Another Message for the NSA story

The news has been fast and furious about the NSA monitoring of internet and phone accounts.  But one of the funniest responses came from Edward Tufte who twittered yesterday about how bad the NSA did on their slide presentation.

Tufte has taught those of us who use slides (I favor Keynote over Powerpoint) a lot about how to make slide presentations readable and helpful.  But  I personally like the rule first offered by Guy Kawasaki called 10-20-30 Rule (see below to hear Guy give you the rap about the rule) - I have heard Guy use two versions of the rule - 10 Slides - 20 words per page or 20 minutes max for the presentation and no less than 30 point type for anything on the screen (he quotes a funny algorithm - figure out who the oldest person in the room is and divide his age by 2 to figure out the minimum type size).

I am not bothered by the collection of this data in part because they are searching using algorithms that are unlikely to include the things I do.   There is a possibility that could change but not based on the content of the NSA slides.   Because as Kawasaki points out so clearly, if you do not follow the rules (and the NSA presentation violated two of the three) you are a bozo.



I am not worried about getting caught in the bozo's web but I am concerned about whether people who create these types of slides can actually competently figure out who the bad guys are.