Jinn of Quality and Risk

Santa comes down the chimney of rotorwash on a static line and hits the ground hard. When he gets up, he's already firing. He's got that glint in his eye. You know the one; you've seen it in his press photos, and on TV. It's like he knows exactly who the good guys and the bad guys are. He knows who's been naughty and who's been nice. No one even questions him. Right about now, I'm sure glad I haven't been naughty. [Kenneth Brady, via boing boing] 

Weinberg: In addition to all the other benefits, reviews teach while testing. Review participants learn about a number of things that are important to their development as software engineering professionals. [via Tony Bowden] Reviews are so valuable that one has to wonder why some people are always trying to avoid them (either as reviewer or reviewee). In my experience, people who show no interest in performing project reviews (or treat it as a joke) tend to display unwelcome behaviours in other contexts: lack of professionalism, manipulative reports, power games, and an unwillingness to learn. Project teams who reject or avoid project reviews are usually the ones in denial and trouble. 

Jerry Weinberg: If a system doesn't have to be reliable, it can meet any other objective. [via Tony Bowden] 

Peter Merholz and Nathan Shedroff: Contrary to common wisdom, user-centered design is not a process, but a philosophy. User-centered design requires the inclusion of a product's end-users throughout the design process. The primary benefit of user-centered design is that, when performed well, it ensures that the product is useful, usable, and meaningful to the end-user. Also, many of the low-fidelity methods developed to accomplish user-centered design allow for shortened development cycles. 

Farideh Tehrani: Everyday, my peers and I sit and talk [in Tehran]. We want only one thing: Freedom... Sometimes I check the Internet for news. At other times, my friends and I watch satellite television or listen to the short-wave radio broadcasts of the freed world. We are constantly amazed, though, at how different our reality is from what some American journalists, academics, and opinion-makers portray it as. So often, we hear self-described Iran experts on CNN and reporters in America's leading newspapers explain away the dictatorship under which we suffer. Our free press should support individual freedom everywhere, instead of singing paeans to dictators. Anything less is moral treason. 

NYT: Some of the most closely guarded financial secrets of the accounting firm Ernst & Young, a private partnership, have been disclosed in divorce proceedings involving its new chief executive... The interesting part in these events is not the private details that are being revealed. Although I am not in favour of public, involuntary dissections of private conflicts, especially when it comes to a divorce, the trend towards opening up corporate books, whether publicly or privately held, is a very good one. Being able to hold people accountable for their actions is a value. Accountability follows from visibility. Responsible behaviour does not grow in hiding. Thanks to modern technology, free markets and individualist mores, we are increasingly drifting away from secrecy (encryption notwithstanding; its main value is in preserving trust and enabling transactions, not avoiding accountability). Some people will learn these lessons in hard, expensive ways. 

Ehud Barak: [Arabs] are products of a culture in which to tell a lie... creates no dissonance. ... Truth is seen as an irrelevant category. There is only that which serves your purpose and that which doesn't. Anyone acting like that in the West would be deemed a manipulative psychopath. Politicians excepted. 

Atlantis (in Swedish): ...och själv jag är ingen gud, du är inte nån gudinna, och jag blir aldrig slav, du får aldrig bli slavinna
Men förmågan att älska är nödvändig att vinna för att inte forlora sig själv
Till det gamla, till det enkla, det bekväma, till det mönster vi måste bryta

Used to listen to his songs 20+ years ago; found an old tape; looked him up on Google; didn't know he had died [1947-1999]. He was some sort of revolutionary, opposed to power. I loved this song, Atlantis (where is it?). Translation of the above:
I am no god, you are no goddess, and I'll never be a slave, I'll never let you be a slave
But the ability to love must of necessity be won so as not to lose oneself
To the old, to the simple, the comfortable, to the patterns we must break