THE WHATIS.COM WORD-OF-THE-DAY October 21, 2003 six degrees of separation
________________ Sponsored by: CA Unicenter(R) infrastructure management software Your Infrastructure Can Manage Itself! INFRASTRUCTURE SELF-MANAGEMENT Unicenter infrastructure management software from CA enables your infrastructure to manage itself, enabling IT managers to focus more on the business of business - and not the business of maintenance. Unicenter ensures that your IT is always in sync with your business, so you can be more responsive than ever to a constantly changing marketplace. http://WhatIs.com/r/0,,18899,00.htm?track=NL-34&ca ________________ TODAY'S WORD: six degrees of separation See our complete definition with hyperlinks at http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci932596,00.html?track=NL-34 Six degrees of separation is the theory that anyone on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries. The theory was first proposed in 1929 by the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in a short story called "Chains." In the 1950's, Ithiel de Sola Pool (MIT) and Manfred Kochen (IBM) set out to prove the theory mathematically. Although they were able to phrase the question (given a set N of people, what is the probability that each member of N is connected to another member via k_1, k_2, k_3...k_n links?), after twenty years they were still unable to solve the problem to their own satisfaction. In 1967, American sociologist Stanley Milgram devised a new way to test the theory, which he called "the small-world problem." He randomly selected people in the mid-West to send packages to a stranger located in Massachusetts. The senders knew the recipient's name, occupation, and general location. They were instructed to send the package to a person they knew on a first-name basis who they thought was most likely, out of all their friends, to know the target personally. That person would do the same, and so on, until the package was personally delivered to its target recipient. Although the participants expected the chain to include at least a hundred intermediaries, it only took (on average) between five and seven intermediaries to get each package delivered. Milgram's findings were published in Psychology Today and inspired the phrase "six degrees of separation." Playwright John Guare popularized the phrase when he chose it as the title for his 1990 play of the same name. Although Milgram's findings were discounted after it was discovered that he based his conclusion on a very small number of packages, six degrees of separation became an accepted notion in pop culture after Brett C. Tjaden published a computer game on the University of Virginia's Web site based on the small-world problem. Tjaden used the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) to document connections between different actors. Time Magazine called his site, The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia, one of the "Ten Best Web Sites of 1996." In 2001, Duncan Watts, a professor at Columbia University, continued his own earlier research into the phenomenon and recreated Milgram's experiment on the Internet. Watts used an e-mail message as the "package" that needed to be delivered, and surprisingly, after reviewing the data collected by 48,000 senders and 19 targets (in 157 countries), Watts found that the average number of intermediaries was indeed, six. Watts' research, and the advent of the computer age, has opened up new areas of inquiry related to six degrees of separation in diverse areas of network theory such as as power grid analysis, disease transmission, graph theory, corporate communication, and computer circuitry. ______________________ SELECTED LINKS: This Santa Fe Institute bulletin is called "Kevin Bacon, the Small-World, and Why It All Matters." http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/publications/Bulletins/bulletinFall99/workInProgress/smallWorld.html Polly Shulman writes about the applications of Duncan Watts' findings in this Discover Magazine article, "From Muhammad Ali to Grandma Rose." http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1511/12_19/59587202/p1/article.jhtml?term=connected+to+friends TechRepublic explains how the six degrees of separation can help you find a job in IT. http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-6316-5077847.html To experience the phenomenon of six degrees of separation, visit The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia. http://www.cs.virginia.edu/oracle/ ______________________ TODAY'S TECH NEWS: ORACLE AND MICROSOFT: A TALE OF TWO SECURITY PHILOSOPHIES Chief security officers Mary Ann Davidson and Scott Charney provide their company's perspective on how much information to provide in a security advisory. http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid14_gci932682,00.html?track=NL-34 LINKSYS ROUTERS CAUGHT UP IN OPEN SOURCE DISPUTE Linksys and other wireless networking vendors are involved in a copyright dispute over Broadcom's use of open source code in its chipsets. A resolution could involve making some chipset code available to the public, but an analyst says Linksys router users will not likely be exposed to any security risks as a result. http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid7_gci932666,00.html?track=NL-34 ORACLE TOOTS RFID HORN Oracle Corp. is planning a broad upgrade to its supply chain management tools within its CRM suite and is hyping the introduction of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. http://searchoracle.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid41_gci932777,00.html?track=NL-34 >> Catch up on all the latest IT news at http://searchtechtarget.techtarget.com/?track=NL-34 ______________________ SECRET WORD-OF-THE-DAY | What is IT? This word can mean a software version of a (traditionally) print medium, or a standalone computer that is used solely as a reading device. >> See if you're right! http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid40_gci492555,00.html?track=NL-34 _____________________ LEARN IT IN 10 EASY STEPS | Defeating Spam in the Enterprise Here's how it works: We give you a little background about who is spamming (and why) and give you some information about what you can do to defend yourself against the onslaught. We also give you a glossary to look up related terms, some outside reading, and a self-assessment quiz. You spend as much (or as little) time as you like moving through the ten steps and exploring the content. http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci931780,00.html?track=NL-34 _____________________ QUIZ | In the Spammer's Lair You get a lot of spam in your inbox, but do you know how spammers do it? Test your knowledge with our latest quiz! >> Take the quiz http://searchcio.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid19_gci931595,00.html?track=NL-34 _____________________ FREE CHAPTER DOWNLOADS For your convenience, we've gathered links for all the free chapter downloads and book excerpts available around the TechTarget portfolio. >> Click here http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci932156,00.html?track=NL-34 ______________________________ RECENT ADDITIONS AND UPDATES [1] lights-out management http://searchcio.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid19_gci931808,00.html?track=NL-34 [2] smoke testing http://search390.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid10_gci930076,00.html?track=NL-34 [3] spam filter http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid14_gci931766,00.html?track=NL-34 [4] UCCnet http://search400.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid3_gci930408,00.html?track=NL-34 [5] six degrees of separation http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci932596,00.html?track=NL-34 ____________________________________________________________________ ::::::::::::::::::: WHATIS.COM CONTACTS ::::::::::::::::::: MARGARET ROUSE, Site Editor ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) IVY WIGMORE, Consulting Editor ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) LOWELL THING, Consulting Editor and Founder ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ::::::::::::::::::::: ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER :::::::::::::::::::::: This newsletter is published by TechTarget, the most targeted IT media. http://www.techtarget.com?track=NL-34 Copyright 2003 TechTarget. 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