People are a problem

The major problem - one of the major problems, for there are several - one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well known fact, that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.

Douglas Adams. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Chapter 28.

Also, have a look at this not very related paper, too:
Informing ourselves to death by Neil Postman

افسانه توسعه

افسانه توسعه
اقتصادهای ناكارآمدقرن بیست و یكم
نویسنده: اسوالدو دریورو
مترجم: دكتر محمود عبدالله زاده
ناشر: نشر اختران
نوبت چاپ: چاپ اول پاییز 1383

ماه پیش خواندن این کتاب را تمام کردم. هر چند برخلاف ظاهرش اصلا پیچیده نبود و شاید حتی گاهی حوصله سر بر و تکراری ولی به نکات قابل توجه بسیاری اشاره می کرد. برخی از آن ها در ادامه می خوانید.

در تمام طول قرن بیستم، نخبگان کشورهای توسعه نیافته خواسته اند الگوی دولت ملی مدرن اروپایی یا امریکای شمالی را باز تولید یا، در مواردی کوشیده اند از الگوی شوروی تقلید کنند؛ ولی تقریبا همه این تلاش ها به فاجعه انجامیده است. به نظر می رسد که امکان ندادن به تقلید از شگفتی های امپریالیسم است. نخبگان کشورهای توسعه نیافته از طریق انواع پروژه های ملی، افسانه توسعه را دنبال کرده اند. این افسانه ابتدا قالب مداخله دولت یا یک انقلاب سوسیالیستی را به خود گرفت و اکنون در کسوت یک انقلاب سرمایه داری نولیبرالی در آمده است. در تمام این موارد مقامات کوهی از ایثار اجتماعی را بر مردم تحمیل کرده اند بدون آن که بتوانند فقر را از میان بردارند و یک جامعه مدنی واقعی تحت حاکمیت قانون و نمادهای دموکراتیک به وجود آورند.
افسانه توسعه در طول جنگ سرد عمدتا به صورت دو الگو بیان می شد: الگوی کمونیستی و الگوی سرمایه داری. هر دو الگو از نظر محیط زیستی ناپایدار بودند. حال که کمونیسم سقوط کرده است، زیرا می کوشید برنامه ریزی متمرکز کمیابی را جانشین بازار کند، نوعی از سرمایه داری جهانی در حال ظهور است که تا تبدیل بازار به نوعی قانون طبیعی عالی، به لحاظ اخلاقی خنثی، نظیر قانون جاذبه، پیش رفته است. به عبارت دقیق تر، این سرمایه داری جهانی اصلا به ملاحظات اجتماعی و زیست محیطی عنایتی ندارد و از همه انتظار دارد که به این امر تسلیم شوند. این الگو در حال حاضر تنها الگویی است که افسانه توسعه را بیان می کند، می کوشد از طریق جهانی شدن، جوامع سرمایه داری مدرن را در اکثر کشورهای توسعه نیافته باز تولید کند. با وجود این، بر خلاف انتظارات، انفجار ثروت و رفاهی که تصور می شد پس از پیروزی سرمایه داری رخ دهد، تحقق نیافته است. تاریخ پایان نیافته، و بر عکس، پیچیده تر شده است، چون آن چه در عمل دارد اتفاق می افتد طرد بخش اصلی جمعیت دنیا از اقتصاد جهانی است.
جهانی شدن اقتصادی امروز نوع ابتدایی سرمایه داری را تبلیغ و حمایت می کند، و بیشتر علاقه مند به فروش موزیک پاپ، کوکاکولا یا مک دونالد است تا حمایت از دموکراسی و گسترش دادن واقعی نهادهای دموکراتیک، جامعه مدنی و حقوق بشر. به عبارت دیگر، دقیقا ارزش هایی را رها می کند که توان شکست دادن کمونیسم را به سرمایه داری داد.

برای آشنایی بیشتر با این کتاب نگاه کنید به:
ماهنامه تدبیر شماره 153
The Myth of Development: The Non-Viable Economies of the 21st Century

Insufficient free space

Do you think that 50GB of free space is sufficient for your files? I just got this error from SQL Server while I was trying to restore a database:

System.Data.SqlClient.SqlError: There is insufficient free space on disk volume 'G:\' to create the database. The database requires 139623137280 additional free bytes, while only 53548818432 bytes are available. (Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo)

Ability to predict your future!

It is very fantastic when you have an ability to predict your future! It is about 2 years since I’ve started to think of how to personalize Farsi (Persian) news for Iranian users. And now I know what would happened if I start that project. I’m just joking. But here is a true story of a very same idea: Starting Findory: The series
I’ve read all the series. It was fascinating. I think besides all of Greg Linden’s problems, I’m facing with two more problems: 1. Slow Internet connection. 2. Many of reliable Farsi news websites has been destroyed or filtered during these 4-5 years.

Here are the highlighted lessons for me:

In retrospect, I think I have been too cheap. The tradeoff here is between death by burn versus death by resource starvation. While Findory has lived a long time with very low burn, it has been starved of resources, slowing growth and making it difficult to pursue many paths for expanding the products.

I think a mistake I made in the very early days of Findory was thinking too much of law firm as a mere source of legal advice. In fact, the most valuable interactions with our lawyers were the business advice and connections they provided. Despite the cost, it is worthwhile to find one that can advise you on all aspects of your business.

I want to end by emphasizing that it is important to understand that any business discussions with any large firm are going to be costly for a startup. Not only do you have the risk of disclosing information (regardless of NDAs) to a potential competitor, but also the cost of any legal frameworks necessary for the discussions can be risky for a tiny startup to bear. Be very careful with who you decide to talk to and make sure those discussions are worth the cost.

I remain a strong believer in launching early and often for web development. Findory is learning constantly. We get immediate feedback. We get rapid gratification. The benefits far outweigh the costs.

Focus on product and try to minimize the time spent on competition. I think the best way to build value is to build something customers clearly want.

Have some sense of proportion!

The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses.
To explain - since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation - every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake.
The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife.
Trin Tragula - for that was his name - was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.
And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake.
"Have some sense of proportion!" she would say, sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day.
And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex - just to show her.
And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.
To Trin Tragula's horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.

Douglas Adams. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Chapter 11.

سمبل‌های میهن پرستی جمعی

در فیلم‌ها و تصویرهای تبلیغاتی قدیمی هر زمان صحبتی از میهن پرستی بود عده‌ای سرباز را نشان می‌دادند که در حال رفتن به جنگ و یا برگشتن از فتح نبردی بودند. چهره‌ها خندان و پرچم‌های آن کشور در دست‌هایشان و البته با حفظ صف‌های نظامی. این روزها همان چهره‌های خندان و همان پرچم‌ها هستند اما آدم‌هایشان تماشاچی‌های یک استادیوم فوتبال شده‌اند.
ده یا بیست سال دیگر سمبل و نشانه‌های افتخارات ملی چگونه خواهند بود؟ چقدر ملیت و مرزها در آینده اهمیت خواهند داشت؟

Iranian Taste of Password

I found 2 different databases of username and password (fortunately, they were not hashed!). Why not give it a try to find out the taste of Iranian Internet users for passwords? These databases were completely different and their users were from two different world in both educational and profession. Their academic studies and occupation was not related to computer science or Internet security. So, it could be a good sample for a Statistical analysis. The ages of these users were between 25-30 to 60-70, both male and female.

Database number one (DB1) has 3070 users and the other one (DB2) has 2150 users. The longest password had 23 characters and the shortest one had only one character (typically it was "1"). The average length was 7.25 characters and 6 was their Mode (26.4068% of users).

I didn’t check the strength of these passwords or tried to find patterns in them. (e.g. Phone number or a Name). But it seems the majorities of them are too weak and there were lots of first name, phone and mobile-phone numbers available in those passwords.

I may try some complex analysis on this database, too. And I’ll be happy to hear if you have any other idea.

My favorite categories 3

After 9 months, here is what Azmazon recommend to me:

Anthropology   Asia   Cognitive Psychology   Communications   Computer Science   Cosmology   Economic Theory   Europe   Finance   High-Tech   History   Information Systems   Logic   Management   Marketing   Personal Transformation   Philosophy   Pure Mathematics   Quantum Theory   Relativity   Scientists   Sociology   Statistics   Theory   Decision-Making and Problem Solving 

Can you tell the difference from the older ones? 1, 2

ردیف‌های موسیقی ایرانی

وقتی به دوران مدرسه و دانشگاه نگاه می کنم انگار بیش از هفتاد – هشتاد درصدر درس‌ها بی‌خودی بودند و هیچ جنبه آموزشی نداشته و تأثیری در شیوه زندگی و فکر من نداشتند. آت و آشغال‌هایی که برای گذراندن به اصطلاح حلال زمان به حافظه ما خوراندند و ما از گوش دیگر بیرون کردیم بلافاصله. تربیت ناموفق طوطی‌هایی که از طوطی شدن تنفر داشتند.
آنچه همیشه می خواستم یاد بگیرم و نشد آموختن تاریخ هنر ایران و موسیقی و ردیف‌های آن بود. موردی که در دوازده سال مدرسه به گونه‌ای با آن رفتار کردند گه انگار موسیقی نبوده و هنری نداشتیم و تاریخی نداریم. خنده دار است که من تا چند سال پیش حتی فرق تار و کمانچه را نمی‌دانستم و تا چند ماه پیش تفاوت صدا و کار استادانی چون شجریان و ناظری متوجه نبودم.
هر چند زمان زیادی از عمرمان را به باد دادیم و دادند ولی خوشحالم که طوطی نشدم و حداقل این را دیگر می دانم که هیچ نمی‌دانم و آموختنی‌ها فراوان هستند. شروع بیداری آغاز راه است.
به هر حال سری به این آدرس بزنید تا شاید شروعی باشد برای آشنایی با ردیف‌های موسیقی ایرانی.

Misinterpreted

It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much-the wheel, New York, wars and so on-whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man-for precisely the same reasons.
Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending destruction of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to alert mankind of the danger; but most of their communications were misinterpreted as amusing attempts to punch footballs or whistle for tidbits, so they eventually gave up and left the Earth by their own means shortly before the Vogons arrived.
The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a doublebackwards- somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the "Star Sprangled Banner", but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish.
In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioral research laboratories running round inside wheels and conducting frighteningly elegant and subtle experiments on man.
The fact that once again man completely misinterpreted this relationship was entirely according to these creatures' plans.

Douglas Adams. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Chapter 23.