Thinkst Blog

While talking to someone on IRC today, i mentioned that lot's of young companies (and some old ones) are Cargo Cult Startups.. I was asked to explain ( which is a sure fire sign that someone hasn't been reading their Feynman ), but figured i could probably elaborate. In his commencement speech at CalTech (and in his book " Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman ") RPF talks about Cargo Cult Science. He was referring to Pacific Islanders, who having seen the planes landing from the sky bringing provisions during the war, built hats with coconuts and erected runways, replicating marching drills (after the war) trying to get the provisions to land once more. The islanders were replicating the observed behavior without understanding the true nature of the tasks.. Now Feynman famously likened this to people performing the superficial motions of scientific experiment, without truly understanding the core of it, and if you look around today you will see lots of this disguised a...

I just finished the new book from 37Signals - " ReWork ", and it was a reasonably enjoyable read. (It was actually the first book i read through the iPhone Kindle App, which is incredibly cool) (Would love to see that discussion at Amazon, deciding if they should support the iPad to sell books, or try to starve the iPad to sell the Kindle?.. but i digress..) There are many, many 37Signal fanboys and signal vs noise has to be one of the more popular geek blogs out there.. but.. its really hard not to notice that what the 37Signal guys understand, more than almost anything is how to market to the current geek-hackernews-entrepreneur crowd. They hit all the right notes to appeal to their target demographic every time. There are obviously many times when you disagree with them, (like saying that long hours at work is " making up for intellectual laziness with brute force ", or their take on formal education, or the SalesForce.com bashing you often hear DHH talk about) ...

If you didnt figure that portswigger rocked for his elite " The Web Application Hacker's Handbook ", or for managing to put out a tool ive never heard anything bad about (in an industry full of people who dont hesitate to say bad things..) , you have to give him +1 for having the coolest ad that ever graced an infosec magazine .. BURP SUITE PRO v1.3 NOW* AVAILABLE New features Same logo More expensive http://portswigger.net *Product not available at time of print. Actual release date depends on the motivation and morale of Portswigger's helper monkey, but it will probably be before Christmas (2009)

On Friday my great-aunt passed away. She was an amazingly wonderful, warm lady who's work and efforts have touched the lives of many. When you remember her as the soft spoken, self effacing granny figure at family functions, you tend to forget just how remarkable a person she was. Rhodes University published the following tribute penned by Paul Maylam. It's the sort of tribute that makes you recognize the difference between regular people (like us) and legends like her.. The world is truly poorer for her passing.. [ Tribute by Paul Maylam ]

Welcome to thinkst thoughts, my new blog home. There is a good chance you got here from the SensePost blog, where I've been pondering, posting & prognosticating for the past few years. Add us to your RSS reader .. (aka. the elevator pitch! ) There is much broken in the info-sec industry, and there is much broken in general. There are answers waiting to be discovered, brand new questions waiting to be asked, and really important problems waiting to be worked on. Thinkst Thoughts will be the home of such thoughts, tirades, tips, tricks and tech. tid-bits.. and so it begins... /mh PS. if you subscribe to the RSS feed , ill even promise to stop the a nnoying a lliteration a lready..