wissel.net

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Interesting chain of arguments. I don't buy that batteling the global climate change will lead to depression, rather the opposite: I see advances in technology and accellerated growth in developed nations since less resources are needed to achive something. Have a look and see if you can find a flaw.

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 2:22 PM Location Singapore | Permalink | Comments (2) |      

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I've blogged about corporate greed before. Slashdot points to an article on arstechnica.com. It reports that Jennifer Pariser, the head of litigation for Sony BMG has a little unique view on copyright. In total denial of fair-use she states, that the CD licencing terms actually only allow to listen to the music from the CD. Transferring the music onto a PC or portable device would be "stealing". I'm quite surprised, that a high profile litigation lawyer doesn't get her facts together. Using copyrighted material without an appropriate licence is a copyright violation. That would be first and foremost a civil claim. It only recently has been added to the penal code (recently in legal dimensions, which goes back a few thousand years). Theft is the physical removal of assets. If you steal something it is gone from where it was. If you copy a CD its content is still where it was. So this is completely different.
Secondly copyright is bound to the use of copyrighted material (I don't like the term intellectual property since that is also smoke and mirrors mixing copyright, trademarks and patents), and not necessarily to the physical form. When I buy a CD I buy the right to listen to the music for my personal pleasure. That is what I do on my mobile player. Of course I need to make sure, that this right to listen is executed only from one source at a time. Since a licence contract could state different usage patterns (e.g. a broader licence to use music for events) there are legal limits to how much you can tighten the rights.
Enter fair use. Of course right owners would rather limit how you can exercise the right you paid for to make more money from you. However restrictive licensing terms stifle creativity and innovation. The whole DJ based music category, where DJ resampled and remixed music playing in clubs would have be killed before taking off applying today's copyright viewpoints of the music industry. Also there are strong indicators in other businesses, that fair use is actually beneficial for a country at large.
So the music industry might start to ask themselves if eventually other factors than people buying music on CD and listening on an MP3 player contribute to their decline. Some hints: treating your customers as criminals, installing illegal software (rootkits anyone), a decline in talented musicians, tighter personal budgets, fierce competition on discretionary spending: if I have my 3 latte/week I won't buy that CD or it is the WII game vs. a new movie DVD etc.
Anyway a quote attributed to Ghandi says it all: "The world has enough for everybody's need but not enough for everybody's greed".
So Sony stays OFF the buying list (I know it is SonyBMG, but they run the same ignorance).

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 2:00 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

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One of my favorite business authors are Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I Sutton. They teach at Stanford and Harvard and create woderfull business books. Sutton even overstepped Harvard's fine taste and created a book titled "The No Asshole Rule" (Highly recommended read).
In their book "Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense" Pfeffer and Sutton advocate evidence-based management. This deeply resonated with me, probably because my childhood playground was a law firm and evidence daily business there.
In a nutshell: solid evidence should replace "conventional wisdom", "usual practices", "management hypes" and other nonsense. They suggest four easy sounding questions to be asked before implementing a business idea or practice (on page 22):

1. What assumptions does the idea or practice make about people and organizations? What would have to be true about people and organizations for the idea or practice to be effective?
2. Which of these assumptions seem reasonable and correct to you and your colleagues? Which seem wrong or suspect?
3. Could this idea or practice still succeed if the assumptions turned out to be wrong?
4. How might you and your colleagues quickly and inexpensively gather some data to test the reasonableness of the underlying assumptions?
5. What other ideas or management practices can you think of that would address the same problem or issue and be more consisten with what you believe to be true about people and organizations?

The questions should be answered using solid facts, clear evidence. This made me think about evidence and what I know about it. There are several levels of evidence which I will shed a light on. I won't talk about witnesses, because they give evidence but they are not evidence per se:

Anecdotical  evidence
How to get a conversation going? Tell a story. We all love a good story, be it love, drama or horror. Stories are easy to obtain and are an excellent means to bring a point across. Well told they can change the perception of a topic. However anecdotes have a dark cousin, the "Urban myth". We hear horror stories every day "Using xyz will lead to abc, so better...." and eventually we even tell them. The biggest issue with anecdotical evidence: it is not repeatable. What worked for the fish sellers in San Francisco might not work in your environment. To no surprise anecdotical evidence is not  court admissible.

Statistical evidence
Running the numbers provides you with evidence that is rock solid and the undisputable bedrock of your management practice? Well some beg to differ. While numbers don't lie you might be seduced to look at the wrong number pairs or jump to wrong conclusions. E.g. (this is an anecdotical evidence bringing my point across): it is 45% more likely that a woman who uses red color for her fingernails is committing murder of her husband. So banning red nail polish will lower the crime rate?  Typical "sins" in statistic:

• Using (only) analysis that supports a point that had been determined beforehand.
• Overlooking the effect of time: Marketing money spend today will yield revenue only month down the road.
• Seeing connections where there isn't: The number of storks and birth in northern Germany is pretty constant.. so who is bringing the babies?
• Overlooking other factors: market saturation, competition, change in preferences (fashion anyone)
• Linear extrapolation: I start my business with 2 people, after 4 month I hire two more, then 8 month later another 4. So I look at the numbers and say: oh my staff growth is 500% per year. So in less than 7 years I will be bigger than Microsoft and a few years later bigger than IBM. The 10% annual growth projection is not as drastic, but the numbers add up quickly too. You need some lessons in the law of diminishing returns to avoid that.

Since economics has so many factors to consider statistical evidence is a crude but readily available instrument to measure an idea or your results. The only thing to be careful about: You will get what you measure!

Forensic evidence
The favorite for all CSI and crime story fans. Using high tech equipment and the latest science you find out who's fiber that was and where and when the bullet was fired. Forensic evidence is typically directed backwards, explaining "what did happen" rather then "what will happen if...". In business this is useful as raw material for new theories or to nail down the bad guys (Enron anyone).

Scientific evidence
The cousin of forensic evidence. They share a lot of the methodology but are quite different. At the core of scientific evidence lies a thesis or model with an important property: it needs to be able to be falsified. Science is always on the outlook to prove their own models wrong. If the models stand these tests, then they become accepted knowledge. Of course only until the model is superseded by a better one. Einstein's relativity theory superseded Newton's view of the world without the need to call Newton names or un-scientific. The hallmark of scientific evidence is the statement "to our best knowledge". This is also a clear differentiator to believe: if you believe that the world is 5000 years old, be my guest. Such a believe is 100% unscientific, since it lacks the readiness to let go once better insights are available. Or on other words: if it can't be falsified it is not scientific (and doesn't belong in science classes).
Other than forensic evidence scientific evidence can look forward: "If you mix Oxygen and Hydrogen in any combination between 5% and 95% it is highly explosive and will show an rapid exothermic reaction (a.k.a. explosion) that will create water". In business scientific evidence is expensive to obtain since it is nearly impossible to recreate the same laboratory experience. So most scientific methods in business take quite a dose of statistics.

Spiritual evidence
Looking around one might get the impression, that Spiritual evidence and Scientific evidence are each others nemesis. However Einstein is attributed with the quote: "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." and I think he is right. (Very dangerous territory I'm walking in...). Spiritual evidence is the result of a personal mystic experience that lends one an insight into your own and the world being. While it is commonly related to religion and religious groups I firmly believe such evidence is deeply personal and non-transferable. Your spiritual group or your teacher can facilitate an experience or help one to cope with it, but it is your very own personal evidence. Spiritual evidence can be you guide to keep your business on track in its moral and ethic dimensions (if you trust that evidence).

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 2:00 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (1) |      

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Interaction with each other comes at a price. The currency we settle the cost of that interaction is attention. The saying is "Pay attention", not "lend" or "give" or "show" attention. Seeing attention as a currency it starts to explain a lot of pattern in interaction:

• If you force my attention you are an extortionist. Nobody likes to get blackmailed. So if you "steal" my currency I try to give as little as possible, if not nothing. I also will try to take back what was extorted. A vicious cycle begins
• If I find something worthwhile, I don't mind paying. I see that as a good investment. This is why we feel good paying attention to people who are interesting, engaging and inspiring
• If I'm paid a lot of attention I feel (emotionally) well heeled. Just imagine 10000 people paying full attention to you. This gets addictive. This is why musicians and actors never will stop, it simply feels too good. This is also a reason why lovers feel so good: they pay full attention to each other escalating the good feeling
• If we interact and you don't pay full attention I will feel short changed. So I might start to reciprocate and hold back myself
• If I hedge my bets and spread my attention investment (a.k.a. permanent partial attention) I might avoid total loss, but for sure I also won't get the full story, because I'm never fully here or there (How many meetings suffer from that)
• If I want to influence someone and get a certain result I will make a deposit or pay forward with my attention.

Partial and forced attention are an epidemic. I think it is worth to fight this disease. The best remedy is to pay forward attention: whenever you interact with someone, pay full attention regardless of your expectation in return. One secret of attention: if you pay it because you want, it will replenish you with energy. If it is extorted is will drain all participant. Want to try in your next meeting: buy a palm size bean bag. Whoever holds the bag gets full attention in a meeting (no email/im/sms please) and can speak. The bag is handed over once (s)he is finished. In energy starved environments you might want to limit the time how long one person can hold on to the bag and/or have rules how to pass on the bag (e.g. in circles).

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 2:00 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

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In 1963 Singapore inherited the Internal Security Act (ISA) from Malaysia which had inherited this legislation from British rule. Under the ISA (Chapter II Section 8 - 1.) any Singaporean can be detained at will by the government. Singapore has been slammed for this piece of legislation repeatedly (e.g. 2004, 2005, 2006). Nevertheless the US seems to have taken a clue from us when you follow the current legislative initiative. While our ISA at least requires a renewal of a detention order every two years and features a review board, the Military Commissions Act does away with these minimal checks and balances and even revokes 900 years of legal history voiding the "habeas corpus" practise. What is happening to the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 4:38 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (2) |      

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<rant>
Common market theory tells us, that price is a function of supply and demand. In case of digital goods the theory is flawed since one digital good (in the limits of bandwidth) is in unlimited supply. So the ability to price is bound to stimulation of demand. Or even better: if you can fix the demand you can play with the price at will (Just ask your next drug dealer about Junkies' insensitivity to the price of their next shot - they simply have to have it).
The music industry seems to believe, that their customers are junkies and need their daily shot. And weeding out (pun intended) any alternative supply guarantees pricing power. I can't imagine no other set of mind, seeing how the industry is treating their customers as criminals.
What could, and in my opinion will happen: slipping quality of music offerings paired with a growing number of people being p****d off by the industries attitude will send sales south leading to more panic in the industries execs' offices, leading to more customer harassment, leading to..,, you get the idea. In a country where copyright violation by file sharing carries the same sentence as man slaughter there is a serious lack of perspective or a serious warp in the perspective of the legal system.
Copyright first and foremost is a private protection right, dragging it into criminal law is bad (there are enough other provisions to punish for *profiting* from Copyright violations), as is DRM.
And I'll demonstrate that with my purse strings being closed for music purchases until it is resolved.
</rant>

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 4:33 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (1) |      

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No one can force you into transformation.
No force in the universe can change you
Without your personal consent.
No force, nothing.
So you have a lot of choices to make.
You have a lot of consent to grant.
You have a lot of fears that need to be relaxed.
You have a lot of suffering that needs to be disregarded.
You have a lot of anger,
A lot of hatred,
It is nothing but a burden to you.
It requires your dropping in,
Your willingness to let go,
To take a chance,
To trust.
These choices are all that stand between you
And the Rimpoche consciouness... ...
Consciousness to be in a precious place,
As wonderful as a dream.

Shantam Dheeraj (in Where does the World come from)

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 2:49 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

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Mental note to self: when you cross the international date line eastwards, you arrive one day earlier than you would expect. So I'll be in Orlando Friday night.

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 1:57 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

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I'm not a person of big plans, so I usually resent making New Years Resolutions. However it seems to me I could try to be "a man with a plan" for a change. So this is what I came up with:  

• Shield my boys from the rigor of our education system by reaffirming the notion, that learning is fun and an adventure.  
• Going on a Holiday (hadn't had one since I started TAO Consulting) with the family.  
• A dance class with the best of my wifes (Don't tell her it is a surprise)  
• Shedding some pounds and do more sport (getting below 88 kg)
• Restart my Chinese lessons  
• Get my PMP certification from PMI  
• Learn a new language (Ruby and Fabric are the main contenders)  
• Restart the Lotus User Community in Singapore  
• Work on some exiting and well paid projects
• Have at least one release each of my SourceForge projects

... and thousand things more.  

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 12:33 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (3) |      

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Pleasure is the seed of pain;
Pain is the seed of pleasure.
Equanimity is the seed of peace,
of true painless pleasure.

Zen Saying  

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 1:00 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

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Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 7:09 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (1) |      

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Unexiting as usual I endured 9 hours of boring flight and a rush stopover at Dubai. This is such a pitty to rush trough Dubai's duty free, since it is one of the few places where you can pick up a new Ferrari or Rolls Royce when passing by (ok - my credit card doesn't have that kind of limit).
I'm staying at the Carlton in Karatchi and it feels like late 80ies or early ninties...
No Internet in the room, normal keys, digital aircon (on or off) and so much static on the phoneline that dialup wouldn't work.
Without GPRS I would be stranded. Digital Divide anyone?

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 6:31 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

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I'm using del.icio.us for a while together with the Firefox plug-in. Recently some peers and I decided to give del.icio.us a spin as a website notification tool. Whenever a website is supposed to catch attention we flag it with the users nickname. My is NotesSensei. So if you want me to have a look at a specific page, just tag it in del.icio.us with the tag "NotesSensei".

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 3:24 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

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There is a very interesting article over at WeLikeItRaw. It points to research done in 1930, that finds cooked food lets our bodies defence system react as if it needs to fend off an attack increasing the all over stress level. My preliminary conclusion (of course 100% unscientific <g>): Unless we can offset that stress through an appropriate setting (nice dinner, lustful food, friends, good mood etc) better stick to raw food. So no more midnight pizza or candy bars when hacking away in the night. Rather stick to apples and carrot sticks.

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 10:59 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

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Over at mathforum.org there is an excellent article (or would one say testimony) by J.J. Uhl from the University of Illinois how technology changed his lecture style for the better. Titled "How technology influenced me to stop lecturing and start teaching" it is a must read. He reminds us of the learning sequence that makes things stick in our minds: "intuition-trial-error-speculation-conjecture-proof."

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 3:25 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

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Including the chancellor (or is it chancelloresse?) 15 people will run Germany in the top tier of the federal government. Six of them, fronted by Dr. Merkel, our first woman at the helm, will be female, that is 40%. Rosa Luxembourg would be delighted.
Let us see if "Angie" will be the German edition of Ms Thatcher. My bet is, that we're in for some surprises.

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 10:44 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

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Jamaica anyone?

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 2:00 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (1) |      

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We are currently working to prepare some replies to government tenders. Looking at the way the tenders are structured I'm amazed how much -to put it mildly- room for improvement is left.
All tenders overlap in hardware requirements, infrastructure, middleware and identity management. Since it is very unlikely, that one party will win all of them, they will end up with incompatible, divergent solutions. The implementation timeframe also will make sure, that competing teams, once the tender is awarded, will be on the ground at the same time making each others life as miserable as they can.
It is quite amazing how the 'law of unintended consequences' has highjacked the tender process. While intended to get the best deal for the government, it actually locks out specialist and performers and leaves only very big contenders who, by nature of their size, have high overhead costs. The best team to define, assemble and run a portal will most likely have no interest in hardware sales. So they are out. 10% of the project value needs to be deposited upfront, so the smaller teams are out. The hardware guys won't understand implementation to make it sound.
At the end they get so so service and a lot of bureaucracy instead of performance.
Luckily I don't pay this taxes since it's overseas.

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 8:56 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

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In the current article on MSN about the Hurricane Katrina Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, said: "We’re talking about in essence having — in the continental United States — having a refugee camp of a million people".  Whatever you believe in, this is a good time to pray for the people affected. While there won't be the number of casualties as during the Tsunami in Asia, all who suffer deserve our compassion --- and a blood donation as Rocky suggest.
I wonder how long it will take until someone claims that New Orleans was the resurrected Sodom and that its destruction was higher will.  

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 2:20 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

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Logging off now, leaving the house. No phone, no email, no IM, no SMS, no talk.
Until Sunday!

Blessings to all!
stw  

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 8:16 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

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 â€œIt wasn’t worth fighting for the inheritance, love was enough,” she finally says, understanding what we were feeling. Yes, seeing the complete absence of any bitterness or rancor, I understand that love was enough.

Read the full story at  "The Warrior of the Light"

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 12:19 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

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Pointed conclusion in this month Fortune magazine:

"Christianity was born in the Middle East as a religion,
moved to Greece and became a philosophy,
journeyed to Rome and became a legal system,
spread through Europe as a culture
- and when it migrated to America, Christianity became big business."

Remember "In the Name of the Rose" where Franciscan monks struggled with the religious establishment of their time? They were told: "The question is not whether Jesus was poor, the question is: Should the Holy Mother Church be poor". Seems like history repeats itself.

Update:
The evangelical churches not only made it onto the Fortune website, they captured the Business Week headlines too, including a special mention of supersizing believe.

P.S:  If you are into acronyms you would not only like WWJD but also WWBD or JBB

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 4:07 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

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Found @ Warrior of the Light:

Respect for a man who at that moment is recalling a very important lesson: you have a personal legend to fulfill, period. It is of no matter if others support you, or criticize, ignore or tolerate you – you are doing that because that is your destiny on this earth, and the source of any joy.  

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 4:59 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

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Found this there, liked it, share it:

Two monks were washing their bowls in the river when they noticed a scorpion that was drowning. One monk immediately scooped it up and set it upon the bank. In the process he was stung. He went back to washing his bowl and again the scorpion fell in. The monk saved the scorpion and was again stung. The other monk asked him, "Friend, why do you continue to save the scorpion when you know it's nature is to sting?"

"Because," the monk replied, "to save it is my nature."

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 1:00 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

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Triggered by a post on vowe.net I digged out lyrics from on of my favourite song writers: Heinz Rudolf Kunze. I like his older songs best. When I talk to people here, especially to young students, I hear a lot about qualifications and titles they want to achieve to make a stellar carrier preferably in the government or a MNC. How different that is from what is driving me:
"Ich geh meine eigenen Wege,
ein Ende ist nicht abzusehn.
Eigene Wege sind schwer zu beschreiben,
sie entstehen ja erst beim Gehn."
-- HRK Meine Eigenen Wege.

(for non German speaking readers):
"I go my own ways,
the end cannot be seen.
Own ways are difficult to describe,
they unfold only when you walk them." (sorry the Rhythm and rime got lost in translation).  

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 3:25 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

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Today you exercise your basic right, you enjoy the freedom to vote. May you pick a leader that benefits all citizens. And remember it doesn't matter if you pray to Jahwe, the Lord or Allah. Your are praying to the same god, and this god may bless you!

Closing with the words of the Buddha: "You pick the level of your suffering yourself".

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 7:10 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (2) |      

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Maria Wissel. 10 September 1934 - 01 November 1977  

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When you grow up in Bavaria, as I did, it is very likely, that you end up with a Roman Catholic view of the world, at least initially. You have strong ideas what is right and what is wrong and who is calling the shots when it comes to the question who and what belongs to the dark side. The holy mother church makes sure, that you never forget, that the lord of the dark is the fallen first angel, who was disobedient.
The strongest reminder is that feeling of guilt. According to Catholic believe we are born already guilty. Over the years growing up, you start internalizing the moral authority, that was first represented by parents, teachers, priests and elders, into a nagging voice in the back of your head. Guilt is so entrenched in our culture and society, that e.g. breaking a rule not just has consequences, but you are foremost 'guilty as charged'. You have to remorse your deeds, so you acknowledge you guilt. Guilt has been used over centuries as a premier tool to manipulated people for whatever reason.
Enter Buddhism and the idea of Karma.  The teaching is free of the concept of guilt (suspiciously the most authentic teachings of Jesus are free of the idea of guilt too). Karma simply says, that there are choices and consequences. You bear the consequence of your thoughts and deeds, you are the sole responsible person. Karma doesn't say anything about what has to or  will happen to you. Karma to me is the essence of free will: It is your choice to increase or reduce suffering for you and the world.
On the first look it seems intriguing: no more moral authority, do what you want, you can't be guilty anymore. And an outcry of the law-and-order lobby: the world will fall into pieces.
On the second look: it's a really tough call: be your own moral authority, be your own source. Deep inside you always will know if you added to the suffering of the world with your actions and thoughts. No more excuses, no system to blame, no circumstances to explain away your responsibility.
What blows my mind is to make peace with my tendency to still categorize things as right or wrong. The difference between the two concepts is subtle: right and wrong can be totally random and easily be manipulated and twisted. The increase in suffering as a result of your actions can be seen, heard, felt  and sensed, given you have cultivated your senses.  

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 12:07 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (3) |      

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If God were to humiliate a human being, He would deny him knowlegde.

Imam Ali bin abi Taleb (6th century AD)  

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