best software talk ever?

At last month’s BayCHI meeting, Alan Cooper of Cooper gave the best talk I’ve seen on software development, Ending the Death March. Unlike the rest of the BayCHI talks, this one wasn’t recorded or podcast. (Aside: please email BayCHI and Alan and ask them to make this available.)

However, Allison at BayCHI did take good notes.

Key point number one: bad software is a business problem, not a technology problem:

Death marches happen, according to Alan Cooper, for three reasons related to managers, who are still (1) using intuition instead of methods to run businesses, (2) letting programmers intimidate them with techno-babble, and (3) assessing the economics according to industrial era logic.

Key point number two: engineering organizations are badly structured:

The Triad of Entirely Separate Roles in Software Construction:
Programmer – Interaction Designer – Design Engineer

Programmer: Construction for shipment
Interaction designer: design for humans
Design engineer: Design for CPUs
Product managers are not Interaction Designers. If they are professional interaction designers, they aren’t doing the work of product managers. Keep those roles clear, Cooper said emphatically.

These three software construction roles are separate roles and have separate career paths. Cooper reiterated that the roles are fundamentally different: “You don’t graduate from one to the other, and one is not more advanced than another.”

telecom regulation

My friend Sonia, who works for a bunch of a libertarian think tank wrote an opinion piece for TechNewsWorld arguing for deregulation in telecom:

Companies like SBC and Verizon were forced to share their lines with so-called competitors at below-cost, government-set rates. This type of policy is a disaster, not only because central planning was shown to be faulty many years ago, but also because when people are told they have to share their property with others, they tend to not want to invest in the “commons.” And that’s precisely what happened.

In California, for example, SBC slashed spending from $8 billion in 2002 to $5 billion in 2003. Jobs followed this trajectory. While general employment in California has been slowly growing over the last couple of years, there have been huge job losses in the telecom sector.

But IT World ran a story from IDG News Service headlined Customers suffer where regulators are weak. The European Competitive Telecommunications Association study found the opposite of what Ms. Arrison suggested: a good regulator leads to more investment:

For example, in the U.K., where the study found that the regulator is independent and has created effective regulations, telecommunications companies invest US$184 per capita. By contrast, in Germany, which tied with Greece as having the least effective regulatory environment, operators spend just $68 per capita. The incumbent has maintained a strong grip on the German market.

Continue reading “telecom regulation”

athiesm 101

On NPR’s This I believe: There Is No God:

Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-O and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.

Richard Dawkins on Good and Bad Reasons for Believing:

The way scientists use evidence to learn about the world is much cleverer and more complicated than I can say in a short letter. But now I want to move on from evidence, which is a good reason for believing something , and warn you against three bad reasons for believing anything. They are called “tradition,” “authority,” and “revelation.”

and the dangers of Gerin oil:

Gerin oil (or Geriniol to give it its scientific name) is a powerful drug which acts directly on the central nervous system to produce a range of characteristic symptoms, often of an antisocial or self- damaging nature. If administered chronically in childhood, Gerin oil can permanently modify the brain to produce adult disorders, including dangerous delusions which have proved very hard to treat. The four doomed flights of 11th September were, in a very real sense, Gerin oil trips: all 19 of the hijackers were high on the drug at the time. Historically, Geriniol intoxication was responsible for atrocities such as the Salem witch hunts and the massacres of native South Americans by conquistadores. Gerin oil fuelled most of the wars of the European middle ages and, in more recent times, the carnage that attended the partitioning of the Indian subcontinent and, on a smaller scale, Ireland.

Sam Harris spoke at the Long Now foundation on “On necessary heresy.” Stewart Brand summarizes:

In the US, Christians use irrational arguments about a soul in the 150 cells of a 3-day old human embryo to block stem cell research that might alleviate the suffering of millions. In Africa, Catholic doctrine uses tortured logic to actively discourage the use of condoms in countries ravaged by AIDS. “This is genocidal stupidity,” Harris said. Faith trumps rational argument. Common-sense ethical intuition is blinded by religious metaphysics.

In the US, 22% of the population are CERTAIN that Jesus is coming back in the next 50 years, and another 22% think that it’s likely. The good news of Christ’s return, though, can only occur following desperately bad news. Mushroom clouds would be welcomed. “End time thinking,” Harris said, “is fundamentally hostile to creating a sustainable future.”

best letter ever

showing up Nicky Hilton:

Nicky Hilton asked, “I’m 21 years old, I run two multi-million-dollar companies, I work my ass off. Like, what were you doing that was so fucking important at that age?” I would like to repond to that. When I was 21, I was busy working toward my Ph.D. in organic chemistry at the University of Minnesota. I was the first to synthesize the compound okadaic acid — shown to be the leading cause of breast cancer.
– Steven F. Sabes
Wayzata, Minnesota

optimism tax

Tantek points to John’s post on Optimism Tax:

I’ll consider the loss to be part of my optimism tax. I sporadically pay this fee (when people take advantage of my trust in goodness) in exchange for optimistic freedom.

I would be less at-risk if I concentrated more on the negatives. “What if _____ happens?” But it’s not worth it. The cost to my quality of life (by worrying more) is far more expensive than the cost of losing some stuff.

I pay that, too.

Apple Store bookmarklet

Remix: this movie + WordPress’ PressIt bookmarklet = Apple Store bookmarklet 

javascript:if(navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Safari') >=0){
Q=getSelection();
}else{
Q=document.selection?document.selection.createRange().text:document.getSelection();}
void(window.open('http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore' +
'?productLearnMore='+encodeURIComponent(Q)));

(I’d make it draggable, but WordPress auto-curly-quoting is being too clever.)

Update: the movie is from Jon Rentzsch.