What tomorrow may bring

Finding a pattern: "The essence of intelligence analysis is you don't know what you'll need to be looking for tomorrow morning" - a rather interesting article on the increased (percived) need of good algorithms for finding and understanding relevant information. But the challenge still remains - how to predict something that has not happened by something that is happening? As more and more data is available for analysis, does it make it easier to build connections - or to simple? If I buy a donut and a coke every morning before there is a bus-bomb in Israel - does that make me a part of the event? Or even a predictor?

"could grow to 120 terabytes" (same article) - how many words and numbers can you fit with that?
"Certain algorithms that might work with a couple megabytes of data don't work when you have gigabytes' worth of information" - and that is part of the problem ... the more data used, the greater the chance of "butterfly effect" - seemingly linked but actually random or chaotic connections, beyond our "control". And that could lead to a lot more "wild goose chases" than good preventive work.

can You see?

steganography is used to supplement encryption [def] - hiding something without traces of the hiding (ie unlike encrypting a textfile - which creates a jumble of bits & signs), the message and the carrier (ideally) looks like just another image, and with thousands (several i'm sure) new making their way onto the net everyday - a method for the future. See it in action - or read more from Wired (way - same example link as I used! spooky!)

So - why this cryptic interest now? Simple - the pocket edition of Pattern Recognition by William Gibson (and one link leads to something completely different 6927 All-Terrain Vehicle - a Lego space-kit that makes me nostalgic) - and now I found out that he had ablog - but is now back to writing his next book ("Time for me to get back to my day job, which means that it?s time for me to stop blogging." [1])
The interesting thing is that Penguin doesn't acknowledge the edition - they only link to different eBook editions.... is it a limited testrun for Scandinavia - or is it a offline centered push?
Or are they simply behind on updating - the US edition was launched on the 4th - so they could be waiting for him to hed over and do some signing? Anyway, so far a good story - more later maybe?

UPDATE: found it! Penguin Paperbacks (file size: 490KB) - a pdf catalogue lists it as a june release!!!

...and the sun is here longer each day - spring is on the way...

Bush ducks dead dudes

Ignores Soldiers' Burials: "Bush's inaction is a national disgrace,' said one Gulf War I vet" - considering how hard he's been working in order to convince (himself?) that there is no war, no real problem - and no pictures of coffins or bodybags, it isn't all that surprising that he prefers a quick hop-stop in Bagdad... after all 544 casualities (and counting) is no reason to acknowledge anything?