The Offending SQL Was:

Well, I guess this happens to everyone. I was curious about the recent disclosures of contributors to former President Clinton's foundation. After reading the article in the New York Times, I clicked on the link they provided to www.clintonfoundation.org, and see only:

the offending sql was:

SELECT T0.id AS T0_F_id,T0.site_id AS T0_F_site_id,T0.category_id AS T0_F_category_id,T0.sub_category_id AS T0_F_sub_category_id,T0.position AS T0_F_position,T0.title AS T0_F_title,T0.link_title AS T0_F_link_title,T0.copy AS T0_F_copy,T0.permalink AS T0_F_permalink,T0.metadata AS T0_F_metadata,T0.preview_text AS T0_F_preview_text,T0.location AS T0_F_location,T0.byline AS T0_F_byline,T0.status AS T0_F_status,T0.media_id AS T0_F_media_id,T0.initiative_id AS T0_F_initiative_id,T0.related_item_id AS T0_F_related_item_id,T0.user_date AS T0_F_user_date,T0.created_at AS T0_F_created_at,T0.updated_at AS T0_F_updated_at,T0.user_id AS T0_F_user_id,T0.date_string AS T0_F_date_string,T0.is_sticky AS T0_F_is_sticky,T1.id AS T1_F_id,T1.name AS T1_F_name,T1.alt_text AS T1_F_alt_text,T1.file_path AS T1_F_file_path,T1.caption AS T1_F_caption,T1.preview_text AS T1_F_preview_text,T1.user_date AS T1_F_user_date,T1.media_type_id AS T1_F_media_type_id,T1.category_id AS T1_F_category_id,T1.sub_category_id AS T1_F_sub_category_id,T1.site_id AS T1_F_site_id,T1.created_at AS T1_F_created_at,T1.updated_at AS T1_F_updated_at,T1.location AS T1_F_location,T1.byline AS T1_F_byline,T1.credit AS T1_F_credit,T1.guid AS T1_F_guid,T1.user_id AS T1_F_user_id,T2.id AS T2_F_id,T2.name AS T2_F_name,T2.description AS T2_F_description,T2.permalink AS T2_F_permalink,T2.parent_id AS T2_F_parent_id,T2.site_id AS T2_F_site_id,T2.page_id AS T2_F_page_id,T3.id AS T3_F_id,T3.name AS T3_F_name,T3.position AS T3_F_position,T3.site_id AS T3_F_site_id FROM items T0 LEFT OUTER JOIN medias AS T1 ON (T1.id = T0.media_id) LEFT OUTER JOIN categories AS T2 ON (T2.id = T0.sub_category_id) LEFT OUTER JOIN initiatives AS T3 ON (T3.id = T0.initiative_id) WHERE T0.status = 1 AND T0.site_id = 1 AND T0.category_id = 1 AND T0.sub_category_id != 2 ORDER BY T0.is_sticky DESC, UNIX_TIMESTAMP(IFNULL(T0.user_date, T0.created_at)) DESC LIMIT 5 OFFSET 0

Isn't that amazing?

A professor Gene Spafford, from my alma mater publishes a blog related to information security. In a posting earlier this week he wrote:

Costs and capabilities of computing hardware have changed by a factor of tens of millions in five decades. Currently, transistors cost less than 1/7800 of a cent apiece in modern CPU chips (Intel Itanium). Assuming I didn’t drop a decimal place, that is a drop in price by 7 orders of magnitude. Ed Lazowska made a presentation a few years ago where he indicated that the number of grains of rice harvested worldwide in 2004 was ten quintillion – 10 raised to the 18th power. But in 2004, there were also ten quintillion transistors manufactured, and that number has increased faster than the rice harvest ever since. We have more transistors being produced and fielded each year than all the grains of rice harvested in all the countries of the world. Isn’t that amazing?

Yes.

Wind Energy Handbook

Ever want to know about how wind energy works and how they go about designing machines to make it? I recently discovered that the Wind Energy Handbook is now available online at http://www.knovel.com/web/portal/basic_search/display?_EXT_KNOVEL_DISPLAY_bookid=1057. Registration required.

Making Money with SharePoint Scalability

There is efficiency and effectiveness (money) for organizations who drive to having "scalable" SharePoint implementations. Joel Oleson writes about this:

If you've done much SharePoint administration you'll soon realize the sooner you can turn your site collections into repeatable, sustainable, objects with consistency and standardized administration, the sooner you'll be able to achieve economies of scale.

See http://www.sharepointjoel.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=0cd1a63d-183c-4fc2-8320-ba5369008acb&ID=147

Risk Management in Five Easy Pieces

Don't miss Greg Alleman on "Risk Management in Fife Easy Pieces". He again writes eloquently on the subject.

See http://herdingcats.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/12/risk-management-in-five-easy-pieces.html

Podcast for Scottish Oil Club

When the presenter allows it, we record the presentation at the Scottish Oil Club and publish it as a podcast. For the first time in recent meetings, we have done so. Hamish Dingwall made a terrific presentation on "Corporate Social Responsiblity in the Oil & Gas Sector: Turning a Burden into a Benefit" which everyone can listen to at http://www.podango.com/podcast.php?podcastId=4443, or search for "Scottish Oil Club" in iTunes and subscribe.

Making Pretty Sites based on SharePoint

While most of my experience is, by design, focusing on using Microsoft SharePoint in a way which does not try to do much more than "out of the box" capability and design, I recognize that there is a place for making a web site based on SharePoint to not look so "techy". I ran across the web site http://www.wssdemo.com/Pages/topwebsites.aspx which provides links to sites based on Microsoft SharePoint which are indeed not "techy".

Understanding and Responding to Risk

See http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e3b34b9c-a9c0-11dd-958b-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1

Stefan Stern notes in yesterday's Financial Times talks about a pragmatic approach to risk management in light of recent failures in Risk Management in the financial industry, BBC Radio 2, and others.

"Understanding risk, and responding properly to it, requires maturity, and sobriety. We had forgotten this. Some had never really grasped it in the first place."

 

Tackling Wicked Problems

The Australian Public Services organization is providing yet another public service in writing and publishing "Tackling Wicked Problems: A Public Policy Perspective". In this year of US Presidential elections, finally some truths.

"Successfully solving or at least managing these wicked policy problems requires a reassessment of some of the traditional ways of working and solving problems in the APS. They challenge our governance structures, our skills base and our organisational capacity.

It is important, as a first step, that wicked problems be recognised as such. Successfully tackling wicked problems requires a broad recognition and understanding, including from governments and Ministers, that there are no quick fixes and simple solutions."

See the full report at http://www.apsc.gov.au/publications07/wickedproblems.htm.

Understanding Risk. An Oxymoron?

The Daily Telegraph in the UK reported last week that the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) issued a report that, amongst other things, said that "a lack of management understanding of risks" was at the heart of the global financial problem. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/3147110/Credit-crisis-caused-by-poor-bank-management-says-ACCA.html.

I certainly agree. The problem, though, is that hardly anyone really understands risks and expecting "management" to understand them is even harder to expect. Further, it appears that few understand that risks are things that "might" happen and are discovered as a result of imaginative thinking. Risks aren't necessarily real and they aren't necessarily something that can be "fixed" and then put "out of mind", e.g. treated as a problem or issue.

The brains of human beings are wired to deal with risk based on anecdotes. Brains employ associative learning to seek and find patterns. This happened because "false positives" are usually harmless; whereas people who rely on "false negatives" may take themselves out of the gene pool, e.g. "That crocodile cannot hurt me because I'm wearing this special hat which protects me".

This lead to reliance on superstition and belief which is a thought-process that is millions of years old. Science, with methods of controlling variables to circumvent false positives, is only a few hundred years old.

Risk management requires human brains thinking in scientific ways. As science has been de-emphasized in our education systems throughout the world post the Space Age, there is a shortage of people in the employment pool who know how to think in a scientific way. Worse, there is a shortage of managers who recognize and value the difference between thinking with science vs. thinking with superstition.

No wonder God gave Moses 10 "issues to manage" and not 10 "risks to mitigate".

Who Moved My Brain?

Merlin Mann, of 43 Folders, has posted an inspirational presentation on managing your own time. Brilliant. See http://www.43folders.com/2008/08/14/who-moved-my-brain.

Holiday Book Report

We just returned from a short week's family holiday to La Gomera, an island near Tenerife in the Canary Islands. It was a terrific holiday very far from the normal "chaos" of the Canary Islands. Other than looking at the geology (lots of volcanoes!), we did nothing other than lounge by the poolside, tennis, eating terrific meals, and reading. I was able to read seven books over the week.

Charlie Wilson's War, by George Crile. As stated by the Economist on the cover of the paperback, "gripping". It provided me a completely different perspective on events in the US and Afghanistan during the occupation by the USSR in the 1980's.

The New Cold War, by Edward Lucas. This is an account of Russia's drive to autocracy over the last ten years since the fall of the USSR.

How Doctors Think, by Jerome Groopman, M.D. I bought this book by "accident" on Amazon, thinking that I was ordering another book. Despite that, this is a terrific read which gave me terrific insght about how medicine really works.

The Man Who Ran the Moon, by Piers Bizony. I grew up with the beginning of the US space programe (I wish I still had all the NASA brochures that I sent away for). This book tells the story of making NASA from the perspective of James Webb, the first administrator. The book is a pure political history of the creation of NASA and the space programme.

The Atomic Bazaar, by William Langewiesche. I had read some of this book already in articles written by Mr. Langewiesche and published in The Atlantic Magazine. However, in book form the whole topic of the drift of nuclear weapons through the world is a gripping and unending story. I read this book after reading "Charlie Wilson's War". The pair of books describe essentially the same thread, with little overlap, relations between the USA and Pakistan with many learnings which help me in a tiny way understand more about today's world and where we are heading.

The Hot Topic, by Gabrielle Walker an Sir David King. I had the opportunity to meet Sir David at a dinner of The Scottish Oil Club in 1994. Following his retirement from being the Chief Scientist for HM Government (UK), he's written a terrific book to set out the problems and propose solutions for climate change.

Why Things Break, by Mark E. Eberhart. Dr. Eberhart is a professor of chemistry and geochemistry at the Colorado School of Mines. This book is a biographical journey of his own discoveries during his childhood, formal education, and professional life learning how "things break". I was particularly struck by his discovery that in today's litigious world, people "expect" things to not break—ever.

With Speed and Violence, by Fred Pearce. Mr. Pearce is another author that I had the opportunity to meet a few years ago. He writes regularly for New Scientist magazine on climate change and the environment. This is a very engaging book which presents what we know, and don't know, about climate change and the potential for "tipping points" to bring on abrupt climate change.

 

Pakistani Gun Market

YouTube, and video sites like it, continue to impress me as the alternative to traditional television broadcasting. I grew up in the 50's and 60's in USA when television was created. I'm now witnessing the birth of its successor.

This video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGlHgeqWLFc) is a fascinating tour of a gun market in Western Pakistan on the historic Khyber Pass.

Desktop Searching Tool

Wow. I justified to myself to get myself a new laptop. The family had a need for another in the family—to support my wife in her college career. I had my eye on the Sony TZ series. While absurdly expensive it is just what I want (small, light, long battery life, full-featured).

As part of the journey to that machine setup and running (it takes weeks to get a new laptop setup!), hesitated installed Google Desktop Search. And I never liked Microsoft's search tool either, even on Vista. I subscribe to James Fallows's blog (a writer best known for his work for The Atlantic), and he mentioned his supreme satistfaction with X1. See http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/12/more_yuletide_cheer_software_d.php.

I trust Mr. Fallows. I've been reading his work for years. He's on my list of people I'd love to have dinner with some day. So I downloaded the trial version of X1. It's terrific. They will get my $50 license fee.

Google's Gmail Spam Filter is Suddenly Too Aggressive

I forward incoming mail to my home/business account to Google's Gmail so that I can easily access copies of my mail while travelling. This avoids me having to set up remote access to the mail server inside the firewall.

Worked well until this week when most of the forwarded mail received by Google is identified as "spam" and moved into their spam folder. I don't have a clue about what changed. I get "tons" of spam mail direct into the Google account simply because it exists. But I don't understand why all of the sudden there are so many false positives. And I don't understand why I don't seem to have any settings to change to help fix it.

I guess I will stop using this approach.