Wednesday, March 10, 2004

At the dinner table

Scene 1 : Neil and Jill are having dinner at the table with their children Zoe (5) and Johnny (3). N: I've just been reading about the Americans and their off-shoring problems. They're getting in a right state about it. J: Yes, and it's happening over here too. N: Yeah, but that's more call centre staff, not IT jobs. J: But Radio 4 had something about, what was it, ... lawyers! N: Huh? J: Yeah, there are call centres in India set up to answer legal questions, you know, process claims and so on, and they're fully trained lawyers. Trained up on English law too. N: I wonder if it'll turn out the way things did with Japan. First their cars were cheap rubbish, but then they got better and next thing you know they're a major threat to us and everyone's going to lose their jobs to them. Then the rest of us get our act together and start making better cars. Twenty years down the line, Japan is just another member of our 'club'. Now someone else is threatening to break into our club and we're up in arms again. Give them twenty or thirty years and they'll be just another member of the club. Z: Do girls go there? N: Huh, sorry, what Zoe? Z: This club, do girls go there? 6:40:37 PM

This Fast Company article is pure gold

Here are a few more snippets: This is what it's like inside Google. It is a joint founded by geeks and run by geeks. It is a collection of 650 really smart people who are almost frighteningly single-minded. "These are people who think they are creating something that's the best in the world," says Peter Norvig, a Google engineering director. "And that product is changing people's lives." Hands up everyone who really thinks their department is creating something that's the best in the world... Okay, not that many. Now, hands up all those who think their department is pushing out a load of barely adequate software at the edge of their capability envelope... Wow, so many of you! Right, keep those hands up for a moment, now keep you hand up if you think you could create something that's the best in the world if you were just given a bit of time to think about what you do for a living... Ha, I think we all agree on that one. Geeks are different from the rest of us, so it's no surprise that they've created a different sort of company. Google is, in fact, their dream house. It also happens to be among the best-run companies in the technology sector. At a moment when much of business has resigned itself to the pursuit of sameness and safety, Google proposes an almost joyous antidote to mediocrity, a model for smart innovation in challenging times. Google's tale is a familiar one: Two Stanford doctoral students, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, developed a set of algorithms that in 1998 sparked a holy-shit leap in Web-search performance. What is it about two guys in a garage that generates so many revolutions? "For a while," Rosing says, "I had 160 direct reports. No managers. It worked because the teams knew what they had to do. That set a cultural bit in people's heads: You are the boss. Don't wait to take the hill. Don't wait to be managed." And if you fail, fine. On to the next idea. "There's faith here in the ability of smart, well-motivated people to do the right thing," Rosing says. "Anything that gets in the way of that is evil." 2:52:05 PM

Google vs CMM

The challenge is negotiating the tension between risk and caution. When Rosing started at Google in 2001, "we had management in engineering. And the structure was tending to tell people, No, you can't do that." So Google got rid of the managers. Now most engineers work in teams of three, with project leadership rotating among team members. If something isn't right, even if it's in a product that has already gone public, teams fix it without asking anyone. [Fast Company] Fabulous, wonderful, amen and hallelujah! Can we get the Software Engineering Institute to hardwire this into the Capability Maturity Model, please? "we had management in engineering. And the structure was tending to tell people, No, you can't do that." So Google got rid of the managers. Is anyone out there under the illusion that introducing CMM into their business is ever going to turn it into something as great as Google? What will your business look like when you've finally documented all those processes, accounted for everyone's actions and received your level five certification? The SEI's Capability Maturity Model for Software does for quality software, what MacDonalds has done for quality hamburgers. 1:32:49 PM

Apple's one-button mouse

The Macintosh at 20: Interview with Jef Raskin. Nice interview with Jef Raskin, creator of the Macintosh project at Apple and bOING bOING contributor. very confused as to its use and when I was designing the software for the Macintosh, in designing the interface, I figured that if there was only one button, there would never be any question on what you have to press the number of ways of using a one-button mouse. I think this was probably a mistake, in fact there is an appendix in my book which discusses why I think this was a mistake and what I think I should have done. One of the reasons I made the mistake is that there is a certain school of industrial design dating back to the Bauhaus which says that designs have to be simple, uncluttered, and clean. In particular, don't put writing on it except for brand names or logos. If we had had a multiple-button mouse with two keys, labeled something like "select" and "activate," it would have been much easier to use, but the idea of putting writing on keys did not occur to anybody, including me. So if I was designing one today, it would have two buttons and they would be labeled. The labeling also the other good effect of forcing software designers to use them as labels otherwise it's clear that they are being misused. Link [Boing Boing Blog] At last someone from Apple is calling the one-button mouse a mistake. The one-button issue put me off Macs for years; if they were so dumb that they couldn't see the point of a second mouse button, then I didn't want anything to do with them. That, and the stupidity of ejecting a floppy by putting it in the trash, turned me into a raving anti-Mac user. I figured that Apple had the Italian designer's disease; the triumph of style over substance. Not that I was a fan of Windows. It is a horribly unstable environment to work in. There were days at my last corporate client's site when I thought myself lucky because the reset button still worked on the laptop. On other days, I had to take the battery out to get the damn thing to restart. Four or five resets in a morning really tries your patience. In the end, I gave up on the Windows laptop the client had issued me with. I did all my work in Office on my PowerBook and shuttled the results across to their system with my JumpDrive. That way, I could keep working while all those around me were cursing Windows. I'm not a great fan of Linux. I've been a Unix user for years, starting with Data General boxes in 1989. I love developing in Unix and I love the idea of Linux, but trying to get a Linux system set up at home was always a complete nightmare. I just couldn't get the drivers for this, that or the other. Then, Apple came out with Mac OS X. A Unix operating system with a civilised front-end. In fact, quite a groovy front-end. And wow, look at that sexy titanium laptop with the amazing screen. I really wanted one, but couldn't justify it. Then one day, completely by accident, I ran over my Compaq laptop. A week or two later I had a shiny, well matte actually, new PowerBook. It was only after I'd spent my £2,000+ that Jill said I should see if the household insurance would cover the laptop. The thought had never occurred to me! In the end, the insurance company provided me with a Toshiba Satellite with XP Pro. It sits in the corner, never being used. I do everything on this PowerBook now and I've even found a justification for having a one-button mouse. Back in 1993-5 I spent a huge amount of time using a case tool called GraphTalk. For most of the time I was clicking and dragging with a two-button mouse and after a couple of years I got RSI in my right wrist. There followed years of experimentation with left-hand mousing and alternative devices like thumb balls and track balls. Left-hand mousing seemed to work fine, and right-hand mousing with a laptop has never given me any trouble. I think the real cause of the RSI is the presence of a numeric key pad on most keyboads. This useless extension forces right-handers to place their mouse waaayyyyy over to the right. That makes them over extend their reach and lower their wrist resulting in shoulder pain and carpal tunnel damage. And the justification for one mouse button? Well, you simulate the second mouse button by pressing the ctlr-key on the left side of the keyboard while you click with the mouse in your right hand. This balance of left and right activities helps to keep you square to the laptop. After a few minutes you get used to it; half an hour later, and you've forgotten how to use a two-button mouse. 11:41:52 AM

He orks hard for a living

Nader kicks Mastercard's ass in fair-use fight. Ralph "Don't Run" Nader has won a key legal battle against Mastercard. Mastercard sued Nader over a parody of its "priceless" ad campaign that Nader maintained was a fair use -- and today the NY Southern District Court ruled in Nader's favor. My cow-orker Jason Schultz has the scoop. Back in 2000, Ralph Nader ran ... Link [Boing Boing Blog] So, what does Jason do to the poor cows with the scoop? Yeah, yeah, juvenile, I know, but it made me snigger. 10:52:08 AM

Blogging and literacy

Blogging as literacy in Europe and Scandinavia. PT wrote asking about blogging as a pedagogical practice and literacy practice: "I am discovering that a lot of the ideas and writing on blogs is coming from Europe/Scandinavia. I have not thought much about blogging as literacy. For me blogging is a practical matter of finding new ideas, and processing my own ideas for publication elsewhere. Perhaps a reader (if I still have some) could comment on the literacy aspect? [Universal Rule] I've found it remarkably hard to write blog entries. I do a lot of boring technical writing in my day job but I don't want to write blog entries in that style. I find that I drift into a conversational style, you know what I mean, like? I'm not sure how it comes across, a bit amateurish perhaps? Whatever, it really does make you think about what you're writing, and that can only improve your literacy. 10:39:13 AM