Stephen E. Arnold: Amazon (and CIA) Breaking Oracle — the Surveillance State Goes Open Source

Amazon and Oracle: The Love Affair Ends I recall turning in a report about Amazon’s use of Oracle as its core database. The client, a bank type operation, was delighted that zippy Amazon had the common sense to use a name brand database. For the bank types, recognizable names used to be indicators of wise …

Reflections: Kudos to Intel – #ConflictFree Toward #TrueCost?

Intel is doing something new and useful. They have introduced a Conflict-Free Smelter Program (CFSP) to migrate toward assuring Intel consumers that its offerings are free of minerals from conflict environments — tantalum, tin, tungsten, and gold are the ones they are focusing on. What Intel is doing impresses me for two reasons. First, they …

Yoda: US Federal IT — $100 Billion in Flames

Systemic mess. Federal IT Spending Slashed In Proposed 2015 Budget Obama’s 2015 budget request cuts 2.9%, gives agencies $79 billion for IT, including $13 billion for cyber security. Phi Beta Iota: Not being discussed: holistic analytics, true cost economics, or open source everything engineering. See Also: Internet Of Things: 8 Cost-Cutting Ideas For Government

ANSWERS to Spanish Dancer on CIA and SOF Replacing Conventional Forces

My Masters is focused on Strategic Studies and International Security and my thesis is about the relevance of the black-ops (paramilitary) to the detriment of the conventional military operations in America´s foreign policy. Basically I argue (due to literature that I´ve been revising for more than a year) that it is a fact that since …

Stephen E. Arnold: Salon Says Google Makes Us Stupid… PBI: We Think We Make Google Stupid!

Overreliance on Search Engines? The Salon.com article titled Google Makes Us All Dumber: The Neuroscience of Search Engines probes the ever-increasing reliance on search engines and finds that the way we use them is problematic. This is due to the way our brains respond to this simplified question and answer process. The article stipulates that …