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Thursday, February 06, 2003 |
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The Sean Connery Principle. Don't get me wrong, I like watching Sean Connery on the big screen. However, his name generally is not one of the first one's to pop up when I am thinking of great actors. Connery has an extensive filmography and this, in part, accounts for my perception. He has been in some memorable films and he has also been in some less-than-memorable films. I once heard Connery say that he takes a workman's attitude toward acting. He looks at it as a job he is paid to do and each job is an opportunity. Thus, he rarely, if ever, turns down a movie based on its artistic merits. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that attitude, but it does have the effect of diluting his perceived contributions to film.
I bring this up because it points out a key difference between corporate software developers and external consultants. [Hey, somebody has to stick up for corporate software developers every once in a while]. The primary motivation for a consultant is to look at a project as a job opportunity, a chance to make money. A good consultant is going to offer feedback on a poorly conceived project, but if there is any chance of success they are going to offer constructive feedback that makes the project a success for both the client and the consultant. That is, they are going to try to create more jobs out of it. A corporate software developer, on the other hand, is truly a partner in the business. Their profit sharing, their performance evaulation, their reputation, and even their honor are riding on the success of the project. If they feel the project is not going to provide an adequate return on the company's investment, they are generally going to be very quick to say so. It is not exactly like turning down a film, but the principle is similar. Their success is directly tied to the success of the enterprise.
This attitude can anger internal business clients. They perceive that the IT community is quashing their dream or protecting IT turf. In reality, IT is just trying to help the business continue making good business decisions by providing feedback from their area of expertise. And isn't that exactly what we are all supposed to do in this enlightened age of empowerment? 4:09:26 PM 
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Writing Posts From Radio's Outliner. For the last week I have been writing all of my posts from an outline in Radio and loving it. It turns out to be pretty easy to set up, if you are reasonably comfortable with working in Radio. I still have some additions I want to make to the framework and hope to tackle some of these additions in the weeks ahead.
3:47:21 PM
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Restoring Radio's Default Background ... Mark, you can get the plain display to come back -- you don't have to restart Radio -- just right click on the background and choose Back. The "normal" background is also a Web page. It's in a file named background.html in the Appearance sub-folder of the Radio folder. You can edit that file, of course. (But keep a copy so you can restore it. Mark is right, it can get awkward, but it's lots of fun to play with.) [Scripting News]Thanks for the update Dave. I thought I tried the context menu to get back to Radio's default background, but I clearly did not try hard enough. It works just like you said it would. 3:32:30 PM
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ActiveWords has made its way back on to my desktop. I have shuttled through a few machines in the last few months and never bothered to re-install ActiveWords, but I found that I really missed some of its features. First, the Misspellings application that automatically corrects some of my common spelling errors. Second, the Outlook application that enables me to launch an email, or check my calendar, without leaving the keyboard. I also have several pet text subsitutions that I rely upon (e.g. date and time). At one time I really liked ActiveWords a lot, then I kind of fell away from it. Maybe now I'll finally get it and stick with it. 1:27:42 PM
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The Streaming Download Project is investigating and documenting Microsoft's Media Server (MMS) streaming protocol. They have documents describing MMS and tools for actually downloading a stream for offline listening/viewing. 9:39:34 AM
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The Sanctity of Life in a Brave New World “... in biotechnology we meet the moral challenge of the twenty-first century. For the uniqueness of human nature is at stake. Human dignity is indivisible: the aged, the sick, the very young, those with genetic diseases—every human being is possessed of an equal dignity; any threat to the dignity of one is a threat to us all.” [From A Manifesto on Biotechnology and Human Dignity] 9:01:42 AM
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