You can actually use military techniques to analyze why this is. Anonymous operates inside the enemy ODA (Observe Decide Act) loop.
The ODA loop for a typical corporation is at least 5 people. Eg. from when someone observes something (anon is ddosing us) to when that information reaches someone who can act on it (the CEO) anonymous has already completed it's complete loop which is (post on IRC, have people read it and suggest action) the ODA loop for anonymous is on the order of 5 minutes, the ODA loop for a corporate CEO is probably more like 5 hours to 5 days.
Therefore anonymous will always be about 25 steps ahead of a corporate target. The primary advantage that comes from this is that anonymous appears to act 'randomly' which causes further stress on the enemy ODA loop and forces them to continually react which leaves the proactive party in control of the competitive landscape (battlefield)
If you study military genius you'll find that the most effective commanders were the ones that pushed command furthest down to the org chart.
We know that decentralized control is much more efficient than centralized control. Communism didn't lose because its a failed ideology or because its godless, it failed because it's command and control systems allocate resources poorly. They allocate resources poorly because of information asymmetry and the length of the ODA loop.
The important thing to take from this for software development is that your time from when you decide to implement a feature to when you deploy to production or get a product to market (AppStore,BestBuy,etc) is your ODA loop.
Also, for software watch what happens to your favorite webserver under intense load when you replace it's queue (FIFO) with a stack (LIFO). The LIFO drastically shortens the median response time.
The unifying concept is the half-life (exponential decay) of plans and information. The older your intel, the less valuable the plans you have built off of that information.
Top-down and waterfall approaches institutionalize this in order to provide an illusion of control to the executives and shareholders. Agile development and maneuver warfare each seek to tighten their feedback loops.
The ODA loop for a typical corporation is at least 5 people. Eg. from when someone observes something (anon is ddosing us) to when that information reaches someone who can act on it (the CEO) anonymous has already completed it's complete loop which is (post on IRC, have people read it and suggest action) the ODA loop for anonymous is on the order of 5 minutes, the ODA loop for a corporate CEO is probably more like 5 hours to 5 days.
Therefore anonymous will always be about 25 steps ahead of a corporate target. The primary advantage that comes from this is that anonymous appears to act 'randomly' which causes further stress on the enemy ODA loop and forces them to continually react which leaves the proactive party in control of the competitive landscape (battlefield)
If you study military genius you'll find that the most effective commanders were the ones that pushed command furthest down to the org chart.
We know that decentralized control is much more efficient than centralized control. Communism didn't lose because its a failed ideology or because its godless, it failed because it's command and control systems allocate resources poorly. They allocate resources poorly because of information asymmetry and the length of the ODA loop.
The important thing to take from this for software development is that your time from when you decide to implement a feature to when you deploy to production or get a product to market (AppStore,BestBuy,etc) is your ODA loop.
Also, for software watch what happens to your favorite webserver under intense load when you replace it's queue (FIFO) with a stack (LIFO). The LIFO drastically shortens the median response time.