Friends

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sachac/~3/yT8kUy0_s0k/

http://sachachua.com/wp/2010/01/monthly-highlights-december-2009/

The best surprise of December was the response I got to my post on What can I help you learn? Looking for mentees. I’m looking forward to developing the relationships I started from there, and to meeting many more people in the future.

Limiting my blog to mostly one post a day turned out to be a great idea. Prioritizing my post queue was fun and interesting. Here were my favourite posts for the month.

Year-end is a good time for reviews and plans, and I posted a few thoughts:

• Lessons from 2009 and plans for 2010
• What will you stop doing?
• Learning plan for 2010

More reflections on what I do and why:

• I write because I cannot waste time
• What do I delegate, and why?
• Copious free time? Carefully protected!
• A toolbox of questions

On perspectives:

• Happy-do, epiphanies, and relentless improvement 
• My week starts with Mondays, and other ways perspective influences life

Sketches:

• Informed Judgment, Terrence Hickey
• Notes from VizThink video on Visual Notetaking 101
• Visual notes – Gary Vaynerchuk and Democamp Toronto 24
• Living in the sweet spot

Geek stuff:

• Process: Using Activities to organize workshop-related information
• Lotus Connections Communities topics+replies feeds to OPML
• Behind the scenes: Livin’ la Vida Emacs

In January 2010, I’m looking forward to:

• Reconnecting with friends in the Philippines (Hi! Catch me before January 16)
• Completing my permanent residency application and bringing my cat over
• Braindumping as much as I can at work and in life

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Monthly highlights: December 2009

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/01/gift_cards_and.html

Retail theft by employees has always been a problem, but gift cards make it easier:

At the Saks flagship store in Manhattan, a 23-year-old sales clerk was caught recently ringing up $130,000 in false merchandise returns and siphoning the money onto a gift card.

[...]

Many of the gift card crimes are straightforward, frequently involving young sales clerks and smaller amounts than the Saks theft. Among the variations of such crimes, cashiers often do fake refunds of merchandise and then, with the amount refunded, use their registers to electronically fill gift cards, which they take. Or sometimes when shoppers buy gift cards, cashiers give them blank cards and then divert the shoppers' money onto cards for themselves.

That last tactic is particularly Grinch-like.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sachac/~3/ZsvhLjjIFIc/

http://sachachua.com/wp/2010/01/on-pen-and-paper/

A friend of mine wanted to know my notebook preferences, so here’s what I do in terms of pen and paper. =)

My favourite kind of notebook is a hard-cover non-spiral-bound notebook, with a back flap for storing ephemera. Hard-cover notebooks are easy to write in when I’m walking around, and I don’t have to worry about squishing them in my bag. Spiral-bound notebook coils tend to flatten or unwind, so I avoid them.

I’d love to have a notebook with a spine that can accommodate a pen clip, but I’m happy carrying the pen around separately, too.

I use different sizes for different things. Pocket-sized notebooks are good for daily notes. Mid-sized notebooks are good for single-page sketches. 8.5×11” notebooks are good for brainstorming or visual note-taking.

I like using unlined pages, preferably in off-white. Unlined pages let me use the notebook both horizontally and vertically, and they scan better when I have diagrams. It would be great to find a notebook with a light dot-grid (not an square grid) that can be removed from scans, but that’s okay.

My notebooks tend to have white or cream pages. Cream pages go well with my dark red fountain pen ink and feel less harsh than white pages, but white is okay too.

The Moleskine unlined hard-cover journal is nice, but Curry’s and other art stores carry cheaper alternatives. I usually stock up on 8.5×11” sketchbooks when they’re on sale, and pick up pocket notebooks whenever.

Following Lion Kimbro’s recommendation, I’ve stocked up on 4-colour pens. My current favourite 4-colour pen is the Pilot Feed GP4 0.7, which I picked up at National Bookstore in the Philippines for the equivalent of ~CAD 3. You can bet I’m going home with a box of those pens. I also sometimes carry an inexpensive fountain pen that I don’t worry about losing or dropping, saving my Waterman Harmonie for bedside writing.

I usually use a pocket-sized notebook to take notes during conversations, which are usually captured as keywords. I tend to use visual notetaking for talks. For brainstorming, I make lists, mindmaps, visual notes, sketches, and other diagrams.

I number odd pages and keep an index at the back.

Archived notebooks go on one of our bookshelves. I rarely refer to them, but it’s fun to flip through old notebooks once in a while.

I’m looking forward to getting into the habit of scanning my notebook pages when I get back. It’ll be fun!

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

On pen and paper

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/01/nate_silver_on.html

Over at fivethirtyeight.com, Nate Silver crunches the numbers and concludes that, at least as far as terrorism is concerned, air travel is safer than it's ever been:

In the 2000s, a total of 469 passengers (including crew and terrorists) were killed worldwide as the result of Violent Passenger Incidents, 265 of which were on 9/11 itself. No fatal incidents have occurred since nearly simultaneous bombings of two Russian aircraft on 8/24/2004; this makes for the longest streak without a fatal incident since World War II. The overall death toll during the 2000s is about the same as it was during the 1960s, and substantially less than in the 1970s and 1980s, when violent incidents peaked. The worst individual years were 1985, 1988 and 1989, in that order; 2001 ranks fourth.

Of course, there is a lot more air travel now than there was a couple of decades ago. Although worldwide data is difficult to obtain, U.S. air travel generally expanded at rates of 10-15% per year from the 1930s through 9/11. If we assume that U.S. air traffic represents about a third of the worldwide total (the U.S. share of global GDP, which is probably a reasonable proxy, has fairly consistently been between 26-28% during this period), we can estimate the number of deaths from Violent Passenger Incidents per one billion passenger boardings. By this measure, the 2000s tied the 1990s for being the safest on record, each of which were about six times safer than any previous decade. About 22 passengers per one billion enplanements were killed as the result of VPIs during the 2000s; this compares with a rate of about 191 deaths per billion enplanements during the 1960s.

Why? Because over the past decade, the risk of airplane terrorism is very low:

Over the past decade, according to BTS, there have been 99,320,309 commercial airline departures that either originated or landed within the United States. Dividing by six, we get one terrorist incident per 16,553,385 departures.

These departures flew a collective 69,415,786,000 miles. That means there has been one terrorist incident per 11,569,297,667 mles flown. This distance is equivalent to 1,459,664 trips around the diameter of the Earth, 24,218 round trips to the Moon, or two round trips to Neptune.

Assuming an average airborne speed of 425 miles per hour, these airplanes were aloft for a total of 163,331,261 hours. Therefore, there has been one terrorist incident per 27,221,877 hours airborne. This can also be expressed as one incident per 1,134,245 days airborne, or one incident per 3,105 years airborne.

There were a total of 674 passengers, not counting crew or the terrorists themselves, on the flights on which these incidents occurred. By contrast, there have been 7,015,630,000 passenger enplanements over the past decade. Therefore, the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning.

In 2008, 37,000 people died in automobile accidents -- the lowest number since 1961. Even so, that's more than a 9/11 worth of fatalities every month, month after month, year after year.

There are all sorts of psychological biases that cause us to both misjudge risk and overreact to rare risks, but we can do better than that if we stop and think rationally.

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/mrzine-drunk-on-its-own-rotgut-ideology/

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/?p=2879

Just as it did immediately after the elections in March of 2008, MRZine is posting material that strives to legitimize the government of Iran. As is widely known, the website functions pretty much as an outlet for Editor Yoshie Furuhashi’s peculiar devotion to Ahmadinejad despite having much useful information. One perhaps might take the same [...]

http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2010/jan/06/software-freedom-law-center-promotes-karen-sandler/

New York, NY, January 6, 2010//The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), provider of pro-bono legal services to nonprofit developers and distributors of free and open source software, announced the promotion of Karen Sandler today to general counsel.

As general counsel of the SFLC, Sandler's responsibilities include overseeing the organization's governance, policies and procedures. Sandler, along with the rest of the SFLC legal team, will continue to advise the SFLC's clients on matters regarding nonprofit formation and maintenance, copyrights and trademarks.

Prior to joining the SFLC in 2005, Sandler worked as an associate in the corporate departments of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP in New York and Clifford Chance in New York and London. Sandler holds a bachelor degree in engineering sciences from the Cooper Union and a J.D. degree from Columbia Law School, where she where she was a James Kent Scholar and co-founder of the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/01/david_brooks_on.html

David Brooks makes some very good points in this New York Times op ed from last week:

All this money and technology seems to have reduced the risk of future attack. But, of course, the system is bound to fail sometimes. Reality is unpredictable, and no amount of computer technology is going to change that. Bureaucracies are always blind because they convert the rich flow of personalities and events into crude notations that can be filed and collated. Human institutions are always going to miss crucial clues because the information in the universe is infinite and events do not conform to algorithmic regularity.

[...]

In a mature nation, President Obama could go on TV and say, “Listen, we’re doing the best we can, but some terrorists are bound to get through.” But this is apparently a country that must be spoken to in childish ways. The original line out of the White House was that the system worked. Don’t worry, little Johnny.

When that didn’t work the official line went to the other extreme. “I consider that totally unacceptable,” Obama said. I’m really mad, Johnny. But don’t worry, I’ll make it all better.

[...]

For better or worse, over the past 50 years we have concentrated authority in centralized agencies and reduced the role of decentralized citizen action. We’ve done this in many spheres of life. Maybe that’s wise, maybe it’s not. But we shouldn’t imagine that these centralized institutions are going to work perfectly or even well most of the time. It would be nice if we reacted to their inevitable failures not with rabid denunciation and cynicism, but with a little resiliency, an awareness that human systems fail and bad things will happen and we don’t have to lose our heads every time they do.

There's a pervasive belief in this society that perfection is possible. So if something bad occurs, it can never be because we just got unlucky. It must be because something went wrong and someone is at fault, and then things must be fixed. Sometimes, though, this simply isn't true. Sometimes it's better not to fix things: either there is no fix, or the fix is more expensive than living with the problem, or the side effects of the fix are worse than the problem. And sometimes you can do everything right and have it still turn out wrong. Welcome to the real world.

http://www.stallman.org/archives/2009-nov-feb.html#6%20January%202010%20%28Two%20futures%29

6 January 2010 (Two futures)</p>

China is building a commercial empire as the US builds a military one.

http://www.stallman.org/archives/2009-nov-feb.html#6%20January%202010%20%28More%20depleted%20uranium%20fallout%3F%29

6 January 2010 (More depleted uranium fallout?)</p>

Iraqi doctors demand a probe into why cancer rates in a region have risen by tenfold.

http://www.stallman.org/archives/2009-nov-feb.html#6%20January%202010%20%28Crack-down%20in%20Iran%20grows%20worse%29

6 January 2010 (Crack-down in Iran grows worse)</p>

Iran took Shirin Ebadi's sister hostage and Mousavi's brother-in-law hostage, after murdering Mousavi's nephew right outside his home.

http://www.stallman.org/archives/2009-nov-feb.html#6%20January%202010%20%28Crazed%20man%20attempts%20to%20assassinate%20Danish%20cartoonist%29

6 January 2010 (Crazed man attempts to assassinate Danish cartoonist)</p>

A Muslim fanatic tried to attack the cartoonist who drew cartoons making fun of Mohammad. That's religion for you.

http://www.stallman.org/archives/2009-nov-feb.html#6%20January%202010%20%28Absurd%20law%20challanged%20in%20Ireland%29

6 January 2010 (Absurd law challanged in Ireland)</p>

Irish Atheists have defied the law that prohibits blasphemy.

http://www.stallman.org/archives/2009-nov-feb.html#6%20January%202010%20%28Urgent%3A%20Demand%20a%20real%20health%20care%20bill%21%29

6 January 2010 (Urgent: Demand a real health care bill!)</p>

US citizens: Phone your congresscritter and insist that the health care reform bill have a public option. Passing Lieberman's gift to insurance companies would do harm rather than good.

The bill should also tax the rich (as the house bill does) rather than working Americans, and should make health care affordable (as the house bill does) for them. And it should extend anti-trust law to insurance companies (as the house bill does).

http://www.stallman.org/archives/2009-nov-feb.html#6%20January%202010%20%28Former%20Weatherman%20on%20historical%20movements%29

6 January 2010 (Former Weatherman on historical movements)</p>

On the difference between activism and organizing.

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/marx-at-the-movies/

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/?p=2876

WBAI Arts Magazine
MARX AT THE MOVIES: What’s wrong with this picture? An ideological deconstruction of Hollywood.
A couple of Unrepentant Marxists join The Arts Magazine this week to unravel the politics of screen romance, impersonating the working class in movies, revisionist royalty, best movie lines, worst movie moms, class warfare vs. imperialist war porn at the [...]

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/01/tsa_logo_contes.html

Over at "Ask the Pilot," Patrick Smith has a great idea:

Calling all artists: One thing TSA needs, I think, is a better logo and a snappy motto. Perhaps there's a graphic designer out there who can help with a new rendition of the agency's circular eagle-and-flag motif. I'm imagining a revised eagle, its talons clutching a box cutter and a toothpaste tube. It says "Transportation Security Administration" around the top. Below are the three simple words of the TSA mission statement: "Tedium, Weakness, Farce."

Let's do it. I'm announcing the TSA Logo Contest. Rules are simple: create a TSA logo. People are welcome to give ideas in the comments, but only actual created logos are eligible to compete. (When my website administrator wakes up, I'll ask him how we can post images in the comments.) Contest ends on February 6th. Winner receives copies of my books, copies of Patrick Smith's book, an empty 12-ounce bottle labeled "saline" that you can refill and get through any TSA security checkpoint, and a fake boarding pass on any flight for any date.

EDITED TO ADD (1/6): Please leave links to your submissions in the comments, and I will add them to the post. After the contest is over, I'll choose five finalists and post them. The winner will be chosen by popular acclaim.

Here's the first entry (click to enlarge):

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sachac/~3/CyXyge4YNl4/

http://sachachua.com/wp/2009/12/offline-and-online-conversations/

Do you miss the serendipity of hallway conversations at conferences and events?

Online conversations can be more powerful than offline ones. Here’s why I think so.

In person, you start with people, and you look for common topics. Conversation participants all see each other. The possibilities are limited to who’s there and what you can discover in time.

Online, start with the topic you’re interested in. You find people, and people find you. The conversation goes on, asynchronously, for weeks, months, years.

I rarely talk to just one person about something. Most of the time, other people are interested. These people may have never met. The conversation brings them together. We learn even more.

I rarely talk to just people I know. Often, someone de-lurks and joins the conversation. People come in through searches or links. The conversation is much more open, more far-reaching.

This makes for interesting conversations. Amorphous, because I don’t know who’ll be in it or when it will end. Serendipitous, because we make unexpected connections. Efficient, because sharing serves many.

Do your online conversations look like this? How can you take advantage of being online? How can we translate these strengths into the offline world?

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Offline and online conversations

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/01/breaching_the_s.html

An unidentified man breached airport security at Newark Airport on Sunday, walking into the secured area through the exit, prompting the evacuation of a terminal and flight delays that continued into the next day. This isn't common, but it happens regularly. The result is always the same, and it's not obvious that fixing the problem is the right solution.

This kind of security breach is inevitable, simply because human guards are not perfect. Sometimes it's someone going in through the out door, unnoticed by a bored guard. Sometimes it's someone running through the checkpoint and getting lost in the crowd. Sometimes it's an open door that should be locked. Amazing as it seems to frequent fliers, the perpetrator often doesn't even know he did anything wrong.

Basically, whenever there is -- or could be -- an unscreened person lost within the secure area of an airport, there are two things the TSA can do. They can say "this isn't a big deal," and ignore it. Or they can evacuate everyone inside the secure area, search every nook and cranny -- inside the large boxes of napkins at the fast food restaurant, above the false ceilings in the bathrooms, everywhere -- looking for anyone hiding or anything anyone hid, and then rescreen everybody: causing delays of six, eight, twelve, or more hours. That's it; those are his options. And there's no way he'll choose to ignore the risk; even if the odds of a terrorist exploit are minuscule, it'll cost him his career if he's wrong.

Several European airports have their security screening organized differently. At Schipol Airport in Amsterdam, for example, passengers are screened at the gates. This is more expensive and requires a substantially different airport design, but it does mean that if there is a security breach only the gate has to be evacuated and searched, and the people rescreened.

American airports can do more to secure against this risk, but I'm reasonably sure it's not worth it. We could double the guards to reduce the risk of inattentiveness, and redesign the airports to make this kind of thing less likely, but that’s an expensive solution to an already rare problem. As much as I don't like saying it, the smartest thing is probably to live with this occasional but major inconvenience.

This essay originally appeared on ThreatPost.com.

http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/women-in-gnome-in-free-software

GNOME's Summer outreach program and FSF's LibrePlanet conference highlight women's participation in free software

http://questioncopyright.org/showstopper

We got this submission from a performance artist who wishes to remain anonymous, for reasons that will be clear below (though we've verified that it is from a well-regarded performer). While we generally run attributed pieces, it's good to have a reminder once in a while that there are many artists who are impeded by copyright but who, for professional reasons, can't talk about it openly. When trying to measure the damage done by copyright restrictions, one must allow for the fact that creative repression is an underreported crime.

---

I have this one show which is kind of languishing, in part because I don't know what to do about the music. I developed the show over the course of a couple of years, playing around with different pieces of music as the show evolved. When I came to the point where the show was "finished" and I had found music, I was so overwhelmed at the prospect of licensing it all that I... just never did.

I showed the piece once, without doing any licensing, to a packed house and a very warm reception. I did, by the way, contact the artists who made the music in my show. They're local. And they were like, "Oh, hey, this sounds great. Yeah, go for it. But you know, it's not our permission you need."

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