Douglas L. Ross - My Personal Reflections

My employer (Cisco) published its most recent forward looking study of the Internet today. It's called " The Evolving Internet: A look ahead to 2025 by Cisco and the Monitor Group's Global Business Network " and although I haven't studied it in detail yet, I scanned it this morning and I liked what I saw. Those who know me will not be surprised that I particularly liked the three dimensional evaluation criteria that they used to frame their analysis. Lately nearly everything I do ends up finding its way into some sort of analytical cube like this. I've been wondering whether there is something wrong with me that I can't seem to frame things simply in two dimensions. Glad to have company.

My personal strategy for anonimity on the Web is to game the system by joining every social site I discover, liking everything, friending everybody (whom I actually know and who want to be friends, ok almost everybody), and posting the same benign profile stuff everywhere. Why you ask? To confound those spooky behavorial targeting algorithms that lurk in the backgroud of the Web as best I can. I see it as a challenge; to not be profile-able. Because of this strategy, I have long since passed the so-called "Dunbar Number" on many social sites to which I belong. It's also caused me to follow closely the work of people like John Udell and projects like Open Social. The Dunbar Number is a hypothesis about social group size limits by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar. A good summary of the hypothesis can be found on The Psychology Wiki and in this blog entry by Chris Allen. What made me think of this in the first place was a podcast interview of Spencer Wells by NPR's D...

Myngle has built something in the "that's a good idea, wish I'd thought of that" category. It's pretty simple. Use Web 2.0 technologies to connect language teachers (who make a few bucks on the side) in real-time, and one-on-one, with students interested in learning a new language. I may have to try it when I retire. I've always wanted to speak French.

You just have to love Dr. John Malone. The guy's a certified genius but also a "what you see is what you get" straight-shooting kind of guy. His Ph.D. is from Johns Hopkins, BA is science from Yale, worth $2.3 billion (according to Forbes, but probably way low because they just couldn't find all of it). He ran TCI (America's largest Cable company) and sold it to ATT for $54 billion. He's the kind of person that you could just sit and listen to for hours. He's so logical, well informed and well spoken. In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal here's a few nuggets from what he had to say... (I agree with him about Obama) WSJ: What are the biggest risks for Liberty right now? Mr. Malone: I think the biggest concern I have for the next year or two would be on the retail side, because of the consumer sentiment and the macro conditions. The concerns really tend to be much more macro: Is America going to make it, rather than are we going to make it?...

My friend Bruce Pearlman and I played in a Member-Member golf tournament at The Golf Club of Georgia this past weekend. I had one of those rare moments in life that ABC Sports use to refer to as "The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of Defeat." It happened like this. We were one of seventy-two, two-man teams organized in nine flights ranked by golf handicap. I'm an 11.0 handicap and we were in the 8th flight (next to last...so our expectations weren't that high.) The tournament was played over two days and was essentially a "best-ball" format net after handicap. We both played great the first day and what's more (the real secret to success in "best-ball") we never had a bad hole at the same time. We shot a net 62, or 10 under par, and lead our flight by four strokes after day one. The highlight of the day was my partner Bruce Pearlman's natural "EAGLE" on the 18th hole of the Lakeside course (a net double-eagle or 3 under par for ...

I spent nearly three hours today trying to understand the meaning of the Obamacare legislation. I am a reasonably intelligent individual, I have experience analyzing legislation (in my work), I know generally where to look and despite all that, I found it to be basically incomprehensible. This suggests to me that most people; don't have a clue what has happened, how it will effect them, why it was necessary (0r not), when it will take effect, what it will cost, what the alternatives might have been (or might still be), or in general what they should think about it. I'm going to try again to decipher it and when I do, to write here what my opinion is. Right now I am suspicious of it simply because it's too complicated to understand.

A family member sent me this story recently. I don't know whether it's true or not? I wasn't able to find any evidence that it is true. Somehow I wish it were both true and not true. In Washington , DC , at a Metro Station, on a cold January morning in 2007, this man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, approximately 2,000 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After about 3 minutes, a middle-aged man noticed that there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds, and then he hurried on to meet his schedule. About 4 minutes later: The violinist received his first dollar. A woman threw money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk. At 6 minutes: A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again. At 10 minutes: A 3-year old boy stopped, but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the viol...