Governance Services Meme

What is 'governance services'? -

"Governance provides an overarching structure to prioritize and then support the enterprise business objectives on a strategic, functional, and operational level....It defines the rules, processes, metrics, and organizational constructs needed for effective planning, decision-making, steering, and control..."

An interesting curve which has been in an upswing for over five years. It looks likely that it is a pre-inflection point graph which means it should have a few years of accelerating growth, perhaps more.

It's interesting that, although governance is nominally linked to SOA, it was in an upswing even as SOA was collapsing during the Dot Com crash.

---

And now I'll go eat dinner and watch pretty waitresses.

The PF Chang Position

Got my fortune cookie tonight -

You Will Be In The Best Position

Knowing PF Chang's, this can only mean one of two things.
Next month I'll either be:

i) bent over by cute Blonde chick wearing a large strapon

or

ii) bent over by a desperate project manager wearing a large, fucked up project.

Oh, god, please let it be the Blonde chick this time.

Document Diversity - The Results

The Prelude To The Dilemma

Gad. It's been thirteen years since I did real statistical analysis. That's why I like the Meme Miner. A lot of skews get eliminated by hitting a huge, whopper datasource like Dejanews, and I do ratio and rate-of-change comparisons (instead of actual counts) for the same reason.

I threw Year 1988 out of these calculations. There's too much residual weirdness from the Usenet hierarchy re-structuring in preceding years.

My sample size is now 5700 records (versus 2000 in that last entry). I was going to brute-force the thing into submission with 5000 more queries, but I'd rather not get banned by Google. I may already be pushing the envelope. So I dug out my books and ran the standard deviation on this existing data set.

Here's the Poisson Distribution curve of frequency count.
This is my sanity check that the random sampling has integrity -

The memetic drift still looks the same, so it's probably a real effect.

So the theory is that there should be a steadily increasing standard deviation from 1988 to 2005 as the culture diffusion moves along. The theory does hold true, but I don't like how erratic this curve is. It should be smoother, I think. And now that I'm actually doing REAL WORK here, I'll have to calculate the confidence level to verify that the peak values are meaningful.

Not fricking tonight, though.

Document Diversity - The Reckoning

Dang it.
I need, like, 8000 more queries to build an adequate data set.
Two solid hours of queries.
At least.

Dang it.
I'm gonna be a Google Agenda Item on Monday morning.
I may have to buy a new card for an unbanned IP address.

Sometimes I write things because they make me chuckle.
Sometimes they make me chuckle for weeks afterward.
I'd like to do another "Vector" misfired mission, but I'm not sure I'm up to the task tonight.

Perhaps I will.
Perhaps... I won't.

Document Diversity - The Regrouping

So, what do I have?

There is a small sample of prominent memegraphs which imply a steady cultural divergence. Circumstantial evidence.

There is a random sampling of an Ideosphere proxy which indicates the opposite. In fact, the sample implies that the Internet has had virtually no effect on how people create and manipulate ideas. And this methodology is closer to a global proof.

What am I missing between the two samples?

I have two new ideas -

The Redistribution: The number of memes in circulation is steady, but the frequency distribution between them is shifting. The steadiest, most popular memes are losing ground to unpopular memes. If true, this should be measurable by a frequency analysis of the random sample. There should be a normal bell curve of frequency, but it should flatten out as time moves from 1988 to 2005, and that flattening should be statistically significant.

Dang, that means I have to drag out my rusty statistics knowledge.

But this seems the most likely and it explains both the results.

So I need a much bigger random sample.

The Meme Channel: The memes might travel in channels, i.e. meme complexes. I've been thinking of the Ideosphere as an amorphous mass, but it may have internal structure and interaction points. For instance, "livejournal.com" occupies a certain tendril structure in the 3-d space of the Ideosphere. I suspect that "Myspace.com" tends to eat away at "livejournal.com" along those same network lines because they occupy similar ecological niches, so there wouldn't be many new interaction points.

An unlikely theory and harder to test, so I'll put it on hold for now.

Vector & Checkmate

Of course, regardless of the veracity of Vector & Sequence, we can imagine an alternate sequence of dangerous events....

Suppose I went to a bar.

Perhaps it's one of the bars in the original meandering. It could happen. There could be a strange coincidence that we'd come across an interesting woman with bi-color hair. Maybe it's not a coincidence, though. Maybe there's a synchronous event leading to previous questionable events spawned by an innocent but priestly email.

Perhaps that woman reads the Internet. Perhaps not. But for unspecified reasons, suppose this rather attractive woman embarked on full frontal assault upon my senses, and at ten feet, no less! If this unlikely event occurred, I might be vexed with uncomfortable fidgeting and fumbling, although it would be likely that I'd hide it fairly well.

Perhaps this assault was on purpose. But it could be inadvertent, given the age of the assailant. It could be the result of too much military training, although you'd think that my own military background would keep me immune from a fellow citizen possessing interesting hips and a delicate neck. I might think about suing the ass off of this perpetrator, simply to possess that ass for further examination.

And most likely, I would need quite a few stiff drinks, which luckily are available at the bar in question. Perhaps this strange woman returned for a secondary assault, but dialed down the intensity to something within my range of tolerance. I suppose I could probably last another hour or two under such an invasion.

Maybe I did.

However, I'm not sure my vocabulary can withstand many more attacks of this nature.

And now, considering that I have a low-grade fever triggering a mild case of asthma, I shall collapse into my bed and fantasize about women who assault me without mercy. Yeah, baby!

Religion

Hey, I told you I wasn't that smart.
Sometimes it takes days for something to penetrate my skull.
I finally figured out the core of this week's controversy.

The fact that I omitted religion from the list of "race, color, sex or sexual preferences" should be a clue. I don't even think about religion. I was raised as a rational agnostic and I've generally stayed that way.

I'm still amazed that the Mormons in Idaho would place religious affiliation above Federal law, State law or even Right and Wrong. Historically, this is long-term losing strategy, which is why the United States works as it does today.

I had a SLC recruiter call me last month. I can always tell by that emphasis on my "Boise State degree" that something unsavory is in the wind....

He: "I have a position open"
Me: "Okay. Where is it?"

He: "It's in Murray, Utah"
Me: "No thanks"

There's a pause of surprise.

He: "Don't you want to hear anything about the job?"
Me: "No"

He: "Well, why not? You're not interested in the pay rate?"
Me: "No. I don't do work in Utah or Idaho"

And I wait a seconnd, hoping he'll get the clue that despite my Alma Mater, I don't own a secret ring and I'd like to avoid being rude, too.

Another lengthy pause and he finally gives in, a question still in his voice.

He: "Uhhh, well, okay, thanks for talking to me"

Business Process Meme

First a memegraph of "Business Process Model" (BPM), then a commentary follows -

I'm surprised at the recent level of traffic. It's an interesting insight into Seattle's LJ community, but I've wasting too much of your time on my personal life, so let's go back to something with more value.

Technical analysis shows that "business process model" bottomed in late 2003. The red lines indicate a classic technical pattern of higher highs and higher lows, which imply business process modelling has been gaining mind- and market-share for two years. This, along with Service Oriented Architecture, are growth areas for predictable reasons.

I suppose I should throw in an alternative lifestyle joke about "Service Oriented".

In 1997 I was teaching at ITT Technical Institute and my students heard a prediction about the upcoming Dot Com Crash. Sometimes I wonder how many of them remember. They also heard me jabber about the "marginal cost of information". Here's my quick strategic model of what's happening -

Pre-2000, the IT market was driven by a diversity race to capitalize on expanding growth in a possibly infinite market. Post-2000, the focus is now on value within a bounded market. Since the crash, I keep my focus on IBM's software because their strength is business value. Microsoft is too short-sighted and too quick to use pricing and monopoly power, while Sun is too focused on high-tech, low-value pyro-technics.

Theoretically, BPM and SOA are strategies which reduce internal transaction costs for large IT systems. They produce future value by laying a foundation of standardization in areas that currently are chaotic and costly. I expect the BPM and SOA markets to stay in growth mode for at least two more years, but less than five, when the primary IT downward trend will re-assert itself.

----

I can always tell when I'm driving Billy Beck nuts. When he's vexed, he wanders off into the history of Russia and guitars, then complains about anonymous posters.

Man, I just know he and his pals are trying to figure out what hell I'm up to.
"The gun culture post tweaked their curiosity", said the IP address to the Walrus.

----

This could be an interesting visit -
but I'd probably need a suite number.

----

And off to the Popoffs

Vector & Sequence

Suppose I went to a bar.

It's possible that I might already know about that bar, and about its likely patrons. But perhaps that bar was recommended by a pseudo-nemesis in Seattle with similar tastes. Synchronicity might play a hand by inducing a vector of events which are linked, but have no clear casuality.

I might sit at the bar expecting a certain event. Another event may occur, and that strange woman may hold back at thirty feet, unsure that I am who I am, standing just beyond the curve of the wall, her body held at an oblique angle so that she can maintain surveillance, but not project the interest of a full body alignment.

If I noticed this sequence of events, I might glance downward, smile and then take another sip.

Information always leaves a fingerprint. The lack of information leaves a fingerprint, too. Sometimes the fingerprint is smudged, sometimes it it deceptive. But if you look, you can find it. The nature of most fingerprints is the delta of Before and After as the information travels through that bar, through that node.

If I went to another bar, I might take an interest in a young waitress, but never talk about it. Over time, I could establish a Before baseline of normal behavior; that is, the length and degree of her accidental gaze, the set of her body, the tightness of her smile or avoidance of proximity. This is not a strategy of conquest, though, but a habit of force.

A master of information could inject a vector into that environment through a known inhabitant. Perhaps by accident, perhaps on purpose because sometimes we don't even know our own motives.

If we knew the inhabitant well, or knew his habits well, we could guess at the likely path of the vector. How long would the vector require to saturate the paths there? It's possible that one might have prior knowledge of the propagation of memes through intimate networks and that the transit time in something like the LJ network is typically less than twenty-four hours. But in a network of physical presence, several days may be required. The vector could flood across all community members, but typically it might only require three or four of the right hops in the right sequence.

And information always leaves a fingerprint.

If we walked into the bar later, perhaps tonight , we might notice a change in the Delta. The accidental gaze may last too long now, or occur too frequently. The smile may have less tension, physical proximity might be different. A single change is unimportant. But the odds are good that a change in the gestalt is significant.

The gun culture requires egoless responsibility in the use of deadly force; therefore it requires full disclosure, and that implies the lack of manipulation and exploitation of others.

The information culture requires the testing and breakage of things, because it's through empirical knowledge that we get better at building things.

The dichotomy of the two cultures could be distressing.
And one might eventually supercede the other.

Experiment In Expulsion

Jose Cuervo was an experiment in honesty and expulsion. But the cuervo went down better than expected, which makes it a marginal failure and I'm slightly surprised.

If I had made any headway on the current Document Diversity results, it would be here instead but I'm still stonewalled. I can't reason out the cause for the conflicting results.

I have some abstract thoughts on the LJ web that I may post later tonight.
If I can pull them together during dinner.

Jose Cuervo

My PF Chang's fortune from Monday night reads,

"Others are anxious to get to know you better"

So I guess I'll yield to the fortune cookie tonight.

Last night I told John that he is a Guardian.
I don't glad-hand people, but I rarely compliment them, too.
The other night he was very fast to a false incident and it made me feel good.

So we'll do a Scary Story about violence.

--------

I am part of the real American Gun Culture, which is why I seem odd. Most people don't know about it and if they do, it's through distortions from the Main Stream Media. The true American Gun Culture prefers to ignore your race, your color, your sex or your sexual preferences.

Ahhh..... you see.
I told you that you only knew about it through media distortion.

I have owned weapons since I was eleven years old. The pure culture has severely rigid behavior, as you'll see, and it tends to carry over into other areas of your life.

We accidently bought our Phoenix house in an area of drugs and crime and after a year, I bought a quad of cameras to monitor the property. Later, I bought another quad, so we had eight cameras filming. My yard was a favorite for drug deals and occasionally the buyers would look through our windows for stealables.

Late on a weekend night, the monitor showed a pickup truck stopped alongside our house. I grabbed the closest weapon, a plain Colt 45 auto, chambered a round, stuck it in my back pocket and walked outside. I turned the corner and there were two Hispanic men about twenty feet away. One was drinking a Corona, the other, Jose, was pissing on my house until he finally noticed me.

"What are you looking it, bitch?!", he said, zipping up his pants.
"I'm watching you piss on my house", I replied.

"Why are you so far away? Come over and do something about it", and Jose steps forward.

I immediately step backward, put my hand back, grab the Colt, but leave it in place because I don't threaten or brandish. My first thought is legal: the cameras are rolling and if he rushes me there is photographic evidence of attempted assault. This will probably be ruled as a justified shooting. Messy and expensive, but the odds are high.

My second thought is tactical: Jose is drunk and I have twenty feet. There is a Federal guarantee that I can deposit 230 grains of lead into his chest before he reaches me and a fair chance of more. The second man is timid. There's a high chance that he's never heard a close gunshot or seen swift violence and that he'll be paralyzed for a few seconds. He may even flee the scene. A third man is still in the pickup truck and unimportant.

Jose is dead, probably his friend, too, and his forward momentum may knock me down. But overall, the odds are high that I will win both the physical and legal battle.

But I am bound by a severe set of ethics.

Jose and his friends are probably construction workers. For hispanics, they're fairly large, both taller than me and their arms and chests are muscular. Perhaps they are second generation. In a physical confrontation, they would hold the cards.

But we're not going to have a fist fight tonight.

There is a reptilian hindmind in most people that can sense when danger lurks nearby. Often, the right words, the right intonation, the right glance or movement can trigger the hindmind into shrieking loud enough that the conscious mind listens. So I say it calmly and with the right intonation, hoping the hindmind is listening.

"We are not going to have a fist fight tonight."

For a second, Jose and his friend are frozen with surprise. Their foggy minds know that something is wrong because I'm not acting properly. I haven't cursed, threatened or fled the scene. And then Jose's hindmind cuts through the beer haze and the long workday and he blinks.

"Fuck you!", he says, but he steps back.

I wait.
I can wait all night.
I project my patience.

"Motherfucker, just stand there then", then he turns to his friend, and they walk back to the pickup.

They drive quickly away.

-----

John has more courage than I do.
I trust him to defend others.

Maybe this will satisfy the Fortune Cookie Gods.

Unique Identifiers

The Mixed Message pattern is deceptive. It is context-specific, so the targets are often unaware of its use.

I use it frequently for certain reasons.

I rarely use unique birth names because I am conscious of identity. I often use generic first names; they have contextual meaning to me and a few others, but they are simple placeholders for other readers. If a first name is unique or rare, I often use a generic name which starts with the same initial ("Jaime").

Even generic names can be unique identifiers when tied to location. In the enemies list, the names are not generic enough, so three suspects have no location. This was deliberate. In one instance, the birth name was shortened to "Doug". Also deliberate.

Notice that I dialed back the names to a single initial in the Sex Puzzle.
It does have one inadvertent mistake which is contextually neutral, so I didn't fix it.
It also has two deliberate errors for alternative paths that never appeared.

When a story requires a fool, I almost always use an untraceable name like "Mr. Ferret". About the only person who can identify Mr Ferret is Mr Ferret himself, and likely not even then.

I do trace IP addresses and sometimes they can be strongly associated to individuals.
My website records IP addresses.... but the blog (anything with "roller" in the url) does not,
if that's important to you.

If you look carefully, you will see that it's a fairly consistent strategy of context, and it has several different levels. Individual posts may appear to convey more information than they really do.

I don't (or didn't) consider computer handles to be unique, important identifiers. When I think of unique identifiers, I think of driver's licenses, IRS records, information bound to a birthname. The LiveJournal community is fairly advanced in its use and I see that often the computer handle is bound tightly to identity. It's an interesting evolution which I didn't understand.

Hypnox Reworked

I'm usually careful to avoid real names in my comments, unless there are reasons to use them.

I made a mistake in the Synchronicity post which I can't correct.

I'd like to think that readers will understand that the entry is about me,
not about the named subjects. I felt a level of identification that night which surprised me, so I wrote about it without a great deal of thought.

I have to admit, I do kinda dig that I'm apparently associated with Satan.
That's a new one for me. I'm usually just a psuedo-libertarian geek.

Notes On Repressed Sexuality

What a strange little community. Why would anyone care what I write, much less take issue with an ad-hoc experiment in ambiguous word association & non-rational thought process. If I were a true artist, I might be pleased that it invoked honest emotional response, although not quite what was intended.

Yikes.

I may have to add a couple of fetish photographers to my enemies list.

One strategy to suppress documents is to burn them. In abstract terms, it could be named the "Ignore" or "Denial" strategy.

But there are other strategies, if "Denial" is unacceptable. In an "Obsession" or "Flooding" strategy, you might release important documents along with thousands of similar but worthless documents, making it difficult to determine the truth.

So perhaps "Denial" and "Obsession" are more alike than different.
They can both mask the truth.

Applying the theory to sexuality leads to some interesting conjecture at the Vogue.

(And remember, kids! Just because you read it here doesn't mean that it came from personal experience {wink} {wink})

----

I only walked ten miles yesterday.
The Arboretum today.

Hypnox Revised

Apparently there is some misinterpretation of an abstract commentary that I made.

At least, that is my belief, based on the ire that Hypnox directed at me tonight.

I worked as a contractor for a minor law enforcement agency of the Federal Government from 1992 to 1996. I watched my government burn 17 children to death in 1993 in Waco, Texas and I am still angry about the lack of accountability that I saw. Many Federal agents are, too. Some folks will disagree with my view, but someday the truth will come out and you may be shocked.

For the past two years, I've attempted to get back into Federal contracting, mostly because it was an area of success for me that I haven't been able to duplicate in private industry.

On the Sunday night in question, I hadn't planned to go to the Vogue, but I tossed a coin and it said "go", so I went. A long-time Vogue customer spoke to me that night, for the first time, and it gave me a mental focus, a set. And then, towards closing, Spikeyme, Hypnox and JoelleDirty walked in (along with a fourth woman, but I don't know her so I discounted her).

I did see a fingerprint upon each of them...

Anxiety of Recognition
Weight of Responsibility
Repressed Sexuality

And I realized that this triad coincided with my own self.

Please note that my original phrase about Hypnox said, "responsibility", not "guilt".
They are two very different things.

The next day I cancelled my Federal job interview and removed Washington, DC. from my list of potential job areas. I have written enough software for this government. I hope this clarifies things.