Welcome to Orcmid's Lair, the playground for family connections, pastimes, and scholarly vocation -- the collected professional and recreational work of Dennis E. Hamilton

Recent Items
 
From Data Hoarding to Information Sharing
 
Foretelling Our Technological Decline & Fall?
 
Situated in CyberSpace: orcmid, Scoble, and those other guys.
 
Blog, Wiki? WIki, Blog? Oh what to do!
 
The Long Tail Meme
 
Goodbye, "Pre-Approved Offer"
 
Open Source: Taking Food from the Mouths of Capitalist Babies?
 
Scoble Links: Overwhelm of the Solitary Connector
 
Don Knuth on Science as Art and Scholarship as Community Effort
 
Agreeing While Disagreeing

From Data Hoarding to Information Sharing

ACM News Service: New Protocol Can Defuse Turf Wars Over Information Sharing Among Federal Agencies.  It is a commonplace (and perhaps even valid) to say that people resist open-ness and sharing.  The turf wars in organizations of all kinds are an easy source of evidence.  I've hear it attributed to universal human nature, to culture and to individual fears of vulnerability and exploitation.

Whatever it is all about, I'm intrigued by development of a protocol that affords "gradual disclosure of information, which lowers the risk that an agency's interests will be harmed, while also building trust between the entities sharing data."  The idea of Penn State's Dr. Peng Liu is that providing a trustworthy mechanism for gradual disclosure will allow the self-interest in information sharing to be engaged.

The technical approach involves using XML Web Services to deploy a protocol that makes the trust-building process attractive for assuring mutual, timely access to information that is valuable when shared. The Kansas City InfoZine staff article provides more on the protocol for "Trust-Based Secure Information Sharing Between Federal Government Agencies [JASIST 56, 3 (Feb. 2005), 283-298]." On the face of it, this seems like something that could be abstracted into some patterns that could be applied in diverse situations, Web Service based or not.  I have a place where I need that, so I'm moving the article to the top of my literature-search hit list, along with other work of the Penn State S2 Group.

posted by orcmid at 4/9/2005 04:06:01 PM

Foretelling Our Technological Decline & Fall?

ACM News Service: U.S. Slips in Coding Contest.  So what is the future here?  The vaunted knowledge economy, information-worker paradise or job-sharing at Walmart?

The rankings in the 2005 World Finals International Computer Programming Competition have but one representative of the English-speaking world among the top 16 finishers: Ontario, Canada's University of Waterloo, the North American Champions, in 4th place.  Of the 12 schools tied for 17th, there are two more: University of British Columbia and the University of Illinois. Among the 12 schools tied for 29th place, there are four in our language community: Caltech, Duke, M.I.T., and the University of Alberta.  But, heh, we really dominated the Honorable Mention category [;<).

If this were covered on the sports pages, I don't think "slips in contest" would be the likely phrasing. I'd expect something like "Eagle mauled by Bears and Dragons while Johny Canuck steals the continent."  Imagine the Olympics reportage and handwringing.

This blurb carries the usual apologies along with the automatic appeal for governmental intervention, especially in education.  Hey, maybe it's easier.  Your kids want a tech career in software development?  Send them to Canada for an education.  It seems that the declining fortunes of IT workers and their own economic doldrums has not dissuaded the Canadians.  Maybe we should study them.  And brush up on our Edward Gibbon too.

The 2005-04-07 Ed Frauenheim CNet News.com article provides the gory details.  It also features an unbelievable quotation from ACM President David Patterson: "The U.S. used to dominate these kinds of programming Olympics  Now we're sort of falling behind."  I wonder what it takes to conclude seriously falling behind, or does Patterson find this to be irrelevant for the future he imagines his descendants living in?

posted by orcmid at 4/9/2005 03:24:10 PM

Situated in CyberSpace: orcmid, Scoble, and those other guys.

LLRX.com - Internal Blogs: So, Are They Different From External Blogs?.  The post I'm linking to is not by me.  That's one of the other Dennis Hamilton's that is visible in the IT world.

This is my first encounter with this particular Dennis Hamilton, and it all came to pass because I took on the Scoble practice of watching for my own name(s) (not Scoble) in a PubSub query.  The article on Internal Blogs has been linked by Adam Gaffin, writing in NetworkWorldFusion on 2005-03-29 (I should be so lucky).  That's how I got wind of it.   Yesterday, lockergnome picks up on that Hamilton's article.  Now that really hurts, Chris [;<).

---

This incident reminds me of the value of having an identity situated in cyberspace in a unique and memorable way.  Robert Scoble has the advantage of an under-used surname, and the Scoble and Scobleizer slots are essentially his, thanks to Google ranking and the extended community of linkers that reinforces his cyber-identity.  It also makes it easy for him (or any of us) to quickly determine what others are saying about Scoble's posts and connections.

I already knew that my long-time (back when the CompuServe system was called Micronet) nom de net, Orcmid, was unique enough to situate me in cyberspace as a distinct entity.  The only problem is that the juice from Google is triggered by links that I have created between my own web pages.  A query on "orcmid" is dominated by some terribly banal gunk related to how I maintain my web pages and attribute their authorship and maintenance.  This swamps the ranking of anything that people have found interesting on Orcmid's Lair, for example.  I didn't think about this (and hadn't ever seen a blog or worried myself about Google juice) when I took on the practice.  Fortunately, modern science has provided a cure.  As I maintain my web pages, and create new ones, I am using rel="nofollow" on my internal links to the "What's an Orcmid?" page appearing on every one of my sites.  Not that anyone cares, mind you.  I just don't want to give the impression that Orcmid is some cyber-homeless character living under the shelter of crumpled web maintenance pages serving in the absence of old, crumpled newspapers.

I have one lingering concern about the unique pedigree of Orcmid.  I used it for the very first time (in 1979 or 1980) as commander of the Empire Cruiser "Goblin" when dialed-up to a DecSystem 10 and playing "DecWars."  One of my on-line adversaries wanted to know if the name was inspired by Doonesbury. I didn't know what he was talking about.  He showed me a clipping in which Zonker Harris is playing a video game on his TV and is imagining himself as Orcmid slaying alien invaders.  I can't swear I didn't see that though I have no recollection of it.  I had figured out the name by strugging in a dictionary, along with knowing that orcs figured in Dungeons & Dragons (and, Tolkien-challenged as I am, I didn't know what they were). I also wonder if the guys at the University of Rochester Strong Memorial Hospital computer center were simply messing with my head.

posted by orcmid at 4/7/2005 11:34:07 AM

Blog, Wiki? WIki, Blog? Oh what to do!

ACM News Service: The Enterprise Blogosphere.  Those following the rapid adoption of blogs in business as both internal and external voices will not be surprised by much in the 2005-03-28 Michelle Delio InfoWorld article.  But the accurate title is (now) Enterprise collaboration with blogs and wikis. 

I recommend the full article for its extensive interviewing and attention to internal use in business settings.  The ending paragraphs provide some useful insight on the distinct values of Wikis and blogs, with the likely introduction of more authentication (in the manner of blog commenting perhaps) on internal or externally-visible wikis used to collaboratively build documentation and reference material.

posted by orcmid at 4/6/2005 12:00:32 AM