In the days when the Personal Computer was first introduced into the mass market, companies were jockeying for market position, and of course the way you do that is to append some moniker the general public can latch onto. In those days it was digital-this or that. That transitioned to e- everything, and long before the phone of the fruit variety, it morphed to i- something or other.And the process hasn’t changed much. Who can forget such classics as N-tier programming, Service Oriented Architectures, Business Intelligence and of course my current favorite, The Cloud? True, some of these are actually in use; others have long faded into the hype-cycle.“But it’s just a fad.Like so many we’ve seenbefore. ”Companies that sell things are faced with a choice – either jump on the bandwagon and use the buzzword in their products or be considered last-year’s paradigm. So of course most of them succumb to buzzword mania to stay relevant. When it works out to be a real offering, it’s a hit and the company is rewarded, and when it’s just a marketing word that doesn’t pan out into a real offering they are derided as selling hype.Enter “Big Data”. Like Cloud, this term can mean almost anything, so anyone can define it the way they wish. And of course they have – adding to the confusion and the marketing-flavor of the term.One definition of Big Data involves four V’s:Volume – The amount of data heldVelocity – The speed at which the data should be processedVariety – The variable sources, processing mechanisms and destinations requiredValue – The amount of data that is viewed as not redundant, unique, and actionableOther definitions have been proposed. I have one I like to use:Big Data is data that you aren’t able to process and use quickly enough with the technology you have now.I like this definition because it’s easy to understand, and encompasses other definitions. Also, it has the words “Don’t Panic” on the cover and is slightly cheaper than other definitions.
via Big Data is Just a Fad.
Louis Davidson : What Counts For A DBA: Foresight
C.S. Lewis once said “The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.” It cannot be avoided; the quality of what you build now is going to affect you, and others, at some point in the future. Take the time to acquire foresight; it is a love letter to your future self, to say you cared.
via Louis Davidson : What Counts For A DBA: Foresight.
rePost::ICC, admirers, set big welcome for Miriam in The Hague | Inquirer Global Nation
Is this from the onion:
The other ICC mum
As for the other ICC, the better-known International Criminal Court where Santiago has been appointed judge, officials kept mum about any plans for welcoming their newest colleague. Court spokeswoman Candace B. Reill tersely read an official statement to reporters:
“As far as this ICC is aware, the Assembly of States Parties gave a nine-year term to a brilliant, astute, compassionate, and poised barrister who is the first Filipino and first Asian from a developing country to sit in the tribunal, which tries crimes against humanity. So help us, God.”
Santiago was named to the world body before her brash and much criticized performance in the impeachment of the chief justice of the Philippines, where at one time she loudly castigated prosecutors as stupid.
Just days after her controversial performance made the news, some ICC judges were seen wandering aimlessly in the court’s hallways, in their robes, mumbling to themselves, “Wha—she’ll be with us for, oh jeez, nine years? What do we do now?”
via ICC, admirers, set big welcome for Miriam in The Hague | Inquirer Global Nation.
The White Savior Industrial Complex – Teju Cole – International – The Atlantic
Those tweets, though unpremeditated, were intentional in their irony and seriousness. I did not write them to score cheap points, much less to hurt anyone’s feelings. I believed that a certain kind of language is too infrequently seen in our public discourse. I am a novelist. I traffic in subtleties, and my goal in writing a novel is to leave the reader not knowing what to think. A good novel shouldn’t have a point.
via The White Savior Industrial Complex – Teju Cole – International – The Atlantic.
rePost::Draw the line :: FEU Commencement Speech by Maria Ressa
The virtual world is just like the real world – but faster with no boundaries. It’s a world where people, ideas and emotions travel through densely interconnected social networks. The Philippines, according to ComScore, is the world’s social media capital, and Facebook connects 845 million people around the world, the largest ever in the history of man. How many of you here have Facebook? That’s both a positive and a negative for you because I think it makes it harder for you to deal with the challenge that faced generations before you: how to build meaning into your life.
Meaning is not something you stumble across nor what someone gives you. You build it through every choice you make, through the commitments you choose, the people you love, and the values you live by.
via Draw the line.
All the Single Ladies – Magazine – The Atlantic
Last summer I called Coontz to talk to her about this revolution. “We are without a doubt in the midst of an extraordinary sea change,” she told me. “The transformation is momentous—immensely liberating and immensely scary. When it comes to what people actually want and expect from marriage and relationships, and how they organize their sexual and romantic lives, all the old ways have broken down.”
For starters, we keep putting marriage off. In 1960, the median age of first marriage in the U.S. was 23 for men and 20 for women; today it is 28 and 26. Today, a smaller proportion of American women in their early 30s are married than at any other point since the 1950s, if not earlier. We’re also marrying less—with a significant degree of change taking place in just the past decade and a half. In 1997, 29 percent of my Gen X cohort was married; among today’s Millennials that figure has dropped to 22 percent. (Compare that with 1960, when more than half of those ages 18 to 29 had already tied the knot.) These numbers reflect major attitudinal shifts. According to the Pew Research Center, a full 44 percent of Millennials and 43 percent of Gen Xers think that marriage is becoming obsolete.
via All the Single Ladies – Magazine – The Atlantic.
Engineers Rule :: Tal Golesworthy: How I repaired my own heart
rePost::Seth's Blog: Is everyone entitled to their opinion?
I see an epidemic of bloggers who believe they have to have their take.
Yes It’s your right but it is also others rights to filter you out.
When some people say my belief in that is this. That doesn’t automatically mean they have the right to be factored in the conversation. If you don’t matter being the loudest screamer can’t get you anywhere. You are nothing.
The good thing is there is an out to this shithole. Be someone who matters. Create a body of work that in the words of Steve Martin “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” (Aside: Where in the world is my copy of Steve Martin’s Born Standing Up?).
If you matter then people will listen. I’m all fed up with the famous for being famous celebrity. Fuck That Shit.
Is everyone entitled to their opinion?
Perhaps, but that doesn’t mean we need to pay the slightest bit of attention.
There are two things that disqualify someone from being listened to:
1. Lack of Standing. If you are not a customer, a stakeholder or someone with significant leverage in spreading the word, we will ignore you. And we should.
When you walk up to an artist and tell her you don’t like her painting style, you should probably be ignored. If you’ve never purchased expensive original art, don’t own a gallery and don’t write an influential column in ArtNews, then by all means, you must be ignored.
If you’re working in Accounts Payable and you hate the company’s new logo, the people who created it should and must ignore your opinion. It just doesn’t matter to anyone but you.
I’m being deliberately harsh here for a reason. If we’re going to do great work, it means that some people aren’t going to like it. And if the people who don’t like it don’t have an impact on what happens to the work after it’s complete, the only recourse of someone doing great work is to ignore their opinion.
2. No Credibility. An opinion needs to be based on experience and expertise. I know you don’t like cilantro, but whether or not you like it is not extensible to the population at large. On the other hand, if you have a track record of matching the taste sensibility of my target market, then I very much want to hear what you think.
People with a history of bad judgment, people who are quick to jump to conclusions or believe in unicorns or who have limited experience in the market–these people are entitled to opinions, but it’s not clear that the creator of the work needs to hear them. They’ve disqualified themselves because the method they use for forming opinions about how the market will respond is suspect. The scientific method works, and if you’re willing to suspend it at will and just go with your angry gut, we don’t need to hear from you.
via Seth’s Blog: Is everyone entitled to their opinion?.
For language lawyers::Letters of Note: C. S. Lewis on Writing
About amn’t I, aren’t I and am I not, of course there are no right or wrong answers about language in the sense in which there are right and wrong answers in Arithmetic. “Good English” is whatever educated people talk; so that what is good in one place or time would not be so in another. Amn’t I was good 50 years ago in the North of Ireland where I was brought up, but bad in Southern England. Aren’t I would have been hideously bad in Ireland but very good in England. And of course I just don’t know which (if either) is good in modern Florida. Don’t take any notice of teachers and textbooks in such matters. Nor of logic. It is good to say “more than one passenger was hurt,” although more than one equals at least two and therefore logically the verb ought to be plural were not singular was!
What really matters is:–
1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.
2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.
3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.”
4. In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”
5. Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.
Thanks for the photos. You and Aslan both look v. well. I hope you’ll like your new home.
With love
yours
C.S. Lewis
via Letters of Note: C. S. Lewis on Writing.
rePost::Economics in the Crisis – NYTimes.com
The failure of economicsThe best you can say about economic policy in this slump is that we have for the most part avoided a full repeat of the Great Depression. I say “for the most part” because we actually are seeing a Depression-level slump in Greece, and very bad slumps elsewhere in the European periphery. Still, the overall downturn hasn’t been a full 1930s replay. But all of that, I think, can be attributed to the financial rescue of 2008-2009 and automatic stabilizers. Deliberate policy to offset the crash in private spending has been largely absent.And I blame economists, who were incoherent in our hour of need. Far from contributing useful guidance, many members of my profession threw up dust, fostered confusion, and actually degraded the quality of the discussion. And this mattered. The political scientist Henry Farrell has carefully studied policy responses in the crisis, and has found that the near-consensus of economists that the banks must be rescued, and the semi-consensus in favor of stimulus in the initial months mainly because the freshwater economists were caught by surprise, and took time to mobilize was crucial in driving initial policy. The profession’s descent into uninformed quarreling undid all that, and left us where we are today.And this is a terrible thing for those who want to think of economics as useful. This kind of situation is what we’re here for. In normal times, when things are going pretty well, the world can function reasonably well without professional economic advice. It’s in times of crisis, when practical experience suddenly proves useless and events are beyond anyone’s normal experience, that we need professors with their models to light the path forward. And when the moment came, we failed.
via Economics in the Crisis – NYTimes.com.