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4926

Living Room / Re: Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates

« Last post by IainB on July 19, 2012, 02:15 PM »

@Renegade: Well you might be able to say something polite about this, or at least smile about it:
Internet Defense League creates "cat signal" to save Web from next SOPA

Mozilla, reddit, lawmakers, even a Tea Party activist team to protect the Web.
by Jon Brodkin - Jul 19, 2012 5:45 pm UTC

When the Internet is in danger, the cat signal will appear.
Internet Defense League

You've heard of the bat signal—now get ready for the cat signal. A diverse crew of Internet businesses, advocacy groups, and lawmakers has banded together to create something called the Internet Defense League. The organization seeks to save the 'Net from bad laws like SOPA. And a cat signal—modeled after the signal used to rouse Batman each time Gotham City is threatened—is what the group will use to alert the world when it's protest time.

When the SOPA blackout day helped convince Congress that the Stop Online Piracy Act was a bad idea that would threaten Internet freedom, it showed how democracy can be used in the digital age to preserve the interests of people above the interests of corporations lining the pockets of politicians. But can the Internet rally to save itself each time it's threatened?

Enter the cat signal. A piece of code supporters of the Internet Defense League can embed in their websites, the presence of the cat signal will tell you another bad law threatening Internet freedom is making the rounds, and that it's time to call your local member of Congress. The cat signal is also being broadcast today on sites like Fight For the Future to announce the Internet Defense League's creation:
[Image]

Yes, the signal was inspired by all those funny cat pictures on the likes of reddit and I Can Haz Cheezburger (two of the founding members of the Internet Defense League). But the League has prominent members who take Internet regulation very seriously.

"I recently gave a talk about being Batman or being Batwoman for your respective Gotham," said Alexis Ohanian, cofounder of reddit (a sister company of Ars). "This is like a call to arms for all the people who are creating something online. Whether they have a Twitter account with 20 followers, or they have a website with 35 million visitors, they all have a Gotham, so to speak, to protect. They all have a community they want to keep strong."

Internet Defense League founders said spotlights will be used to project actual cat signals into the sky today at live kick-off events in New York City, San Francisco, Washington DC, and Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. But the cat signal will more importantly be a digital signal that can be planted on websites to protest future attempts to censor the Internet.

"This digital signal is a critical component of how IDL works; it's code that lets any website or individual broadcast messages to their personal networks in an 'emergency alert system,'" the group said in its announcement. "When the Internet's in danger and we need millions of people to act, the League will ask its members to broadcast an action. (Say, a prominent message asking everyone to call their elected leaders). With the combined reach of our websites and social networks, we can be massively more effective than any one organization."

reddit is just one of many members in the Internet Defense League. It also includes a Tea Party activist, Mozilla, WordPress, Fark, Imgur, Tor, BoingBoing, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, advocacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Marietje Schaake, a Dutch member of the European Parliament (which recently rejected the AntiCounterfeiting Trade Agreement). Congressmen including US Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), US Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS), and US Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) are also on board.

Ohanian and several other members got the word out about the Internet Defense League this morning in a somewhat chaotic conference call with reporters. (Imagine lots of noisy people not on mute and everyone trying to speak over everyone else because there's no established order for reporters to ask questions).

Moran said he wasn't necessarily expecting Internet freedom fighters to win the war against SOPA, but thought the battle was worth fighting anyway. The protest's ultimate success was gratifying, and helped preserve the abilities of businesses to innovate by using the Internet, he said.

"We have patted each other on the back and congratulated each other for that success, but I would say these battles, including the ones specifically related to SOPA and PIPA, are not behind us," Moran said. "And Congress has the habit of doing things without much forethought, without understanding these issues, particularly these tech issues, are ones many members of Congress don't have a complete understanding of. I think… individuals with expertise, knowledge, and a passion for the Internet have a great role to play in making certain the policies developed by Congress are ones that are advantageous to the Internet, and from my perspective advantageous to innovation."

Mozilla Foundation Executive Director Mark Surman said the scale of the Internet makes it possible—for the first time in human history—for anyone to publish anything, speak to anyone, or start a business without permission from someone else, and that right needs to be preserved. "We've made a huge bet on the Internet," Surman said, calling the Internet Defense League "a group of creative people who are excited about what the Internet can be as an open system."

Mark Meckler, co-founder and former national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots, said the Internet Defense League's nonpartisan, people-centered approach is ideal for protecting the Internet from the tendency of politicians to over-regulate. "The Internet is not the problem. The Internet is the solution, so the Internet Defense League is here to help be the solution and prevent government from intruding on that which has the chance to save society," Meckler said.

The Internet Defense League has the code ready for download. But there are questions about just how it will work in practice, such as who decides when to broadcast the cat signal, and how the decision made. Group leaders didn't present a specific method, but said it will be modeled on the way things become memes or viral on the Internet.

Just how to measure "viralness" hasn't been determined. But group members will hold discussions amongst themselves, and pay attention to what's happening on the Web at large. For example, if posts about a bill on Internet issues make it to the front page of reddit ten times in a row, there's a good chance the Internet Defense League would take a look and see if it's worthy of action.

One threat being monitored by group members is the Senate version of CISPA (the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act). One reporter asked if net neutrality is on the agenda, but no specific commitments were made.

There's always the possibility that not every member of the group will agree that a certain threat is actually a threat. While the cat signal code can be automatically triggered, members can also choose to turn it on a case-by-case basis, deciding for themselves which events are actually worth protesting.

4927

Living Room / Re: new DVD "M-Disc" perfect for archive material

« Last post by IainB on July 19, 2012, 09:12 AM »

I wonder if the data backed-up onto M-Discs would survive uncorrupted after an EMP (Electomagnetic Pulse) from a nuclear bomb?
In the event of WW3, the paranoid archivist would presumably hope that all his backup data was intact.   

4928

Living Room / Re: DOTCOM saga - updates

« Last post by IainB on July 18, 2012, 09:44 PM »

Hmm...now the judge in question (David Harvey) has recused himself from the DOTCOM trial: Megaupload judge quits case after inflammatory comment
What a complete surprise (NOT).

Spoiler

Kim Dotcom loses a sympathetic New Zealand judge.
by Timothy B. Lee - Jul 18, 2012 12:10 pm UTC

The New Zealand judge overseeing Kim Dotcom's extradition fight has removed himself from the Megaupload case. At a recent conference on copyright, Judge David Harvey stated, "we have met the enemy and he is US," a reference to tough US intellectual property policy. Critics argued that the statement called his impartiality into question, and the judge apparently agreed.
"He recognises that remarks made in the context of a paper he delivered on copyright law at a recent Internet conference could reflect on his impartiality and that the appropriate response is for him to step down from the case," said the district court's chief judge, Jan-Marie Doogue, to the New Zealand Herald.
The comments came last week at the NetHui conference in Aukland. The conference was organized by a group that opposed strong copyright language in the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty.
The development is a blow for Kim Dotcom, because Harvey's May ruling suggested he was sympathetic to Dotcom's arguments. "The United States is attempting to utilize concepts from the civil copyright context as a basis for the application of criminal copyright liability," he wrote, echoing the views of Dotcom's own lawyers. He ordered the US government to give Kim Dotcom data from his hard drives, ruling that their seizure had deprived the defendants of access to information they need to defend themselves.
Harvey has also granted Dotcom easier bail terms, allowing him to return to his mansion and freeing him from electronic monitoring requirements.
According to the Herald, the case will now be overseen by Judge Nevin Dawson. Dawson was previously involved in Dotcom's bail request back in February.

The most rational conclusion for this that I can come up with at the moment is that he may have deliberately contrived the situation where he repeated the Twittered quote about "we have met the enemy and he is US", in such a public manner, in anticipation of subsequently recusing himself because of it. (I mean, after making such a statement, he would have to, wouldn't he? It's not like he wouldn't have known that.)
This conclusion is based on an assumption that, generally, judges are not complete idiots - debatable, perhaps, but just bear with me.

Knowing the little that we are allowed to know, at least two possibilities occur:

• (a) Judge David Harvey had to be removed for granting Dotcom easier bail terms: they had been incredibly stern terms initially, presumably at the behest of the US SS, who would seem to have been orchestrating the whole Dotcom SWAT by a sort of remote control over the NZ authorities. So, perhaps to please the US contingent, he could have been quietly "got at" by the NZ government and told to manufacture his own recusal.
  
  
• (b) Judge David Harvey wanted or saw no ethical option but to recuse himself: after reading the published ruling of New Zealand High Court judge Helen Winkelmann - that the Dotcom raid was illegal - probably no self-respecting judge would be able to rest easy.
  Even without that judgement, in his arriving at a judgement over Dotcom's bail terms, David Harvey would presumably - even had his hands been tied - have been able to make his own observations of the egregious wrongness/illegality about the whole business, and could therefore have ruled leniently on the bail terms. He could thus have become biased in this way, and especially if he had sincerely put 2 and 2 together in quoting the Twittered comments about the TPPA (Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement) at the  NutHui Internet conference. For example, look at the possible reasoning:
  

  "We have been instructed, and have complied, to carry out an illegal act (QED) against a New Zealand citizen over unsubstantiated charges (QED) of crimes related to Internet business, at the behest of the SS of a foreign power who is apparently regarded as being "the Enemy of Internet freedoms". Regardless of whether he has committed a crime (as yet unproven), NZ has thus done a great wrong to Dotcom, his family and his business and has thus breached his statutory and legal rights to protection by the government, justice and privacy. This is generally wrong on statutory, moral, ethical and legal grounds, and we have been complicit in it. It is tantamount to discrimination, victimisation, harrassment of an NZ citizen, compounded by theft, all committed by the NZ government."

My take on it is that it is probably (b). If the above suggested reasoning is generally correct, then most judges involved must be sick to their stomachs at what has happened. Even to a casual onlooker, it would seem to be a gross corruption of NZ authority and justice, and it now needs to be rectified. I'm not sure whether or to what extent the Big Bully is twisting NZ's arm over this (probably via threat of economic sanctions), but the NZ government must be sweating as to how to now gracefully extricate themselves from this mess and make proper reparation. The situation would be no different if Dotcom were subsequently found to be guilty of some crime. It is wrong on so many fronts that it beggars belief. Arguably no government deserves to be re-elected if it allows and/or continues to be complicit in this sort of thing. Judges need to remain impartial amidst the chaos.

If there is one thing that successive NZ governments have shown themselves to be, it is that they can be relatively legally balanced.
One of the best examples of this would be the agreement over the Treaty of Waitangi claims and settlements.
Whether you agree with it or not, the disenfranchisement of the Maori (aboriginal tribes) and the theft of their land via the TOW has been confronted, addressed and rectified. I think this reflects what any civilised society could do - if it put it's collective mind to it - to try to give back to the aboriginal inhabitants what was taken from them not so long ago by the colonists.
Try doing that for the American Indians or the Australian Aborigines and see how far you get.

We're all watching with acute interest here in NZ, because this Dotcom saga is turning into a watershed not only for NZ justice, but also apparently for Internet freedoms worldwide.

4929

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a FREE pdf compressor tool

« Last post by IainB on July 18, 2012, 02:44 AM »

This is probably not practical,
but for individual files you could (I think!) print the PDF to a good customisable PDF printer (I use PDFcreator, watch out for toolbar install) and save with high compression levels and maybe even reduce image resolution settings.

-tomos (July 17, 2012, 04:49 PM)

I have found this to be practicable (and FREE) for individual files - as opposed to batches of files - in the past, and it is still probably worth a try. However, it will not usually work on (compress) .PDF documents which have security settings set that prevent reassembling or editing of the document.

4930

Living Room / Re: How do I turn off image attachment previews in Gmail?

« Last post by IainB on July 17, 2012, 12:36 PM »

This now leads me to believe someone is logged into my account somewhere, spamming the same email addresses my email seems to be coming from, causing the importance ranking to get bumped up, and then quickly deleting the sent emails before I can find them.

-daddydave (July 17, 2012, 05:19 AM)

This might help (detailed steps) - from a DCF post:
Run a security check on your Gmail account - if not already done

4931

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a "virtual scanner' software in one pass, outputting in PDF.

« Last post by IainB on July 17, 2012, 12:13 PM »

...if I press Ctrl+Alt+PrtScr, FastStone Capture will create an accurate screenshot of the entire page, and offer me to merely click Save as Pdf - and I have a much better looking copy than any virtual pdf printer ever will give me - at a fraction of the price.

-Curt (July 17, 2012, 09:11 AM)

If you only want a few pages, and you only want an image, then I think it might be best to stick with FastStone Capture or some other screenshot capture tool, rather than something like OmniPage. The book I was referring to was 300 or so pages long, and not what you'd really want to do page-by-page. OmniPage apparently just chuntered through the document in one pass.

I don't know that OmniPage did:

"...a higher resolution image..."

- because it did an OCR scan of the image in video/graphic RAM that had been read in from the .PDF file (quite clever really).
Going from digital-->digital-->OCR analogue though is likely to produce some errors. (The output was text and images in a Word document, don't forget.)

The suggestion of doing a scrolling screen capture of all the pages of a document in a .PDF reader would seem to have merit. I wondered about asking @mouser to add that to SSC (ScreenShot Captor) too, but didn't as it's not something I would want to do all that often. Nowadays, I could probably do something similar in OneNote otherwise.

4932

Living Room / Re: How do I turn off image attachment previews in Gmail?

« Last post by IainB on July 17, 2012, 03:31 AM »

@barney: That all sounds a bit weird to me. I haven't actually tested the 30-day thing for ages, as I usually (daily) systematically check through the Spam and the Bin, and check for any material I might want, before expunging the contents and leaving the Spam and the Bin folders empty.
You have gone through all your Gmail account settings and Labs settings with a fine-tooth comb have you? I tend to fiddle about with fancy filtering and such, and it is easy to make mistakes in them and then end up wondering what the heck is going on with my Gmail...     

4933

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a "virtual scanner' software in one pass, outputting in PDF.

« Last post by IainB on July 17, 2012, 03:16 AM »

I'm not sure, but I suspect that, to some extent, the price may reflect the sophistication of the design and the technology in use.

For example, some years back, I recall that a colleague of mine had a .PDF file from a project management "cartel" trade association that he was a member of - the "Project Management Association", or something like that.
Anyway, he wanted to print out the .PDF document onto paper, but could not, because printing had been deliberately disabled in the security settings of the .PDF file. So he could only open it in a .PDF reader. Yet he wanted two copies - one for his desk at the office, and one for reference at home. I think the association took advantage (read "ripped off") members by charging them an arm and a leg to sell them a hardcopy of the document, and he wanted to avoid that.
The document was the then current year's members' handbook, containing all the arcane mumbo-jumbo methodology of the association that initiates had to learn. This was supposedly "proprietary" to the association, but was actually nothing more than the usual collection of project management theory and so-called "best" or good practice that is taught in business school and which has lain in the public domain since Taylor/Gantt.

I saw that he had access in his office to a software called Omnipage (I think it was that), so I suggested to him that the simplest thing might be to use Omnipage to open and read the document, because I had read that Omnipage could blindly scan a document image once it had it in RAM in video/screen output format, OCR it and output it to a .PDF or MS Word document file in a reasonable likeness of the original.
So he did that, and in one pass he easily outputted it to a Word document file, and printed off two hardcopies for himself and a third for me - for giving him the idea in the first place.
I looked through it and it seemed to be a very good likeness of the original .PDF file - images, diagrams, tables and all, and there were only a few minor OCR errors. You could always parse the Word document file with a spellchecker and clear up the OCR errors, and fiddle with any image oddities.

I do not know whether any copyright was breached in the process, but what did strike me (as someone interested in all aspects of desktop publishing) was the sheer sophistication of the software that enabled you to do all this. Omnipage was pretty expensive to buy.

4934

Living Room / Re: How do I turn off image attachment previews in Gmail?

« Last post by IainB on July 17, 2012, 12:27 AM »

You know what's really freaky? Gmail itself  is marking these as important. If I mouse over the important icon, it says "marked important mainly because of the people in this message."

-daddydave (July 11, 2012, 06:21 AM)

Do you consistently mark them down (using the little yellow thingy in Gmail) as "not important"? I thought Gmail had a default rule that something is important, but you can teach it otherwise this way. It works for me, anyway.

Since I have the Stylish add-on installed, this bit seemed to do the trick as far as hiding the attachment previews...

-daddydave (July 11, 2012, 06:38 AM)

Thanks for the idea! I also use Stylish to a limited extent. I had not thought to use it to suppress content though.

I didn't realize you could block images per domain.

-daddydave (July 11, 2012, 06:49 AM)

Nor me (or I had forgotten). Thanks @4wd.

4935

Living Room / Re: DOTCOM saga - updates

« Last post by IainB on July 17, 2012, 12:04 AM »

Not a development in the DOTCOM saga per se, but an interesting comment apparently coming from the the NZ judge to hear the Dotcom extradition case.
US "the Enemy" Says Dotcom Judge

Posted by samzenpus on Monday July 16, @10:14AM
from the know-your-enemy dept.

First time accepted submitter Flere Imsaho writes "During the NutHui Internet conference last week, the NZ judge to hear the Dotcom extradition case was speaking on the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement and how the U.S. entertainment industry is pushing to make region code hacking illegal, when he said 'Under TPP and the American Digital Millennium copyright provisions you will not be able to do that, that will be prohibited ... if you do you will be a criminal — that's what will happen. Even before the 2008 amendments it wasn't criminalized. There are all sorts of ways this whole thing is being ramped up and if I could use Russell [Brown's] tweet from earlier on: we have met the enemy and he is [the] U.S.'"

This gives me some hope that the principles of justice and liberty might be alive and well in the minds of the judiciary - in NZ, at least.
We shall see.

4936

General Software Discussion / Re: Program "Text Images", and sttmedia.com

« Last post by IainB on July 15, 2012, 05:23 PM »

@Curt: Thanks for posting the image of the list of proggies page.
Please see caveats below.

FilelistCreator:
I have been trying this out. Not bad...but, it occasionally hangs whilst "analysing" the files. Not sure what is happening. It might be just my installation(?), I suppose. But it can certainly produce some great filelists, and in different output formats too - e.g., including txt and html. I haven't thrown out FileGrab just yet though...

Clipboard Saver:
Looks like it could potentially be quite good (though probably not up to CHS standard)...but, after you've gone through the settings to make it do what you want, how you want, it won't let you save and reload your settings until you pay a "donation". It is effectively crippled until you pay up. You can't even try this @#$*$ software out properly. Bushwhacked by ultra-annoying crippleware. There's no indication up front that you are letting yourself in for this.
So, I looked at the website and found discreetly hidden away at the bottom of a page a button marked Licence. Click on that and you get pages of stuff, opening with: (my emphasis)

Stefan Trost Media offers the use of two categories of software through licensing. The categories are the free A-Software and the B-Software, for which licence fees must be paid. The following terms are the contractual basis of the use of the software of both categories between the parties in detail. Regarding to the B-Software an additional contract concerning the creation, the licences and the costs of the software has to be concluded. An exception is the B-Software ImageConverter Pro (BildKonverter Pro) and the B-Software TextConverter Pro (TextKonverter Pro). These two programs have no additional contract. With the first use of the software or in the case of A-Software in addition with passing on the software, this contract is concluded and the following contractual terms are accepted by the user.
...

This looks like it is bait and switch, as Wikipedia puts it - here:

Bait-and-switch is a form of fraud, most commonly used in retail sales but also applicable to other contexts. First, customers are "baited" by advertising for a product or service at a low price; second, the customers discover that the advertised good is not available and are "switched" to a costlier product.

What a pity (sigh). Of course, I immediately lost interest in this site.   
I apologise for wasting anyone's time in being overly eager and making the opening post before exploring further. I'll try not to make that mistuk again.   

4937

General Software Discussion / Program "Text Images", and sttmedia.com

« Last post by IainB on July 15, 2012, 08:22 AM »

Posted in case this might be of interest/use to DCF members.
I was reading a post in A. Kipta's Blog - here. It is about a proggy on the website http://www.sttmedia.com called Text Images

Text Images seems be a rather novel and nifty idea - it automates the putting of text strings onto images, and thus could be a potentially major timesaver for some blog authors. I don't really need the proggie, and I'm not sure how novel it really is, but I hadn't come across anything like this before.
But it is just one of several potentially useful/interesting donationware proggies listed on the sttmedia.com website.
So it might be worth a look for other obsessive-compulsive software triallists out there...    

I found one instance of the site being previously mentioned in DCF: Re: IDEA: Script or software that scans lines of text and reports no. of syllables

EDIT 2012-07-16 0213hrs (NZT)
Check out their File List Creator proggy. Looks like it will super-supersede (and enable the retirement of) the highly useful FileGrab freeware proggy that I have (ZiffDavis, 1997 vintage).    

4938

Living Room / Re: What went wrong at Digg: publishers, PR hacks and power users ruled the roost

« Last post by IainB on July 14, 2012, 11:09 PM »

I don't want to hijac this thread, but I would make an explanatory response to the below 3 statements/points:

This was news back when mouser wrote that piece...
...most startups are designed to sell big before failing rather than being successful.
...share risky predictions instead of explaining away stuff...

-Paul Keith (July 14, 2012, 07:08 PM)

1. Old news and hindsight: Yes, as I wrote:

When I read that theatlantic.com article though, I thought it was so busy analysing and criticising Digg - in hindsight and after the fact - that it could well have missed the point about the lack of definition (nebulousness) of Digg.

-IainB (July 13, 2012, 01:00 PM)

- and...
2. Startups collapsing: Whilst I am not sure whether it is true - at least, not since the Dot.com bubble burst -  that:

"...most startups are designed to sell big before failing rather than being successful."

- (because that could presumably suggest some kind of fraudulent intent behind an IPO), it does nevertheless seem...

3. Prediction of collapse: ...to have been born out in practice that the simple application of the theoretical approach of process Statistical Control described enables the user to predict - given knowledge of the business processes involved - with some accuracy, whether a business is likely to go down the progressive path towards collapse that Deming described:

• Fail to make sales.
• Lose customers.
• Lose market share.
• Make a net loss.
• Go bust.

I apologise if I wrote what I did in a confusing way, but this 3rd point was what I was working towards with:

With a dreadful statistical certainty, it seems that they must fail.
There could be other examples in progress - e.g., interestingly, to an onlooker, Facebook might seem as though it is making all the right moves to follow suit.

-IainB (July 13, 2012, 01:00 PM)

And you would do this by the application of simple Statistical Control process charts.
Statistical Process Control charts won't tell you whether the IPO was a fraud, but, if you have knowledge of the business processes involved, then they will tell you something about the degree of statistical control of the business processes, and that would point the likely way ahead. It would also give you some idea of what you might need to do to repair the situation if the process was on the path towards collapse that Deming described.
So the tool enables both prediction and diagnosis. That can be very constructive.

In Facebook's case, they seem to have been and to still be going through dynamic change of their business processes. A process that is in a state of dynamic change (e.g., process change thrashing) cannot be in statistical control, nor can it (by definition) be categorised as anything higher than CMM Level 1 or 2. There's a lot they could do - and probably are doing - to get back on a stable business process track.
_______________________________________________________________

Off-topic:

Spoiler

I recall Deming saying something to the effect that he had spent a good deal of his life translating something that he had found very complex to understand that his teacher (Shewhart) had taught him - the mathematical/statistical theory relating to processes in Statistical Control - into simple terms that people could understand, and then communicating that to business.
He said that it was very simple, but that people seemed to find it difficult to understand.
In my case at least, he was right on both counts.   

There's an interesting reference to this in Wikipedia, here:

Dr. Shewhart's boss, George D. Edwards, recalled: "Dr. Shewhart prepared a little memorandum only about a page in length. About a third of that page was given over to a simple diagram which we would all recognize today as a schematic control chart. That diagram, and the short text which preceded and followed it, set forth all of the essential principles and considerations which are involved in what we know today as process quality control."[1]

Shewhart was alive March 18, 1891 – March 11, 1967, but the profound statistical theory of the process control chart approach seems to have been little-used and not generally taught in business schools.
Deming was alive October 14, 1900 – December 20, 1993, and was only listened to by Western industrialists because he was regarded (by the Japanese) as having laid the foundation for Japan's rise from a shattered post-war economy to huge economic prosperity. That is, "He must have done something right!"
I am not sure to what extent Deming/Shewhart is currently taught or even understood in business schools, but I have seen plenty of evidence to suggest that it's node widely understood.

It is ironic that when I had the opportunity to attend one of Deming's a 4-day seminars when he was 84 years old, that what he was talking about to the 300 or so attendees was, for most of them, completely new.
Furthermore, they were ignorant, and some of them resisted accepting what he said because it killed some sacred MBA cows and thus went against their paradigms and beliefs. Though Deming was not new to me (I had read about him and watched TV documentaries about him, and had asked to be sent to the seminar by my employer), I was one of those ignorant ones, and I am ashamed to admit that the penny only started to drop on the morning of the 3rd day.   

4939

Living Room / Re: What went wrong at Digg: publishers, PR hacks and power users ruled the roost

« Last post by IainB on July 14, 2012, 06:27 PM »

...It's especially funny if you look at the thread starter pic. 

-TaoPhoenix (July 14, 2012, 12:20 PM)

Yes indeed! That pic makes me cringe - a frighteningly true image - but it was a good choice, quite funny.   

4940

Living Room / Re: What went wrong at Digg: publishers, PR hacks and power users ruled the roost

« Last post by IainB on July 14, 2012, 10:53 AM »

Wow Iain, that post is incredible.

-TaoPhoenix (July 14, 2012, 08:03 AM)

Hahaha - does that mean you don't believe it?   
(Don't bother answering. It's a rhetorical Q. I don't ask for or expect belief.)

My training for improving or re-engineering business processes typically involves:
(a) gaining an understanding of the process by applying relevant theory to the process, then
(b) actions in line with that theory, to improve the process.

"Action which is not based on sound theory or "best"/good practice is irrational by definition." (WE Deming)

What I learned from studying Deming et al was that, for improving existing processes, if you focussed on the the ICOMs and the cost-effectiveness of process design, by modelling the AS-IS and TO-BE processes and applying (say) ABC (Activity-Based Costing) or Linear Programming/Optimisation (where the latter might be feasible/relevant), then you could usually streamline your process design on "paper" (I use computer-based models) before spending a lot of money introducing risky ad hoc changes to the actual process. This saves time and money, and reduces potential risk of a costly screw-up.

Of course, one piece of theory to apply is about processes in CMM Level 1 or 2. That is, you should try to avoid potentially wasting your time by putting any work into a process until it has been brought under Statistical Control (CMM Level 3 or above). It is axiomatic that only when an AS-IS process is in Statistical Control can you rationally develop a plan to improve its design.

So, when I read about "Where XYZ business went wrong", my approach is to focus on the ICOMs in a model of the processes involved, and not what I think/feel should be done about symptomatic or organisational problems. Theory is a powerful thinking tool for discovering truth, and it invariably leads us to the realisation that the causal problems in business are generally to be found within a business process. Every time a coconut.

4941

General Software Discussion / AutoHotkey_L v1.1.08 released 2012-07-15

« Last post by IainB on July 14, 2012, 07:52 AM »

AHK Forum discussion - AutoHotkey_L v1.1.08
Downloads

I am pleased to see this. Because of some of the discussions in the forum, I had been a bit worried that the AHK-L fork was about to be abandoned/dropped. It seems to be dependent on one person.

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Living Room / Re: Preparing for the inevitable

« Last post by IainB on July 13, 2012, 01:37 PM »

It would be useful if there was some free zip file somewhere that contained a bunch of forms to fill out to cover all of these issues.. A living will, a place to list important passwords, etc.

-mouser (July 13, 2012, 09:10 AM)

Also, you could try this list (from a Google search) - here.

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Living Room / Re: Petition - This Week We Kill ACTA - Or Get Locked Down In Monopolies For Decades

« Last post by IainB on July 13, 2012, 01:23 PM »

It's rather like @Renegade put it in a separate, earlier discussion thread - "they're like cockroaches".

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Living Room / Re: What went wrong at Digg: publishers, PR hacks and power users ruled the roost

« Last post by IainB on July 13, 2012, 01:00 PM »

You could well have been right in what you said in that older (2006-09-07) DCF discussion that you kicked off.
I don't feel qualified to comment though, as, though Digg, StumbleUpon, and the other all-the-samers looked intriguingly interesting to me at first glance, I could never really understand what they were really supposed to be, nor see the point/use of them for me or other users. Same with Google's Wave or Buzz or Google+, for example. They seemed nebulous.
Don't get me wrong - I did have at least some understanding of their fly-paper-like business objectives, but that was probably all.

When I read that theatlantic.com article though, I thought it was so busy analysing and criticising Digg - in hindsight and after the fact - that it could well have missed the point about the lack of definition (nebulousness) of Digg.

I would approach that from a theoretical perspective: (because it tends to stand up in practice)

• Function and purpose: Any business generally exists merely to do something in such a way as to enable it to make a profit from what it does, to maintain/increase shareholder value. (Conventional business model.)
• Process: What a business does can be defined as a process. If you are unable to define it as a process, then you don't know what it is that the business is doing. (W.E. Deming.)
• Process capability maturity: If you can attempt to define it as a process - for example, (say) using the GAO-preferred IDEF0/3 methodology (GAO BPR Assessment Guide 1997), with ICOMs (Inputs, Controls, Outputs, Mechanisms), but in a state where the ICOMs vary in the short term, then the Quality of the Output will tend to be subject to inherent statistical variability/inconsistency. (W.E. Deming.)
• CMM Levels: This state of variability was defined in the 5-level Humphreys CMM (Capability Maturity Model) as Level 1 (Ad hoc) or Level 2 (Repeatable). Level 3 (Defined) was where you operated the processes consistently in a defined manner. Level 4 (Managed) was where you deliberately managed the processes (as distinct from managing the business), and Level 5 (Optimised) was where you optimised those managed processes. (Managing the Software Process, 1989, Watts Humphrey)
• Processes in statistical control: These are processes where the process performance (e.g., the quality of a process Output) can be seen to be in statistical control and subject to Common Causes inherent in the process itself. There are no trends, the mean is flat, performance is consistent and repeatable, and any variability beyond normal Upper or Lower performance bounds is thus attributable to Special Causes. (W.A.Shewhart)
• Processes out of statistical control: These are processes where the process performance (e.g., the quality of a process Output) can be seen to be out of statistical control and subject to Special Causes. There are trends, the mean moves all over the place, performance is inconsistent and not easily repeatable, and process performance is almost entirely attributable to Special Causes (e.g., the process changes). (W.A.Shewhart)

Deming showed (in "Out of the Crisis: Quality, Productivity and Competitive Position" 1982) that where a business' core business processes were out of Statistical Control (which would typically place them in Humphreys' CMM Level 1 or 2), then they would progressively be likely to:

• Fail to make sales.
• Lose customers.
• Lose market share.
• Make a net loss.
• Go bust.

If you look at Digg and other recent innovative Internet-based businesses that seem to have failed (including those within Google), you are likely to find that they generally seemed to involve a poorly-defined business process and/or a process in a dynamic state of change. This would place them as business processes out of Statistical Control, in Level 1 or 2 of the CMM.
With a dreadful statistical certainty, it seems that they must fail.

There could be other examples in progress - e.g., interestingly, to an onlooker, Facebook might seem as though it is making all the right moves to follow suit.
Generally, if a business has a single major core business process, then such a process failure is likely to be a recipe for disaster. If they are not yet core processes, and are being exposed to the market as ß-tests in a sandbox (e.g., like Google Wave, Buzz, etc.), then the costs of failure would probably be written off as necessary market trialling or R&D costs, well before they started to adversely affect overall corporate profitability or shareholder value.

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Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on July 13, 2012, 12:07 PM »

Probably apocryphal, but amusing nonetheless:

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Living Room / Re: Petition - This Week We Kill ACTA - Or Get Locked Down In Monopolies For Decades

« Last post by IainB on July 13, 2012, 05:01 AM »

Yes, there's the holidays, but I'm not sure whether urgent bills can get passed under "emergency" provisions despite many voters being away...
There seems to be a secretive Dirty Tricks Brigade active here.

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Living Room / Re: Petition - This Week We Kill ACTA - Or Get Locked Down In Monopolies For Decades

« Last post by IainB on July 13, 2012, 01:50 AM »

See edit above:

EDIT 2012-07-13 1842hrs (NZT)
Oh dear, looks like it is an issue - an issue of Trust for the EC. (from falkvinge.net)
Bad faith from European Commission indicates CETA may be ACTA episode II after all

-IainB (July 10, 2012, 07:35 AM)

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Living Room / Petition with Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales + Demand Progress - re Richard O'Dwyer

« Last post by IainB on July 12, 2012, 01:10 AM »

Join Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales: Protect Internet Freedom And Seek Justice for Richard O'Dwyer
(Go to link for the actual petition and embedded links.)

Hi, I am Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, and if you care about justice and the future of Internet freedom, Demand Progress and I need your help.  This will only take a few seconds, but you can really help us change things for the better.

Richard O'Dwyer is a 24 year old British student at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK. He is facing extradition to the USA and up to ten years in prison, for creating a website - TVShack.net – which linked (similarly to a search-engine) to places to watch TV and movies online.

O'Dwyer is not a US citizen, he's lived in the UK all his life, his site was not hosted there, and most of his users were not from the US. America is trying to prosecute a UK citizen for an alleged crime which took place on UK soil.

The Internet as a whole must not tolerate censorship in response to mere allegations of copyright infringement. As citizens we must stand up for our rights online.

Please sign on at right here to join me in demanding that British authorities refuse to extradite O'Dwyer, and that US officials cease persecuting him.

When operating his site, Richard O'Dwyer always did his best to play by the rules: on the few occasions he received requests to remove content from copyright holders, he complied. His site hosted links, not copyrighted content, and these were submitted by users.

Copyright is an important institution, serving a beneficial moral and economic purpose. But that does not mean that copyright can or should be unlimited. It does not mean that we should abandon time-honored moral and legal principles to allow endless encroachments on our civil liberties in the interests of the moguls of Hollywood.

Richard O'Dwyer is the human face of the battle between the content industry and the interests of the general public. Earlier this year, in the fight against SOPA and PIPA, the public won its first big victory. This could be our second.

This is why I am petitioning the UK's Home Secretary Theresa May to stop the extradition of Richard O'Dwyer, and asking the United States to end his prosecution. I hope you will join me.

- Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder
Just add your name at right to sign on and email UK and US authorities.
   If you're already on Facebook, click here to share with your friends.
   If you're already on Twitter, click here to tweet about the campaign:

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Living Room / Re: Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/ACTA-related updates

« Last post by IainB on July 11, 2012, 09:05 PM »

The role of "IP attaches" is defined in this Slashdot news item re Lamar Smith's efforts to apparently introduce new US legislation to control Internet freedoms.
SOPA Provisions Being Introduced Piecemeal From Lamar Smith

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday July 10, @04:30PM
from the will-be-hard-to-blackout-the-internet-every-other-week dept.

bricko sends this disappointing but not unexpected news from Techdirt:

"While it didn't get nearly as much attention as other parts of SOPA, one section in the bill that greatly concerned us was the massive expansion of the diplomatic corp.'s 'IP attaches.' If you're unfamiliar with the program, basically IP attaches are 'diplomats' (and I use the term loosely) who go around the globe pushing a copyright maximalist position on pretty much every other country. Their role is not to support more effective or more reasonable IP policy. It is solely to increase expansion, and basically act as Hollywood's personal thugs pressuring other countries to do the will of the major studios and labels. The role is literally defined as pushing for 'aggressive support for enforcement action' throughout the world. ... In other words, these people are not neutral. They do not have the best interests of the public or the country in mind. Their job is solely to push the copyright maximalist views of the legacy entertainment industry around the globe, and position it as the will of the U.S. government. It was good that this was defeated as a part of SOPA... but now comes the news that Lamar Smith is introducing a new bill that not only brings back this part, but appears to expand it and make it an even bigger deal."

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Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: NoteFrog Pro (clipboard information manager) - Mini-Review

« Last post by IainB on July 11, 2012, 08:10 PM »

I hardly ever use RSS!  I have the NoteFrog forum set as a hotsite in WebSite-Watcher, so I see which sections have new postings.

-rjbull (July 11, 2012, 03:14 PM)

I've not used WSW. Being lazy, I just feed everything into the feed aggregator (Google Reader), and that is set to filter out preceding duplicate post titles from the view.
So, instead of seeing all the new comment posts in a forum discussion thread, I just see the latest one.
This gives:
(a) a lot less clutter,
(b) notification that something has changed in that discussion thread, and
(c) the link to follow to the last post, from which you can scroll backwards to review what led to that last post.