the same amount of transistors in a space of just 4% of what is currently possible on a 45nm chip. Read full here (very dry)

A mathematical formula for procrastination

Researchers have devised a mathematical formula for calculating just how much you'll procrastinate on that Very Important Thing you've been putting off doing.

 

The equation's factors are the desire to complete the task (U); the expectation of success (E); the value of completion (V); the immediacy of task (I) ; and the personal sensitivity to delay (D).

 

The magic formula is U = E x V / I x D.

 

Now if I can find the "square root" of evil, I'm set!

Universe can be explained this simple?

"the expansion history of the universe can be explained by simply adding this constant background of acceleration into the normal theory of gravity."

 

Linked>

The problem is between the Chair and the Keyboard!

Spoof made about the hole nonsense of "Which O.S. is better than who's"

Vista - Nice shot to the temple

"The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history"....

Vista -- the next version of Windows -- goes to in order to restrict how you use high-definition video. The operating system has been essentially rendered useless by a set of deliberately introduced malfunctions. For example, the if your computer detects erroneous data in its registers, or voltage fluctuations (both of which are typical of PCs whose parts have been manufactured by dozens of companies), it will restart major subsystems, hanging up while it flushes all your data -- just in case those errors were part of a hack-attack on the system.

Maybe I do need an Iphone

I always find there are 10 better devices than the main stream "iProduct"
But, after I saw the commercial, I may need to buy a Iphone ;-)

Stephen Colbert On New Tech & Iphone

Gotta love Colbert

I'm a Mac vs P.C. Bill Gates - Hello ... Linux

Good T.V. Spot?

I think you need a MAC they are VERY pretty and soooo simple to use an APE could do it. So if your "artistic" with limited computer and software skills.... this is the system for YOU. Did, I mention it's pretty.

I say you MUST us a Microsoft based computer is you want to play games, use 10,000's of free applications the business world runs on. Without our Microsoft tools you will be hard pressed to get any "real" work or gaming done. Did, I mention your company can't run effectively without Microsoft tools.

I really don't care if you use the most stable platform that MAC's are based on and runs Microsoft tools "native". Hey, it's free, stable, runs anything and has millions of people for tech support free. Did, I mention "no-viruses", no-malware and no "MAC a hacks".

Apple Patches 100's Security Flaws a year...

Microsoft Warns of Attacks on Unpatched Windows, IE and Office Flaws...


Fact
Ratio of IT pros that are aware of obvious "open" security threats 1 of 1000.

Ratio of preteen hackers that are aware of "open" security threats 1 of 10 (then they i.m. the rest :-o

I try to save $1000's on my systems as I invest the rest in viable security & performances "tweaks" and run Linux on the "day to day" work horses.

Don't Download This Song ....

Infomania' worse than marijuana

Workers distracted by email and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers, new research has claimed.

The study for computing firm Hewlett Packard warned of a rise in "infomania", with people becoming addicted to email and text messages.

Researchers found 62% of people checked work messages at home or on holiday.

The firm said new technology can help productivity, but users must learn to switch computers and phones off.

Losing sleep

The study, carried out at the Institute of Psychiatry, found excessive use of technology reduced workers' intelligence.

Those distracted by incoming email and phone calls saw a 10-point fall in their IQ - more than twice that found in studies of the impact of smoking marijuana, said researchers.

More than half of the 1,100 respondents said they always responded to an email "immediately" or as soon as possible, with 21% admitting they would interrupt a meeting to do so.

The University of London psychologist who carried out the study, Dr Glenn Wilson, told the Daily Mail that unchecked infomania could reduce workers' mental sharpness.

Those who are constantly breaking away from tasks to react to email or text messages suffer similar effects on the mind as losing a night's sleep, he said.

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COMMENTS - As I said before... the "new" social net " intertubes" will suck you in, and you'll never escape... the internet is just better at turning you into dumb, criminal, self absorbed, socially dysfunctional, deviant junkies...

New year to Encrypt your data - FREE

TrueCrypt,  encryption application that works on Windows and Linux. Given the right credentials, TrueCrypt will create a virtual hard drive that will read and write encrypted files on the fly. .

 

Download TrueCrypt, install and launch. Using TrueCrypt you can secure an entire drive - like a USB thumb drive. To do so, instead of hitting "Select File," use "Select Device" and choose your thumb drive.

 

Read full INSTALL from Geek to Live: Encrypt your data

Why are there ad's on blogs???

If it is a "blog" why would there ever be an ad?  When "ad's" are posted on a "blog" then it is NO longer intended for "personal" or non-commercial use... as it is being used to generate review.

 

"Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it." --Stephen Leacock, Canadian economist and writer

 

 

 

Newer I.T. People continue to get more suckie...

Concern mounts as shortcomings in IT  - The IT skills gap is at its highest level since 2004 and is continuing to grow for both technology users and IT professionals, according to research. 10% more employers report deficiencies in the skills of their IT staff, compared with just five per cent the previous quarter. The shortages concern both higher-level technical abilities and business skills, with medium to large firms worst affected.  The IT skills gap remains a serious issue... ', says fewer people are choosing the profession because it has a poor reputation. 'One does wonder how the IT profession is going to move forward,'  'In the past, IT has been guilty of over-selling and under-delivering, so the sector needs to regain its professional status to attract people into the industry. > Read the full article

99 Places to Score Free Photos for Your Blog or Website

Here is a big ol' list of a ton of sites you can visit to get free photos for your blog or website. Enjoy!  » original news

Because code is the cool

Oppp's your code is showing ;-)-You have to try this!

1. go to any website

2. delete everything in the address bar

3. paste the following code in the address bar:

javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI=document.images; DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i-DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position='absolute'; DIS.left=Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5; DIS.top=Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5}R++}setInterval('A()',5); void(0);

4. press enter and have fun

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From Grim [ ModeratorToid ] Midland, Michigan

Wooohooo! BLOGGER LETS YOU USE YOUR OWN DOMAIN !

Blogger added a new feature: Bring your own domain.  All you have to do is buy a domain, anywhere, at any price you can find, set up your Blogger account and point your DNS at Google's server at ghs.google.com, and viola*!  Link:   http://google.blognewschannel.com/archives/2007/01/07…

 

 

Source:   InsideGoogle

Author:   Nathan Weinberg

Analogy to a dictionary attack

It is well known that the one-way encryption scheme is easily broken when the user picks a dictionary word as their password. All an attacker would have to then do is encipher the entire English dictionary and compare the ciphertext of each word to the ciphertext stored in /etc/passwd and pick up the correct word as the password. As such, users are commonly advised to pick more complex passwords that are not words. The dictionary attack can be illustrated like this:

The similarly to the dictionary attack on the blurred image attack lies in the fact that blurring an image is a one-way encryption scheme. You are converting the image you have into another image designed to be unreadable. However, since account numbers only typically go up to the millions, we can assemble a "dictionary" of possible account numbers - that is, all the numbers from 0000001 to 9999999, for example, use an automated image processor to photoshop each of those numbers onto a photo of a blank check, and blur each image. At that point, one can simply compare the blurred pixels to see what most closely matches the original blurred photo we have.

Solution
The solution is simple: Don't blur your images! Instead, just color over them :-)

 

 

Read full at http://dheera.net/projects/blur.php

Power is in the proof - Lean management pays big!

How do you run a business without managers

The IT company co-founded back in 1997, decided not to have any managers.

So rather than have presidents, vice presidents and managers, all employees had an equal say in running the company. This was backed up by the fact that all employees were also co-owners, every new hire being offered a stake in the company after six months on the job.

We sat down and made a list of all the categories of tasks we had in the company. Sales, finance, intranet, our website, personnel, etc. There were around 20 in all. Then instead of appointing managers responsible for each of these, we asked who in the company would like to do it, and let people choose for themselves where they wanted to be involved. Interestingly, everyone signed up for at least a couple of these and every single task got at least one person assigned to it.

Paycuts or firing 5 people. Discussions raged. Some held out for the pay cuts. That became a unanimous decision. And a good one too - just 6 months later we had signed new customers, and every single consultant was back in business. If we had fired people back then, we would have missed them sorely.

I realize that this experiment worked for an IT company of just 20 people and that you can't possibly generalize from that to larger companies in other fields. And yet I believe that this is certainly a viable way to go. That what companies really need is leadership that is dynamic, distributed and entirely voluntary. Leadership that switches from person to person, depending on who has the will and the energy, rather than what it says on somebody's business card.

Read full here

Secure your network, NSA-style

(Via -lifehacker.com)

If you're nutso for network security, the NSA's 60 Minute Network Security Guide PDF (yes, that NSA) should get your network up to brick wall status in - apparently - 60 minutes. The guide, which checks in at just under 50 pages, is serious about airtight network security, urging you, for example, to enforce a password history of at least 24 different 12+ character passwords, swapping out passwords at least once every 90 days. The free PDF covers Windows and Unix security setups. If you give it a look, let us know how your network measures up to the NSA's specifications in the comments. — (Adam Pash lifehacker.com) The 60 Minute Network Security Guide [NSA via Treelimb]

How to go to M.I.T. for free

Intended as an act of "intellectual philanthropy," OpenCourseWare (OCW) provides free access to course materials such as syllabi, video or audio lectures, notes, homework assignments, illustrations, and so on. So far, by giving away their content, the universities aren't discouraging students from enrolling as students. Instead, the online materials appear to be only whetting appetites for more.

 

"We believe strongly that education can be best advanced when knowledge is shared openly and freely," says Anne Margulies, executive director of the OCW program at MIT. "MIT is using the power of the Internet to give away all of the educational materials created here."

 

The MIT site (ocw.mit.edu), along with companion sites that translate the material into other languages, now average about 1.4 million visits per month from learners "in every single country on the planet,"

Lifehacker on the WiFiance

What wifi sniffers can find out about you (from www.lifehacker.com)

New York Times tech writer David Pogue - who says he's not one of the "privacy paranoid" - describes his shock when someone tracked his online activity on an open wifi network at a public coffee shop while he browsed and emailed. Using the free Mac program Eavesdrop, Pogue said this packet sniffer grabbed: Every copy of every e-mail message I sent *and* received. A list of the Web sites I visited. Even, incredibly, the graphics that had appeared on the Web sites I had visited. Apparently Pogue doesn't get his email over SSL (tsk tsk, David!). Eavesdrop is not available for download at the moment since all of the Times' tech section readership is hammering it right now. Just remember kids, SSL is your friend. — Gina Trapani How Secure Is Your Wi-Fi Connection? [Pogue's Posts]

Criminals conclude....Piracy, The Better Choice

From link... "we're heading into a time when it seems like piracy is going to be the better choice compared to legally owning content. The Inquirer's Charlie Demerjian explains why this will be the case in a recent article. Head on over and read the article. If you haven't yet done so, also read a recent paper by Peter Gutmann which I also discussed here to learn about the details of the content protection technology in Windows Vista and the latest PC hardware."

 

... as consumers begin realizing they were screwed and experiencing the disadvantages of the copy protection technologies first hand..., people might still buy HD-DVD content because they know they'll still be able to make copies and remove the restrictions.

 

But it'll still be too much of a hassle and it seems piracy is still going to be the better choice for the weak of free will.  Read full here

 

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Comments: As I have said before... the internet is just better at turning you into criminal, self absorbed, socially dysfunctional, deviant junkies... ed

A nice Linux vs. MS rundown

Ten things Linux distros get right (that MS doesn't)

I use Windows and Linux every day. They're both competent operating systems, each with reasonable applications and windowing systems. I find myself more productive on a Linux system, though, because of a few very simple differences.

So what are the differences?

1. A useful terminal. So what if it's only useful for developers: I'm a developer. I like a terminal with capable cut-and-paste, tabs, and resizing.
2. All-in-one application sources. Man, I love my apt. Finding and downloading applications for Windows is a crap-shoot in almost every way. I find this especially handy when building new systems: it takes far longer to build, update, and add needed applications on a Windows system than on most Linux systems.
3. Cut-and-paste, and focus handling. Middle-click cut-and-paste is even more useful than middle-clicking a URL to a new tab, and XWindows does scroll-wheel window focusing right (scrolls the window under the cursor).
4. Frequent, painless patches and new stuff, all the time. I've had a 3d desktop (compiz) and funky search (deskbar) for more than a year now (and I avoid the bleeding edge).
5. Multi-desktops. Using a single desktop now is a lot like working at a grade-school desk: it's just too small to be useful.
6. Good, free tools. Like vim (or emacs). I know they're old and crusty, but they both live and breathe text editing.
7. No reboots. I rarely have to reboot a Linux system when patching. Windows is getting better about reboots, but they're still too frequent.
8. Open formats and protocols. My stuff (and my network) is mine, locking my stuff in proprietary, costly formats doesn't work for me.
9. No need for paranoia. I don't like the anti-malware tax: the cost, the CPU cycles, and the wasted fear. Signed application bundles are a big part of how Linux gets this right: you don't have to fear installing new stuff (the rest is in frequent patching and limiting possible damage).
10. Respect. Don't tell me what or how to do it: give me choices. And don't treat me like a criminal, because I'm not.

 

Hotmail Crash & Burn - using MSN support

I installed a "silly" (MSN recommended) security feature in place to "block cookies" on our work systems as recommended BY MS.

I then went to access my hotmail account (VIA pop) and low and behold, pop not working.

While I assumed it was the new cookie blocker... I just thought I would "follow the rules" and go to the MSN hotmail help site.

The image below is a screen shot of what I got. Zip, nothing the MSN "help" is down.

While I know they were not trying to be "funny" by alerting me to a cookie flaw and how to fix it that intern generated and security flaw that finally brought me to the originating help site that was "down".... This was a I.T. scream of a joke on me. You guys bust me up...

The "Person Of The Year" self absorb "megalomaniac" who needs constant self approval

You — Yes, You — you shallow, self absorb "megalomaniac" have listened to enough media to believe that you alone Are TIME's Person of the Year I remember how self absorbed & oblivious I was when I entered the internet age over a decade ago. As time progress I found myself not becoming "me" but becoming more of "them".

So when they say "YOU" are the "Person Of The Year", what they mean is THEY are. Because YOU have become "content" utilized for marketing and social change at their hands.

As humans we ALL beg for acceptance, individualism, recognition and self affirmation... general media knows clearly knows this and uses the internet to take advantage of every issue that makes "YOU" feel that you are "important". ( Condition know as NPD - Narcissistic Personality Disorder )

How to write context for new media articles (paid for by their sponsors ;-)

• Yes - buying that dress shows you care about animals, buy it!
• Yes - you look very smart in that suit, buy it!
• Smart people buy this car, buy it!
• Caring people donate here - donate now!
• rep/dec vote this way based on this "stuff" so vote now based on this "stuff"
• This "stuff" is better, throw out your old "stuff" and buy better....
• People who care about the environment buy this stuff or vote this way - SO DO WHAT WE SAY or your a bad person!

Hey I could do this all day folks, bottom line is that the internet makes far less of "YOU" than you could ever imagine... you just become one of them.

Picture rights of slate.com

Is your IT budget an Oxymoron

Paul Strassmann is a fellow who has been critical of IT spending for some time now. His resume is about as impressive as they come; he has also authored many seminal works in the field, including the Squandered Computer, which I have reviewed before ( The ROI Hath No Clothes .)

A good exercise for the start of the new year will be to calculate your Information Productivity Index, which measures exactly how much output you are getting out of your information processing dollars. Paul explains exactly how to do this in this Baseline 500 writeup. You will probably be surprised at how low your score is; in fact, half of all companies don't even get a positive score, implying their entire IT program is just a hobby. Where are you?

 

Linked from ecoiron.blogspot.com (Thanks ;-)

'They're geeky, but they don't know what to do with their geekdom,'

College Freshmen Struggle With Tech Literacy

On a recent nationwide test to measure their technological 'literacy' -- their ability to use the Internet to complete class assignments -- only 49 percent of the test-takers correctly evaluated a set of Web sites for objectivity, authority and timeliness. Only 35 percent could correctly narrow an overly broad Internet search."

Geek to Live: Lifehacker Zeitgeist

In the spirit of the Google Zeitgeist, today I've got Lifehacker's top dozen most popular posts of 2006.

1. Turn your $60 router into a $600 router
2. Top Firefox 2 config tweaks
3. Windows Vista Beta: How to dual-boot Windows XP and Windows Vista
4. Automatically back up your hard drive
5. Top 10 Ubuntu apps and tweaks
6. Build your own DVR
7. How to format your hard drive and install Windows XP from scratch
8. Become a Gmail master
9. One-click DVD rips
10. Automatically download your favorite TV shows
11. The self-sustaining iPod
12. Lifehacker Pack