Phi Beta Iota: “Too Big to Fail” is industrial era idiocy. REALITY tells us that the more complex a system gets, the more it DEMANDS self-healing from the bottom-up. Feedback loops at all levels, each with their integrity intact. What all of the headlines above have in common is precisely the opposite: degraded feedback loops lacking integrity.
Internet visionary fears an end to openness as Internet rivals consolidate power.
The Web, which began life as an open community where information and tools were freely shared across geographic, political, and social boundaries, is in danger of becoming segmented into a federation of closed camps led by a handful of increasingly powerful vendors, said Internet pundit Tim O'Reilly.”We're heading back into an ugly time,” said O'Reilly, during a keynote address Tuesday at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York City.
O'Reilly said efforts by Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN), Apple, and other tech vendors—as well as publishers like Rupert Murdoch's Dow Jones—to create closed communities around their products and services are jeopardizing the freedom, and the spirit, of the Web. Continue reading “Journal: Web War II”
The Associated Press
Sunday, November 15, 2009; 1:58 AM
WASHINGTON — The government paid more than $47 billion in questionable Medicare claims including medical treatment showing little relation to a patient's condition, wasting taxpayer dollars at a rate nearly three times the previous year. . . . . . .
n recent years, the suspect claims have included Medicare prescriptions from doctors who were dead, and requests for payment for medical supplies such as blood glucose strips for sexual impotence and diabetic shoes for leg amputees. Patients, many of them new citizens who barely speak English, are sometimes recruited by brokers who go door-to-door offering hundreds of dollars for use of their Medicare numbers. . . . . . .
Records released in the past week showed that CMS for three years ignored internal watchdog warnings about swindlers stealing millions of dollars by scamming several Medicare programs. The agency received roughly 30 warnings from inspectors but didn't respond to half of them, even after repeated letters.
COVER STORY: The Cyberwar Plan It's not just a defensive game; cyber-security includes attack plans too, and the U.S. has already used some of them successfully.
by Shane Harris Saturday, Nov. 14, 2009
Full Story Online
14 tech firms form cybersecurity alliance for governmentLockheed Martin, top suppliers launch initiative for government market
By Wyatt Kash Nov 12, 2009
Phi Beta Iota: It is a scam, big time. The U.S. does not have–outside of our small number of colleagues in Hackers on Planet Earth and the Silicon Valley Hackers/THINK Conference–the brainpower and cummulative skills to fill the Potemkin Center, much less staff a capability with global reach.
This extraordinary resource is the personal initiative of Jeffrey S Harley,SMDC/ARSTRAT G39, Deputy, Information Operations. As received, each new newsletter is posted to the Archives at the above permanent URL:
A contest planned by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will challenge contestants to use the Internet to locate the 10 large red weather balloons the agency will place across the continental United States, DARPA officials announced last week. DARPA will put the balloons in publicly accessible locations and display them for one day during daylight hours. The first participant to identify the latitude and longitude of all the balloons will receive the $40,000 cash prize. The balloons will be positioned Dec. 5, DARPA officials said Oct. 29.
Phi Beta Iota: Our most trusted alter ego flagged this for attention, and we love it. We have ordered the book on Visual Language and hoping the author will soon publish on Information Mapping. This is sheer genius, not least for its human sensitivity and its grasp of the brain-eye-hand-touch loop. We are blown away by this, it buries the visual design phenoms of the past, while clearly being relevant to Collective Intelligence and Conscious Evolution.
