The Sexual Network of a High School looks at the unusual structure of the connections (sexual) between students. What’s unusual? The fact that there is not a “high gear” group in the centre that has the most activity (which is common in the adult community and partly drives the spread of STDs and HIV). Rather there’s a general spread so that most everyone is related at some remove.
Archive for January, 2005
Always prevail. An interesting thought on Crooked Timber:
It seems to me that there’s a shared attitude towards science among various right-leaning technophiles (Glenn Reynolds being a paradigmatic example). Roughly speaking, they tend to agree with science when it suggest new possibilities for human beings (the Singularity! nanotechnology! conquering the universe via spaceflight! longer lifespans!) and to strongly disagree with scientific results or prognoses that suggest fundamental limits to human beings’ can-do ability to prevail over their circumstances (global warming, ecological collapse).
I’ll be on the lookout for this kind of spin in my own thinking, but also testing whether the doom-mongering is making accurate predictions (oil scarcity looks tricky at the moment given economic strength vs the increasing price of oil; continued discovery of oil reserves) and also whether belief in the ability to prevail is removing real obstacles from consideration.
Some good thoughts on how to be a consultant. It’s geared towards the full-on technical IT consultancy, but has relevance for all of us.
Apparently a large swathe of RFID keys have been cracked. This makes it likely that the system that protects our car is crackable too. However, the requirement for proximity of the RFID device and the proper key in the ignition still leaves it difficult, given the U-channel key design (you can’t see the shape of the key without having it in your hand).
Cringley describes Apple’s success in making money on all parts of the portable music distribution business. A correspondent wonders whether they could do the same for video as well.
You do realize that the MiniMac is the Netflix killer, and the next wave of the “digital content” revolution? With the MiniMac, a decent set of HD movies as well as old content, an iFlix client connecting to legal content and BitTorrent to transmit, Apple has eliminated the most costly part of the NetFlix model while maintaining all of the good pieces. When you examine the NetFlix annual reports you can pull out the fact that one of their most expensive costs is the handling of physical media. The man power, physical shipping, and multiple location warehousing is much greater than the cost of getting the content
The Mac Media Center Project threatens to Turn the Mac Mini into a Media Center. I’m really, really thinking about doing this.
Apparently the solution to the slow take-up of e-Government is a government-funded internet cafe / one-stop shop. I’m not convinced. The focus should be more on satisfying the requirements of the current customer mix and building on age and IT literacy to move channel migration more rapidly.
A negative view on e-Government. I think we’re starting to see the strategic shift that the author asks for, but slowly. The ODPM’s local e-gov programme is stressing that the service improvement benefits are only one part of the equation - councils have to think about access channel migration, 24×7 service and efficiency as inextricably linked.
Local government in the UK is getting a 6.3% rise in grant from the ODPM this year. How does this relate to Gershon savings of 2.5% per year?
Amazon / A9 has launched a see everything on the block in pictures service. Nice.
Some new stats show that identity theft and bank theft are worse offline than online (both in terms of number of incidents and scale of losses). So the internet may not be secure, but it’s definitely no worse than normal life.
The end of the world could be sealed in 10 years. I wonder how this relates to the Hubbert Peak? If the amount of fossil fuels available drops catastrophically, then surely the emissions must go down as well?
Nice (PDF) document summarising the current state-of-the-art in quantum cryptography.
Nice how-to setting out the various pieces you need to turn a Mac Mini into a media centre. It all comes in under $1000, I think, making it look pretty attractive. I’ve been wondering how to get Mac-ness into the house, and this might be the answer; couple it with a cheaper widescreen laptop (HP or something) and I might have a winner.
Is it just me or is the EU referendum question a bad one?
Should the United Kingdom approve the treaty establishing a constitution for the European Union?
Then again, maybe the point is this: most people reading the question will go "why should I care?". This means that the vote will be down to how many people the opposing camps can get out to vote (if it is a get-out-of-the-house vote). In which case maybe it’s quite clever - I’m assuming the pollsters have already asked the question in a mind-boggling number of alternative ways to see what the outcome might be.
FUD will always be easy for the negative campaign: "you don’t trust Europe /Â France / Germany not to take over your soul, so vote no". To get people to positively vote for the yes campaign will be a serious job.
Some interesting takes on local government modernisation from NLGN reported on and in their own words. I like the idea of a "localism test" to require Whitehall to check whether any central initiative might be better carried out locally.
The Sun paid £8,000 for the Harry / Nazi photo and made £500,000 within a few weeks. Not bad going. And further evidence for the thought that journalists are loss leaders (this certainly used to be the case for Reuters).
Came across a large range of consulting tools following a link from Headshift:
- Methods for interacting with large groups
- Methods for generating ideas
- Some thoughts about people’s different worldviews
Thanks to Martin Leith for putting all of this content online. It supports my argument that more consulting firms should make their methodologies public. I am convinced that the "what to do" piece is easy to tell someone else, and is not damaging to make public, as the "how to do it" piece is by far the most complicated and value-adding. Even talented consultants would find it difficult to apply (e.g.) Martin’s methods without some training.
