…are of course one of the worst and evil habitats in this world. treating passengers like cattle during the entire process of boarding and exiting the plane (let’s not skip the “joyful” stage of buying a ticket, let alone attempting to modify it later) has become - generally - a new standard today. a few months ago I had the opportunity to fly back and forth in Poland on two different days - Monday and Wednesday....
twitter and facebook admit, that at least 10 percent of the user base is likely bots. it’s “official” data, but that article shows, that this estimation may be way undersized. it seems that next dot-com bubble slowly grows and should burst soon. we’ve been discussing this for years now, but it seems the valuation of seemingly worthless, virtual companies producing software is growing year by year. 3 billion dollars for company that builds (poor, by the way) headphones - Apple buys Beats Electronics....
failure that Tidal came to be and at the same time success to which Apple Watch is experiencing (the same that has trouble keeping it’s bettery up for ONE day) is troubling. on one side we have market, that is able to verify this poor and blatant run for money organized by multi-billionaires, obviously coupled with lack of any style and market research (which would show there are other, better, faster and with wider selection of artists and capabilities services available already), on the other hand - Apple Watch?...
from everything read up to date and noted as worth reading: Think like a freak - great set of anecdotes coming strait from author real experiences. there’s a lot of examples that if you don’t know that something can’t be done - you’ll succeed and amaze people around you. so called “ground truths” are serious problem those days. in most of the cases because people have very shallow knowledge or lack it - so can be easily manipulated....
as I read a lot of books, at some point I decided to share those worth mentioning here. partly so you can see what I’m reading, partly - to have a good summary about those books. let’s start - over last two weeks I’ve managed to read: How Google tests software - great book for everyone that deals with software development, process optimization or simply building their own company. it demonstrates how important is to get feedback from users, and how hard it is to built whole compliance system right from the beginning....
it’s better not to know, how thick the wall is. you may have too short run. anonymous
let me quote book i’m reading now: A quick hypothesis: say one million monkeys speculate on the stock market. They buy and sell stocks like crazy and, of course, completely at random. What happens? After one week, about half of the monkeys will have made a profit and the other half a loss. The ones that made a profit stay; the ones that made a loss you send home. In the second week, one half of the monkeys will still be riding high, while the other half will have made a loss and are sent home....
Christmas are coming, and traditionally that means good time of the year to push people to buy things they don’t need. in Poland, companies generally don’t care what Customer wants. and don’t listed in the process of ignoring him/her. why are companies selling services choose not to listen? they don’t care? i was talking about this paradox during Cisco Connect, but in reality i was just repeating what everyone sane enough to think shouts left and right - we want customized offer, not something off the shelf....
after reading ridiculous, made up story of british SAS, hiding under alias “Andy McNab”, trying to tell his version of Rambo&Commando-style fictious account of Iraq operation i couldn’t find story that was so exaggerated and made-up. in reality, his total ineffectual commanding style and bravado led to death one of his own team members, and injuries as well as captivity for rest of them. that was independently verified by Michael Asher and Peter Ratcliffe....
amazing sweet photo. you can watch this until you drop dead, looking for all details. and this landscape in the background…
I just finished reading two books of the author mentioned in the title of the post. Fermat’s Last Theorem Code Book highly recommend reading both of them during break from work :)
…but about everyone that hates it. i can highly recommend you two Scott Berkun essays: on substantive discussions without attacking people personally on choice - wise one - of president; it needs to be of course aligned to polish political model, but it has wider applicability :)
all interesting and worth reading. as usual during summer holidays i’ve tried to catch up with my reading queue - it’s been interesting two weeks: rework - great book for every company owner and destined for big things - previous version of the book - getting real can be read online managing humans - of Rands in Repose blog author; a lot of useful observations and tips for dealing with humans in IT world; you can however skip being geek - most of the content can be found either in ‘managing humans’ or in blog; Stephen Greys Operation Snakebite, Gregory Feifers The Great Gamble, Doug Beatties Task Force Helmand and finally Bing Wests No true Glory - bunch of good books about Iraq and Afghanistan; it’s unbelievable how people tend to make the same mistakes even when previous generations documented them very clearly; Metro 2033 and Metro 2034 - great reading, each of them took me just one day and night; Scott Berkuns Myths of Innovation - wonderful; Born standing Up - Steve Martins biography, tells compelling story about Steve himself, but also about world and America; Richard Wisemans 59 seconds - very practical book worth reading and applying to your daily routines - follow up can be found on You’re not so smart blog; well....
for some time Jim Gettys on his blog is writing a lot about problems caused by buffers, queues and other congestion avoidance mechanisms. you should really read about them. especially, if you’re in this group that believes big buffers solve all of the problems, and dropping traffic is absolute evil. nowadays it should be treated as absolutely normal thing - in most of the real life cases. on the upcoming, sixth PLNOG we may be able to tackle this problem (if there will be space in agenda), and have a shot at myths and legends related to network QoS....
it was a rule some time ago, right now its rare luxury - to have time to sit down with book that’s not about networking and spend time reading it from start to finish. i got back to most of Stanislaw Lem books, Anthony Beevor monography of both Berlin and Stalingrad battles. i’m still in front of Norman Davies ‘Uprising ‘44’ (i’m ashamed to admit, but no, I haven’t read it yet)....
very interesting article, that led to writing this even more interesting article, describing how computer viruses compare to human.
thanks to Mirosław Kwaśniak, who in his very own time managed to find a way to generate PDF with polish letters - i was able to publish PDF that renders properly. thank you!
for all of those that are starting to make first steps with VoIP, or believe know everything - i’d like to highly recommend my fathers book that was just published via BTC publishing house. it covers both H.323 and SIP protocols, along with all auxiliary topics - like integration, and signaling over middleboxes like packet filters and stateful firewalls: Telefonia VoIP. Multimedialne sieci IP, Marek Bromirski, ISBN: 83-60233-07-1
i just launched new project - BGP Blackholing PL. i’d like to invite therefore everyone that: is interested in network security is interested in service provider edge security is interested in internet security wants to help actively defend against DoS/DDoS attacks and own network infrastructure wants to learn more about how BGP can be used in internet security …to join over at http://networkers.pl/bgp-blackholing.
finally, i found some time to update the site. children are really time consuming ;) on the other side, i was anyway able to do some things recently. i’ll do some announcements after Cisco Forum 2005. and yes, i’m changing my job ;)
…was born (last saturday in the morning), so i’ll need to delay all current projects. i’m spending time right now doing all new things :) i’ll get back to regular updates sooner or later.
fresh quote from latest ComputerWorlda, from article authored by Lech Bury, general director for PATPOL Patent Attorneys Company: Patenting inventions (including those from IT) is good for the economy as a whole and that includes consumers as well (sic!). It is also beneficial for creative individuals. On the other hand, the patent system is certainly disadvantageous for ordinary imitators who stay in the market by using someone else’s ideas (sic!)....
I was able to read two older Moore books (Downsize this and TV Nation), after reading Stupid White Men a while ago. because of nice party with my friends on friday and then following exams that i’m going to take for the next two days, i didn’t do much for (un)Cisco FAQ PL. i also didn’t found time to migrate off Moveabletype to some other CMS (that decided in the meantime to change license to something of pure absurd)....
i never thought that i’ll be bothered by SCO argument with Open Source community, and with Linux in particular. it seems SCO tried desperately to build credibility by claiming Linux broke copyrights, where there such things took place. reading Linus post how SCO was sending demanding emails to those targeted as easy prey, in pathetic attempt to get some money before rolling up and dying. SCO supposedly is going to take BSD in crosshairs as well “soon”, but i wish them all the worst, including bankrupcy with all my heart (in line with christmas spirit)....
today (but for some of you, it’s still tomorrow), Comedy Theatre will premiere What The Night Is For, with my favorite Gillian Anderson. unfortunately, my travel plans failed, but my friends - Karina Szymczuk and Adam Robiński are there already (with camera ;) ). working people life is unbearable ;)