Category: IO Impotency

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Berto Jongman: ISIS — What We Do Not Know and How NOT to “Understand” ISIS

08 Wild Cards, IO Impotency, IO Sense-Making
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Most interesting for its itemization of what the US does NOT know about ISIS.

How Not To Understand ISIS

EXTRACT

I should begin by emphasizing that our knowledge of ISIS is extremely scant. We know close to nothing about ISIS’ social base. We know little about how it made its military gains, and even less about the nature of the coalitions into which it has entered with various groups—from other Islamist rebels in Syria to secular Ba‘athists in Iraq.

Sensationalist accounts of “shari‘a justice” notwithstanding, we do not have much information about how ISIS administers the lives of millions of people who reside in the territories it now controls.

Information about the militants who fight for ISIS is likewise scarce. Most of what we know is gleaned from recruitment videos and propaganda, not the most reliable sources. There is little on the backgrounds and motives of those who choose to join the group, least of all the non-Western recruits who form the bulk of ISIS’ fighting force. In the absence of this information, it is difficult to even say what ISIS is if we are to rely on anything beyond the group’s self-representations.

Read full article.

See Also:

ISIS @ Phi Beta Iota

1989+ Intelligence Reform

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Stephen E. Arnold: Buzzword Alert – “Dark Data”

IO Impotency
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

Buzzword of the Day: Dark Data

Big Data. Biggish Data. Now dark data. The idea plays on the silliness of the dark Web; that is, it is information that is “there”, but you don’t know about it. Well, get with it, pilgrim. Datameer used this term in “Shine Light on Dark Data.”

Here’s the definition:

At every organization neglected data sits overlooked in log files and archives accumulating digital dust and incurring costs. But as more organizations look for ways to become better, stronger and faster, they’re digging into this “dark” data and uncovering a gold mine of business intelligence.

Continue reading “Stephen E. Arnold: Buzzword Alert – “Dark Data””

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Stephen E. Arnold: How the NYT (and Google) Imploded — Bad Management, Static Content, Piecemeal Kludging

Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Impotency, Media
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

New York Times Online: An Inside View

Check out the presentation “The Surprising Path to a Faster NYTimes.com.”

I was surprised at some of the information in the slide deck. First, I thought the New York Times was first online in the 1970s via LexisNexis.

I thought that was an exclusive deal and reasonably profitable for both LexisNexis and the New York Times. When the newspaper broke off that exclusive to do its own thing, the revenue hit on the New York Times was immediate. In addition, the decision had significant cost implications for the newspaper.

Continue reading “Stephen E. Arnold: How the NYT (and Google) Imploded — Bad Management, Static Content, Piecemeal Kludging”

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Stephen E. Arnold: Federal Agencies Suffering Constant Connectivity Losses — “Dark Fiber”?

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Impotency
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

Federal Agencies Perpetually Battle Connectivity Loss

This may be stating the obvious, but ComputerWorld declares that “IT Outages Are an Ongoing Problem for the U.S. Government.” The article cites a recent report sponsored by Symantec and performed by MeriTalk, which runs a network for government IT workers. Though the issues that originally plagued HealthCare.gov were their own spectacular kettle of fish, our federal government’s other computer networks are no paragons of efficiency. Writer Patrick Thibodeau tells us:

“Specifically, the survey found that 70% of federal agencies have experienced downtime of 30 minutes of more in a recent one-month period. Of that number, 42% of the outages were blamed on network or server problems and 29% on Internet connectivity loss….

Continue reading “Stephen E. Arnold: Federal Agencies Suffering Constant Connectivity Losses — “Dark Fiber”?”

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Yoda: Open Access Journals — Answer? Scam?

Academia, Ethics, Ineptitude, IO Impotency
Got Crowd? BE the Force!
Got Crowd? BE the Force!

Deciding who should pay to publish peer-reviewed scientific research

How open-access journals are changing the field of peer-reviewed science

John Abraham

The Guardian, 18 September 2014

There is an important discussion to be had about the future of scientific publications.

– – – – – – –

A publisher cannot simply give papers away for free – they would rapidly go out of business. On the other hand, an author can opt to make their papers available without a pay wall, but the author has to pay for this option. My colleagues and I recently wrote a major ocean heating paper and paid multiple thousands of dollars to make it freely available. This money came from our research budgets – budgets that are already tight.

So into this mix enter open-access publishers. Instead of selling papers, they make the articles freely available to the public. On the one hand, this system dramatically alters who can gain access to articles. The papers can be freely downloaded anywhere in the world (hugely important if you are a researcher in the developing world). In addition, open-access journals typically do not print papers in hard copy form, thus saving money on printing and shipping. But how can these journals survive? They do that by charging the author. Fees range anywhere from $100–$1000 or so.

Continue reading “Yoda: Open Access Journals — Answer? Scam?”

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Stephen E. Arnold: Russia (BRICS?) Firewalling the Internet

IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

Russian Content: Tough to Search If Russia Is Not on the Internet

Forget running queries on Yandex.ru if Russia disconnects from the Internet. Sure, there may be workarounds, but these might invite some additional scrutiny. Why am I suggesting that some Russian content becomes unsearchable. Well, I believed the story “Russia to Be Disconnected from the Internet.” Isn’t Pravda a go to source for accurate, objective information?

The story asserts:

This is not a question of disconnecting Russia from the international network, yet, Russian operators will need to set up their equipment in a way to be able to disconnect the Russian Internet from the global network quickly in case of emergency, the newspaper wrote. As for the state of emergency, it goes about both military actions and large-scale riots in the country. In addition, the government reportedly discusses a possibility to empower the state with the function to administer domains. Currently this is a function of a public organization – the Coordination Center for the National Domain of the Internet. The purpose of the possible measure is not to isolate Russia from the outside world, but to protect the country, should the USA, for example, decide to disconnect Russia from the system of IP-addresses. It will be possible to avoid this threat, if Russia has a local regulator to distribute IP-addresses inside the country, rather than the ICANN, controlled by the United States government. This requires operators to set up “mirrors” that will be able to receive user requests and forward them to specific domain names.

Interesting. Who is being kept in the information closet? I suppose it depends on one’s point of view. Need an update for Sphinx Search? There will be a solution because some folks will plan ahead.

Stephen E Arnold, September 20, 2014

See Also:

BRICS Internet @ Phi Beta Iota

noble gold