Your passwords need changing … NOW!

This article will make you feel a little queezy … the level of sophistication in the hacker / cracker communities is really astounding.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/08/passwords-under-assault/

And this might just be the solution … give it a try if you would rather not continue rolling the dice with your financial life.
http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/

Thanks go to Jan for passing this along …

Edit: I decided against password safe and chose instead keepass ...
http://keepass.info/download.html

It has Android, Unix and Windows covered ... and that will be enough for me :-)

Commitment – You just have to be impressed …

The recent Pussy Riot fiasco has drawn the attention of, well, everyone. Three young girls are going to jail for 2 years as the result of their political protest in a Church. I doubt that much would have come of that at all in Canada and most of the US, but of course the deep south is another matter entirely.

Anyway … back to my point :-)

The Russian artist Petr Pavelensky (could someone please find that missing “e”?) protested today in front of St. Petersburg’s Kazan Cathedral. With his mouth sewn shut. Wow.

Samsung Galaxy IIIs on Rogers LTE Network – Yowsa!

This thing is smokin’ fast!

Yes, that’s 27mbps down and a spectacular 3mbps up! This uplink is quicker than my computer can do …
Anyway, I’m impressed …

Edit: It was pointed out to me that this was actually a test of my WiFi speeds on the phone. And that's true. Still impressive.

What is not that impressive is my LTE speeds, at least the uplink side. I get more like 3mbps down and 300kbps up, which is dog slow. Still, very nice for a phone. But people in Toronto apparently get my WiFi speeds on their LTE network. *sigh* ...

Olympics corruption? Can it be?

The USA is seeded #1. Canada is about to win. The ref takes matters into her own hands with several calls in a row that are controversial, to put it very mildly. The USA finally benefits from her generosity with a gold-medal game that they really did not earn. The ref receives scathing criticism. Her dad defends her.

Blah blah blah … and what is the point.

This Olympics seems to me to be the one in which it became obvious that corporate interests have wrested away all semblance of the original community spirit of the games. At least the naïve could certainly be forgiven for thinking that.

So call me naïve.

Where is Kim?

Back in Winnipeg for a family emergency. No posts, no email responses, no comment responses.

Olympic Badminton Scandal … will people ever learn?

I took a course in Boston back in the early 90s called “Controlling Software Projects” by the brilliant team of Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister. Look for their terrific book called “Peopleware” if you want to see how strong teams are built (or not.)

Anyway … today’s badminton scandal is the direct result of not following the advice I got in that course. Eight players are going to lose their chance at Olympic glory – not because they cheated (although they did), but because they were forced to behave badly by the governing body’s choice to create a round robin tournament instead of a knock out tournament.

So what did I learn in Boston? Several things:

• If you are not measuring it, it is not getting better
• Keep your measurements simple and easily interpreted
• People behave how you incent them to behave

That last one is directly applicable here. These people used to be incented to compete fiercely for every match, because to lose was to be bounced from the Olympics. Now, they are incented to strategically place themselves in a favorable position once they have qualified for the knock out stage. That means that the final game is disposable. Very bad idea.

When, exactly, will people learn to keep it simple and direct and to incent people to perform?

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The smart ones among you knew that this next bit was coming

CEOs and boards of directors had their incentives changed since the 70s and the 80s. They are now incented for short term stock performance instead of long term corporate health and their contributions to mankind (lol.)

So what happens when you do that?

Every bad thing that we have seen in the last decade … and a lot more to come …