Dame Stephanie tells the story of her life, having escaped from Nazi Germany but also having to leave her parents on a Kindertransport to the UK, later going on to set up a successful IT company that aimed, among other things, to offer more flexible working opportunities to women in the IT sector and where, in an environment not favourable for working women, she used to call herself simply “Steve”. The autistic condition of her only son Giles let to her engagement in supporting better conditions for care of autistic children as well as research into the disorder. After her “retirement” from the company she used the money made by the successful floating of the company to fund philanthropic ventures mainly with a focus on autism. As such she gave away more than £50m that, among other things, helped found the institute.

You can hear more about this remarkable life on the BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Disc website and there is also a podcast available.

“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Now of course it will be immediately obvious to most people that this is simply wrong and I refrain myself from giving more counterarguments than political activists in autocratic regimes and the type of privacy most sane people prefer for going to the toilet.

What makes this statement more than a mere nuisance but outright dangerous is that it was made by Eric Schmidt who is the CEO of Google, in an interview with CNBC on 3 December 2009. There has been an outcry already and I refer everyone to the brief and eloquent response by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The statement of Mr. Google does nothing to alleviate the fears about privacy intrusion by Google through its ever more pervasive technology and vast data retention*. I still don’t believe in any conspiracy plot by Google to take over the world – rather it is something much more dangerous: It is utter naivity and ignorance about the complexities of human society and a purely technocratic approach to life.

I believe there is only one way to help Eric Schmidt to realise the value of privacy – that is to take it away from him. Let us help Eric to come clear about what he has done and add Sunlight (as the best disinfectant)** to his life by making it public. For example, I want to know where Eric Schmidt lives. Exactly. What car he uses to get to work. When. On which route. What stuff he loves. What nightmares he has. Everything. Let’s make a crowd-sourcing effort and publish all of this on the web. Again and again. Until Mr. Schmidt starts to realize the value of privacy.

There is only one trouble with this: Eric Schmidt already knows the value of privacy. For himself at least. For when in 2005 CNet published this story with some details on the private Eric Schmidt (with data that was obtained by public Google searches only) he acted very quickly and banned Google interviews with CNet reporters for the duration of one year.

So let us call this what it is: Hypocrisy. And this is evil, Mr. Schmidt.

Maybe it is time for a CEO to step down from his position when he is severely violating his company’s code of conduct:

“Don’t be evil.” [...] But it’s also about doing the right thing more generally — following the law, acting honorably and treating each other with respect. [...] It’s built around the recognition that everything we do in connection with our work at Google will be, and should be, measured against the highest possible standards of ethical business conduct.

[...]

Who Must Follow Our Code?

We expect all of our employees and Board members to know and follow the Code. Failure to do so can result in disciplinary action, including termination of employment.

Shareholders of Google, you know what to do to prevent further damage for your company. But then I see this Reuters article from February this year:

And some say Google is inherently unreceptive to investor input. Its dual-class share structure gave three individuals — co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and Chief Executive Eric Schmidt — 67 percent of voting rights as of 2008.

Time to change this too!

** On the issue of the sometimes questionable value of transparency see this very recommendable piece by Lawrence Lessig.

Facebook is recently becoming very overpopulated. There have been many members complaining that Facebook is becoming very slow. Records show that the reason is that there are too many non-active Facebook members, and on the other side, too many new Facebook members. We will be sending this message around to see if the members are active or not. If you are active please send to other users using Copy+Paste to show that you are active. Those users who do not send this message within 2 weeks will be deleted without hesitation to create more space. If Facebook is still overpopulated we will kindly ask for donations; until then send this message to all of your friends and make sure you send this message to show me you are active and not get deleted. Also, do not send back to the person who sent it to you.

Mark Zuckerberg
Founder of Facebook

The authors of this Hoax do have some humour…

The reality can be less glamorous as many Doctoral students (at least from the Social Sciences) will be able to tell you and which are voiced in the article. The top three problems of working from home:

1. it can get pretty lonely
2. you are always at work… (so you start dreaming about 9-5 jobs)
3. it needs a lot of discipline not to succumb to the urge to do (suddenly desirable) housework, sleeping, watching TV…

[UPDATE: As was correctly pointed out: most of these problems apply to anyone who is self-employed as well though they might have an office]In an interesting turn these drawbacks of the home office lead some of the modern day super-flexible workers to actually spend money on renting shared office space…

Turns out that this is not as simple as it sounds. Most software “only” generates pseudo random numbers which means that ultimately the numbers are not really, well, random.

However, help is at hand so search no longer as random.org offers some simple and convenient ways of acquiring true random numbers, including for example a Perl module to access the service via a script. The random numbers are generated with the help of atmospheric noise which yields the desired properties of the random number distribution: uniform, non-deterministic and aperiodic.

There is a good overview about the problem on the site which also highlights additional sources of randomness (no, this blog is no official source as the topics of this blogs are not considered to be random in the strict mathematical sense…).

Ok ok, not that it would really matter if you are just drawing a few hundred cases from a population.

From my point of view the nuggets were:

• a good literature review often brings a better impact factor than an original contribution
• best to understand academia and publishing as a market looking for contributions rather than as a world just waiting for your masterpiece
• best to chunk a good idea into several papers and rewrite the same idea for different audiences
• before publication, check that the journal actually counts for the research assessment exercise (RAE)
• the title is the most important bit. Check what are the buzzwords
• try to meet some of the publishing reps that are present at conferences to get an idea of what publishers are currently looking for

The mediocre rest below.

self questioning:

• Why – fill a gap?
• What – novelty, review, extension
• Where is the audience – own discipline, multiple disciplines, public?
• When – current debates, topicality of context, centenaries
• How to reach it?

modes of publication:

• scholarly journal article
• book – monograph (more difficult), textbook, popular
• book chapter
• working paper or conference proceedings
• blog
• professional journal or newspaper article

considerations:

• how much space do have / do you need
• target audience
• RAE or other professional metrics

time/space/style

• title keywords are important (check search rankings and taxonomies on Indexes)
• take time over the title
• books: 40-80k words
• articles/chapters: 5-8k words

formal metrics:

• used in RAE?
• Social Science Index – Impact Factor
• Journal/Book Sales
• Rejection Rates
• External Reviewing Procedures
• length of time between receipt of manuscript and publication

informal factors:

• who are the senior/associate publishers? Where and what do they publish? What conferences do they attend? How long have they been in the post?
• Note useful articles in journal of choice in your submission.
• Who reviews for them (end of year thanks page). How many re-writes are allowed / encouraged?
• Talk to publishers’ rep’s at conferences => where is the market heading? See book fairs at conferences.

own writing strategy:

• get it reviewed internally before submission
• consider joint-ventures
• check all submission criteria are met
• be polite even if rejected

The files come in Windows Media Format and the usual restriction of using it only on three different computers. However, even more complicated: one has to register the downloaded song with the central server.

No idea where that information goes…

The only way to do this is by using Windows Media Player…

Then I have to key in my user name and password for every single song …

So that makes 12x before I can listen to them …

Still no way how I could transfer it to my mobile phone to listen to it …

To burn it to a CD I need to use Windows Media Player as well …

at least this way I might be able to finally convert it into MP3 format by ripping the burned CD …

All of that is not new, I know. However, I’ve never encountered DRM for music so far (don’t download usually) and I am surprised by its poor usability. It is even sadder considering that Imogen Heap has reached popularity mainly through online communities such as MySpace.

So I tried a bit myself and voila, here it is now: the Buzztracker Flip-Book. It allows you to choose a certain date and then starts automatically flipping through the Buzztracker maps from day to day – forwards and also backwards if you like. If you are interested in a certain location, you can get all the additional information (headlines etc.) by clicking on the location on the map.

Give it a try and let me know what you think!

technical note: In order to limit the bandwith usage for the Buzztracker crew I download the maps from their server. Therefore it might not always be up to date… Also they are sometimes missing some days.