“In 210 BC, a Chinese commander named Xiang Yu led his troops across the Yangtze River to attack the army of the Qin (Ch’in) dynasty. Pausing on the banks of the river for the night, his troops awakened in the morning to find to their horror that their ships were burning. They hurried to their feet to fight off their attackers, but soon discovered that it was Xiang Yu himself who had set their ships on fire, and that he had also ordered all cooking pots crushed.”

“Xiang Yu explained to his troops that without the pots and the ships, they had no other choice but to fight their way to victory or perish. That did not earn Xiang Yu a place on the Chinese army’s list of favorite commanders, but it did have a tremendous focusing effect on his troops (as they grabbed) their lances and bows, they charged ferociously against the enemy and won nine consecutive battles, completely obliterating the main-force units of the Qin dynasty”

Prof. Ariely is making a point about the advantage of making a choice to focus by closing other doors/options/opportunities.

Joshua Baer had an interesting allegory to the startup world in his “Necessity is the mother of Invention” post

“This is similar to when a bootstrapper enters the Valley of Death* and commits to their venture, but before they are making money and cash flow positive. They are forced to figure out how to make it work with what they’ve got. The timeline is not completely in their control.

We’re always tempted to leave ourselves an escape route or path of retreat. And usually that’s a good idea. But sometimes there aren’t enough resources to mount the attack and cover the retreat. In order to be successful sometimes you have to commit the resources to what you believe in because the retreat option isn’t acceptable. Sometimes once you head down a path there is just no turning back, so you might as well commit all of your resources to getting to the end”

Well… this is true but since I am a notorious pessimist and usually like my options open, I have continued reading about this fine gentlemen (a.k.a. Xiang Yu)

I learned that indeed in the beginning of the civil war Xiang Yu was winning but with his rude manners, arrogance and lack of political vision, the tide turned against Xiang Yu and in the end he lost the war to Liu Bang.

In 202 BC, when Xiang Yu and his remaining men had their backs against the river while surrounded by Liu Bang’s troops, a boatman on a raft persuaded Xiang Yu to go with him across the river so he can prepare a comeback.
Xiang Yu said, “When I crossed the River and went west, I took with me 8,000 sons and brothers from east of the Yangtze. Now none of them has returned; how can I face the elders east of the Yangtze?” After declining this offer, Xiang Yu turned around, charged against the Han troops, killed over a hundred men, and finally cut his own throat.
Shortly after his death Liu Bang established the Han Dynasty.

Three concluding facts about Xiang Yu:

• Xiang is popularly viewed as a leader who possesses great courage but lacks wisdom, and his character is aptly summarized using the Chinese idiom “Yǒu Yǒng Wú Móu” (有勇無謀) - “Having Courage but No Strategies” (or  to be foolhardy or to be more brave than wise or to have reckless courage…)
• Xiang’s battle tactics were studied by future military leaders while his political blunders served as cautionary tales for future rulers
• Xiang Yu is also the kind general that raided the Terracotta** tomb less than five years after the death of the First Emperor – Xiang’s army was looting of the tomb and structures holding the Terracotta Army, as well as setting fire to the necropolis and starting a blaze that lasted for three months.

“Yǒu Yǒng Wú Móu” (有勇無謀) - “Having Courage but No Strategies” - Think about it…! ;)

* Valley of Death – A slang phrase to refer to the period of time from when a startup receives an initial capital contribution to when it begins generating revenues.
During the death valley curve, additional financing is usually scarce, leaving the firm vulnerable to cash flow requirements.

** The Terracotta Army or the “Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses“, is a collection of terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of China
The figures, dating from 210 BC, vary in height according to their roles, with the tallest being the generals. The figures include warriors, chariots, horses, officials, acrobats, strongmen, and musicians.
Current estimates are that in the three pits containing the Terracotta Army there were over 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses, the majority of which are still buried in the pits.
There is also a legend that the terracotta warriors were real soldiers, buried with Emperor Qin so that they could defend him from any dangers in the next life.

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

p.s. Prof. Ariely also recommends another role model for door closing – Rhett Butler for his supreme moment of unpredictable rationality with his astonishing elan, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn”

I might be getting a little too old, visionless, pragmatic or pessimistic for this but I find it very hard to travel to the promised lala land, Gartner’s calls “peak of inflated expectations”.

When I encounter a new “Technology Triggers”, I skip right to the “Trough of Disillusionment” without really passing through the promising “peak”…

e.g. Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies | Gartner, 2009 – Am I missing something here?

p.s. I do think Technology Triggers are very good for SEO and I will update you if it will work… ;)

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
Human Augmentation, 3D Flat Panel Displays, Quantum Computing, Context Delivery Architecture, Video Search, Behavioral Economics, Mobile Robots, Surface Computers, Augmented Re4ality, 3D Printing, Internet TV, Wireless Power, Cloud computing, E-Book Readers, Social Software Suites, Micorblogging, Green IT, Video Telepresence, Mesh Networks, Online Video, Home Health Monitoring, Public Virtual Worlds, RFID, Social Network Analysis, Web 2.0, Idea Management, Tablet PC, Wikis, Corporate Blogging, SOA, Location Aware Applications, Speech Recognition etc.

Fashionably late*, Google Search’s

Simply click on the checkbox next to SearchWiki and you will “Hide the ability to share, promote, remove, comment, or add your own results”

All good now :)

* Friendly reminder: Marissa Mayer promised that Google Search Wiki would soon have a toggle button that allow people to turn it off (“early Q1.”/2009)

Surprise Surprise… My new facebook username / vanity URL is http://www.facebook.com/karmona

Go and get yours before someone else will @ http://www.facebook.com/username/, although it is probably too late ;)

Good Luck!

For your convenient, I have collected few cloud-buzz-quotes to  spice your cloud computing elevator pitch:

• According to Gartner: “Cloud computing heralds an evolution of business that is no less influential than e-business”

• IDC on Cloud Computing: “This is about the IT industry’s new model for the next 20 years“, Vernon Turner, head of enterprise infrastructure, consumer and telecoms research.

• Merrill Lynch estimates that by 2012, the annual global market for cloud computing will surge to $95 billion and that 12% of the worldwide software market would go to the cloud in that period.

• In January of 2008 Amazon announced that the Amazon Web Services now consume more bandwidth than do the entire global network of Amazon.com retail sites…

• “… the new computing cloud age” Eric Schmidt (April, 2008)

Do you happen to have more???

This small vista saga started when I found myself unable to access domain assets (exchange, domain servers, shared storage etc.)

Browsing quickly throughout Event Viewer System logs I found out that Workstation, Netlogon and Computer Browser services were down due to rather long and frustrating service dependencies failures:

• The Netlogon service depends on the Workstation service which failed to start because of the following error: The dependency service or group failed to start. (Event ID 7001)
  
• The Computer Browser service depends on the Workstation service which failed to start because of the following error: The dependency service or group failed to start. (Event ID 7001)
  
• The Workstation service depends on the SMB 2.0 MiniRedirector service which failed to start because of the following error: The dependency service or group failed to start. (Event ID 7001)
  
• The SMB 2.0 MiniRedirector service depends on the SMB MiniRedirector Wrapper and Engine service which failed to start because of the following error: The dependency service or group failed to start. (Event ID 7001)
  
• The SMB 1.x MiniRedirector service depends on the SMB MiniRedirector Wrapper and Engine service which failed to start because of the following error: The dependency service or group failed to start. (Event ID 7001)
  
• The SMB MiniRedirector Wrapper and Engine service depends on the Redirected Buffering Sub Sysytem service which failed to start because of the following error: SMB MiniRedirector Wrapper and Engine is not a valid Win32 application. (Event ID 7001)
  
• The Redirected Buffering Sub Sysytem service failed to start due to the following error:  Redirected Buffering Sub Sysytem is not a valid Win32 application. (Event ID 7000)
• The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load: CSC rdbss  (Event ID 7026)

As a real IT expert, I tried 5 restarts before trying anything else ;)

So… to resolve this unfortunate issue, I had to use the notorious System File Checker tool (SFC.exe) .

This poorly documented windows  utility will scan all protected system files and replaces incorrect (corrupted, changed or missing) versions with correct Microsoft versions and running this from the command prompt is much easier than booting off the DVD into repair mode.

Once you have an administrator command prompt open (click Start, click All Programs, click Accessories, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator), you can run the utility by using the following syntax:

SFC [/SCANNOW] [/VERIFYONLY] [/SCANFILE=<file>] [/VERIFYFILE=<file>]

[/OFFWINDIR=<offline windows directory> /OFFBOOTDIR=<offline boot directory>]

The most useful command is just to scan immediately, which will scan and attempt to repair any files that are changed or corrupted using this command:

sfc /scannow

The scanning replaced the corrupted system file rdbss.sys and I was back to domain browsing business right after :)

Note: If SFC shouts he can’t repair the corrupted files, than you will have to drill down to the CBS.log to find what is corrupted and replace it yourself

____________________________

By the way, Marissa Mayer promised that Chrome Browser will be leaving Beta (while GMail is still in Beta…) and it just did yesterday and that Google Search Wiki would soon have a toggle button that allow people to turn it off (“early Q1.”) – I can’t wait… :)

This post is a weird collection of three Internet Conspiracies from the last 24 hours.

Note: I do realize that this post is a creepy testimony to the fact that I might be building a search engine and reading too many blogs and the affect it might have on my sense-of-judgment…

Conspiracy I (Google thinks Facebook is a dangerous Phishing Site)

Google Chrome browsers around the world have claimed today that Facebook is a dangerous Phishing Site (read more on Facebook Developer Forums)

Conspiracy II (Searching for a compatitor ‘search engine’ with Yahoo)

Searching ‘Google’ in Yahoo, results with suggestion to use Yahoo search: “You could go to Google. Or you could stay here and get straight to your answers.” (it also works with ‘ask’, ‘aol’ and ‘live’ :)

Conspiracy III (Apple Anti-Virus or not)

Two weeks ago, Apple updated a technical note on its Support Web site that says:
“Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult.”

Yesterday, Apple removed the KnowledgeBase article from its support site (KBase Article HT2550 now points to a bare error page – see below) and Apple spokesperson Bill Evans explained:

“We have removed the KnowledgeBase article because it was old and inaccurate… The Mac is designed with built-in technologies that provide protection against malicious software and security threats right out of the box… However, since no system can be 100 percent immune from every threat, running antivirus software may offer additional protection.”

…

With Google SearchWiki, signed-in Google users can now customize their search experience by re-ranking, deleting, adding and commenting on search results. 

So…

• The re-ranking changes you make are private and only affect your own searches. 
• Your comments are visible to the public 

Random thoughts on Google Search Wiki:

• You need to be very brave to change usability patterns in your world-leading-search-cash-cow (!)
• Why wasn’t it tested as yet another interesting Google Lab project?
• The arrows “soup” is really too much for the lonely-searcher –> way too many arrows if all you wanted is just search.
• The comments I saw until now are mainly spam or not interesting.
• The most important feature in Search Wiki is a way to turn it off but it is still missing…
• It is a good time to change your default search engine ;)
• Is it only me or Search Wiki have the lively smell all over it?

I must be missing something since the Google guys are very far from being stupid (to say the least) and it will be a very interesting to see if Google will change the search experience yet again with this move.

Update (10 Dec. 2008) : Marissa Mayer promised that Google Search Wiki would soon have a toggle button that allow people to turn it off (“early Q1.”) – I can’t wait… :)

Justin Kruger & David Dunning have tested and verified the following predictions:

• Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own ability and performance 
• Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others (it takes one to know one ;)
• Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy (“One puzzling aspect of our results is how the incompetent fail, through life experience, to learn that they are unskilled”)
• If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill (There is still some hope)

Do you have the confidence that this post isn’t about you? 

Think again… (!!!) - “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge” (Charles Darwin)

Do you think this post is about you?

Might be considered vain but interesting enough, the same research have shown that the top performers tended to underestimate their own performance compared to their peers (see chart below). 

So… if you find this post boring, obscure, stupid, annoying, poorly written or inappropriate than please keep in mind it isn’t something I have committed knowingly.

From: Developer Day <developerday.il@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 11:00 AM
Subject: PLEASE READ: Unauthorized network activity at Google Developer Day
To: ####@#####.com

Dear attendee,

First of all thanks for attending Google Developer Day yesterday, we hope you found it useful. Unfortunately, we need to let you know about an incident which took place during the conference which you may need to take precautionary action on.

We identified unauthorised activity on the public wired Ethernet network which was provided by the convention centre for conference attendees to access the Internet. This may have affected a limited number of  attendees accessing websites and online applications through the wired Ethernet connection. We have no evidence so far to suggest that the wireless network also provided at the event, and which was used by most attendees, was affected.

Due to the unauthorised activity, there is a chance that if you used the wired network, any user name and password entered to access a website may have been put at risk. When trying to access a secure website (a website using https), you may have received an alert indicating that the page had an invalid security certificate. In any case, we advise users as a precaution to change the passwords for any websites or services they accessed through the wired connection during the conference.

We’re really sorry that this has happened but we believe that the vast majority of attendees won’t have been affected by this incident. In the meantime, we look forward to seeing you at future events very soon.

The Google Developer Day Team