Hiding in plain sight

In this age of ‘Big Data’ the masters are the ones who hide in plain sight. If you generate billions of media bits that must be parsed by the powers that be, the devil really is in the details.

During a stint in a fraud unit I learned that the trick wasn’t to read all the monitored data, but to build patterns of ‘normal’ for everyone monitored. If the patterned changed then something had changed, and an investigator was assigned.

Another article I keep remembering is an interview with with a ‘Ninja Assissan’ who was quoted as;

” I never sleep in the same bed two nights in a row (he had 5 bedrooms), and he never ate the same thing for breakfast (though he always ate what he wanted)

Hence the pattern he would generate would always be random, and therefore a consistent repeated event would be considered abnormal and a ‘red flag’ that something wasn’t normal.

So to hide, and maintain privacy would be to either overwhelm the bit watchers, or develop such a random lifestyle as to make normal pattern matching methods useless.

anyone want to be a Ninja Assissan?

UPDATE: Pattern Reconition

UPDATE 2: Global consumer data broker plans to reveal your data

If you Can’t dazzle them with data, baffle them with Bull Shit!!!

UPDATE 3: Just so you know: US government is hoovering data from Apple, Microsoft and Google servers

Browser Stats – Internet Exploder

I have been observing a vast increase in traffic, traffic without apparent purpose, over the last several weeks.

And I didn’t give it much thought. However I now know that its MSNBot a Bing Robot that is deeply scanning all my postings. But it’s not very thorough.

And then the evidence, it’s telling my site that it is using Internet Explorer as the browser. It not telling me it’s a search engine or a spider, it pretending to BE a browser to the statistics recorder on my site as a Internet Explorer browser. Internet Explorer has been declining in the statistics over the past few years, and it now seems that Microsoft is attempting to drive that number up on websites around the country to indicate an increase in Popularity for Internet Explorer.

Has anyone else see this in their site statistics?

Apple’s outrageous share of the mobile industry’s profits

That pretty much says it all, doesn’t it?

Pie chart: Apple’s outrageous share of the mobile industry’s profits

In any other businesses this would be called a RIP OFF! by Apple, but with the Apple-Fanboy base, They can do no wrong. I used to be a Apple Evanglista back in Apple’s dark days, and I still use a MacBook. But I use a Nokia N900, because I can do more, with less Apple regulation, and I pay a great deal less than any iPhone ball-and-chain.

Nokia Smartphone reality check, Ka-ching!

All the bad news,
Nokia smartphones dumb down profits
Nokia releases Q2 2010 results; profits down, market share flat
Nokia Q2 2010 results – profits down but smartphone sales up

So lets do a reality check on the facts; Nokia profits are Down 40%, but are still making a Profit. Which means they are in the green economically, and are making a Profit of €221M Euros (285M$). But 40% less than last quarter, meaning that they are only making 60% of the profit they made last quarter, during the worst recession in over 100 years And everyone is complaining?

The only thing this tells me, is that a manufacture like Apple who makes more profit on their iPhone 4, is ripping off their customers by charging a premium price for a Smartphone and Nokia does not!

Reality Check cashed, Ka-ching, change your misperception!

The best Portrayal of Nokia

This article is one of the best portrayals of Nokia’s Perceived fall from grace: The Background Story

…But somehow with Apple, the facts no longer matter. The iPhone was the ultimate best phone ever – according to Steve Jobs – and because Steve Jobs says so, that started to become the storyline. The truth didn’t matter…


Mobile Phones Shipped last quarter

…Because Apple was in the game, now anything Steve Jobs said was the word from god. And no matter how severely deficient the first iPhone models were, because they were Apple phones, that meant they were the world’s ‘leading’ phones. And if you didn’t match the current iPhone model with a potential ‘iPhone killer’ – then you were obsolete. …

Consider how unfair this issue is. Apple has today 2% of total phone market share. Nokia has 34%. Apple has 14% market share in smartphones – and has lost market share now for 3 straight quarters. Nokia has 41% market share in smartphones and has been growing market share in the same period. Of Apple’s flagship phone the iPhone 4 – with its 5 major improvements now in 2010 – Nokia has had 4 of those in its phones long before 2007. Why is Apple given any credit as the ‘leader’ and Nokia accused as ‘having lost the lead’?

Atheism in the world

I was reading a Digg article about atheism, and I was sure the percentages of the population were incorrect. So Googleing up an answer gave me the best answer yet.

There is a great deal of room for debate as to the accuracy of any method of estimation (of atheism), as the opportunity for misreporting (intentionally or not) a category of people without an organizational structure ( read church) is high.

That about said it all, no way to count them!

( (editorial) )

SmartPhones in the reality distortion field.

I have had a revelation with regards to SmartPhones and the Reality Distortion Field.

Simply put, if the device, any device, that does not behave like a profit generating platform for Apple, should not be considered a Smartphone.




Platforms based on Symbian OS, BlackBerry , Windows and Palm and are based on a principal that the phone provides smart services to help the owner become more productive. To assist with the communications and telephony functionality and on the side, provide other useful apps. For the newly renamed iOS the goal is looping the customer into more expenses, locking them into Apple products, and Apple’s iPhone Ecosystem. To behave as a continuous advertisement and mobile marketing stream. A profit stream that even Razor Blade Salesmen would love.

Sorry not for me, even Android’s more subtle marketing of Google is too much for me. If you are new here, you can be excused for not knowing that I use an Open Source phone called the Nokia N900. And while Nokia has done a lousy job marketing it, it still does all the things that the mighty Apple iPhone 4.

Ireland offline, as in no broadband.

If anyone wants to know the benefits of having an Internet connected population only needs to skim this article Economic Benefit of Getting Everyone Online in the UK


– Digitally excluded households are missing out on average savings of
GBP560 per year from shopping and paying bills online

– The most economically disadvantaged families are missing out on savings
of over GBP1billion

– 1.6 million children in digitally excluded families could increase
their lifetime earnings by GBP10.8billion

– Unemployed people who get online could increase their lifetime earnings
by over GBP12,000

– If 5% of digitally excluded unemployed could find work by using job
websites it would deliver an estimated GBP560million to the UK economy

– Internet savvy workers can earn an average increase in lifetime
earnings of over GBP8,000

– Government could save at least GBP900 million a year in customer
contact costs if all digitally excluded adults got online and made just
one electronic contact per month

and while the amounts will be different in Ireland, the benefits will be similar, maybe even better.

Data mining Terrorism

I have been, and will continue to be amused about the Storm over Big Brother database. Amused because I know ultimately that it will fail to stop terrorism, but also that I know how easily such a system can be overwhelmed into oblivion. The only reason for these databases is for political control, not for protection, but political gain. Security Theater, and nothing more.

Consider for a minute, should someone discover a method to product Weapons of Mass Destruction out of say, peanut butter. A database would have to track the purchase and use of every gram of peanut butter, and latter peanuts, raw and roasted, and then farmers who could grow peanuts. The data would grow exponentially and it wouldn’t find anyone who could or does produce WMD’s from peanut butter. It wouldn’t even be able to detect that the Peanut butter Bomb was a hoax.

Hillary’s rising fortune, floats McCain’s boat

I got an email from Intrade and read the interesting fact that as Hillary’s chances (over the last few days) for becoming the Democratic Nominee for President rise out of her previous low chances, The probability that John McCain to Win the 2008 US Presidential Election goes up also.

The specter of a Hillary nomination as the Democratic candidate, Makes the probability that McCain will be the next President greater.

This should be a serious concern for the Democratic Party, if Hillary gets nominated, McCain Wins! Call that a prediction, because it will be mine.

Pattern Matching vs Prediction

I stumbled upon this article about Who Will Win the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election?. And realized that what they we claiming here was not a predictive method, but merely these people’s attempt to fit, to pattern match, ‘Presidential Electability’ factors to winners of elections. And making a half hearted attempt to apply these historical factors to up coming election. I’ll give you some examples, these are the factors they used in a previous ‘prediction’ Who Should Win the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election? they used factors like

if the candidate served as Director of Central Intelligence (e.g., George H. W. Bush), was a four- or five-star general officer in the United States Armed Forces (e.g., Dwight D. Eisenhower), or ordered the combat use of nuclear weapons (e.g., Harry S. Truman),

as you can see such ‘factors’ could only be applied to demonstrate why Truman beat Dewey, not as a general rule that proves the model.The factors used in the 2008 ‘prediction’ only suggest combinations of Presidential candidates , but can not predict them, because the factors are based on historical artifacts as part of the pattern matching, factors that can not be predicted in advance.

With that in mind there are no factors for emotional content, or future historical events.

They further go on to make this statement, We assume that major party primary voters are rational and will understand the empirical power of our algorithm. and we all know that voters for both nominees or candidates are not rational. And with a model that does not factor the level of ‘rational’ or irrationality of the electoral process, they can not forecast or predict. In other words, they can’t put their money where their mouths are.

They make another bold statement Readers of this paper could make a lot of money at Intrade.com if our assumption that major party primary voters are rational is correct. but you don’t see them making money.

The old adage is this, never take investment advice from a poor broker.

Perceptions of the Stockmarket falling

I love this quote from Jose Vistan of AB Capital Securities from World stock drop hits second week

“You throw away technical and fundamentals out of the window,” he explained. “Emotions are the ones driving share prices right now.”

The stock market has ALWAYS been about emotions. The entire market is all about perceptions, one’s perceived value of a stock or commodity. If this is the first time Jose has learned this, he should go back to school until he learns this.

What will 500€ buy these days

500€ that’s proximately what the surplus means to every man woman and child in Ireland today. What could you do with 500 Euros? Maybe buy a new government, or maybe add it with your neighbor’s 500 and help fix up the local medical facilities, or maybe your estate residents could help fund a rapid transit stop in your community. Maybe with the next budget, we the citizens of Ireland could vote for what we thought the budget surplus be spent on?

Polls and politicans, Truth is who you trust.

I find this amazing, when political polls indicate a rise in popularity like when Fianna Fáil soars in poll as Opposition suffers decline. Everyone in the captive press spew hours of dialog about how such results could have happened. But when polls are negative, they spend that same effort trying to demonstrate that the polls were flawed, or biased.

The press can not get it into their heads that the positive poll, while reflecting an unexpected result could be flawed, or even false in it’s results.