Ajdin Brandic

What is more important "effort" or "intelligence"

2011-04-20T03:03:00.000-07:00

A nice article from BBC news section discussing the effectiveness of praising child's work without taking into account the effort put into the work.

I have long held a view that a person's hard work is more rewarding that simply relaying on ones intelligence and a minimum amount of work. I've seen this through my education that many bright kids dropped out of the system simply because they did not put enough effort into their studies.

To be able to work hard a person needs to have something driving him/her forward. Some people will be looking for work that they love and enjoy. Others will be driven by money, power, fame etc. In the case of children it is important that the parents drive them forward not only by rewording them for good work but also with clear explanation why the child needs to work hard. What will be benefits during their school years and beyond into adulthood.

For some years now I have held a view that a person of average intelligence who is willing to work hard can achieve more that a person with high intelligence and minimal effort.

However I need to explain what I mean by "work". A person needs to do dedicated and focused work, work which is organised and well planned. Doing some "choppy work" (a bit today, then a bit next week and so on) will not get you far.

I also feel as my duty to pass my knowledge (bit by bit) onto my children rather than let them learn all things for them selves ("Reinventing the wheel").

It is important to do your research

2011-02-02T02:24:00.000-08:00

Why it is important to your market research! Short and clear instructions in this BBC article from the entrepreneur Simon Woodroffe founded YO! Company

Like other great communicators

2011-01-19T04:42:00.000-08:00

Recipe for Success
1. Contrasts
2. Three-part lists
3. Contrasts combined with lists
4. Alliteration
5. Bold imagery
6. Audience analysis

(Text taken from BBC JFK's inaugural speech: Six secrets of his success - By Max Atkinson)

President John F Kennedy would have been delighted to know that his inaugural address is still remembered and admired 50 years later.

Like other great communicators - including Winston Churchill before him and Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama since then - he was someone who took word-craft very seriously indeed

Most important rhetorical techniques and figures of speech that have been at the heart of all great speaking for more than 2,000 years are:

Contrasts: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country"
Three-part lists: "Where the strong are just, and the weak secure and the peace preserved"
Combinations of contrasts and lists (by contrasting a third item with the first two): "Not because the communists are doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right"

If the rhetorical structure of sentences is one set of building blocks in the language of public speaking, another involves simple "poetic" devices such as:
Alliteration: "Let us go forth to lead the land we love"
Imagery: "The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans"

In general, the more use of these a speaker makes, the more applause they will get and the more likely it is that they will be recognised as a brilliant orator.

But great communicators differ as to which of these techniques they use most.

Presidents Reagan and Obama, for example, stand out as masters of anecdote and story-telling, which didn't feature at all in JFK's inaugural. Mr Obama also favours three-part lists, of which there were 29 in his 10-minute election victory speech in Chicago.

Kennedy, however, used very few in his inaugural address. For him, contrasts were the preferred weapon, coming as they did at a rate of about one every 39 seconds in this particular speech. Some were applauded and some have survived among the best-remembered lines.

He began with three consecutive contrasts:

"We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom"
"Symbolizing an end as well as a beginning"
"Signifying renewal as well as change"

From the 20 or so he used, other widely quoted contrasts, all of which were applauded, include:

"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich"
"Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate"
"My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man"

The speech also bristled with imagery, starting with a stark warning about the way the world has changed because "man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life."

People of the developing world were "struggling to break the bonds of mass misery."

JFK vowed to "assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty" and that "this hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house."

He sought to "begin anew the quest for peace before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity", hoped that "a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion" and issued a "call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle."

First inaugural designed for the media?

Impressive though the rhetoric and imagery may have been, what really made the speech memorable was that it was the first inaugural address by a US president to follow the first rule of speech-preparation: analyse your audience - or, to be more precise at a time when mass access to television was in its infancy, analyse your audiences.

In the most famous fictional speech of all time, Mark Antony had shown sensitivity to his different audiences in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar by asking his "Friends, Romans, countrymen" to lend him their ears. But Kennedy had many more audiences in mind than those who happened to be in Washington that day.

His countrymen certainly weren't left out, appearing as they did in the opening and towards the end with his most famous contrast of all: "Ask not..." But he knew, perhaps better than any previous US president, that local Americans were no longer the only audience that mattered. The age of a truly global mass media had dawned, which meant that what he said would be seen, heard or reported everywhere in the world.

At the height of the Cold War, Kennedy also had a foreign policy agenda that he wanted to be heard everywhere in the world. So the different segments of the speech were specifically targeted at a series of different audiences:

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill"
"To those new nations whom we welcome to the ranks of the free"
"To those in the huts and villages of half the globe"
"To our sister republics south of the border"
"To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations"
"Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary"

The following day, there was nothing on the front pages of two leading US newspapers, The New York Times and the Washington Post to suggest that the countrymen in his audience had been particularly impressed by the speech - neither of them referred to any of the lines above that have become so famous.

Wikileaks

2010-12-03T03:50:00.001-08:00

DOS attack on wikileaks.org. It will be interesting to find out who is behind it in technical terms. Everyone knows that a government (one of the most democratic ones?!) is behind it financially. But are the attackers part of the governments agency or have real hackers (criminals) been paid by the government.

If we are talking about some hacker (criminal) organisation being paid by a government to do dirty work then that is very worrying. Not because it is immoral but because we, ordinary citizens, suffer enormous damages caused by ID thefts, web accounts compromised, contact details stolen, spam etc.. All this of course if the work of such hacker (criminal) organisations and governments around the world allegedly cannot stop this.

It seams a lot clearer now why the governments do not want to stop hacker (criminal) organisations. They might come useful one day, like today for example (3/10/2010).

Is the west more democratic than the east? Sometimes!

NOTE: Not all hackers are criminals!!!

Wikileaks.org can be accessed directly via the sites IP address
http://213.251.145.96/
or
http://88.80.13.160

Also check http://wikileaks.info/

Social Networking Data Use

2010-03-01T03:52:00.000-08:00

Interesting video on data collection made by social networking systems namely Facebook.

Security makes money

2010-02-18T04:21:00.000-08:00

Here is a new (well it has been around since early 2000) device that can detect ANYTHING!!! Drugs, explosives, " mushrooms :-)".

This guy conned a large number of governments around the world by selling a peace of plastic with an antenna which, allegedly, detect any type of chemical in the air. It is used in Iraq, Taiwan, Mexico on airports, road check points etc. And the device only sells at £30,000 each.

So how to make money

1. Find out what are people (governments) scared of / how they can improve the SECURITY;

2. Think of an ideal solution that everyone would want (it doesn't have to work);

3. Package it nicely (after all it is the packaging that sells).

4. And do not forget, cheap stuff never sells. Set some crazy price.

5. Additionally make sure that only you can supply spare parts and do maintenance.

6. Offer Old for New discounts. That way no one will ever see what is inside your fab device. Who's going to dismantle a £30,000 gadget just to peak inside.

Read the original article on BBC.

Live Mesh

2010-02-17T06:51:00.000-08:00

After reading a BBC Technology article (here) on smart ways to backup files I decided to try Microsoft's Live Mesh.

Live Mesh isn't only another file storage service. It provides several features such as:
1. Cloud Storage
2. File & Folder share with other users
3. Remote desktop
4. Multiple PCs can be connected to the same account and files/folders synchronised between them.
5. Event feed via RSS which tells you (and people you share folders with) of any changes made by anyone member.

To analyse
1.1 It gives each user 5GB free storage space with an option to upgrade.
1.2 Once a virtual folder is created in the cloud identical folder is created on user's desktop too. Now any files dumped into the folder will be uploaded to the cloud folder. This is very convenient although the upload is not very fast.

2.1 Files and folders can be shared with others and there is a good access control facility (i.e. forbid your friends to share this folder with someone else etc).

3.1 Remote desktop allows you to login into multiple PCs and use/run local applications. For this to work a PC to which you are connecting needs to be connected to the same Live Mesh account. I tried this at work but had no success!! I guess the problem was my network firewall.

4.1 Very useful if you use multiple PCs or work on a joint project with someone and you wish to share files.

5.1 This is useful as it can alert you to new files being added or removed from you account.

Existing services
1. Drop.io , Google Docs (has similar access control), 4shared.com etc.
NOTE: None of these create a local folder on your desktop and some might be less secure.
2. Google Docs (has similar authorisation features),
3. LogMeIn allows remote desktop connection, moving of files between PCs and no hassle with firewalls.

Security
The whole Live Mesh service is protected using your Live ID (i.e. hotmail account) and SSL. I'm not sure that this is very secure. I think they need to introduce two-factor-authentication. Also some form of file encryption in case someone does gain access to you Live Mesh account, although you could encrypt files on your PC before uploading.

Viewing decrypted files - vulnerability

2009-12-09T07:54:00.000-08:00

I use Cyptainer LE to encrypt some of my sensitive files. Since they are .doc or .xls files once decrypted I use Open Office to read them. Recently my PC crashed while viewing one of those files. After a quick restart I loaded Open Office to write a document. Open Office alerted me to an unsaved file and asked if I wanted to recover it to which I said Yes. And guess what, my so called encrypted file popped up. With auto save feature on Open Office saved the file in cache.

Wander how big of an issue this is? I wander if this makes my secure data completely unsecured? How long is the data held in cache?

I found this in a Open Office forum http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=65016"... Delete the file Documents and settings/userName/Application data/Openoffice.org2/user/registry/data/org/openoffice/Office/Recovery.xcu

Beware, it resets the settings for Autosave in the Tools>Options>Load/Save>General dialog. ..."

Google security

2009-09-24T08:58:00.001-07:00

I've used Google Docs on a number of occasions for collaborative working. It might not be a perfect tool for collaborative work but it is free and does the job. In the past I did not pay much attention to the security aspect of those documents since they were never of contained highly sensitive information.

But what if they did?!

Sharing documents online has its advantages namely only one master copy exists and can be viewed and edited by multiple users simultaneously. Such documents are accessible (if not set as public) only to specific users (specified by the document owner) who must have a Google account too.

If those documents are protected by simple username/password combination, how secure are they? In fact such documents are as secure as the weakest authentication credentials (username/password) of users who share those documents.

Therefore I would like to be able to specify a certain criteria which users must fulfil before they can access my shared documents. To add an additional layer of security I should be able to specify:

1. "To view my documents the invited user must use a strong password", meaning Google “password strength” tool must indicate "Strong".

2. "To view my documents the invited user must use captcher when login-in".

3. “To view my documents the invited user will need a secret key to decrypt them.” Google docs (end emails in Gmail) should have offer encryption which would add additional layer of protection for sensitive documents.

All of the above should be optional so that those who see it as "just another obstacle" do not have to use it.

How much additional security would such options provide???

What about backup?? How secure should the backup be?

Social Networking

2009-09-03T02:41:00.000-07:00

As part of my research into Social Networking (SN) I was given a task of finding an Open Source (OS) SN which can be run locally (ie. not web based service like Facebook/Orkut/Ning etc). Having read about Apache Shindig my hopes of finding a suitable application were very high.

For those who are not familiar with Apache Shindig, "Apache Shindig is an OpenSocial container and helps you to start hosting OpenSocial apps quickly by providing the code to render gadgets, proxy requests, and handle REST and RPC requests." (taken from the site). There is a Java version and a PHP one.

Shindig is a container allowing us to run OpenSocial gadgets across (in theory) SNs that support OpenSocial. Looking at gadgets used in popular SN services (like Orkut, Ning and others) they can generally be classed as entertainment and sales gadgets rather than real world apps, although there might be some exceptions (like to-do or chat gadgets). Shindig does not provide features like messaging, groups, photo gallery etc.

So apart from Shindig we need an application to sit on top or along side Shindig and provide us with the UI features we want (I call these, "component apps"), like: friends list, messaging, wall posts, photo albums, groups, creating networks etc).

The only application that I could find is Partuza which was surprising. Looking at it issue tracker it is clear that this application is in its infancy and not ready for full production use (lacks features and there are a few bugs). Not surprising since such full blown application probably requires substantial resources which, by the looks of it, Partuza is lacking.

Having this in mind it be better if the Open Source community started developing features (component apps) as components, independent from each other yet supporting interoperability. Not sure if OpenSocial as standard would be enough to support such a project but it could be extended if not.

This way there would be a range of component applications to choose from and relatively easy to build own Social Network(s). These components could include forum, wiki, blog etc to enrich SN environment as we know it today. There would be no reliance on one project (like Partuza) and costs would be spread across the community.

I've looked at Joomla and its ability to support third party extensions (component apps) and a similar approach should be taken up for OS-SN development.

Soon I will be looking at Google Wave and how it can be used as Social Network. Since Google Wave extends OpenSocial any existing gadgets should be reusable.