Gibberish?
Interesting and amusing little article from ACM Queue:
"One of the students, Jeremy Stribling, explains how they had developed a computer program to generate random sequences of technobabble in order to confirm their suspicions that papers of dubious academicity were bypassing serious, or indeed, any scrutiny. In fact, the students claim ulterior, financial motives behind this lack of proper peer review." (from Call That Gibberish?)
Technorati Tags: funny, interesting
Microsoft blogging: “What do managers do…”
I often cite Microsoft as an example of corporate blogging that seems to really works: If you work with, for, against Microsoft (and who in the computer industry doesn't do one of those?) Microsoft Bloggers will give you a view into Microsoft's thinking, attitude, plans and challenges that is incredibly valuable. You (generally) won't learn any trade secrets. You will hear what you might have heard if you ran into this or that Microsoftie in a Starbucks or at a conference. But few people do. Exhibit #1 is a recent post by Steven Sinofsky, a very senior Microsoft manager, about how Microsoft thinks about management, how it structures its development teams, and what kind of people and performance it values.
"The typical organization in Office development is one where there is a group of about 5-8 developers (we'll use developers for this post, but the discussion is just points of the dev/test/pm triad) managed by a lead developer. That is the first level of management called a feature team. There are then 3-5 leads that report to a development manager. That is the second level of management, usually called a group. The development manager reports to a general manager or an executive manager that represents the place that development, testing, and program management come together. This structure is matched by development testing and program management (where there are about equal numbers of testers, and about half that number of program managers). The general manager or executive is where the product or technology comes together (think SharePoint, or Excel, or the new Office "12" user interface). In some groups, if there are a lot of products or a very large team there might be one additional level of management. I manage these general managers. My boss manages the overall Office P&L, so marketing, finance, HR, etc. as well as other products report to him." (from What do managers do and how big should my team be?)
If you have ever tried to develop a relationship with a Microsoft product group information like this, basic as it is, is really important. Check out Steve Sinofsky's blog. It has many other gems just like that one. Technorati Tags: microsoft
Interesting article about Open Source in the Financial Times
And in classic Blogosphere form, you can find a report on the report from Nicole-Ann Boyer on World Changing, where she says:
"With the FT riding high as the world's best daily for the business intelligentsia, take heed large organization types: if you ever needed a piece to put in front your boss's nose and add credibility to some of your open source ideas, this should help." (from World Changing)
She goes on to comment and link to some especially interesting parts of the FT Special Report. I guess that makes this post a report on the report on the report. Can anyone spell **e-c-h-o-c-h-a-m-b-e-r? ** Technorati Tags: dangillmor, opensource
Hope this isn’t true…
Even though this is from the National Enquirer, which has no credibility, it's a scary scary thought Technorati Tags: georgebush
Baseball rules
I guess it's the time of year, but I came across this site for Baseball umpires which is a fun entertainment if you are into the esoterica of Baseball. For the more obvious (seemingly) questions that still stump me, Wikipedia is a good resource. For example, do you think you know what a balk is? Or what a cutter is? Technorati Tags: baseball
Finally, a simple cell phone!
My Treo 600
recently died a hard death. I had to learn a new cell phone, a relatively low
end one, and it was a serious undertaking. Someone I know recently did a 90
minute drive in 3.5 hours because their car's GPS inadvertently was set in the
'avoid highways' settings and they were in unfamiliar territory, without a
map, and so had no choice but to follow the long way. I've seen this idea
suggested elsewhere, but how a cell phone for people who don't read manuals?
Why can't a cell phone be as easy to operate as a regular telephone? (Yes, the
new home cordless sets with built in answering machines are almost as complex
as cell phones!) It seems someone has finally done it!
Thank you KDDI, Kyocera and
Toshiba.
[eminimall products="cellphone mobile phone cell"]
ID: Part Deux
If you are interested in the Intelligent Design debate, this is an fascinating and somewhat surprising article about a survey done by the Pew Research Center for the People. As usual with this kind of thing it is useful to know the bias of the folks doing the survey, which I have not looked into at all.
"Despite these fundamental differences, most Americans (64%) say they are open to the idea of teaching creationism along with evolution in the public schools, and a substantial minority (38%) favors replacing evolution with creationism in public school curricula." (from "Religion: A Strength and Weakness for Both Parties")
Interesting reading. Technorati Tags: intelligentdesign, science
Making it sound better
Ever notice in restaurant menus how the dish descriptions are made to sound fancier and fancier by adding adjective? "green beans" are not as good as "fresh green-beans", which are not as good as "native fresh green-beans", which are not as good as: "hand-picked native fresh green-beans", which are of course the best! Is this a similar phenomenon in geek-world? It seems like you can tack "X driven development" or "agile Y" or "object oriented Z" to make anything sound cooler and more a-go-go. Why has no-one written the papers on "agile idea driven development" or "agile concept-driven object-oriented debugging" yet? Or have they? Technorati Tags: funny, Geeky
[GEEK] JDemo: Java Demonstration Framework
This is pretty cool: a framework to easily manage the demonstration of UI elements, inspired by JUnit. Here's what they say:
"As supplement to test driven software development, JDemo provides a new approach of demo driven development : When developing software, you write short code snippets (demo cases) that use your new API. The demo then demonstrates both: how to use the API and what happens when you execute the code. So you can for example interactively test the usability of GUI components." (from JDemo web site)
Pretty cool. Check it out!
Technorati Tags: cooltool
Funny: Banana Problem
This is from a dictionary:
Banana problem : noun
A situation of uncertainty about when a task is complete and therefore when to stop working on it
The term banana problem is often used in computing when talking about badly written or incorrect conditions for the termination of a computer program. It has also been applied in website development, referring to a situation in which a designer adds so many different features that the whole thing looks messy, for example: 'If you insist on adding that video clip, I'm afraid we're going to have a real banana problem on our hands.'
Background
The term originates from the story of a little girl who said 'I know how to spell 'banana', but I don't know when to stop!'
In the computing world reference is often made to a one-banana problem, a phrase which looks similar but in fact has a completely different meaning. This term derives from the idea that those with less-skilled jobs in the IT industry, such as computer operators, can be compared to monkeys, and incentives given to monkeys (bananas) can be used to describe the level of difficulty of a task. A one-banana problem is therefore the simplest, for example: 'It's only a one-banana job'. In contrast, two- and three-banana problems would constitute more complex activities."
Technorati Tags: funny