Journal ISSN 1078-1935 – Page 1838 – Public Intelligence Blog

Posted: 03 Aug 2013 07:20 AM PDT

I read “How Can I Pass the String ‘Null’ through WSDL (SOAP)…” My hunch is that only a handful of folks will dig into this issue. Most senior managers buy the baloney generated by search and content processing. Yesterday I reviewed for one of the outfits publishing my “real” (for fee) columns a slide deck stuff full of “all’s” and “every’s”. The message was that this particular modern system which boasted a hefty price tag could do just about anything one wanted with flows of content.

Happily overlooked was the problem of a person with a wonky name. Case in point: “Null”. The link from Hacker News to the Stackoverflow item gathered a couple of hundred comments. You can find these here. If you are involved in one of the next-generation, super-wonderful content processing systems, you may find a few minutes with the comments interesting and possibly helpful.

My scan of the comments plus the code in the “How Can I” post underscored the disconnect between what people believe a system can do and what a here-and-now system can actually do. Marketers say one thing, buyers believe another, and the installed software does something completely different.

Examples:

Continue reading “Stephen E. Arnold: Search Sucks, Crowd-Sourcing Rocks II”

2013/08/04

Stephen E. Arnold: Big Data Sucks, Crowd-Sourcing Rocks I

Commerce, Corruption, Crowd-Sourcing, Data, Ineptitude

Crowdsourcing Helps Keep Big Data Companies Straight

Posted: 26 Jul 2013 07:06 PM PDT

As big data analytics begins picking up steam, we are seeing more and more interesting outlets to learn about different platforms to choose from. Not just catalogs and boastful corporation sites, but insightful criticism. One such recent stop was when we came about the “About” story of Bamboo DIRT.

According to the site:

Bamboo DiRT is a tool, service, and collection registry of digital research tools for scholarly use. Developed by Project Bamboo, Bamboo DiRT is an evolution of Lisa Spiro’s DiRT wiki and makes it easy for digital humanists and others conducting digital research to find and compare resources ranging from content management systems to music OCR, statistical analysis packages to mindmapping software.

One look at its tips for analyzing data and we were sold. Here we were turned on to such intriguing companies as 140kit and Dataverse. The user-supported recommendations were the best. About Dataverse, it said: “Researchers and data authors get credit, publishers and distributors get credit, affiliated institutions get credit.” Concise and giving all the needed vitals, this type of crowdsourcing recommendation site could really catch on as the world of big data analytics keeps growing beyond most users’ capacity to keep up.

Patrick Roland, August 04, 2013

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search

2013/08/042013/08/04

SchwartzReport: Senate Republicans — 36 of Them — Seek to Screw Labor — And Make Case for Keeping the Senate Democratic in 2014

Corruption, Government, Idiocy

Almost every day I read stories about Republican actions to subvert the wellbeing of the middle class. It is amazing to me. They just roll in day after day, each one more extreme and hurtful than the one before it. Here is an example. Frankly, and I know this will offend the 14 per cent of my readers who are conservatives, as presently configured ! I do not think is is possible to be an ethical person and to vote Republican. I am sorry, but on the facts, in my view, that is the case.

36 Senators Introduce Bill Prohibiting Virtually Any New Law Helping Workers
IAN MILLHISER – Think Progress

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Senate Republicans — 36 of Them — Seek to Screw Labor — And Make Case for Keeping the Senate Democratic in 2014”

2013/08/032013/08/04

Marcus Aurelius: False Embassy Threat a Preamble to War? + Syria Islam Divide Iran Nuclear Israeli Insanity RECAP Update 1.1 — More Prison Breaks?

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 05 Iran, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Transnational Crime, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

The retired Marine colonel who cued me to this report opined that, “This is a hell of a lot closer to the mark than any Administration or DoS blathering.” I would be totally unsurprised to find him 100% spot-on. I invite your attention to the final para, highlighted. If that is true, the (in)actions of our government may have rendered us incapable, fiscally and operationally, of effective response. Another Task Force Smith, another Kaserine Pass could be the foreseeable result.

Unmasking the embassy threat

Embassy closures are a signal of the rapidly escalated intervention in the region by the US

There is one thing certain about the publicized threat to our embassies; it is not what it is presented to be. To accept the official explanation of a nebulous threat from al Qaeda as the reason for closing our embassies across the Middle East and North Africa is being dangerously naive and simplistic.

This is much more serious than what we are being told, but not for the reasons we are being given. We are seeing the consequences of a long running “Cold War” on two major fronts of political conflict that could escalate into military engagement with proxy nations of world super powers. The world, and life as we know it, could change in an instant should we awaken one morning to the news of bombs flying across the Middle East. That is a very real possibility, as we are now in a heightened proxy war environment. We are standing in a thick forest of dry tinder, and the smallest of sparks could ignite a conflagration the likes of which we have never before seen.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: False Embassy Threat a Preamble to War? + Syria Islam Divide Iran Nuclear Israeli Insanity RECAP Update 1.1 — More Prison Breaks?”

2013/08/032013/08/03

Mini-Me: Is Michael Scheuer A Jesuit Agent of Influence?

Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement

Huh?

Earthlinggb's Blog

WHO IS MICHAEL SCHEUER?

Hot on the heels of my last blogpost “Israel: The contrarian agenda” comes this. Michael Scheuer – the ex CIA man who is throwing his word around the world on media and at International book festivals as if he is some “guru” of the Intelligence world – which, being ex CIA, I guess he has the right to think so.

EXTRACT:

2. Michael Scheuer is a jesuit

Scheuer was born in Buffalo and graduated from Canisius College in 1974, and went on to earn an M.A. from Niagara University in 1976 and another M.A. from Carleton University in 1982. He also received a Ph.D. in British Empire-U.S.-Canada-U.K. relations from the University of Manitoba in 1986.

Read full post.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Is Michael Scheuer A Jesuit Agent of Influence?”

2013/08/032013/08/03

Jean Lievens: YouTube (48:13) Venus Project Presents “Paradise or Oblivion?” An Examination of Dysfunctional Societies and An Alternative

Cultural Intelligence

Paradise or Oblivion

This documentary details the root causes of the systemic value disorders and detrimental symptoms caused by our current established system. This video presentation advocates a new socio-economic system, which is updated to present-day knowledge, featuring the life-long work of Social Engineer, Futurist, Inventor and Industrial Designer Jacque Fresco, which he calls a Resource-Based Economy.

The film details the need to outgrow the dated and inefficient methods of politics, law, business, or any other “establishment” notions of human affairs, and use the methods of science, combined with high technology, to provide for the needs of all the world’s people. It is not based on the opinions of the political and financial elite or on illusionary so-called democracies, but on maintaining a dynamic equilibrium with the planet that could ultimately provide abundance for all people.

Paradise or Oblivion, by The Venus Project, introduces the viewer to a more appropriate value system that would be required to enable this caring and holistic approach to benefit human civilization. This alternative surpasses the need for a monetary-based, controlled, and scarcity-oriented environment, which we find ourselves in today.

If you would like to help with the creation of a translation for this and/or other TVP videos, please write to LinguisticTeam@thevenusproject.com

DuckDuckGo / Venus Project

Quanto / Venus Project

2013/08/03

Berto Jongman: Chechens Flee Kadyvote Terrorism in Chechnya

Cultural Intelligence

Exodus of Chechens from ‘prospering' Chechnya baffles Europe

Kavkaz Center, 3 August 2013

EXTRACT:

“We can not psychologically endure humiliation and abuse from Kadyrovites. They do what they want, kidnap whom they want, kill whom they want, seize property from whoever they want … If you take up arms and go to the mountains, they immediately call you terrorists … People can not tolerate this lawlessness, withstand it psychologically, that is why so many are leaving. As for the fact that they built something there, it is not for the common people, but for themselves … ”

Read full article.