Nota Bene

Of course, I’m bound to get a lot of spam in my inbox – probably more than most. Decades of giving out my business card left, right and center; our domain included on presentation slides, in publications and catalogs and so on. Then there’s my email address’s simplicity. Sometimes employees’ blown email addresses we ‘leave out in the cold’ as spam honeypots while setting up new, slightly amended email addresses for the employee. But we can’t have that for me now can we? No. Because – first – I need to keep track of precisely who the enemy is, and – second – I want to personally be able to monitor the quality of our antispam protection. And I also don’t mind a few extra laughs now and again.

Much like entomologists with their butterflies, I file all incoming spam in a separate folder, check out the verdicts, and determine tendencies and false positives, while I forward missed samples to our antispam lab.

Curiously, since the beginning of the year the amount of spam has gone through the roof! And after studying its structure and style, it looks like most of it comes from one (1) source! Almost all the messages were in English (with just two in Japanese), and – main thing – 100% of this spam was detected by our products! I turned to our specialists… – and it was confirmed: it was a huge tsunami-like wave of a specific type of spam – snowshoe spam. This is unusual as normally around New Year spam activity falls in volume.

* Data for 1-10 January

And here’s the data on how the share of snowshoe spam changed on the most active day – January 7 – in the inboxes of our corporate domain:

So just what is this snowshoe when it’s at home, and how can it be protected against?

Read on: Snakeoil…

Our introduction into Viennese nightlife occurred most unexpectedly: we were invited to a ball! A real ball, which takes place in a large concert hall somewhere in downtown Vienna. Woah!

To the sound of chamber music, with the men in tailcoats (white tie) and the women in ball gowns, the guests gathered for the 10pm ceremonial kick-off to the ball. The ceremony was most official – formally opened by two government ministers (of internal affairs and foreign affairs). Here’s the latter making his speech. Yes – he is young for a minister :-):

So, if I was there, why did I take a pic of a TV screen and not of the (young) man himself? Simply because there were that many folks in the hall – literally thousands! (Clearly evening-wear rental and/or sales must is a profitable business in the Austrian capital). So many ball-goers, in fact, that we couldn’t even get into the hall for the opening ceremony, which was just like you see in the old films: guests being paraded in front of the royal/ministerial hosts, with a few formal words exchanged with each:

A little later things calmed down a bit and we managed to squeeze our way inside. And this is what I saw…

The debutantes’ dance, or whatever it is they call it: young couples new to such a ball. They take dozens of lessons on how to do ballroom dancing so they can dance as per requirements at the ball. The ball itself is something like an exam, or so it seemed to me. Or simply a demonstration of the newbies’ cavorting talent. The moms and dads in the audience must have been very proud:

Vienna, capital city of Austria, is one of the few European cities which for some perplexingly mysterious reason always seems to not feature in my busy schedule. Or, rather, I seem hardly ever to feature in Vienna’s busy schedule.

I’ve been here a few times, but each time I never got even a minute of tourism in. It was always airport > hotel > conference > speech > meetings > interviews > dinner > sleep > breakkie > suitcase > taxi > airport. Boo. For Vienna is… venerable, and deserves much more time and attention. Well just the other day I finally did it – finally took some time out from that ever-present busy business schedule of mine and invested it into having a stroll around the center of this magnificent city…

St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Alas, we didn’t have time to go inside (so much for spending quality time in Vienna:). That will have to wait until next time…

Read on: Hundertwasser…

In my previous post we had a math competition. Let me remind you of the task:

Using +, -, x, ÷ and (), make the row of numbers from 10 to 1 equal 2017.

That was an easy task, which got more complicated.

How about 9 to 1 with arithmetic equalling 2017? 8 to 1? 7 to 1? And down to just 1?

Before I could say ‘What January blues when you’ve got arithmetic in your life!?!’ I had answers from people in our fan club streaming in! And some of them (remember, there are different possibilities to get the same answer of 2017) were so wonderfully interesting, while others were so interestingly not-quite-elegant enough, that, well, I just had to share some of them with you…

Read on: A real math indulgent…

Hi folks!

Phew. After a few days’ rest and recuperation since last week’s merciless working schedule at the WEF, I do believe I’ve recharged my batteries sufficiently to be able to continue my notes on my four-day stay in Davos, where the WEF took place.

First – rewind: some history…

So, just why is it that this famous yearly forum – infamous to some, helpful to others – takes place in this particular tiny village in Switzerland?

I’ve got two versions…

Read on: A story of a remote quite place…

As many will already know, the number 2017 is a prime number; that is, it can be divided without a remainder only by itself and 1. Must say, the theory of prime numbers is a wholly interesting one and an extremely useful one too, as any cryptographer will tell you :).

But today I’ll be writing about something different. See, based on the fact that 2017 is prime – or ‘simple’ – many, myself included, are anticipating a simple, straightforward and calm year 2017, especially since 2016 was a bit of a rotter. Let me show you why.

Like I said, prime numbers are those that can only be divided by themselves and 1 without leaving a remainder. Non-prime numbers are called composite numbers, incidentally.

Turns out that 2016 is not only a composite number but a very composite number! It has a whole eight divisors. Grab a calculator your smartphone and test it for yourself:
2016 = 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 3 * 3 * 7

Whoah! Even the quantity of divisors is anything but simple, since 8 = 2 * 2 * 2.

So what about other years? Was 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution, a ‘prime’ year, for example? No, it wasn’t. 1917 = 3 * 3 * 3 * 71. Just four divisors, but they’re kinda poignant – and prophetic of nothing much good.

So what about other very prime/simple years, and other very non-prime/non-simple ones? Ok, let’s narrow this down a bit to 1980 through present day…

Prime/simple years:
1987
1993
1997
1999
2003
2011

And in the near future there are a few more prime/simples:
2027
2029

(eek, that’s a lot of non-simple years until then)

The most non-prime/non-simple years were:
1984 = 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 31 (seven divisors)
2000 = 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 5 * 5 * 5   (also seven)

There were six divisors in 1980, and there’ll be six in 2025. All other years can be called semi-prime/semi-simple.

But I digress…

Now, in the popular British mathematical journal The Guardian :), readers were recently teased with a… brain teaser. In the blanks between the sequence of figures 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 you need to add arithmetic symbols (+, -, x, ÷, (),) – as many as you like – so as to get the number (year) 2017.

For example, if you add arithmetic signs as follows you get 817:
10 * 9 * (8 + 7 – 6) * (5 – 4) + 3 * 2 + 1 = 817

But how do you add arithmetic to get 2017?
10?9?8?7?6?5?4?3?2?1 = 2017

Come on, have a go!

As for me, in nine minutes I got the equation to equal 2017 by kinda wonky arithmetic (I made the ‘3’ and ‘2’ = ’32’!); then, in around 15 or 20 minutes I got the answer in a proper way without bending the rules. I say ‘a’ way: there are different ways of getting to 2017!

So, tried it yet?

Ok, let’s make it harder: Now take away the 10:
9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1 = 2017

Read on: How to make 2017 out of 1?…

Having a depressing January? Well don’t! Get out and about – preferably on the road! Which is just what I did. With my trusty big black suitcase…

To warm-up it’ll be Western Europe, mostly of the Alpine variety. Then it’ll be a healthy dose of equatorial/tropical travel, then back to Europe, then back home for a bit. It’s going to be fun, I can tell, and I’ll be sharing that fun, plus pics thereof, as I go along (I’ve already found the ‘masterpiece’ button:).

Read on: Best get started…

All righty. The Christmas tree’s been taken down, the New Year merriment appears to have vanished, and it’s still very cold and snowy. So what better time for a bit of taking stock in the calm, cold light of day January. Therefore, as per tradition (2015, 2014, 2013), herewith, a cursory glance back over my personal highlights my year…

The first thing I can say is that it was a relatively calm year. In all 92 flights – lagging quite a bit behind the previous year’s record of 116. All the same, a couple of months were very intense aviation-wise: 12 flights in March and 13 in September. On the other hand, I had my first whole month without flying anywhere at all in many years: November.

Now – a bit more detailed:

Read on: Any round-the-world trips?…

Happy New Year folks, and hope you all had great holidays!

You won’t believe this… but this post is about… RED SQUARE! // Incidentally, the square I consider to be the most beautiful spot in Europe!

I hadn’t been in downtown Moscow on New Year’s Eve since… oooh, 15 years ago! Yep – 2001 was the last time, on Pushkin Square watching the fireworks. But I’d never been on Red Square on New Year’s Eve. What?! So this year I decided to make amends…

So how was it? Well, actually, my overall impressions were… mixed. And it’s those mixed impressions that I’d like to share with you today.

Read on: Red Square was really something!…

I regularly get asked which books should be read to build up a successful business. Students, start-uppers, managers, business owners – everybody wants a reading list! But that’s ok, for I do have some answers. However, I don’t believe one can become a businessperson by reading certain books, no matter how highly recommended they come. Still, there are some great books out there that sure won’t do any harm reading; eight of which I’ll tell you about in this here post…

I divide business books into two major categories.

The first helps readers with what needs to be done to build up a successful business; the second – how not to do it. The boundary is often blurred, but taken together books from both groups can help readers avoid both spending valuable time and resources on re-inventing the wheel again and again, and make the exciting business of… building a business a constant struggle.

Actually, there’s also a third category of books – works by legendary captains of business or government leaders, which instruct by example how things should be done. Such books are normally rather general as they cover such a broad range of business problems and unpredictable unexpectednesses, while also demonstrating limitless possibilities – albeit hazily. They don’t contain hands-on action plans, but they’re still well worth a read to get valuable overarching insights.

Many of the books in my list here were written quite a while ago – some even in the last millennium – so whole new industries and technologies of the 2000s are either hardly touched or aren’t touched at all. All the same, the books are still relevant to modern times; their main ideas can easily still be applied to today’s digital realities. We’re living in an era of new technologies, but man’s nature is still the same, and folks tend to repeat the same or similar mistakes. Not all folks, mind: others do things right and their companies become widely recognized and respected leaders. Which is what I hope for everyone.

All righty – here we go. Happy reading – of this post and then the books detailed in it!…

Jim Collins. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t

details

I’d call this the most important book in my business library. In plain language and with lots of practical examples, the author convincingly analyzes the traits commonly found in various types of leaders. This book is one of the few in my first category mentioned above: How to build a great business.

Read on: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail…