« January 9, 2007 | Main | January 11, 2007 »

January 10, 2007

What's being read around the Pentagon

USA Today: Can small businesses help win the war? -- The U.S. military is studying small companies such as 24-employee Craigslist to see how the online bulletin board has all but terrorized the newspaper industry by siphoning classified advertising. Such research may unearth ideas that will help the United States fight the war on terror.

How large, traditional companies fare in this fight may prove invaluable in developing a strategy against al-Qaeda. That's why the military is going to school. A book making the rounds at the Pentagon is The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations. It was written for a business audience, but military strategists are saying, "This is the best thing I've read that applies to counterterrorism," says Lt. Col. Rudolph Atallah, a Defense Department director in international affairs.

The premise of The Starfish and the Spider is that centralized organizations are like spiders and can be destroyed with an attack to the head. Decentralized organizations transfer decision-making to leaders in the field. They are like starfish. No single blow will kill them, and parts that are destroyed will grow back.

Posted by eubie at 9:01 PM permalink

The lost Apollo 11 tapes

Wired News: The Lost Lunar Landing Tapes -- NASA puts a man on the moon -- then loses the videotape. A grizzled crew of ex-rocket jockeys goes on a star-crossed mission to find it.

Amid concerns about lost technology, unreadable formats and data integrety, it's often the human element -- the lost or forgotten record and carelessness -- that's as much the risk. Also this story shows that old memories can sometimes yield the best clues.

Posted by eubie at 8:54 PM permalink

iTunes dominance may end in 2007

WiredNews: Who's Killing MP3 and ITunes? -- DRM is toast. Here are seven reasons why major record labels will abandon it in 2007 -- and why that's bad for Apple.. Also TechCrunch: The Inevitable Death of DRM -- Notwithstanding Apple’s announcement today of the sale of 2 billion songs on iTunes (all with DRM), most of the recent market signs suggest that the eventual demise of DRM is inevitable. Consumers are more frustrated than ever that certain file types are playable only on certain devices. The only real questions are when, and will it be replaced with something far more sinister?

Posted by eubie at 8:15 PM permalink