Articles

Affichage des articles du juin, 2013

Celebrating Failures

Image
Being a passionate design thinker I am a big believer in failing fast and failing often . I have taken this one step further; I celebrate one failure every week. Here's why: You get more comfortable looking for failures, analyzing them, and learn from it I have sat through numerous post-mortem workshops and concluded that the root causes of failures are usually the same: abstract concepts such as lack of communication, unrealistic scope, insufficient training, and so on. If that’s true, why do we repeat the same mistakes, causing failure to remain a common situation? Primarily because many people find it hard to imagine and react to abstractions, but can relate much better when these concepts are contextualized into their own situation. Post-mortem of a project would tell you what you already suspected; it's hindsight and it's a little too late. I have always advocated a "pre-mortem workshop" to prepare for a failure in the beginning. Visualize all the things that

Fathers of Clouds - A Tribute

Image
(A guest post from Mr. Ray Holloman, NJVC Digital Communications Manager ) For more than half a century, cloud computing has changed names more often than a Hollywood starlet. Utility computing. Time share. Thin client. SaaS. PaaS. IaaS. While concepts have been added and capabilities grown, cloud computing was no more invented by Amazon or other modern vendors in the last seven years reality invented by reality shows. It’s simply been advance, repackaged and repurposed for as long as computer connectivity has existed. In honor of Father’s Day, NJVC looks up the family tree of cloud computing to say thank you to six of the fathers of cloud computing.  (And if you’re wondering about a gift, a single tie will suffice. Certainly, these guys understand how to share.) Dr. John McCarthy— In the manner that genius tends to be promiscuous in emerging fields, McCarthy is often given credit as the father or influencer of many things, including Artificial Intelligence, e-commerce and time-share c

Hacking Into The Indian Education System Reveals Score Tampering

Image
Debarghya Das has a fascinating story on how he managed to bypass a silly web security layer to get access to the results of 150,000 ISCE (10th grade) and 65,000 ISC (12th grade) students in India. While lack of security and total ignorance to safeguard sensitive information is an interesting topic what is more fascinating about this episode is the analysis of the results that unearthed score tampering. The school boards changed the scores of the students to give them "grace" points to bump them up to the passing level. The boards also seem to have tampered some other scores but the motive for that tampering remains unclear (at least to me). I would encourage you to read the entire analysis and the comments , but a tl;dr version is: 32, 33 and 34 were visibly absent. This chain of 3 consecutive numbers is the longest chain of absent numbers. Coincidentally, 35 happens to be the pass mark. Here's a complete list of unattained marks - 36, 37, 39, 41, 43, 45, 47, 49, 51, 53,

CNBC Closing Bell: Bob Gourley on NSA Leaker

Image
This is clearly off topic, but I couldn't help myself!  Please take a moment to view this CNBC video where my good friend Bob Gourley addresses this important event. Good job Bob!! ( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article , get free updates by email or RSS - © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2012 ) --> --> -->