Simply Arianna Huffington has once more shot several vultures with only one shot. Congratulations Arianna! This time she has spelled out the ridiculous arguments from Murdoch News Corp. and some of the NYT arguments as well in a terrific post today in the Huffington Post.

Arianna Huffington

I understand the NYT out of desperation is trying everything, all mad magic potions in order to keep its grandeur of last century. It’s a pool of professionals which deserve all my respects.

But as Arianna has brilliantly exposed in her post today, Murdoch calls everybody “thieves” while he and his companies practice it severely without any shame or apologies: citing the article of Techdirt.com, the post shows that “The Wall Street Journal has a tech section that’s nothing more than a parasite — uh, I mean, aggregator — of outside content. FoxNews.com has a Politics Buzztracker that bloodsucks — uh, I mean aggregates and links to — stories from a variety of different sources, including the NY Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC and others.
AllThingsD has a section called Voices that not only aggregates headlines, but also takes a nice chunk of text — and puts the links out at the bottom of the story.
And Murdoch’s News Corp. also owns IGN, which has a variety of web properties, including the Rotten Tomatoes movie review aggregation site — which is entirely made up of movie reviews pulled together from other places. Did someone say “stealing”?

When “people” of the kind of Murdoch decide to do something against a given situation we can predict all sort of dirty, scummy and filthiness coming along the way. Those kinds of “people” simply don’t know the concept of fairness. The only understand of the world they have is their OWN POWER which, all things considered, will not remain as it is nowadays for much longer.

An old time friend of mine, in Germany, used to say “beer should not be sold but rented; anyway almost always you leave it in the bar you got it from”. And of course I couldn’t stop laughing when I read Arianna relating a discourse she had to hear in Monaco from a German tycoon named Mathias Döpfner, CEO of of the German publisher Axel Springer and creator of the German’s tabloid BILD (controlling 25% of the European Market in 32 countries and more than 150 newspapers and magazines) saying: “If it’s your business decision to offer beer cans for free, fine,” he said. “But don’t take our beer and offer it for free.“

That caused a certain shock to our dear Arianna: “it struck me as a really bizarre metaphor. Information is hardly the same thing as a product that can only be consumed once by a single person. If you consume a news story, you might be one of millions. If you consume a beer, no one else can consume it.”

Well, well, there are “people” with bizarre habits who maybe “recycle” their own beer in order to not share it with the germs of the toilets in the bars. Love for their “products”, maybe.

The Wall Street Journal had a great article this morning entitled “No More Executive Bonuses.”  The author’s argument is that “the problem isn’t that they are poorly designed.  The problem is that they exist.”  Now I’m an “executive” in my company – you can read about what my bonus plan is by picking up a 10-K.  I can assure you that said plan has not been terribly lucrative in the recent past.    As the plan’s primary architect, I have to say it does a fairly good job of matching stakeholder value with annual rewards to executives.  But I can also tell you that even as someone who stands to profit from this plan, I have always struggled a bit with one element in particular.  What it doesn’t encompass is the tremendous amount of work executives – and all employees – put forth even when the business is in the tank (especially when it’s in the tank for reasons beyond the company’s control).  In other words, company success does not always equate to level of effort, sacrifice, and contribution on the workforce’s part.  This particular issue relates to some of the “faulty assumptions” highlighted in the article - fault with which I cannot argue.  These faulty assumptions border on “criminal” when it really gets right down to it.  And it demonstrates an age-old issue in Corporate America…we do things because it’s always been done that way. 

Why not simplify the approach we take to paying our executives…and senior management…and managers?  Why not focus more on total compensation through base pay.  It may mean more variability to base pay from year to year, but no reason company performance and individual contributions can’t be incorporated into base pay planning.  It means the Board of Directors and Management need to have the cojones to hold others accountable for their contributions (or lack thereof) – something they need to get better at any way.  It means we’ll have to attract executives who aren’t necessarily in it for the selfish, ego-boosting reasons – a good thing for sure.  But it also means there’s a bit more equal footing on pay-for-performance.  It’s time that corporate America wake up to the fact that no one person – or exclusive group of persons – is solely responsible for an organization’s success.  I’m not talking about socialism here – I’m just talking about realism.  I’m also not saying executives shouldn’t be paid a lot of money – I’m just saying the moolah should come with sustained results measured by factors other than what can be derived from a set of financial statements. 

The only problem – well, the biggest one – is that the executives themselves usually create these plans (with the help of the Board of Directors and Compensation Committees who are all cut from the same cloth.)  What’s going to change that?  It starts with the selfless initiation of the executives to “get over it.”  They might as well because I’m convinced the time is rapidly approaching when the market realizes their lofty compensation expectations don’t have to be met in order to attract exceptionally gifted leaders.  Then perhaps…just perhaps…HR/Recruiting can get back into the game by a) actually finding and hiring those people and b) designing a pay-for-performance comp plan which is easy to administer, understand, and doesn’t make you blush.

A Rant from Donnie Bagley

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

1. Can the world go back to spinning on its correct axis?

2. Can someone please turn things back to normal?

3.When did this all happen? How did it all happen at once?

4.How did the economy collapse……this bad?

5.How does Wall St. “crash” then “select” companies STILL get HUGE chunks of cash?

6.Why are the wars are still going on?

7.What is Lady Gaga and why is this thing popular?

8. How did the “News” become a bunch of asshole’s opinion?
People….listen to the words….IT’S THEIR OPINION……NOT FACT!!!!!

9. When did it become okay to “code” every single fucking thing in the world?
Did it really start with the New Kids on the Block? (NKOTB) ???? Now we have NSF (Not Safe for Work) GMA (Good Morning America….and by the way, really?) DWTS (Dancing with the Stars) LOL and all of its counterparts, etc.. The list goes on and on and on and on! JUST FUCKING WRITE THE WORDS OUT!!!!!!

10. Why are humans so stupid?
The new thing is a utter lack of patience. I mean zero patience. The new trend is that if something lasts for more than 6 months people change their mind. Healthcare? Yes, reform and change it !!!!!……oh wait, it’s taking longer than 6 months to change it? Its on the news all the time? Oh well, I am sick of it now. DONT CHANGE IT! OBAMA IS EVIL!

Now people are also disbelieving in Global Warming? Apparently this is now is a “hoax” because the movie “The Day After Tomorrow” hasn’t happened yet and people are sick of the name. “Hey it’s snowing out, that global warming shit is a crock.” “Yeah, doesn’t seem to be gettin any warmer to me!” ….fucking retards. How bout we just call it the “Hey you stupid assholes, pollute less…like, a lot less, so that out children still have an “outdoors” initiative.” Would people understand then?

11. How did it get this bad? Do you know that the Cookie Monster on Sesame Street is now a fucking vegetarian? Did you know that? I am not lying. Cookies are now only “sometimes food.” Yeah, watch this shit with your kids or when your really stoned one day. Its FUCKING RIDICULOUS!!!!! He’s the fucking COOKIE MONSTER!!!!!!!! Now they got the poor bastard eating veggies and tofu and shit. Seriously how and when did we get HERE?

12.Sarah Palin. I think that is all I have to type.

Can someone please turn the regular channel back on? Just go back to some form of sanity! PLEASE!

By now, most have heard about the so-called “party-crashers” of Tareq and Michaele Salahi at Obama’s State Dinner at the White House.  Mr. and Mrs. Salahi “crashed” the affair with no invite and managed a meet-and-greet with mmm mmm mmm Barack Hussein Obama himself.  The New York Times (ever on the ball as they are) first reported that it was “unclear” whether the couple met Obama or his guests of honor at the State Dinner, but it was in fact VERY clear that the couple did manage a face-to-face – read here and here.

As Obama now asks for an “inquiry” on “how this happened,” leave it to the Canada Free Press to report that Obama’s relationship with the Salahis runs back to his days as an IL Senator.  Read the full story here. (*Hattip to Kosmosnet via Twitter)

Stay tuned folks…there is likely far more to this whole affair than has been reported thus far…

UPDATE: …such as the fact that Tareq Salahi has served as a lobbyist for Mahmoud Abbas (and see here as well).  As Ed Morrissey has queried, are we to really believe these people “crashed” this affair or is it more likely that Barack Hussein Obama wanted them there, but off the “official” guest list?

Su alcuni quotidiani italiani nelle ultime settimane sono comparsi articoli critici nei confronti di Google. Gli spunti per attaccare l’azienda di Mountain View i più vari: dalla struttura societaria europea incentrata su una capogruppo irlandese (è così da sempre per tutte le multinazionali americane), ai commenti di Rupert Murdoch circa i presunti furti patiti per colpa del più famoso motore di ricerca al mondo. Addirittura la seconda e la terza pagina interamente dedicate a quest’ultimo tema nel caso di un noto quotidiano nazionale.

Sta succedendo qualcosa? Le cose stanno proprio come riportato dai media? Murdoch ha ragione così come la FIEG attraverso l’esposto presentato lo scorso luglio?

Senza voler arrivare a un giudizio di merito sul tema, occorre ricordare alcuni passaggi partendo dal passato recente. Mr. Murdoch ha manifestato nel tempo un atteggiamento ondivago sul tema dei contenuti e il Web. La versione più recente comunicata al mercato attraverso un’intervista a una sua televisione australiana in pratica rimprovera gli editori per essere stati sciocchi all’origine rendendo disponibili gratuitamente i contenuti prodotti dalle testate giornalistiche. La puntata precedente di questa mini saga verteva sul “furto di valore” procurato da Google nei confronti degli editori con l’intenzione di effettuare una sorta di de-listing dei contenuti delle proprietà online del gruppo dal motore di ricerca americano. La stampa ha poi ipotizzato accordi in esclusiva con Microsoft nel tentativo di estrarre valore da un player che da più di dodici anni sta cercando di trovare una chiave di lettura di successo alla propria strategia online e di – ironico – rendere un solo motore di ricerca uno strumento per accedere ai contenuti prodotti dai propri giornalisti. il tutto alla faccia della costantemente sbandierata democraticità del web.

Ripercorrendo l’evoluzione del pensiero di Mr. Murdoch negli anni, vale la pena ricordare che nell’aprile 2007 al momento dell’acquisizione del gruppo Dow Jones comprendente il Wall Street Journal, la posizione del guru dell’informazione era stata critica verso i contenuti a pagamento anticipando la rimozione della fee mensile per trasformare il WSJ in un prodotto totalmente gratuito e supportato esclusivamente dalla vendita di spazi pubblicitari. Attualmente il numero di abbonati al WSJ è stimato in 356,000 (sono uno di questi da molti anni ormai e pago con grande soddisfazione $149 all’anno per un contenuto che io ritengo assolutamente distintivo, informativo e – sintetizzando – fantastico), numero che contribuisce alla determinazione della circolazione complessiva del giornale stimata in poco più di 2M di “copie” al giorno, facendo del WSJ il quotidiano #1 negli USA. Questo significa che WSJ incassa oltre una cinquantina di milioni all’anno dalle quote pagate per l’abbonamento online, una cifra di per se non colossale, ma immensamente superiore a quanto estratto per Unique User attraverso la pubblicità sulla stessa base temporale.

Sempre in merito alle oscillazioni comunicate al mercato da Mr. Murdoch, un paio di mesi fa è stato comunicato che i contenuti di WSJ accessibili attraverso un’apposita application per iPhone sarebbero stati a pagamento anche per i sottoscrittori di un abbonamento online. La cosa ovviamente non mi è sembrata particolarmente logica e infatti un paio di giorni dopo i manager dell’azienda hanno dovuto correggere quanto comunicato dal Big Boss.

A completamento di tutto ciò, il contratto di concessione di vendita degli spazi di MySpace – una proprietà online acquistata da Murdoch qualche anno fa e ormai in declino costante dopo l’esplosione di Facebook – siglato con Google con minimo garantito di $900M per tre anni è vicino alla scadenza e sembra molto realistico che possa non essere rinnovato alle medesime condizioni visti i risultati conseguiti. Questo lo scenario.

Una prima semplice conclusione è che ciascuno degli attori coinvolti in questa sceneggiatura ha una propria agenda e degli obiettivi di business molto chiari. L’industria dei media attraverso il suo più insigne rappresentante sta trasferendo messaggi contraddittori, ottimo specchio della confusione che regna nel settore. E il sospetto sembra che l’intento di individuare un capro espiatorio sia superiore alla capacità di individuare in modo lucido una soluzione al problema del calo verticale degli introiti legati alla carta. Tra tutti gli editori di livello mondiale, la sola Condé Nast si è distinta per la chiusura di un numero consistente di testate con Gourmet il rappresentante più insigne visti i 980,000 abbonati rimasti “appiedati”. Indicazione di coraggio, ma – ovviamente – anche di una situazione che ha già raggiunto limiti di non sostenibilità, tali da indurre a misure che dall’esterno sembrano molto drastiche e sinonimo di difficoltà oltre la soglia della criticità.

Questa strategia protezionistica ipotizzata da Murdoch costerebbe al WSJ il 25% del traffico giornaliero e una perdita di utenti più o meno assimilabile. Questo calo dovrebbe essere compensato da un flusso altrettanto cospicuo generato da Bing, il motore di ricerca di Microsoft, nel presupposto che l’azienda di Redmond sia disposta a finanziare l’editore. E alcune simulazioni fatte da società indipendenti stentano a individuare l’economicità e la convenienza dell’operazione. Ancora più grave, l’approccio protezionistico ipotizzato da Mr. Murdoch assomiglia molto a erigere muri per creare enclavi separati nell’interesse personale e non della collettività. Personalmente preferirei continuare a pagare i $149 richiesti come faccio da molti anni, senza però sentirmi coinvolto in guerre “ideologiche” alle quali non sono interessato. Se, come dice Mr. Murdoch “… gli editori sono stati degli stupidi a rendere disponibile il proprio contenuto gratis sul Web …”, forse sarebbe opportuno che alla stupidità originaria sostituire un’intelligenza non postuma. Meglio per tutti.

(Linux Journal) – Are the fights that matter just the ones between giant companies? Doesn’t the health of the Net and the Web matter more than any commercial battles? …

http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/rupert-murdoch-vs-web

The impression left by the Climategate emails is that the global warming game has been rigged from the start.

Source:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703499404574559630382048494.html?mod=wsj_share_digg

News X5：五份報紙

• 原價＄0.99，降價至免費
• NYTimes, USA Today, Boston Globe, Time, & WSJ.（未來會增加12個）
• 可以經由twitter分享（有待更新功能）。

I’m spending the week in the Washington, DC area—partly for meetings with national and international organizations that COSI is affiliated with and importantly to also play grandpa to our little Leah

When in DC, you hear about multiple governmental announcements and stories each day—it’s part of life “inside the beltway.” I was glad to be here though and getting detailed news about the President’s announcement of his Educate to Innovate initiative in partnership with multiple companies and organizations. The announcement was of import to us at COSI and other science centers as the initiative recognizes the power of support for science investigation and learning not only in the classroom but in community resources as well.

And the objectives expressed in this new initiative mirror exactly how we see our role at COSI, as highlighted in the following statement contained in President Obama’s comments at the White House:

Everyone in this room understands how important science and math can be. And it goes beyond the facts in a biology textbook or the questions on an algebra quiz. It’s about the ability to understand our world: to harness and train that human capacity to solve problems and think critically, a set of skills that informs the decisions we make throughout our lives. So, yes, improving education in math and science is about producing engineers and researchers and scientists and innovators who are going to help transform our economy and our lives for the better. But it’s also about something more. It’s about expanding opportunity for all Americans in a world where an education is the key to success. It’s about an informed citizenry in an era where many of the problems we face as a nation are, at root, scientific problems. And it’s about the power of science to not only unlock new discoveries, but to unlock in the minds of our young people a sense of promise, a sense that with some hard work—with effort—they have the potential to achieve extraordinary things.

A video of the President’s announcement is available here:

The partners in this initiative include Time Warner Cable, our new sponsor of after school programming and special monthly science days that COSI will implement with their support. In addition to what takes place in the classroom, there are so many learning opportunities with the often non-productive (even destructive) time children and youth have out-of-school. COSI and science center colleagues around the country are developing more partnerships with schools and others to bring our special opportunities, engagement with science and technology, and resources to play an increasing role.

Coincidentally, the same day as the Educate to Innovate announcement, the Wall Street Journal published a special CEO Council report. Several Columbus area CEO’s—Michael Morris of AEP, George Barrett of Cardinal Health, and James Hagedorn of Scotts Miracle-Gro Company were participants—all partners and supporters of COSI’s educational efforts. The group defined and discussed top national priorities. Interestingly, the group of 100 top CEO’s in the U.S. concluded that “Education is an urgent national priority—well ahead of health care, climate change and financial regulatory reform…”

Wow, that says something.

We are linking with more partners locally and nationally to expand and enhance what we can do to support lifelong learning—building on that special skill set we’ve developed of linking and engaging people with the wonders and power of science and technology. You can see the variety of ways in which we’re putting forth our efforts by scanning our web site. My time in DC is partly to expand and link that through national and international partnerships.

During this time of thanks, I’m thankful that at COSI we have the talent and resources to make a difference. The challenge at times is knowing where to focus.

What do you think are the most important areas of learning for COSI to focus on?

What do you see as COSI’s most important, maybe unique, strengths to bring to the national priority of a scientifically literate and comfortable society?

I think about these questions constantly with our team here—any thoughts are always appreciated.

One more reason I love the Wall Street Journal.

The Labor Department’s report of occupational injuries and illnesses that required days away from work mimicked the shifts the recession caused in the labor market in 2008. Hard-hit sectors, such as construction and retail, reported fewer injury and illness cases. Older workers experienced more injuries as their labor force participation rose. And incidents among younger workers fell as fewer remained employed.

The Wall Street Journal reports that 325 million visit Wikipedia each month.  But thousands of the online volunteers who write, edit and police it are quitting the site.  What will this mean for the brand of democratization that is Wikipedia? 

Wikipedia suffered a net loss of more than 49,000 editors, compared to a net loss of 4,900 during the same period a year earlier. It has been 8 years since Wikipedia began to provide the world, free access to knowledge.   So what is happening to the idea of participation?  Errors and deliberate insertions of false information by vandals have undermined its reliability. Executives at the Wikimedia Foundation, which finances and oversees the nonprofit venture, acknowledge the declines, but believe they can continue to build a useful encyclopedia with a smaller pool of contributors. “We need sufficient people to do the work that needs to be done,” says Sue Gardner, executive director of the foundation. “the purpose of the project is not participation”.

There may be a decline in volunteers but users are growing with a 20%increase in the 12 months ending in September 2009, according to comScore Media Metrix. Wikipedia contributors have been debating and discussing what is prompting the declines in volunteers.  Is it that many topics already have been written about?  Is it the multitude of rules Wikipedia has adopted to bring control and order to its  universe, especially infighting among contributors.  ”Wikipedia is becoming a more hostile environment,” contends Mr. Ortega, a project manager at Libresoft, a research group at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid. “Many people are getting burnt out when they have to debate about the contents of certain articles again and again”.

Full article by Julia Angwin and Geoffrey A. Fowler can be found here

 http://hpb.online.wsj.com/article_email/SB125893981183759969-lMyQjAxMDI5NTI4MzkyMzM5Wj.html#

Which was one should expect. But I don’t think the Big G is scared:

‘Microsoft has had discussions with News Corp over a plan that would involve the media company being paid to “de-index” its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry.

‘The impetus for the discussions came from News Corp, owner of newspapers ranging from the Wall Street Journal of the US to The Sun of the UK, said a person familiar with the situation, who warned that talks were at an early stage.’ -Financial Times

Here’s an excellent commentary from Wolff:
Murdoch and Microsoft: The Mice Are Trying to Roar
by Michael Wolff -Vanity Fair

It certainly looks that way if Rupert Murdoch, now the owner of Wall Street Journal, and Microsoft, the owner of the Google-alternative search engine named Bing, have their way.  Here’s the story from the Washington Post and Techcrunch and a take on it from Social Media analysis site Mashable.

The idea is media companies, led by Murdoch and WSJ, would strip their content from Google unless Google would anty up to pay them to provide searches to their content. Microsoft which is stooping to some desperation to try to take market share from Google has been exceptionally eager to say to Mr. Murdoch, hey, Bing will pay you.

What will happen? I agree with Erik Schonfeld of TechCrunch: Exclusive indexing goes against the Web’s inherent openness. Companies that try to curtail that openness don’t last long on the Web.

I think this very overt attempt to steal market share by violating the most basic tenet of the web which is free content for all is doomed and not only that, but puts Microsoft at some reputation risk. I’m not sure that Murdoch faces the same reputation risk as Microsoft in this. First, he doesn’t have to worry that much about ticking off the internet crowd as Microsoft does and who can blame a mainstream mogul from trying to figure out a way to stay in business? I hope that major news gathering organizations like WSJ find a way to survive and I think they will–but I don’t thing they will by violating basic values of the people they are trying to serve. Find another way, guys. This one is doomed.

This week marks the second anniversary of the first live internal demo of the intelligence community’s A-Space project, groundbreaking for the IC in its goal of collaborative use of social media across agency lines. Somewhere in Maryland, a remarkable government employee and friend named Mike Wertheimer should pause and quietly celebrate the fruition of his early evangelism for it.

I was still a government employee then, but wrote about the effort at the time here on Shepherd’s Pi (“A-Space: Top-secret social networking“). It makes me chuckle to remember back to those days when it was still mostly unheard-of for IC employees to blog openly on the public web about current technology projects. Now you can’t shut ‘em up!

It made sense, I thought, to set down a few notes at the time for several reasons:

1. A-Space was intended by Mike’s Analytic Transformation team of the Office of the DIrector of National Intelligence (ODNI) to take advantage of social-media advances then occuring rapidly on the internet, more rapidly than behind our firewalls. I had joined Twitter for example in March 2007, but few of my IC colleagues had Twitter accounts or access from work machines. Same for Facebook and LinkedIn. I blogged about A-Space because I felt we needed to socialize externally the path we were following internally, in order to attract good ideas and assistance from Silicon Valley and technologists who had little knowledge of intelligence work.
2. The time would come when A-Space would be all grown up and accepted as a success, I hoped – and at that point “paternity” could become an issue. We had seen the same thing happen with Intellipedia, which has had several bouts of being claimed as a CIA creation rather than its more community-minded actual roots – and I thought it might be best to set the record straight early on. As Winston Churchill said about World War II, he intended history to treat him fairly “because I intend to write it.”
3. I had announced my “retirement” from government service and was ready to go back to the private sector, and was frankly intent on setting a mark with A-Space so that later leadership might be less inclined to reverse course, against the use of social and collaborative tools.

So here we are, two years on.  I am relieved that A-Space lives! At this point in their lives Twitter and Facebook were themselves  not quite into their hockey-stick growth cycle as social-media phenomena. Think back to Facebook of early 2006 (it was launched in February 2004), or Twitter of March 2008 (it launched in its first alpha baby SMS steps in March 2007.  If you’re interested, Flickr holds some interesting screenshots of the very early Twitter beta screens by their designer).

This week Joab Jackson, senior technology editor at Government Computer News has an update titled “A-Space Melds Social Media and Intelligence Gathering,” quoting Ahmad Ishaq, who manages the project at DIA for the ODNI. I like giving him praise – not just because I hired him, but because he is doing  a bang-up job in difficult circumstances. Let’s just say that he and his team have been dealing with my third bullet point above during the last couple of years.

One of Ahmad’s smart tactics has been to enlist supportive users from multiple agencies as vocal advocates. The GCN article provides an example illustrating the cross-agency collaboration that was mandated by the 9/11 Commission and WMD Commission reports, and which A-Space and its sister tools are helping to realize:

A Homeland Security Department analyst needed to identify a person whose face was found posted on several street and stop signs in a region of the United States. So he posted a scan of the poster on A-Space and received information and photos from seven other agencies. With that information, he could run an image search of the face, which ultimately provided identification.” -Government Computer News

There’s been a lot of change in A-Space since I left – in the requirements, in the emerging business practices, in the software baseline used, and – perhaps explaining some of that – in the contractor team used. That’s all fodder for another article, perhaps.

Whither Analytic Collaboration?

What I prefer to focus on is the future potential of this tool and others in enabling progress for intelligence analysis and collaboration. Ahmad gives one window in the GCN article, and it’s a topic he and I have talked about recently:

[A]llowing analysts to share all this information is only the first step of A-Space. Ishaq and his team are exploring ways of making all the information that is being generated machine-readable. Ishaq would like to incorporate elements of the Semantic Web tools, which would allow them to draw inferences from existing material.

“Right now, the communication is between person and machine,” he said. “We’re trying to take it a step further, to machine-to-machine. So the end-user logs in to the computer, and everything he could possibly want would be there, without doing searches or clicking around.” -Government Computer News

But I’m sure that Ahmad would be among the first to agree that technology is perhaps among the lesser factors which will contribute to the success or failure of analytic collaboration (and “transformation” – an overused term but a worthy goal). Much more important are the social and cultural aspects of the workforce, the workplace, and the changing nature of intelligence work itself  – in response to and support of a dramatically changing foreign policy approach, driven as much by political transition as by societal shifts.

For the moment, let’s keep the focus on the tools though. As A-Space continues taking its own baby steps, it is worthwhile to consider the experience of its older sister Intellipedia – and that sytem’s progenitor Wikipedia. 

Early this year, GCN carried another Joab Jackson article claiming: “Intellipedia Suffers Midlife Crisis.” Much chatter ensued. Some of the challenges dealt with in the article are being addressed internally by the likes of the IC’s Chris Rasmussen, with new and complementary efforts such as Intellipublia (see Federal Computer Week, “Intelligence community wrestles with Web 2.0 tools for information sharing“).

The looming question rises about the overall significance of Web 2.0 style tools.  Dr. Mark Drapeau argued early this year in a widely read piece that “Government 2.0 has reached its midlife crsis.”  Now, more concrete and noteworthy stats are emerging about the hallmark Web 2.0 tools which inspired many of the IC’s efforts.

Could Crowd-Sourcing Max Out?

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported on new research  (“Volunteers Log Off as Wikipedia Ages“) showing that “unprecedented numbers of the millions of online volunteers who write, edit and police it are quitting.” They’re leaving Wikipedia and not being replaced by as many new volunteers, undercutting the “many-eyes” approach that crowd-sourcing relies upon. The numbers are striking: “In the first three months of 2009, Wikipedia lost more than 49,000 editors, compared to 4,900 a year earlier,” reports ZDNet based on the new research (more details here: “Is Wikipedia Maxed Out?”). An influential Econsultancy.com blog now asks in response: “Is free user-generated content dying?”

It is worth keeping an eye on the pulse of Intellipedia and A-Space, as their activity levels wax or wane. Unlike Wikipedia, they are work systems, not free web tools. So the issues there are the differential adoption and longevity of enterprise tools, as explored in Andrew McAfee’s excellent new book Enterprise 2.0.  

For the new intelligence tools, much will depend on their inclusion within agency official processes and analytic-tradecraft training programs. As Chris Rasmussen has pointed out about A-Space, it may still be true that “not a single agency recognizes A-Space content as official.” But social collaboration is more and more an accepted and critical requirement of all information technologies – we’re certainly reflecting that at Microsoft, and have been busy building such capabilities into the new Office 2010 suite (info and free beta sign-up here).

The wave is not going away (well, Google Wave might go away… see here and here and here and oh never mind…)

Who best reflects the pulse of A-Space and Intellipedia? There are many intel-watchers in my blogroll over on the margin, who chart the progress of the IC’s collaborative ways. I can also recommend Chris Dorobek’s reporting on the topic for FedNewsRadio; see his piece from July 2009 ”Intel on the government 2.0 front lines – and a new report assessing A-Space” and more recently his article “November’s Signal column: The Intelligence Community Writes the Book on Collaboration” – both have insight and supportive links as well.

There will be other ODNI and constituent agency efforts to provide cutting-edge collaborative and analytic software and techniques. A-Space will be improved upon, no doubt.

The real test of A-Space – while we have it – and its intelligence utility will come in secret moments of crisis, but also in less-flashy use of consistent collaborative processes which over time contribute to the uncovering of truth for our decision-makers and national leaders. Of necessity, most successes will be unseen by the outside world… and likely, most failures as well.  For now, a happy beta anniversary to the A-Space team and its users.

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Lieberman is likely not, on principle, entirely against the public option.  Rather:

“Once the government creates an insurance company or plan, the government or the taxpayers are liable for any deficit that government plan runs, really without limit,” he says. “With our debt heading over $21 trillion within the next 10 years…we’ve got to start saying no to some things like this.”

Aside from principle, it’s not entirely clear who will pay for all of this.

Also On This Site:  From Clive Crook: Is Health Care Reform On Track?…From The New Yorker: Atul Gawande On Health Care-”The Cost Conundrum”

Also: From KeithHenessey.Com: ‘The House-Passed Bill’s Effects On Health Insurance Coverage’

The Wall Street Journal writes that liberals are more interested in identity politics than a color-blind society.

Jesse Jackson accused Alabama Congressman Artur Davis of selling out his race when he voted against the health-care bill.

Source:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704204304574545913962628736.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Much will be said and written about the reported news that Mr. Murdoch is close to signing a deal with Microsoft (source NPR), disallowing Google from searching and indexing his company’s content and getting paid by Microsoft for the search access.  We will hear more about how content is free or wants to be free, how it is commoditized and how people can get free content from somewhere else. The most vocal proponent of them all, Mr. Jeff Jarvis,  described WSJ’s move as, “it is suicidal”. At the other extreme, Mr. Murdoch described Google as, “stealing my content”.

The truth, however, lies somewhere in between.

On the content wants to be free argument:  This is an extreme position treating all contents as the same and treating all customers the same. The value of content is in the minds of the customers and it varies across segments. For instance, my WTP for WSJ opinion pieces is $0. There are news articles that add no unique value and hence by definition are commoditized. While other articles, even thought they have high value, fail to capture value because of alternative free means of accessing these articles (WSJ articles can be accessed for free through Google searches).

On customers don’t want to pay for content: It is a widely accepted notion that customers do not want to pay for access to content. There is no basis to these and any marketing research studies done are not rigorous enough. This is the very definition of Conventional Wisdom, and going against it will be seen as disastrous move.

On “it is suicidal”:   It definitely is not. WSJ still makes a great portion of its revenue from paid subscriptions. It takes a lot more Ads and CPM to get the same amount of revenue. For someone running one of the top sources of business information we should give WSJ the benefit of doubt that they did the revenue models and calculated loss of revenue from Google traffic. If they were not monetizing much of current traffic, it is not a devastating loss and it offers future revenue potential from subscriptions.

On the stealing argument: This is another extreme claim. What is true is Google can and does monetize search results with search Ads and it does not share those revenues with WSJ or with any other source. One thing Google or other search engines do is lowering customer’s reference price for the articles, preventing WSJ and others from capturing value. It is not that far off for Murdoch to get recover some of that by asking Google and Microsoft to pay for indexing access.

On charging for content: Charging for content starts with value,  communicating that value, and protecting that value through reference prices. How can you credibly communicate value of a newspaper or a Journal? WSJ is taking the approach of showing what is possible from reading, sometimes even drawing suspect causations based on correlations. Another example is Elsevier, which is communicating value of its online journals articles through by making (again somewhat suspect) causation arguments showing new research grant.  Both WSJ and Elsevier may be using causation argument when none exist but they are trying and spending resources on creating the value proposition while most others do not even know how to communicate theirs.

This is not a battle between Murdoch and Google or other search engines, this is the beginning of the efforts by content producers, those who create value,  to capture their fair share.

There’s a story up on the Wall Street Journal about the recent(ish) trend in classical concert percussion pieces, including Philip Glass’ Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Tan Dun’s Concerto for Water Percussion. It mostly covers the growing corps of soloists and the number of new music composers that are growing the repertoire, but it also asks the question of why it is so popular.

And yet the extramusical elements may be the reason percussion music is so popular with audiences, and often draws crowds that are substantially younger than average. Sometimes it bridges the divide between classical music and rock: Mr. Yamashta remains an icon in alternative rock circles; a percussion concerto by Stewart Copeland, the former drummer of The Police, will be given its premiere next year by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Perhaps most intriguing is the fact that percussion music is in such demand despite its association with contemporary music—usually considered toxic for ticket sales.

“I think that concert presenters still scratch their heads and don’t understand why this phenomenon is occurring,” says Mr. Haas. “They don’t want to recognize the fact that drums, which not so long ago were considered to not be a concert instrument, have now taken over as the predominant attraction of new audiences.

I think I have an answer to this.

In a sense, rhythm is the last holdout of variety through geographic isolation. Throughout the history of Western classical music it has been possible to track rhythms (especially in dances) from their origin in folk and foreign traditions and the way that they spread around the continent. For example, the sarabande came to Spain from Central America in the middle of the 16th century, then became a staple of French dance suites a century later after it had been banned in Spain due its “obscenity.” With the internet, greater interest in world music, and a globalization fueled interest in cultural pluralism, Western music audiences of the 20th century have the ability to hear the music of any culture on earth.

It was a rhythmic century. Rock and Roll. Funk. Disco. Hip Hop. Jazz. And I think audience interest in percussion oriented pieces reflects a desire to hear concert music that is of its time. In other words, to have music written in the 21st century that ignores the experiments and sounds of percussion specialists like Aphex Twin, or the syncopation and rhythmic variety of a master MC is ignoring the sounds of their time.

There have been periods in music history characterized by growth in complexity of counterpoint, or changes in instrument building and orchestration, or innovations in form. I think this century is going to see a lot of experimentation in the rhythmic content of concert music.

According to e-mails hacked and re-posted on public file sharing sites in Russia, there has been a concerted, concentrated, and organized effort by scientists subscribing to theories of global warming to silence any scholarly opposition.

There are two main schools of thought with regard to climate change: the first is that the planet is heating quickly and that human activity is the biggest, and perhaps only, cause of it. The second is that there is some climate change happening, but the causes, effects, and extent of it are not fully understood. There isn’t enough historical data available to know if any change is the result of recent activity, or historical trends… and if the result of recent activity, then what activity, precisely?

The Wall Street Journal reports that scientists who subscribe to the first, ”imminent doom” theory have threatened to “shut out dissenters and their points of view,” going so far as to disallow peer review of scholarly research by dissenters. Phil Jones, an environmental scientist who believes humans are the only cause of global warming, explained to colleague Michael Mann at Penn State that he would “keep them out somehow.”

University of Alabama scientist John Christy, who has asked scientific organizations to allow dissenting opinions to be published in scholarly journals, is alarmed at the contents of the e-mails: “It’s disconcerting to realize that legislative actions this nation is preparing to take, and which will cost trillions of dollars, are based upon a view of climate that has not been completely scientifically tested.”

If the environmental lobbies and politically correct “scientific” orthodoxies continue to hold sway, it appears that such a view will never have the chance to be completely tested. The overly vocal left won’t allow it.

As much as Rush Limbaugh may shout down cogent left-leaning criticism for the sake of the party line, so too do leftist scientists treat colleagues who criticize what climate researcher Mojib Latif calls “a kind of mafia that is trying to inhibit critical papers from being published.”

Environmentalist methodology.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Want to invent the next iPod? Then don’t try too hard. We may be able to train our minds to be better at generating ideas, according to recent thinking on how we think, and often the best way to foster a brilliant idea is not to push it. Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman used to visit a topless bar, sip a soda and scribble quantum mechanics on a napkin. Einstein’s theory of special relativity came after he imagined himself a child riding on a beam of light.

Read the full article here.