This one is weird enough that two separate references were necessary:
Wired: The Microwave Scream Inside Your Head
ABC News: Microwave Ray Gun Controls Crowds With Noise
Go read both before continuing here.
Now, I think we can all agree that this is both bizarre and terrifying, where by "all" I need to exclude the nice folks at ABC news. For some reason Mr. Hambling includes worries that a high power version might either not be feasible or might cause neural damage, but ignores the aspect that should rightfully terrify every law abiding citizen anywhere: a low power version could beam voices/instructions/advertisements directly into our brains, potentially at a level where they could subliminally influence our behavior. Anyone who thinks that corporations and governments won't take advantage of this is probably already a test subject, or just hasn't been paying attention.
Now you'll need to excuse me for a bit as I need to go make a tinfoil hat.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Top 10 SOA Pitfalls
Top 10 SOA Pitfalls: Wrap-up
With SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) being the current IT systems acronym du jour, it's nice to see that some sane minds are mapping out the pitfalls. After all, many of these implementations stretch into the millions of dollars and deploy over several years. The last project I was part of as a government contractor was an excellent case in point. Most of these top ten pitfalls were present on the project which cost the taxpayers millions and quite frankly didn't do what the customer needed. Ironically we saw many of these pitfalls in advance and ended up having our hands tied by both our upper management and the customer's existing procedures. Maybe there needs to be a number zero, "Lack of Communication," that covers educating the stakeholders on the design and implementation model required for a successful SOA rollout. Hopefully this list can be used as a resource toward that end.
With SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) being the current IT systems acronym du jour, it's nice to see that some sane minds are mapping out the pitfalls. After all, many of these implementations stretch into the millions of dollars and deploy over several years. The last project I was part of as a government contractor was an excellent case in point. Most of these top ten pitfalls were present on the project which cost the taxpayers millions and quite frankly didn't do what the customer needed. Ironically we saw many of these pitfalls in advance and ended up having our hands tied by both our upper management and the customer's existing procedures. Maybe there needs to be a number zero, "Lack of Communication," that covers educating the stakeholders on the design and implementation model required for a successful SOA rollout. Hopefully this list can be used as a resource toward that end.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Kevin Carmony's Blog: Michael Robertson, Where's the Cash?
Kevin Carmony's Blog: Michael Robertson, Where's the Cash?
As a San Diego resident and Linux user, Linspire has always had a fond place in my heart, if not my hard drive. Beyond that I have had cursory professional contact with both Michael Robertson and Kevin Carmony over the years, interviewing the former for a business class and having met the latter at local SDSIC (San Diego Software Industry Council) presentations. That said, you can understand why this news, and Kevin's expose of Michael's less than ethical behavior hit me like a ton of bricks. For most people this will probably be just another bit of corporate opera, and will pale in the face of the Enrons and Countrywides that have been in the news of late, but for those of us in the San Diego OSS community this debacle should, and for me does, garner a sense of personal sadness. I wish luck to the remaining shareholders and employees. Your contributions to mainstream Linux on the desktop will not be forgotten. With any luck the folks over at Cannonical can carry the torch you folks lit so many years ago.
As a San Diego resident and Linux user, Linspire has always had a fond place in my heart, if not my hard drive. Beyond that I have had cursory professional contact with both Michael Robertson and Kevin Carmony over the years, interviewing the former for a business class and having met the latter at local SDSIC (San Diego Software Industry Council) presentations. That said, you can understand why this news, and Kevin's expose of Michael's less than ethical behavior hit me like a ton of bricks. For most people this will probably be just another bit of corporate opera, and will pale in the face of the Enrons and Countrywides that have been in the news of late, but for those of us in the San Diego OSS community this debacle should, and for me does, garner a sense of personal sadness. I wish luck to the remaining shareholders and employees. Your contributions to mainstream Linux on the desktop will not be forgotten. With any luck the folks over at Cannonical can carry the torch you folks lit so many years ago.
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