Category: Uncategorized

McAfee pulls it off. Been struggling under spam and adware in recent weeks. The spam’s bad enough, but the adware (CoolWebSearch) has gradually been hijacking and spawning browsers all over the place.

Difficult to be vigilant with the firewall with four different domestic users klicking OK to so many different legitimate reasons to access the web that eventually the garbage starts leaking through. VirusScans help, but I needed to install McAfee AntiSpyware today to get rid of the hijackers. When it turned out that didn’t scan and delete deep enough to get rid of the particular hijacker without the infection popping-up next time you hit a browser, the guys at McAfee instantly sent me a tool from Ad-Aware that did the trick.

Very impressive service, the McAfee 24/7 human web-chat support.
Maybe I should start attacking the spam more vigilantly too.

Bubbles. Spookily, Ray Girvan has been blogging about bubbles too, well foam anyway.

We’re all children in the long run. Only just noticed a post by Mitch Ratcliffe, from over a year ago in response to one of my “Nothing new under the sun” threads, quoting William Barrett and Ortega y Gasset.

[Quote] One can find all sorts of tools for dealing with new problems in history, if only you let go of the conceit that you’re inventing everything. I tell my kids this all the time, when they are banging their heads against experience that is easily borrowed and improved upon. We’d do well to recognize we are all children in the long run. Better than just being dead, because it leaves your whole life in front of you and millennia of history to parent you through it all. [Unquote]

Well said.

Knowledge Dialogue. Lilia posts, and several other people pick-up on Lilia’s recent post on “Questions Powering Knowledge”. No doubt about that. Just look at the popularity of FAQ’s as a substitute for more planned communication.

A question is (generally on the face of it) an indication of someone wanting to know something. As Jack Vinson notes (quoting Denham Grey) questions come in all shapes and sizes. The problem with this list of categories is that it is a bit one-dimensional as ontologies go. In fact many different aspects of questions are being categorized. Who’s asking who, with what kinds of objectives, and using what strategies & processes. In fact 9 times out of 10 gaining knowledge in the form of a direct response to the question posed is not the main motive, or not even part of the motive, notice.

Lilia also concludes “KM is about motivation to learn”. Well OK, but for me this still begs the question about the motive in the learning itself. It’s about making or influencing a decision to achieve something else. Learning for it’s own sake – to simply have more knowledge as a resource as the outcome, is rarely the sole objective.

The Q&A process, and dialogue more generally, is definitely where knowledge is created, though gaining the A to the Q is only (a small) part of it. Secondly, classifying people’s motives in Q&A / Dialogue is really back to what makes people tick generally – anthropology, Maslow, Hertzberg, Heylighen, Pirsig, etc. An (evolutionary) ontology of life, the universe and everything.

Lilia also links to Andy at Croeso. Must follow-up the Shell EP connection – a customer in my day job.

Something being hatched by the BlogWalkFive ?

At last …. blogged about this over a year ago, when BBC Radio 4 “Today” reported on a Dutch experiment to do away with traffic signs and road markings, and just leave the drivers to it. Sounds irrational, but it’s proven that there are less accidents and more courtesy, because the humans have to use eye-contact and body-language to work out priorities and safe manouvres.

Well yesterday it was announced that such a scheme was going to be adopted in an experiment in the UK that included a busy zone passing a school, where many “traffic calming” measures had previously been tried – doing away with speed-bumps, chicanes, cameras, speed limits, and in fact all road signs and white lines – the lot. (The Thursday Today link is ephemeral – I’ve downloaded the interview and will upload a link – needs Real Player.)

Less is more – you better believe it.
Irrational (subject-involving, non-objective, non-scientific rationale) is better than rational, for any complex evolved system involving humans. That’s MoQ.

We humans are not rational, we are “post-rationalising” for reasons of comfort – Argyris Theory I Model in Use, etc… Wake up from that meme dream (Blackmore) …. need I go on ?

(Our current bee-in-bonnet is new white lines appearing all over multi-lane roundabouts – how does any traffic planner believe these can possibly help anyone, except cover his own arse, and his employer’s arse, in the event of an incident ?)

Classical Physics Cannot Explain Consciousness. Blindingly obvious when you see this straightforward opening quote from Henry Stapp. [Quote] Classical mechanics arose from the banishment of consciousness from our conception of the physical universe. Hence it should not be surprising to find that the readmission of consciousness requires going beyond that theory. [Unquote]

Taken from his 1995 paper “Why Classical Mechanics Cannot Naturally Accommodate Consciousness but Quantum Mechanics Can” of which copies reside in many www locations. This QEDCorp version has editorial input from Jack Sarfatti.

Chrucky – Chalmers link. The plot thickens.

Jorn is Posting Again. Same e-mail and same links to RobotWisdom. Came across this Mortimer Adler reference in a recent post of his. Jorn’s weblog at Robot Wisdom is still untouched since October 2003. He’s back posting (since Jan 2004 it seems) and on his ontology for human life quest again.

An interesting aspect is this quote … Since Adler’s day (1952– pre-Double-Helix), advances in biology have made more practical what I call an ‘etymogeny’ (cf etymology), a sorting of concepts in the order they evolved in nature: http://www.robotwisdom.com/ai/etymogeny.html.

This is very close to Pirsig’s levels of value, and he and Adler were on opposite sides of the Chicago divide. This looks like a very important connection. Must resurrect my “Circle of Life” metaphorical image again soon.

More Cranks and Crackpots. Stumbled across CrankDotNet after seeing Tristan Miller response to Arthur T Murray (Mentifex)