Category: Communities of Practice

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Worth a Look: Cathedral vs. Bazaar (structure-design & public outcomes)

Communities of Practice, Videos/Movies/Documentaries, Worth A Look

The world is assembled along the lines of certain logics.  Human organisations are also outcomes of such logics.

Some organisations are assembled following the logic of the “cathedral”.  Other organisations are assembled following the logic of the “bazaar”.

Cathedrals are organised as military-inspired command hierarchies.  Superior humans give orders, which must be executed by subordinate humans.  Bazaars are self-organising, based on voluntary co-operation among humans.  Like molecules in a chemical reaction, humans join wherever their efforts are needed.

Cathedrals separate consumption from production.  Consumers are not to understand or modify the products they consume.  Bazaars allow humans to be both consumers and producers.  Consumers are encouraged to create new products out of the products they consume.

Cathedrals cannot emerge unless the free spread of knowledge is prohibited.  The underlying knowledge of products or production must be locked, and not released in public.  Bazaars cannot emerge unless the locking in of knowledge is prohibited.  The underlying knowledge of products or production must be kept public.

These two logics have always existed, yet humans have debated them only since the late 1990s.  Computers, specifically software programming, has served as a laboratory for this discussion.

“Cathedrals” and “bazaars” have led humans to interpret their social history in new way.  During the past couple of centuries, cathedrals have expanded, at the expense of bazaars.

However, programmers have proven that the bazaars can be more effective and creative than cathedrals.  Other humans are now exploring how to use this same logic generically, in non-computer contexts.

In the face of such experiments, humans can hope for a 21st century civilisation assembled in novel ways, less dominated by the hierarchies of the past.

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How Neocon Central Worked for Muammar Qadhafi

02 Diplomacy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government
Chuck Spinney Sounds Off....

Among Libya's lobbyists

Laura Rozen, Politico, 21 February 2011

As several Libyan diplomats Monday denounced their country’s four-decade ruler Col. Muammar Qadhafi for unleashing the army against anti-government protesters, U.S. consultancies that have worked to burnish Libya’s and Qadhafi’s U.S. image were laying low.

Several consulting, law and lobbying firms have moved in to advise the Libyan government and energy interests since U.S. sanctions were lifted on Libya in 2004, some of which have since canceled their contracts, according to Justice Department records.

Fahmy Hudome International canceled its contract with the Libyan government in 2007. The Livingston Group canceled its $360,000-per-year lobbying contract with the Libyan government as well as one with an associated Qadhafi charity in September 2009, following the hero’s welcome Libyan leaders gave for the convicted Lockerbie bomber upon his release in August 2009 from a Scottish prison on humanitarian grounds. Justice Department records indicate the law firm White & Case LLP has been registered since 2008 to represent Libya regarding a litigation matter.

One of the more unlikely figures to have advised a firm which has worked to burnish Libya's image and grow its economy is not registered with the Justice Department. Prominent neoconservative Richard Perle, the former Reagan-era Defense Department official and George W. Bush-era chairman of the Defense Policy Board, traveled to Libya twice in 2006 to meet with Qadhafi, and afterward briefed Vice President Dick Cheney on his visits, according to documents released by a Libyan opposition group in 2009.

Perle traveled to Libya as a paid adviser to the Monitor Group, a prestigious Boston-based consulting firm with close ties to leading professors at the Harvard Business School. The firm named Perle a senior adviser in 2006.

The Monitor Group described Perle’s travel to Libya and the recruitment of several other prominent thinkers and former officials to burnish Libya’s and Qadhafi’s image in a series of documents obtained and released by a Libyan opposition group, the National Conference of the Libyan Opposition, in 2009.

Read rest of article….

Phi Beta Iota: In fairness to the Neocons, there is no real difference between the two parties that vie for control of the public purse to favor private ends.  US Government support for dictators, criminal gangs, and selected terrorist groups has always been “bi-partisan” and completely devoid of any public benefit.

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Tim Geithner: Con Man, Dupe, Idiot? Dangerous!

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government
Who, Me?

Geithner’s Gamble

Simon Johnson

Geithner’s Gamble

LOS ANGELES – In a recent interview, United States Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner laid out his view of the nature of world economic growth and the role of the US financial sector. It is a deeply disturbing vision, one that amounts to a huge, uninformed gamble with the future of the American economy – and that suggests that Geithner remains the senior public official worldwide who is most in thrall to the self-serving ideology of big banks.

Geithner argues that the world will now experience a major “financial deepening,” owing to growing demand in emerging markets for financial products and services. He is thinking, of course, of “middle-income” countries like India, China, and Brazil. And he is right to emphasize that all have made terrific progress and now offer great opportunities for the rising middle class, which wants to accumulate savings, borrow more easily (for productive investment, home purchases, education, etc), and, more generally, smooth out consumption.

Read detailed critique….

Phi Beta Iota: The persistent idiocy of the Administration can only be understood if one recognizes that the White House and Congress have been bought and paid for.   They are NOT representing the American public interest, and they are a danger to the rest of the world.  The silence of the goats in senior positions is reprehensible.  Foreign countries should be banning US banks [and expelling US forces] entirely–the US has taken legalized corruption to extraordinary heights, and as Matt Taibbi has documented so well, “no one goes to jail“–the US Government and Wall Street have merged to become GRIFTOPIA.

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21st Century Magic? Or 1950’s Idiocy on Steroids?

07 Other Atrocities, Advanced Cyber/IO, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement, Methods & Process, Military, Officers Call, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Technologies

Richard Wright

This is a follow up to that 13 February Spinney piece on predicting the future, DARPA as Poster Child for Out of Control Budget. It belongs to the category of “we don't make this stuff up.”  Speaking of this category, I think this latest incident in Pakistan (CIA contractor shoots two Pakistanis in broad daylight, CIA SUV going to his aid runs down a Pakistani motorcyclist) ought to be a signal to disestablish CIA.

Phi Beta Iota: FATAL FARCE just keeps on growing.

Algorithm: in computer terms, a finite set of coded instructions directing a computer to solve a specific problem or execute a specific process.

The term ‘algorithm’ is a prosaic word that has taken on an almost occult meaning to hosts of middle and senior managers in the intelligence and military sectors of the U.S. National Security Establishment.

It appears that anyone claiming to have developed an ‘algorithm’ to solve any of the many issues facing those sectors will find a receptive audience and usually a wad of cash to pursue development of that program.

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USA Spectrum Out of Control & Self-Destructing

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Advanced Cyber/IO, Computer/online security, Corruption, Cyberscams, malware, spam, InfoOps (IO), Military, Mobile, Officers Call, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Real Time, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Standards, Technologies
DefDog Recommends...

Interesting, and if the point about Garmin is true, what is the relationship between them and the Air Force? The Air Force has gotten into a lot of areas that include tracking to the individual level (RFI) under the guise of tracking logistics….

US Air Force raises concerns over LightSquared's LTE network messing with GPS

Following a navigation system's instructions without driving into a ravine is hard enough as it is — can you even imagine how hard it'd be if you kept losing GPS reception every time you drove within range of an LTE tower? There have been a few anecdotal concerns raised over the last several weeks that LightSquared's proposed LTE network — which would repurpose L-band spectrum formerly used for satellite — is too close to the spectrum used by the Global Positioning System, leading to unintentional jamming when the towers overpower the much weaker GPS signals. Things have gotten a little more interesting, though, now that the US Air Force Space Command has officially piped in. General William Shelton has gone on record saying that “a leading GPS receiver manufacturer just … has concluded that within 3 to 5 miles on the ground and within about 12 miles in the air GPS is jammed by those towers,” calling the situation “unbelievable” and saying he's “hopeful the FCC does the right thing.”

Read rest of article….

Phi Beta Iota: Electromagnetic conflicts have been a known issue since the 1980's.  The Soviets had emission control standards ten times tougher than the US, which had (and continues to have) virtually no standards at all.  This is one reason why US forces in Afghanistan are so severely hampered, with drones, aircraft, radars, and various other “systems” all interfering with one another.  Elsewhere, notably in England, modern cars come to a complete stop within a  couple of kilometers of certain Royal Air Force emitting stations.  All of this can be attributed to at least four root problems:

1.  An acquisition archipelago (nothing sytematic about it) so stupid and out of control as to defy belief.  No standards, no brains, no integrity.

2.  Service-centric and mission-centric “preferred contractor” and “proprietary single point solutions” standard operating processes that are deliberately not orchestrated with other services, civilian elements of the government, or other nations.

3.  A lack of integrity among senior officers who should know better.

4.  A lack of integrity in Congress, where the focus is on collecting the 5% kick-back from delivered programs, not on actually serving the public interest by insuring affordability, interoperability, sustainability, and utility.

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Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail? + US Fraud RECAP

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Chuck Spinney Recommends...

Phi Beta Iota: With a tip of the hat to Rolling Stone and author Matt Taibbi, reproducing the entire article was the only way to show the emphasis added by Brother Chuck.  Updated to add photo and observe that this particular article is rocketing around the Internet.  See also our review of GRIFTOPIA.

UPDATE: Three comments from Facebook:

  • Robert Smith Socrates became disheartened. Machiavelli was on to something – power corrupts. I suspect that a true and totally transparent democracy of ideas and information are requisite groundwork for an enduring democracy.
  • Robert David Steele Vivas Transparency, truth, and trust. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson both understood, Will Durant says it best (see my review of his Philosophy and the Social Problem)
  • Lynn Wheeler In the late 90s, got asked by NSCC (before they merged with DTC) to look at improving integrity of trading transactions (in part because had recently done something similar for payment transactions) … after putting some amount of work int…it was suspended. The comment was that a side-effect of improving the integrity would have also greatly increased transparency and visibility (which apparently is antithetical to trading culture … some x-over with recent RS article focusing on secrecy as a fraud-enabler).

Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?

Financial crooks brought down the world's economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them

Matt Taibbi. Rolling Stone, 16 February 2011

Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.

“Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail,” he said. “That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that.”

I put down my notebook. “Just that?”

“That's right,” he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. “Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there.”

Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people.

This article appears in the March 3, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. The issue is available now on newsstands and will appear in the online archive February 18.

Entire Piece with Emphasis from Chuck Spinney Below the Line

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MIRROR: How to Communicate & Restore Collective Power if the US Government Shuts Down the Internet

07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Autonomous Internet, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Methods & Process, Mobile, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Real Time, Strategy, Technologies, Tools

HOW TO COMMUNICATE IF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT SHUTS DOWN THE INTERNET

02-07-2011 8:48 pm – Wallace

Liberty News Online

Scenario: Your government is displeased with the communication going on in your location and pulls the plug on your internet access, most likely by telling the major ISPs to turn off service.

This is what happened in Egypt Jan. 25 prompted by citizen protests, with sources estimating that the Egyptian government cut off approximately 88 percent of the country's internet access. What do you do without internet? Step 1: Stop crying in the corner. Then start taking steps to reconnect with your network. Here’s a list of things you can do to keep the communication flowing.

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PREVENTIVE MEASURES:

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