Interesting

From SWJ.com
" Insurgent operations aimed at developing networks, gathering intelligence, and distributing information is outpacing the antiquated, inflexible, and unresponsive system employed by our military."   

Considering the telephone call today I had with a young enlisted girl concerning zip files.... Houston, we might have a problem!

The challenge of getting “buy in”

In my organization there are a lot of relatively smart people; college educated, technical folks who understand complex systems.  The challenge I have seen is getting them to “buy in” to a new way of doing things.  As a SharePoint and web 2.0 person, getting others, the types mentioned above, to engage and embrace the new technologies has been a challenge.  You could place some blame on me for not forcing the issue.  However, force is never a good way to convert. 

Failure however is a great conversion tool.  This group was raised on the “C:” drive and understand and are familiar with the digital junkyard known as the “shared drive”.  Although it would be devastating to some, I would like to see the “shared drive” crash.  Then I could go back and say, “Well, if you had moved your files to the cloud, SharePoint etc. you would not have lost all that work.”

Tell me again where did you say you saved that file?  Can you email the latest version of the spread sheet… Pain to my ears…..

MIT Wins DARPA Network Challenge

Awesome!

IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 5, 2009

MIT RED BALLOON TEAM WINS DARPA NETWORK CHALLENGE

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced that the MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team won the $40,000 cash prize in the DARPA Network Challenge, a competition that required participants to locate 10 large, red balloons at undisclosed locations across the United States. The MIT team received the prize for being the first to identify the locations of all 10 balloons.
“The Challenge has captured the imagination of people around the world, is rich with scientific intrigue, and, we hope, is part of a growing 'renaissance of wonder' throughout the nation," said DARPA director,
Dr. Regina E. Dugan. “DARPA salutes the MIT team for successfully completing this complex task less than 9 hours after balloon launch.”
DARPA announced the Network Challenge to mark the 40th anniversary of the ARPANet, pre-cursor to today’s Internet, to explore how broad-scope problems can be tackled using social networking tools. The Challenge explores basic research issues such as mobilization, collaboration, and trust in diverse social networking constructs and could serve to fuel innovation across a wide spectrum of applications.
DARPA plans to meet with teams to review the approaches and strategies used to build networks, collect information, and participate in the Challenge.
DARPA is the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense (DoD). The Agency manages and directs research and development projects for DoD and pursues research and technology where the risk and payoff are both very high and where success may provide dramatic advances in support of military missions.
“We need a renaissance of wonder. We need to renew, in our hearts and in our souls, the deathless dream, the eternal poetry, the perennial sense that life is miracle and magic.”
-- E. Merrill Root

Gov't take over of the internet

We are in a "State of Emergency" and this is how the Fed is going to grab control of the internet and boot FOXNEWS and the likes of Rush! Say bye bye to twitter and facebook as well.

"Experts have for years pointed to the potential problem of Internet access during a severe pandemic, which would be a unique kind of emergency. It would be global, affecting many areas at once, and would last for weeks or months, unlike a disaster such as a hurricane or earthquake."

"The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for ensuring that critical telecommunications infrastructure is protected."

BLOCKING WEBSITES

"Private Internet providers might need government authorization to block popular websites, it said, or to reduce residential transmission speeds to make way for commerce."

The thing to ponder now, how does the internet handle all of the "normal" business traffic?

So Was it an Alien Space Craft?

The Air Force has ruled out the possibility that a burning Russian rocket booster re-entering the atmosphere was the cause of the bright light in the sky seen recently along the East Coast.

The Joint Space Operations Center, known as "JSPOC," which monitors man-made objects in space, concluded that a Soyuz rocket body that some experts thought was the cause actually came through the atmosphere near the Philippine Sea.

"The JSPOC is not aware of any phenomena that would explain the events near Virginia," Stefan T. Bocchino, a spokesman for the 30th Space Wing, told Inside the Ring.

The Air Force will not say whether a meteor caused the light show and booms Sunday night, viewed and heard by people from southern Virginia through northern Maryland.

"We do not track natural phenomena, so we really can't speculate what it was," Mr. Bocchino said.

Technology in the Sand Box

Did I tell you how impressed I am with the internet here in Bahrain?  For what ever reason, the network does not like google news/finance/reader.  All download really slowly if at all.  Sometimes the system just stalls as is obvious with video chat.  Ugh.
Rumor has it that here on the island that the maximum download speed is 2MB/sec.  This means it takes a real long time to down load and episode of 24 with the new program I have been playing with MIRO and bit torrent!