Digital Common Sense

Jon over at Wirearchy said

… that given current conditions writer’s block is contagious, even though I’m not really a writer (yet ?)

All for now … back later, maybe .. when things change.

Reminded me of a note I had somewhere around here that I thought I’d post.

45 Ways to Smash Writer’s Block
1. Read something you’d never dream of reading: even Richard Nixon’s memoirs.
2. Listen to something new and unexpected.
3. Ask yourself if you may be trying to say too much.
4. Write the last sentence of your piece. Think backwards to where you’re stuck. How does it fit?
5. Find the best word in your piece. Insert it where you’re stuck. How does it feel in its new location?
6. Just imagine how you’d feel if your piece caught fire.
7. Lie on the floor, pillowless. Suffer for your art.
8. Stare at the sky.
9. Accept a distraction.
10. Consider the next point on your journey. Why now, of all times, are you standing still?
11. Listen to a favorite song, or even a song you detest.
12. Write something, anything–a recipe, a love or hate letter, a poem, a shopping list–in the white space where you’re stuck.
13. Find the information you’re missing.
14. Change rooms.
15. Do something so dull that your mind will scream to get back to writing. Washing the car, watching religious broadcasting, or working return are all good candidates.
16. Ask yourself if you like what you’re doing. If not, stop.
17. Talk yourself over the spot where you’re stuck. Then write what you learn–fast.
18. Put your notes in a drawer. Shun them for a while.
19. Sprint! Write anything, anything, as fast as you can forlfive minutes.
20. Breathe. (Apologies to Yoko.)
21. Call someone you love. Ask that person how to proceed. Chances are you’ll have the right answer in no time.
22. Deny yourself absolutely nothing. Start with first-rate tools.
23. Stretch.
24. Fool yourself.
25. Delight yourself.
26. Listen to your narrator. How would s/he get out of this jam? What would Ahab do?
27. Write a one-sentence prcis of your piece, striving forlexactly the right words. Where are you in that sentence?
28. Eat something hot, just as Satchel Paige said.
29. Fill the page with a picture of the thing you’re trying to get at. Spare no detail whatever.
30. Tell yourself why you’re stuck.
31. Change writing tools. If you’re writing on a computer, switch it off and find a pencil.
32. Know yourself.
33. Think the clearest thought you can.
34. Walk somewhere. Put one thing from your walk into the text, right where you’re stuck.
35. Imagine the look on your reader’s face.
36. Work on something new.
37. Stop: but only in mid-sentence, where you can pick up next time.
38. Write in a different direction on the page.
39. Imagine the exhilaration of finishing, the rewards you’ll shower on yourself for having gone the distance.
40. Close your eyes.
41. Sit quietly, ignoring the problem.
42. Read something unconnected to what you’re working on. Louis Pasteur: “Chance favors the prepared mind.”
43. Reverse all engines.
44. Chase down the Muse. Then do exactly as she says.
45. Remember that writer’s block is nothing more than a failure of nerve. But don’t let that bother you.

Gregory McNamee is the author of a new collection of essays, THE
RETURN OF RICHARD NIXON (Harbinger House, 1990), and of several other books.

This article will appear in WHOLE EARTH REVIEW in the summer of
1990.

Copyright (c) 1989 by Gregory McNamee. All rights reserved.

3/5/05 Playing with trackback trying tio figure out why didn’t send one to Jon.

Filed by Ken at 8:48 pm under General
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New York Times
Ebbers Mounts an I-Never-Knew Defense
By KEN BELSON
Published: March 1, 2005

Bernard J. Ebbers, the former WorldCom chief executive once hailed as one of the most brilliant telecommunications entrepreneurs ever, told a packed courtroom yesterday, “I don’t know about technology and I don’t know about finance and accounting.”

In taking the stand in his own defense, Mr. Ebbers displayed a folksy innocence that was part of the defense effort to cast him as someone who relied on others with greater expertise to handle the details of running WorldCom as it grew from a small regional reseller of phone services to one of the largest companies in America.

Since when do incompetent boards of directors reward and continue to pay incompetents who don’t know what’s going on in their companies. Anyone who buys this sorry excuse for management really needs to understand that this, along with the Enron scandal are solid representations of the good reasons being changes so many of us are fighting like Sarbanes-Oxley.

Filed by Ken at 8:21 pm under General
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Reuters
U.S. Adventurer Sets Off on Solo Global Flight
Mon Feb 28, 2005 08:42 PM ET

SALINA, Kan. (Reuters) - Steve Fossett, who sailed around the globe in a balloon three years ago, took off from a Kansas airfield on Monday trying to circle the Earth nonstop in a one-engine plane without refueling.

Fossett rolled down the runway at 7:45 p.m. EST from Salina Municipal Airport before about 200 people.

Among those on hand was Virgin Atlantic Airways chief Richard Branson who wants to send tourists into space. He is bankrolling the flight, has put his brand on the experimental aircraft and flew in a contingent of journalists aboard one of his airline’s 747s to cover the event.

Fossett hopes to touch down back in Kansas in a little less than three days after covering 23,000 miles at altitudes of up to 52,000 feet — and is designated as an alternate landing spot for the Space Shuttle.

Fossett’s craft consists of a 7-foot-long pressurized, cigar-shaped cabin suspended beneath a single Williams turbofan jet engine. The cabin is bracketed by two large outrigger-like booms farther out on the 114-foot wing holding the landing gear and fuel. At takeoff, the flight group said, fuel would take up 83 percent of the aircraft’s weight.

[Full Story]

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If you don’t laugh out loud after you read this you are in a coma! This is even funnier when you realize it’s real! Next time you have a bad day at work … think of this guy, a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana. He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs. Below is an E-mail he sent to his sister.

Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother. Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you’ve been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it’s not so bad after all.

Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job. As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It’s a wetsuit. This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this: We have a diesel powered industrial water heater. This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks the water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to the air hose. Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I’ve used it several times with no complaints. What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wetsuit. This floods my whole suit with warm water. It’s like working in a Jacuzzi.

Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my butt started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my butt started to burn. I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done. In agony I realized what had happened. The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into mysuit. Now, since I don’t have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn’t stick to it. However, the crack of my butt was not asfortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my butt. I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other divers, were all laughing hysterically.

Needless to say I aborted the dive. I was instructed to make three agonizing in-water decompression stops totaling thirty-five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression. When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet. As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my butt as soon as I got in the chamber. The cream put the fire out,but I couldn’t poop for two days because my butt was swollen shut. So, next time you’re having a bad day at work, think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your butt.

Now repeat to yourself, “I love my job, I love my job, I love my job.”

Filed by Ken at 7:12 pm under General
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LETTER FROM A HILLBILLY KID STATIONED AT SAN DIEGO MARINE CORPS RECRUIT DEPOT.

Dear Ma and Pa:

I am well. Hope you are. Tell Brother Walt and Brother Elmer the Marine Corps beats working for old man Minch by a mile.

Tell them to join up quick before maybe all of the places are filled.

I was restless at first because you got to stay in bed till nearly 6 a.m., but am getting so I like to sleep late.

Tell Walt and Elmer all you do before breakfast is smooth your cot and shine some things. No hogs to slop, feed to pitch, mash to mix, wood to split,fire to lay. Practically nothing. Men got to shave but it is not so bad, there’s warm water.

Breakfast is strong on trimmings like fruit juice, cereal, eggs, bacon,etc., but kind of weak on chops, potatoes, ham, steak, fried eggplant, pie and other regular food, but tell Walt and Elmer you can always sit by the two city boys that live on coffee. Their food plus yours holds you till noon when you get fed again.

It’s no wonder these city boys can’t walk much. We go on “route marches”,which the platoon sergeant says are long walks to harden us. If he thinks so, it’s not my place to tell him different. A “route march” is about as far as to our mailbox at home.

Then the city guys get sore feet and we all ride back in trucks. The country is nice but awful flat.

The sergeant is like a school teacher.

He nags a lot.The Capt. is like the school board. Majors and colonels just ride around and frown. They don’t bother you none.

This next will kill Walt and Elmer with laughing. I keep getting medals for shooting. I don’t know why. The bulls-eye is near as big as a chipmunk head and don’t move, and it ain’t shooting at you like them Rucker boys back
on the crick. All you got to do is lie there all comfortable and hit it. You don’t even load your own cartridges. They come in boxes.

Then we have what they call hand-to hand combat training. You get to wrestle with them city boys. I have to be real careful though, they break real easy. It ain’t like fighting with that ole bull at home. I’m about the best they got in this except for that Tug Jordan from over in Roane County. I only beat him once. He joined up the same time as me, but I’m only 5′6″ and130 pounds, and he’s 6′8″ and weighs near 300 pounds dry.

Be sure to tell Walt and Elmer to hurry and join before other fellers get onto this setup and come stampeding in.

Your loving daughter,

Gail

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Content Factor Weblog: What a White Paper Is (and Isn’t)

What a White Paper Is (and Isn’t)

In my many (many) years of business writing, I’ve found that one type of deliverable causes more confusion in terms of exactly “what it is” than any other: The White Paper.

It’s tempting when you’re spending the time to develop an 8, 12, 16 (or more) page publication to include everything about the organization, its products, and more. But the most effective white paper is one that is concise, educational, and keenly focused on a single topic, concept, or technology.

What a white paper is not:

* A brochure
* An overview of your solution
* A newsletter
* A 20-page document that says everything you want to say

What a white paper is:

* An educational tool for the reader first
* A marketing tool for your organization second
* An explanation or discussion of something–a trend, a technology, an architecture–not your product though.

There are other reasons to write white papers that those Jeneane has listed, particiulary those written for internal use. But if more people would follow this simple guide, we’d sure see better quality white papers all the way around.

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Can’t remember where I saw this, but it bears reposting.

Can you read these correctly –the first time?

1. The bandage was wound around the wound.
2. The farm was used to produce produce.
3. The landfill was so full, they had to refuse more refuse.
4. Please polish the Polish furniture.
5. He could be in the lead if he would get the lead out.
6. The soldier chose to desert his dessert in the desert.
7. Since there is no time like the present, it is time to present the present.
8. A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9. When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10. I did not object to the object.
11. The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12. There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13. They were too close to the door to close it.
14. The buck does strange antics when does are around.
15. A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16. To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17. The wind was too strong for us to wind the sail.
18. I shed a tear upon seeing the tear in the painting.
19. I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20. I need to intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let’s face it - English is a crazy language.

There is no egg in eggplant, no ham in hamburger;

neither apple nor pine in pineapple

English muffins were not invented in England

nor French fries in France.

Sweetmeats are candies, while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat.

We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square, and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t
groce and hammers don’t ham?

If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese?

One index, 2 indices?

Is it not crazy that you can make amends, but not one amend?

If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught?

If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

Sometimes I think the first ‘teachers of the language’ should have been committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.

How is it that people recite a play and play at a recital; ship by truck and send cargo by ship; have noses that run and feet that smell??

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man
and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down; you fill in a form by filling it out and an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. This is why when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

PS. - Why doesn’t “Buick” rhyme with “quick”

*** mo:Blogged ***

Filed by Ken at 5:49 pm under General
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Full story on Network World Fusion at
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2005/022805fips201.html

Govt. braces for key security standard
Department of Defense could feel biggest impact of new smart-card rules.

By Ellen Messmer
Network World, 02/28/05

The National Institute of Standards and Technology last week raced to meet a weekend deadline to issue a smart-card standard that will be the basis for products that give federal employees and contractors secure access to networks and buildings.

President Bush imposed the deadline last August in a directive aimed at improving government security by having a common access technology adopted by next year.

The arrival of the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 201 is being met with a mix of optimism and anxiety. If it works out, the standard could provide a framework for adoption outside the federal government. But more immediately, government agencies are concerned about its costs and practical implementation.

The Department of Defense, the government’s biggest user of smart cards, is most worried.

“We expect we’re going to have to make some changes,” says Mary Dixon, deputy director at the department’s Defense Manpower Data Center. The group has issued more than 3 million smart cards based on the older Government Smart Card Interoperability Specification (GSCIS ).

In comments to NIST last December on the draft standards document, the Defense Department said FIPS 201 would force a “costly re-investment” that would “require [Department of Defense] to re-deploy desktop middleware to 2.2 million [Defense Department] computers,” update 3.5 million Common Access cards and “impose an unproven solution with no supporting product.”

The government did not release estimated costs to pay for Bush’s mandate.

Filed by Ken at 3:01 pm under General, InfoSec
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In a conversation today a colleague and I talked about this old analogy. It left me thinking about changing corporate culture and the impact of institutional memory, so I’m sharing it here again as a framework for thoughts.

Picture 5 monkeys placed in a cage. A new community is formed. From the ceiling of the cage hangs a bunch of bananas. A stepladder is placed under the bananas. As the first eager monkey rushes up the ladder, a firehose knocks him off and hoses down all the monekys. Shocked, they sit back and regroup. Later another moneky tries, with the same result. It make take repeated attempts by each monkey before they become conditioned (socialized really) to not climb the ladder.

At some point, the lesson has been learned by this closed culture and controls how they respond as a community. Then one monkey forgets and steps onto the ladder. But the firehose doesn’t have time to react. The other four monkeys grab the offender and beat him senseless. They’ve learned that in this society, you don’t climb the ladder.

Now the process of attrition and replacement in the society begins. One of the original monkeys is removed and a new monkey is added to the group. He spies the bananas and leaps onto the ladder, only to be dragged down and beaten by the rest of the group. After several attempts, the new monkey learns.

Another original monkey is replaced with a new monkey. And the same process follows. Then another and another and another. Soon we have a group of five monkeys who’ve never been soaked by the firehose, but won’t climb the ladder. This learned behavior was socialized into the group over time.

It no longer matters how many generations of monkeys follow. The new behavior is that a monkey climbing the ladder will be dragged off and beaten. None of the monkeys in the cage has ever been knocked off the ladder with a firehose. None have been soaked down. They don’t know what the consequence is because it’s been replaced by group behavior. They can’t remember being soaked. They don’t know why they do what they do. The accepted norm for this closed community is to beat anyone who tries to climb the ladder.

Isn’t that a lot like institutional memory? We don’t know why we do what we do. We do it this way because we’ve “always done it this way.” The real end consequence may no longer exist. It may not matter. It may have vanished. But we don’t climb that ladder in this cage buddy. It just isn’t done. We don’t operate that way here.

Today’s conversation led me to recount a seminar and book from several years ago (about 1990 or 91). Teaching the Elephant to Dance by Jim Belasco. That sent me on a quick Googleventure because I didn’t have my copy at hand.

“But, we’ve always done it that way,”

This is a warning sign, a symptom of impending disaster for any organization.

Shackled, like powerful elephants, to the past, organizations rob themselves of the ingenuity required to meet new competitive challenges and escape the “re” dimension trap of “re-engineering, re-organization and re-structuring that concentrate on short term fixes rather than long term solutions.

Elephant is a practical, hands-on guide for creating the right change in any organization, large or small, corporate or governmental, manufacturing or service based. Filled with illuminating case studies, it shows how to devise new corporate visions and strategies… how to overcome inertia .. and how to form labor-management partnerships. Clear, authoritative, practical and inspiring, Elephant provides a step-by-step guide for making the impossible happen.

One of the things Jim said in the small session he led that I attended was a simple tenet of business and change, but one that so often escapes managers.

If you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’ll continue getting the results you’ve been getting.

I was pleased to see a quote from Stephen Covey on Jim’s web page. Jim’s approach to changing corporate culture is one that’s stuck with me ever since. I still have his book. I still refer to it.

Why are the obvious lessons still so hard for some organizations to learn? Change is a fundamental principle in our universe. The rate of change varies widely, but change is everywhere. Permanence is an illusion.

I don’t have an answer, nor do I seek one. I do observe that those who embrace change have an easier time of life. Those who go out and court change…embrace change…drive change, have fun and enjoy. If you resist change, well, as the Borg would say — resistance is futile. Only when we become the agent of change do we have any control over the direction change takes. Isn’t it better to steer the course and set direction than to strive to hold a straight unchanging course. Isn’t progress like sailing, constantly tacking against the winds of change? And if you insist on ignoring the wind of change, don’t you deserve that “jibe ho” just as the booms swings around to knock you into the drink?

Filed by Ken at 7:37 am under General
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Reposted from MT

Here are some of the US statistics for 1904:

The average life expectancy in the US was 47 years.

Only 14% of the homes in the US had a bathtub.

Only 8% of the homes had a telephone.

A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost $11.00

There were only 8,000 cars in the US, and only 144 miles of paved roads. The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California. With a mere 1.4 million residents, California was only the 21st most populous state in the Union.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.

The average wage in the US was 22 cents an hour. The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year. A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year. A veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year. A mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.

More than 95 percent of all births in the US took place at home.

Ninety % of all US physicians had no college education. Instead, they attended medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as “substandard.”

Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen. Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.

Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo.

Canada passed a law prohibiting poor people from entering the country for any reason.

The five leading causes of death in the US were:

1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke

The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii, and Alaska hadn’t been admitted to the Union yet.

The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was 30!

Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn’t been invented.

There was no Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.

Two of 10 US adults couldn’t read or write. Only 6 % of all Americans had graduated high school.

Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at corner drugstores. According to one pharmacist, “Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.” (Shocking!)

Eighteen percent of households in the US had at least one full-time servant or domestic.

There were only about 230 reported murders in the entire US

Try to imagine what it may be like in another 100 years … it staggers the mind.

*** mo:Blogged ***

Filed by Ken at 3:54 am under General
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Reposted from MT -
How to Hold a Productive Meeting

This thought actually goes back many years to my past life working for AT&T. At one point in time, there was an executive in that organization who went into a frenzy over the ratio of counterproductive meetings to actually serving customers. It was a novel concept then, and it still is today.

So here’s a thought. If there’s a meeting and it isn’t directly with customers, sure it focuses on customers somehow. It has to be about customers. How we serve them. How we bill them. How we make them happy. How we win new ones. The locus of any meeting has to be customers.

Business meetings aren’t bloggers conferences. We don’t meet to bluesky concepts that nobody outside the room cares about. That’s what lunch is for. Or happy hour. We don’t meet to solve process flows in committee. We attack specific, measurable objectives.

If you’re going to have a meeting, there are some key components you need. Provide an agenda ahead of time. Don’t just expect people to create an agenda on the fly and then resolve anything. The most counterproductive meetings always seem to begin with “so what do we want to talk about?” If you don’t know what you want to talk about, don’t invite me to your quandry. You really don’t want to hear what I think your problem is.

Have a timekeeper. Be a timekeeper. Allocate time for items in your agenda and then move on. If you can’t solve a problem, assign it to someone, get some level of consensus that the group will come back to it, and move on. Kicking a dead horse of a problem that can’t be solved in a meeting is wasting everyone’s time. If you don’t respect people’s time, why should they respect your problem?

Start on time. Finish on time. Finishing on time is perhaps the most important value a meeting organizer can bring to the table. When I was teaching week in and week out, traveling every week to a new place and new class, I had three goals I set with each class at thee beginning of a session. These same three Ls apply to meetings.

1. Learn a lot.
2. Laugh a lot.
3. Leave on time.

Laughter in meetings means don’t take yourself too seriously. If every meeting is deadpan, serious, crisis management, you’re not managing your tasks or meetings well. You’re getting on people’s nerves and probably driving yourself into an early grave.

Don’t try to eat an elephant in a single bite. It never works. Never. Pick manageable tasks, and structure your meeting around what can reasonably be accomplished in the limited time you have. Aim for achievable and stick to your agenda.

Rambling thoughts assembled while waiting for one of those meetings to begin.

*** mo:Blogged ***

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*** mo:Blogged ***

Filed by Ken at 2:17 am under General
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Lesson 1
A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is finishing up her shower when the doorbell rings. After a few seconds of arguing over which one should go and answer the doorbell, the wife gives up, quickly wraps herself up in a towel and runs downstairs. When she opens the door, there stands Bob, the next door neighbor. Before she says a word, Bob says, “I’ll give you $800 to drop that towel that you have on.”

After thinking for a moment, the woman drops her towel and stands naked in front of Bob After a few seconds, Bob hands her 800 dollars and leaves. Confused, but excited about her good fortune, the woman wraps back up in the towel and goes back upstairs.

When she gets back to the bathroom, her husband asks from the shower, “Who was that?” “It was Bob the next door neighbor,” she replies. “Great!” the husband says, “Did he say anything about the $800 he owes me?”

Moral of the story: If you share critical information pertaining to credit and risk with your shareholders in time, you may be in a position to prevent avoidable exposure.

Lesson 2
A priest was driving along and saw a nun on the side of the road. He stopped and offered her a lift which she accepted. She got in and crossed her legs, forcing her gown to open and reveal a lovely leg. The priest had a look and nearly had an accident. After controlling the car, he stealthily slid his hand up her leg. The nun looked at him and immediately Changing gear, he let his hand slide up her leg again. The nun once again said, “Father, remember Psalm 129?” Once again the priest apologized “Sorry Sister but the flesh is weak.” Arriving at the convent, the nun got out gave him a meaningful glance and went on her way. On his arrival at the church, the priest rushed to retrieve a bible and looked up Psalm 129. It said, “Go forth and seek, further up, you will find glory.”

Moral of the story: If you are not well informed in your job, you might miss a great opportunity.

Lesson 3
A sales rep, an administration clerk and the manager are walking to lunch when they find an antique oil lamp. They rub it and a Genie comes out in a puff of smoke. The Genie says, “I usually only grant three wishes, so I’ll give each of you just one. ” “Me first! Me first!” says the admin. clerk. “I want to be in the Bahamas, driving a speedboat, without a care in the world.” Poof! She’s gone. In astonishment, “Me next! Me next!” says the sales rep. “I want to be in Hawaii, relaxing on the beach with my personal masseuse, an endless supply of pina coladas and the love of my life.” Poof! He’s gone.

“OK, you’re up,” the Genie says to the manager. The manager says, “I want those two back in the office after lunch.”

Moral of the story: Always let your boss have the first say.

Lesson 4
A crow was sitting on a tree, doing nothing all day. A small rabbit saw the crow and asked him, “Can I also sit like you and do nothing all day long?” The crow answered: “Sure, why not.” So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the crow, and rested. All of a sudden a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit and ate it.

Moral of the story:! To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very high up.

Lesson 5
A turkey was chatting with a bull. “I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree,” sighed the turkey, but I haven’t got the energy” “Well, why don’t you nibble on some of my droppings?” replied the bull. “They’re packed with nutrients.” The turkey pecked at a lump of dung and found that it actually gave him enough strength to reach the lowest branch of the tree. The next day, after eating some more dung, he was proudly perched at the top of the tree. Soon he was promptly spotted by a farmer, who shot the turkey out of the tree.

Moral of the story: Bullshit might get you to the top, but it won’t keep you there
*** mo:Blogged ***

Filed by Ken at 11:16 am under General
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“. . .expending energy trying to motivate people is largely a waste of time. . .If you have the right people on the bus, they will be self-motivated.

“. . .the purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline — a problem that largely goes away if you have the right people in the first place. Most companies build their bureaucratic rules to manage the small percentage of wrong people on the bus, which in turn drives away the right people on the bus, which then increases the wrong people on the bus, which increases the need for more bureaucracy to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline, which then further drives the right people away, and so forth.”

– Jim Collins from Good to Great
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Filed by Ken at 11:16 am under General
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Technologists, for all their skills, have one weak spot. They want all problems to be technological problems. That way they can fix them.
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Filed by Ken at 11:16 am under General
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For those outside the field, RSA hosts a conference annually in the bay area. It’s one of the big events for network security professionals. Trade show exhibit floor and all the vendors hawking their wares, but also a series of daily keynotes and an array of educational class tracks.

I made no effort to blog the event. It was one of those times my pocket journal was far more convenient for capturing interesting ideas. I’ll actually probably post some thoughts on that in the next few days as I wander through my own notes. I’ve no intention of even attempting a blow-by-blow rundown, but wanted to share a few things I came away with.

Bill Gates gave the opening keynote. For all you anti-MS folks, you can skip down a paragraph or two. Gates deliver one set of pretty consistent messages that all bear out one theme - Microsoft is indeed serious about security. Sure they’re bring out a new IE 7.0 release.. And yes, while he didn’t say so, it’s partially in response to Firefox. and yes, it’s part of Longhorn which he mentioned by name, with a delivery date. I expect to see Scoble winding the topic up again.

John Chambers also gave a keynote. So did Art Coviello from RSA and a host of others.

While vendors elbow one another aside saying either “I do that better” or “me too,” there were two really obvious standout points. Every vendor represented (hundreds) consitently delivered the message “me too.” Even when they were convinced they were unique, they were all saying “I’m unique and different too.”

But the me too message wasn’t a bad one. Focal points for activity -

• Secure internal assetts
• Prevent viruses
• Segmentation of traffic for better control of flows
• Access control (and identity management is the real theme here)
• Secure critical information

Other themes and observations

The geeks won’t inherit the earth folks. Business concepts will drive security. The technical lexicon needs to give way to the language of business. That shift will drive more money into security budgets. It’s how the people who get things done will get things done.

Managers need to be able to immediately the impact of an event in terms of

• Time
• Cost
• Customers

That’s the only way they evaluate the business impact of a security event. Nothing else matters. Find a way to put security in that business context.

When you consider a new project, there are only three risk factors to consider

• Regulation
• Revenue
• Reputation

Those are the drivers your senior execs will care about. When you’re making a business case for a new project, describe how your project protects and enhances each of these. If you want to win a proposal with your CFO, put in the right lexicons - business and finance.

The role of CSO is changing from the role of NO to the role of HOW.
Security can’t be the disabling technology that says “sorry, but we can’t do that.” It’s time for creativity and entrepreneurial thinking in security that says “if we implement X security, we can wind Y business.” Use security as a competitive advantage and help the business team make intelligent and informed risk decisions.

Good people will create a good methodology, but good methodology won’t create good people. People are a critical key. You have to give people the trust to do what they need to do, but you also have to make sure you put trustworthy people in those positions of trust.

Bruce Schneier spoke in an early session and delivered a typically Schneier-like message (fortunately sans the buy managed services pitch).

Security is a system, and systems are complex. Most vendors, no matter what they say, don’t design or understand systems. Nearly every security offering in the marketplace is a point solution to a point problem. Systems interact with other systems and do not exist in isolation.

Knowing how security systems fail is more important that knowing how they work. We in the field don’t care how they work, only that they do. We care about how they fail. How can we make them fail? Good security people break things because we need to understand the impact of failure.

Designing systems to survive - resilience and continuous operations - is a safety approach. In security we design for the malicious adversary, not safety. Think like the attacker. And remember, to an attacker, there’s no such thing as cheating. The goal is to make the system fail.

Security imbalances are brought on by technology changes. Smart attackers look for the leverage points. In new technologies, the imbalance generally gives the attacker greater leverage.

Complex systems are insecure because the increase in complexity progresses faster than the rate of increased security. We’re always catching up.

When it comes to attackers, skill and ability are very different things. Attackers used to need skill. Now all they need is the ability. Automation exacerbates our vulnerabilities and distance is not a factor. On the Internet, we’re all equidistant.

Remember that most attackers are copycats in some fashion. There hasn’t been a new crime in a millenia. Tactics change and technology gets incorporated, but they mimic and copy time and again. And they have a “budget” to work with. Attackers may have a budget of time, resources, people, and tools. They attack within their budget based on what their perceived return on investment of these resources is. Understand their budget and how the attacker defines ROI.

There was another undercurrent of conversation picked up by several major vendors - the big players. Some of them have gotten the message that “we suck less” is no way to win business and prevail in the security sector. There was a new sense of openness from a couple 800 pound gorillas that I’ve not seen in years, and I do have relationships with both companies dating back many years. That was a good sign. A very good sign.
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Filed by Ken at 11:05 am under General, InfoSec, Technology
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And I knew there would be here, especially given that I set this up without even glancing at docs, watching TV in the other room. You can see how invested I was at the time.
As Misanthropyst noted, the fonts don’t render properly in Linux Firefox. I hadn’t tested that. The whole pages renders badly on my Palm, but I don’t know if I care a lot about that. Bloglines has shifted a lot of my reading to there on the Palm. There are a lot of sites I read that I can’t read directly on my Palm and they render poorly. But I clearly have some tinkering to do with a few things. Font, color, contrast. Minor things I should find time for this weekend.

I find that I can’t turn comment moderation off. Or rather, it is off, but I still have to moderate comments. I may need to go flip a bit somewhere or something. I’d prefer not to do comment moderation if I don’t have to. If I have to, it won’t happen in a very timely manner and that will discourage comments. That was an annyance to me because when you uncheck “comments must be approved by an adminstrator,” I expect it to work. But then again, like I said, I didn’t RTFM.

Errands to run and things to do, but overall I’m satisfied so far.Satisfied enough that I won’t be updating the old page any more.

Updated - A half cup of coffee later I upgraded from the default install to v1.5. Provides a template I like better and will probably leave out of the box. Still haven’t checked Linux rendering. Better on Palm, but not good. Confirmed trackbacks do in fact work, although don’t know if I’ll leave them given recent problems. Still can’t seem to turn off comment moderation, but not going to worry about that for now. Things to do, places to go, people to see.

Filed by Ken at 5:00 am under General
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I just want to once more take a moment to plug AQHost for the fabulous hosting service they provide. If you’re looking for a company to host your stuff, Simon and the AQHost team do a great job for great pricing.

Filed by Ken at 1:15 am under General
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While I’ve always been able to ftp pics or files from my Palm to the blog, that’s generally been a two-step process. As a result, I found myself doing it less than I really wanted.

So this is a quick test. And if it works, here’s a recent picture of Connor, who’s 4 months old now.

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Ok. I cheated after multi-errored attempts and did some cleanup to get the picture here.

Filed by Ken at 12:13 pm under General, Mobility & Handheld
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Filed by Ken at 11:44 am under General
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