Curiouser and Curiouser!

Can anyone help me?  I'm looking for algorithms that implement elections (similar to the way Windows elects a Browser master if you're familiar with that).

The context is a set of hand-held devices that need to elect a leader to perform duties on their behalf.

Any leads & references would be gratefully received.

Something I read this morning (and I'm sorry, but I can't remember what) lead me to a page on Denham Grey's KMWiki about measuring KM performance.  Of particular interest were the suggested Key Performance Indicators:

1. Time to create new knowledge
2. Time to competence
3. Contribution to knowledge bases
4. Number of delivered Best Practices
5. Number of repeat complaints
6. Savings by knowledge re-use
7. Reduction in cost of quality
8. Employee satisfaction
9. Information maintenance
10. Competence maintenance
11. Tool availability
12. Knowledge user complaints
13. Knowledge user satisfaction
14. KM budget availability
15. Network building
16. Proportion employees making new idea suggestions
17. Time to new idea
18. Ratio new ideas generated and new ideas implemented
19. %sales earned with new knowledge

In talking with Ross the other day we more or less agreed that the terms k-log and k-logging should be abandoned.  They are pretty horrible but I've kept using them as the defacto terms.  Not any longer.  I want to find new terminology.

I'd like to offer up my current favourite:

Business Journal

What do people think?

I'd love to hear your alternatives.

Expanding on my thoughts of a couple of days ago I am still wondering:  What is the specific context in which someone who is not a k-log enthusiat, believer, etc... will actually use a k-log?

• When do they turn to it and write something?
• What should guide what they write?
• How are they going to speak up when they've never spoken before?

Hmmm....

Cabinet 'rock solid' on Iraq. Tony Blair will not be diverted from disarming Iraq by the biggest rebellion of his premiership, says Downing Street. [BBC News | UK | UK Edition]

What's frightening is the religious zeal with which this campaign is being waged.  We are not offered evidence but asked to believe.  But we don't, and he would do well to realise that.

The Corporate Weblog Manifesto.

Thinking of doing a weblog about your product or your company? Here's my ideas of things to consider before you start.

1. Tell the truth.
2. Post fast on good news or bad.
3. Use a human voice.
4. Make sure you support the latest software/web/human standards.
5. Have a thick skin
6. Don't ignore Slashdot.
7. Talk to the grassroots first
8. If you screw up, acknowledge it.
9. Underpromise and over deliver.
10. If Doc Searls says it or writes it, believe it.
11. Know the information gatekeepers. 
12. Never change the URL of your weblog.
13. If your life is in turmoil and/or you're unhappy, don't write.
14. If you don't have the answers, say so.
15. Never lie.
16. Never hide information.
17. If you have information that might get you in a lawsuit, see a lawyer before posting, but do it fast.
18. Link to your competitors and say nice things about them.
19. BOGU.
20. Be the authority on your product/company.
21. Know who is talking about you.

[The Scobleizer Weblog]

A good set of principles for someone who is blogging to the outside world (and please visit the original post for a full definition of each point, especially the lovely BOGU!).

If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible. He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.

There is danger in the exuberant feeling of ever growing power which the advance of the physical sciences has engendered and which tempts man to try, "dizzy with success," to use a characteristic phrase of early communism, to subject not only our natural but also our human environment to the control of a human will. The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men's fatal striving to control society – a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.

F.A. Hayek via Lew Rockwell

Good words to think on.

Altova Inc. has announced the public availability of Altova's XML document editor product Authentic 5 under a free software license. Authentic 5 is a customizable, light-weight, and easy-to-use XML document editor. It allows business users to create and edit content through a web-enabled interface that resembles a word processor. Authentic 5 supports WebDAV and HTTP, with real-time document validation and multilingual spell checking.

[From Cover Pages Newsletter]

Checking it out now.  I already use XML Spy but this might be a better choice when editing markup for my new website (which I am hoping to deploy using xSiteable)

Thank you Altova.

Another stimulating piece by Butler Shafer (my summary, the whole article is better):

And now we find Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and George Bush being referred to as "madmen" by one faction or another, depending upon which side of the battlefield you are on.

Confining our focus on the demented state of mind of tyrants and war-lovers is to overlook the more important consideration: the insanity of the state itself. After pointing out to my students how FDR manipulated the Japanese into an attack on Pearl Harbor in order to get America into World War II, I often hear the response "our government wouldn’t do that!"

The courts, a branch of the state, have provided a fairly consistent expansion of the allegedly "limited" powers granted to the state, and a restrictive definition of the "rights" it was the announced purpose of this scheme to "protect."

If the state enjoys a monopoly on the use of force, and there is no device or principle that can restrain the scope of such authority, what would we expect government officials to do with such power? Much what we would expect a group of children to do if a bowl of candy was placed before them: grab as much of it as they can!

It should be evident to any thoughtful person that politics mobilizes the most vicious, socially destructive attitudes and practices known to mankind. The state represents the "dark side" of the human character, and so we are disinclined to stare it in the face, out of a fear that we might see something of ourselves reflected back.

If the United States has created chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, we will go to war with Iraq for allegedly trying to acquire such weapons for themselves. America will condemn North Korea for having nuclear missiles, even though the United States is the only country in history that has actually used such weapons against civilian populations!

No matter how strong or deserving the criticism of any foreign regime, statists can never allow the censure to rise to the level of an attack upon the idea of the state itself.

And so it is that the Hitlers, Stalins, Maos, Pol Pots, and other tyrants, must be marginalized and isolated as aberrations of an otherwise wondrous system. What better way of accomplishing such state-saving ends than to declare them to be "madmen," "crazed lunatics" who managed to get into power by some untoward means?

In the language of "chaos" theory, the state becomes an "attractor" for the kinds of people who are disposed to use violence and intimidation against others; people who are willing to exploit the sociopathic nature of all political systems.

[From LewRockwell.com]