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Saturday, April 22, 2006 |
(Some of) Dave Pollard's Links of the Week - April 22, 2006:
People Only Change When It's Their Idea: James Samuel links to a new paper comparing 24 tools for dialogue by Pioneers of Change, a youth organization committed to self-organized change. The tools include Appreciative Inquiry and Open Space Technology, plus a number you probably don't recognize. The concept is that dialogue is necessary to bring about agreement to change. What underlies this concept, as James points out, is that a dialogue is a means to get people to collectively create a change vision, so that instead of being what they are told to do, it becomes their idea. Really compelling stuff, and the paper is a great resource for change activists.
Big Ag-Bio's War on Family Farms: A new film, Seeds of Change, viewable entirely online, by University of Manitoba students chronicles how Monsanto and other big Agritech/Biotech companies have polluted North America with their genetically manufactured, runaway Frankenstein seeds, and are now suing and jailing small farmers who don't fall in line. What's really telling is that it took three years of fighting with the Monsanto-sponsored University of Manitoba to get the film released.
A Simple Idea to Greatly Improve Productivity: Add a second screen to your computer set-up. And make sure it's rotatable. Psst: widescreen is a hoax.
SCO Bloc Adds Mongolia, Iran, India and Pakistan as Members: The SCO bloc, set up by Russia and China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, is quietly emerging as the Second Superpower. Nothing on this in the Western press. Thanks to Dale Asberry for the link. [How to Save the World]
10:18:28 PM 
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Statistics.
In the latest in the ongoing saga of debit cards being reissued after a breach at an unnamed merchant, 3rd-party, or card processor, we learn that unless a crook stands a chance of getting caught, he'll keep on stealing:
These crooks get away with it, and that's why they keep doing it. They've got about a one in a thousand chance of getting arrested
The quotation is from Gartner analyst Avivah Levitan. I'd love to know where that 1 in 1,000 number comes from. I found a decent report [pdf] from the folks that run the Star ATM network, but couldn't derive anything about arrest rates from it. Other than that, all my intrepid research assistant Google could find was that arrest rates are "under 5%, according to law enforcement" in about 25 different places -- which is probably a factoid run amok, rather than a real number. Besides, there's a big difference between 1 in 20 and 1 in 1000.
Anybody have any idea how such a number could be determined? Seems to me it's rather challenging to compile for a crime likely not to be reported, and where one criminal's arrest could clear hundreds of crimes. [Emergent Chaos]
6:56:32 PM
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Hacker-con videos: "150 hours of hardcode nerd education.".
Videos from the Chaos Communication Congress, a hacker con, are online -- Tim Pritlove calls this "150 hours of hardcode nerd education."
The 22nd Chaos Communication Congress (22C3) is a four-day conference on technology, society and utopia. The Congress offers lectures and workshops on a multitude of topics including (but not limited to) information technology, IT-security, internet, cryptography and generally a critical-creative attitude towards technology and the discussion about the effects of technological advances on society.
The Chaos Communication Congress is the annual congress of the Chaos Computer Club e.V. (CCC). The Congress has established itself as the "European Hacker Conference" bringing in people from all over Europe and even further away.
Link (Thanks, Jake!)
[Boing Boing]
6:56:25 PM
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