The government agency I used to work at hired me as their first official webmaster. I was placed in the Public Affairs office, but I also reported directly to the Chief of Staff. Of course, in order to effectively manage content, I had to take information from several different departments, all with their own agendas. Prioritizing whose content would go up where and when became a nightmare.
So I decided to change things around. I formed a committee (yes, an evil committee, but bear with me). The members were mid-level people from each of the dozen or so internal constituencies. We met twice a month to review the direction of the site. They would inform me if something I was doing bothered them, or if they wanted something new added.
I would also meet individually with these members, and we'd prioritize the content for their department. I'd then collect all of the content "wish lists" together into one master list. The committee members could then see the entire list, and see where their items were on the list. I'd have the Chief of Staff review the list as well, and since they knew he'd signed of on it, they couldn't hassle me when a priority of theirs wasn't high on the list.
The best thing was that these mid-level people were the sole content managers within their departments. All content for that section of the site had to go through them, and then on to me. If they slacked off on the job, or didn't help me out enough, I could talk to their supervisor about it. If they did a good job, they got kudos from the boss, if they screwed up, everyone in that department knew why their part of the site was lagging.
It wasn't a perfect solution, and it can't be applied in every organization, but it helped me maintain my sanity as the sole person developing and maintaining a 1,200+ page site. Even though I left three years ago, the structure I put in place is still being used, and the site has more than doubled in size.
The key to it all is that you have to try and understand human nature. Everyone wants to sharpshoot you if you fail, but by setting up a system that puts other people in the loop while still giving you primary control over development, you can keep your sanity, and more importantly, build a system that will work for everyone.
Essentially, a lot of people have realized that the currrent domestic air transportation system is flawed, primarily because "hub" airports force us to spend more time getting to the airport, getting on the plane, and then driving from the airport to our actual destination than we need to. In fact, much of the time we'd save time by just driving.
So in order to make domestic air travel actually efficient, NASA and others are working to reinvent the system. If you're at all interested in the future of domestic air travel, read the article. Fallows does his homework, and it's a good read.
You're right. The government certainly doesn't get it either. Unfortunate indeed that the government is supposed to be the party forcing Microsoft to learn.
Well Zico, I don't know you, and you don't know me, but you're not going to persuade me of anything by name-calling. But then, you're not really out to change my mind, are you?
Also, I have no argument with you about Microsoft being one of the most successful companies in history. What I'm getting at is that companies which reach this level of success have to learn to play by a different rulebook.
The corporate culture that made Microsoft so successful in getting to where it is now has also engendered a lot of ill-will. When you're that big and powerful, the last thing you want is to create situations where consumers look for other alternatives because they think you're not taking corporate responsibility seriously.
The thing that most bothers me about this settlement proposal is not that Microsoft is engaging in yet another huge marketing effort. It's that Microsoft still doesn't *get it*.
The only way any kind of settlement with Microsoft will accomplish anything is if the people who make up Microsoft's leadership actually alter their behavior.
This latest proposal shows that Microsoft is fundamentally incapable of changing its core DNA to suit a new paradigm. While all public businesses are driven by valuation, Microsoft doesn't realize that when a corporation reaches a certain size and power in the marketplace, it carries additional responsibilities.
Microsoft prides itself on providing boundless upward value to stockholders, but it seems to have a huge mental block when it comes to assessing its role in the larger culture.
Microsoft, corporate competitors, and Open Source
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Good to Great
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Well put.
Both books point to the idea that a business is actually a culture. Taking it further, you could say that a business is a society of its own, to a certain degree.
Is Ellison creating a structure that can survive after he leaves? Is Jobs? The jury is still out, but whether we like it or not, Microsoft has created an internal culture, a society that cultivates leaders who are watch makers rather than clock-watchers.
It makes me wonder if ultimately Open Source might be the only culture currently capable of taking on Microsoft over the long haul. With the notable exceptions of Linus, ESR, and Stallman, there are few Open Source "leaders" who capture the popular imagination.
The Open Source movement took quite some time to germinate. Its approach is incremental, much like the flywheel described in Good to Great. Because Open Source as a movement isn't dependent on the success of individual companies making profits, perhaps the current round of Open Source bashing is a bit premature.
Open Source has a much longer time horizon than most corporations. The development of OS software will continue, regardless of the success or failure of VA, RedHat, et. al. Ultimately, perhaps this is why Microsoft is so schizophrenic about Open Source. They realize that it may be the only culture that can compete effectively with theirs.
Actually, Chris was not dealing with Avie (note the spelling) from Apple. He was dealing with an old, annoying.AVI file that Sparkle somehow couldn't convert to QuickTime. Thus the annoyance.
Is to actually exercise. "Tricking" your body and brain into thinking that you're moving your muscles around isn't an effective way to exercise. That's why every time a product like this comes out (remember how big the "ride your stationary bike with the fake moving digital scenery in front of you" products tanked a couple years ago), they all bomb.
The bottom line is that in order to improve your cardio or muscle performance, you have to actually EXERCISE. That means you're not playing a video game, whether standing, sitting, bouncing, or sliding from side to side.
You're running, cycling, rowing, climbing, lifting, or doing some other form of focused physical exercise. Study after study has shown that people get more out of exercise when they're paying attention to what their bodies are doing. In other words, when they're focused on exercising.
Sometimes there are no technology solutions to issues that are mental. It's difficult to stay motivated to exercise, but it's also a self-reinforcing thing. The more of it you force yourself to do, the more of it you'll want to do, and the easier it is to motivate yourself.
Plus, the real, physical experience of blasting down a single-track on a mountain bike beats any video game ever created.
Two years ago, PacBell was putting out all of these offers for DSL - cheap, fast, etc. The problem was, they didn't have service rolled out yet. The parent company, SBC, was offering something they didn't have the capacity to actually implement. Why? Because they were scared of cable companies and pioneering DSL providers like Covad.
When I first made an inquiry with PacBell about getting DSL service, they told me I was too far out. So I contacted Covad, and lo and behold, they hooked me up. I had service through Fastpoint Communications. It was awesome. I had true, always-on static IP, blazing-fast DSL.
But Fastpoint had a difficult time getting DSL subscribers, due largely to the fact that PacBell was able to jam marketing messages down the throats of phone customers, not to mention TV ads, magazine articles, and the like. Of course, the fact that most PacBell customers were having installation nightmares was beside the point.
I actually had one friend who spent six months trying to get connected through PacBell. FIVE home visits later, they finally got it working. Another friend actually had to contact the California VP of Sales for PacBell in order to get some action on his stalled installation. Talk about a bait and switch tactic.
In any case, Fastpoint went belly-up. So Covad passed me on to Earthlink. Whatever problems Earthlink is having seem to be self-created. Their phone support people are truly awesome - great attitude, very helpful. But it took a while for my service to get started, and I was actually DSL-less for two months. Once it started working, I was moderately satisfied with my new PPPoE (yech!) connection, but not as happy as I'd been before with Fastpoint.
Then I wanted to add a second phone number to my apartment. I had to switch to PacBell for my DSL because since they own the voice line, the only way to get a true DSL Internet and voice on the same line setup is if you use PacBell!
So now I am using PacBell, with an annoying PPPoE, dynamic IP setup. I've just put in an order to convert over to static IP, which means I'll now pay $70/mo., and I'll have five IP addresses, when all I really need is one, perhaps two.
I work from home, so fast, reliable Internet access is key for me. I use PacBell because I basically have no other choice. They submarined the competition, played every stall tactic in the book, and now they're a local monopoly.
Will there be any action on this at the state or federal level? With the current economic and political climate, that's highly unlikely. To me, the subversion of competition in broadband was the real tragedy of the dot-bomb crash. I don't give a crap about pets.com, but we all lost out on a great opportunity when the Baby Bells subverted true competition.
dot-bomb to dot-biz, the logic is clear!
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.biz Open For Biz
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· Score: 2
I predict that soon all of the failing dot-coms that are still alive will convert their business names to.biz. Heck, we may even get some of the old.coms resurrected as.bizes.
We can go through the entire cycle all over again. The Industry Standard will.. oh, wait.. uhh.. "Smart Company" will tout the virtues of new and innovative.biz companies. Headlines on Forbes will scream: "Making Sense of the Dot-Biz Boom," while the Economist will caution against investment bubbles.
The fearless among us will leave our cushy, well-paid jobs at established companies (wait, there aren't many cushy jobs left, are there?), to try our luck on the merry-go-wheel of the Dot-Biz economy.
After a while, Microsoft will gobble up the first few big Dot-Biz companies. The rest will go through all their funding with no profits to show for it. Most will tank. Angry investors will file lawsuits, alleging that they were misled by exorbitant claims of dot.biz companies.
A few survivors will limp along, and a few will survive. Eventually, someone will come up with the idea of a new top-level domain...
1) It's obviously just an excuse for the domain registrars to make more money.
2) Web users don't grok it. Let's face it, most Web users think AOL is the Web. They don't know about.gov or.org, they don't even know.mil exists, and if you throw a.ru or a.uk at them, they can't cope.
3) Would you want to have your company at: mygoofyasscompany.biz? It just sounds so.. so.. 1990s!
If you're a terrorist organization, you can continue killing people, as long as you keep doing it within your own nation.
I think that's a pretty realistic assessment of the way things are *now*. I mean, domestic terrorism is quite different than international terrorism. Conflicts that are internal in nature generally only show up on everyone else's radar screens when they spill over into the international arena.
One reason for this is that most nation-states have zero interest in airing their dirty laundry in front of the rest of the world. Spain hasn't asked for assistance in combatting the Basques because they don't want to admit that the Basques are even a problem. Why ruin your tourist revenue by talking about Basques running around in the hills killing people?
Essentially what we're talking about are tacit rules of engagement. The long-accepted view of terrorism has been that the best way to deal with it is at home. If you're a particularly weak government, you ask for money from the United States, and you beef up your internal security.
Notice that client states such as the Phillipines get money to combat terrorist movements, but major western powers don't. That's because until now, those powers have felt confident in their ability to either squash the terrorists or at least put up with them, limiting their attacks to a car bomb here, an assasination there.
My guess is that a lot of those more powerful nations will start to re-evaluate their own relationships with their internal enemies. For example, we may see much more scrutiny of financial relationships between terrorist organizations and donors, even for example IRA donors from the United States.
If any real war on terrorism is going to win, that sort of re-examination of the rules of engagement will have to occur.
Different enemy, different approach (long)
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A New Kind of War
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· Score: 2
Perhaps the largest difference between this war and most others is that it is not a war between nation-states.
Osama bin Laden is only one of the combatants here. Let's think about who the combatants are in this conflict, which has already been going on for several years:
1) North America, Western Europe, Israel, and supportive other nations (India, Japan, et. al.)
vs.
2) A very loose network of independently-funded, sometimes (but not always) externally-supported terrorists whose agendas differ, but whose means are similar.
There are Basque terrorists in Spain, clamoring for statehood and independence. Palestinian terrorists decry Israel's occupation of their homeland, and fight to remove them from Palestine. Narco-terrorists in Columbia attempt to destabilize the national government so they can make money more easily. Bin Laden directs attacks against the United States and Saudi Arabia because of his rigid fundamentalist view of Islam. The IRA wages war on what it sees as Protestant invaders, fanning flames that the majority of Northern Irish people want extinguished.
All these groups are pursuing different aims, but they all are using the same means - extranational use of force. Groups of armed combatants who do not necessarily represent the views of the majority of the population.
In the days before September 11, 2001, the differences between these groups and older insurrections, such as the Viet Cong, the American Minutemen, and the Russian Communists, may have been hard to discern.
But now the real difference is clear. Those organizations were limited both in means and in goals. Their efforts were focused exclusively on obtaining control of specific geography, for the purpose of governing it themselves. In the main, most terrorists groups still are after that goal (IRA, Hezbullah, Basque separatists, et. al.).
However, the means for terrorists to wage war far beyond ther own borders has been unleashed. In a sense, what we've seen is less like Pearl Harbor than it is like Hiroshima. While the concept of a massive terrorist attack against a far-away nation has been around for a very long time, this is the first time it has been executed.
So now the reality is sinking in. Extranational terrorist groups, which are just small collections of active individuals, are now capable of unleashing the kind of destructive force previously restricted for use by nation-states.
Imagine that you're Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of the UK. Your nation has been fighting IRA terrorism for decades, and now the US endures this massive assault from terrorists. The first thing that enters your mind is: "Perhaps the IRA will attempt something of this magnitude as well."
Repeat the scenario for any number of presidents, prime ministers, and chairmen of nations around the globe. Every nation-state has enemies. They all must now realize to one degree or another, that their enemies have just been shown that massive attacks are possible.
Recall that the United States gained mastery of nuclear weapons in the late 1940s, but by the 1950s, the Soviets had acquired their own. Soon the Chinese, Indians, and Israelis followed. Now there are over a dozen nuclear-capable states.
In the case of nuclear weapons, we've been fortunate enough to avoid any further use of them beyond WWII. But that is because nuclear weapons have been controlled, so far, by national command and control structures. The implications of launching nuclear weapons when you are the leader of a country, responsible for the survival of your own people, is immense.
Terrorists, who have no national sovereignty to defend, do not have such limitations on behavior.
So this is a world-wide conflict between nation-states and independent small groups who now have been shown a new way to press their goals. Alliances have always been a part of warfare, from the Trojan War to the Gulf War. But in the main, alliances have been formed to deal with one easily-identified enemy. For example, in WWII, the Allies banded together to fight the Axis. Though composed of Germany, Italy, and Japan, the components of theAxis were still easily pinpointed on a map.
Now the threat is much more diverse and much more diffuse - nation-states face potential terrorist action at virtually any time, any place.
Beyond the short-term, technical issues of how we fight terrorists, the long-term approach needs to be wholistic. The world is a smaller place now, and actions that impact one nation impact many. One result of this interconnectedness is that internal politics that disenfranchise, alienate, or radicalize people will now be looked at more closely.
A classic example of this is Israel. By assassinating top Intefada leaders, the Israelis are taking care of an immediate security threat, but they are simultaneously helping to create a whole new generation of disenfranchised Palestinian youth with nothing to lose. In short, they are creating terrorists.
The rest of the world, led by the United States, needs to exert more pressure on Israel to come to an equitable agreement with the Palestinian people, because this conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis is now no longer just their problem, it's everyone's problem.
We need also to think beyond military matters when attempting to diffuse conflicts. We're discovering that bin Laden's financial interests are extremely broad and that he has seemingly profited from the market downturn following his attacks. The international monetary system needs to be re-examined from perspective of international security. While financial privacy is important, when someone has been identified as a terrorist, we should be capable of choking off their most immediate air supply, which is money.
Every terrorist organization needs physical space to operate, even if their activities are dispersed and controlled from afar. Terrorist training camps in Libya, for example, have been showing terrorists how to wage war for decades now. Shutting them down is a key means of denying terrorists the ability to perfect their craft and plan their missions. If the international community collectively puts terrorism-supporting nations such as Iraq and Libya on notice, and destroys their ability to defend themselves swiftly and without warning if and when such camps are discovered on their territory, we'll see far less willingness to support terrorism.
Our HUMINT (human intelligence) capabilities were curtailed years ago as part of the "the Cold War is over, we don't need to be involved with nasty people" mentality of the time. We need to get off our high horse and get down in the mud. Human intelligence is vital to infiltrating terrorist cells and stopping violence before it starts.
Finally, our ability to defeat terrorists will not be contingent upon some sort of ballistic missile shiled costing billions of dollars. It will be contingent primarily on our ability to insert special operations forces at the right time and place to execute surgical strikes on terrorist cells. In short, we need to place the terrorists more off-guard than they can place us.
The western world has a wide array of resources in this regard, but the coordination of intelligence, logistics, and operational assets will be complicated. The more coordination, the more chances for over-complication and security leaks. Nonetheless, this must be a multinational effort, sustained over time.
It won't be easy. It won't involve teams of hackers taking down someone's website and winning the war. It will involve skilled, dedicated people risking their lives to kill terrorists. People will die, but it will truly be so that others may live. 21st century Americans hate to admit it, but wars aren't antiseptic, and they're not video games.
This one will be long, difficult, and frustrating, but one thing is certain: the terrorist's days of easy living are over.
I'm going to play Devil's Advocate here. I like the idea of small, lightweight software components for desktop computing, but this has been tried before. Here's the only link I could find to OpenDoc.
Basically, Apple's idea was to build small software components that could talk to each other and be loaded as necessary to accomplish specific tasks.
It was a great idea, and still is. I think the problem isn't so much the technology implementation as it is getting developers to see the benefits of such an approach.
Yes, developers. If you're running a software company, creating small components allows you less room to innovate on features. This in turn makes it more difficult to market your products.
I know your suggestion was that Linux adopt such a component-based approach for productivity apps, and it wouldn't seem that the limitations of the commercial world would apply. But the dominant paradigm in office computing is still the monolithic app, because that's what commercial developers are providing.
So for now at least, Linux developers will probably have to fight this fight alone. In order to convince users to make the shift away from MS Office, et. al., Linux apps have to offer a solution that's easier to use and faster by a factor of at least two. It's been shown time and time again that in order to overthrow a paradigm, the resulting benefits have to be not just incrementally better, but exponentially better.
Finally, is it even worth the effort? See the October issue of Wired, for an article by former Red Hatter Russ Mitchell, about why going after the desktop is a bad idea.
Unfortunately, the world is not organized around the principle that quality will always win the battle against mediocrity.
For example, Microsoft is the biggest software company in the world specifically because they realized early on that consumers are less interested in getting quality than they are in getting something that meets their perceived needs.
This is an important point, because unfortunately the most important aspects of software quality are usually hidden from the end user. Since most consumers actually do realize that they don't know jack about the inner workings of their software, they elect not to get inovlved in the esoterica of which kernel is more stable or which file system kicks ass.
Let's make the assumption that your company's clients aren't consumers. Let's say they're aerospace engineers. Smart peope. People concerned with quality. But the quality they are most concerned with is the quality of their own work. So their attention is primarily focused on how well the software you build for them will help them create quality aerospace products.
Also, keep in mind that the cash that runs your client's company and your company has to come from somewhere. Cashflow can often be a huge issue for clients. If a client knows that they can spend $50k for something they know they'll get in an imperfect form one month from now, versus $100k for something that they know is more elegant more cost-efficient over the long haul, they may elect to spend the $50k because their short-term financial concerns dictate that they deal with a lower quality solution now if it will give them just enough to do what they need done.
Even if your manager understands that the quality way is better, more likely than not she'd have a tough time convincing the client of that. In fact, in my experience, clients often don't really want to hear about deep quality issues. "Just tell me the tradeoffs, and I'll make the decision" they'll say. They simply don't want to really know the nitty-gritty details. "That's what I hired you for!"
The Bottom Line is money, and if your software is good enough that your clients can make money with it, most of them will vote with their pocketbooks. Most companies simply follow the buck, from quarter to quarter.
One thing you might try is to evaluate your next employer not just on the work conditions and pay, but also on who their clients are. There are companies out there that actually think long-term. An excellent book on the subject, "Built to Last" goes into detail about the characteristics of visionary companies. Yes, it sounds like cheesy business-speak crap, but these guys conducted extensive research, and they avoid easy answers.
Find a company that serves long-term oriented clients, and you may find yourself a lot happier.
Of course, Sun Tzu wrote about deception. But he didn't *invent it* - people were practicing it in war long before he wrote about it, and people who have never even heard of him have been writing about it and practicing it since.;-)
Think of it this way - the NSA has to always operate under the assumption that it is in a state of war. The more information it can gather, the more knowledge about potential threats it can accumulate, the better. The weaker it appears to its potential enemies, the better.
Attila the Hun actually almost never outnumbered his opponents. He won using carefully-crafted deception plans and sheer terror to demoralize his enemies.
The Allies were able to intercept and decrypt a huge chunk of Nazi messages throughout WWII as a result of their ongoing effort to crack Enigma. These decrypts probably shortened the war in Europe by months if not years, but they had to use the intercepts wisely, so as not to tip off the Germans.
During the 1950s, the Russians talked about atomic bombs 'rolling off the assembly lines like sausages', when they actually had a very limited stockpile.
The point is that sometimes you deceive your enemy into thinking that you're stronger than you are, and at other times you make them think you're weaker than you actually are.
Intelligence agencies are any nation's first and last line of defense. They're the ones that tip off leaders about potential dangers, well before they surface on CNN or in the pages of the Washington Times. They're also the ones who can provide the necessary misdirection so that critical programs are not detected by the intelligence resources of other nations.
Case in point: The F-117 Stealth Fighter. Remember when Testor's came out with a plastic model of what they thought the Stealth looked like? The Pentagon freaked out on Testor's and tried to keep them from selling the model kit. Of course, when it was revealed a few years later that an F-117 group had actually been flying *operationally* for several years, and that the Stealth fighter looked nothing like the model, we could all see the depth of the deception effort.
If the NSA releases its doors to the television cameras, *particularly* to 60 Minutes (which has a long history of not having a clue about defense-related matters), it's part of an extensive deception plan.
I designed my own desk setup on paper, then found the Anthro catalog. I was amazed that I could actually configure an Anthro desk to pretty much my exact specs, because they have so many variations.
I've got a two-tier setup that has space for my monitor, printer, USB hub, Visor dock, external CD burner, external HD, external Zip drive, flatbed scanner, my laptop, keyboard, and still enough space for the phone and two spots for putting all my paperwork and associated crap.
I've had other home desk setups before, usually cheap, one-shot arrangements. But as others have mentioned, the Anthro products are very high-quality, sturdy, and attractive. Think of it this way - if you use your home office for hours on end, day after day, wouldn't you rather invest a bit more money for something that will actually keep you happy?
that's it! expect to see me at your neighborhood McDonald's some time this weekend, with an Uzi in one hand, and a copy of Encyclopedia Britannica in the other.;-)
Geeks already realize that popular media coverage of computer-related issues is of poor quality. What they may not realize is that the press has vastly less comprehension of military issues than it does of computers.
I couldn't agree more. Classic cases of this (and I'm just naming a few off the top of my head here):
1) During development, the M1 tank was lambasted by the press because it used a turbine engine. This "gold plating" gives the M1 tremendous acceleration, allows the M1 to use a variety of fuels, and has helped it to become perhaps the most feared land weapon fielded today.
2) Similarly, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle was savaged by 60 Minutes. Unfortunately, many reporters seem completely uninformed about how weapons development and testing proceeds. Like any system, the initial testing version can't possibly be as robust and capable as the fielded version. During Desert Storm, the Bradley proved invaluable. In fact, several actually took direct hits from T-72 tanks and survived. Is version 1.0 of any software ever as good as version 2.0?
3) During the buildup of Operation Desert Shield, many in the media mistakenly opined that the US was unprepared for a desert war. This ignores the very obvious fact that US units had routinely gone through desert warfare training at the National Training Center for almost a decade. Many units also had desert experience through Bright Star joint exercises with Egypt. This is akin to saying that because it's Open Source, Linux is inherently insecure. Someone is just not catching a clue.
4) I don't know how many times I've seen the term "elite" applied to military units that are mediocre at best. A unit that might be considered "elite" in a Third World country is usally no match for a truly elite unit like the SAS, US Army Rangers, Australian SAS, etc. It's like saying "Serving pages from his Apple IIe, Bob was able to run a world-class, high-volume e-commerce website."
I could go on and on, but suffice it to say that my personal experience in the military leads me to believe that by in large, reporters are not as intellectually rigorous as they should be. There are a few good ones out there, like Tom Gjelten of NPR, but they seem few and far between.
The neutron bomb was presented by the media back in the 1980s as a method of bombing an opponent so as to kill its inhabitants, then march in and take over the industrial infrastructure.
This is, of course, absurd, because the neutron bomb's primary purpose was for tactical and operational, rather than strategic, use. The idea is that if you can affect your enemy over the same area with a 1 kiloton neutron weapon as with a 13 kiloton fission weapon, you can essentially "manage" the nuclear battlefield better.
The neutron bomb concept came out of a rethinking of US defense policy, a reorientation towards a strategy oriented around actually fighting the Soviet Union at the point of attack, rather than relying on the Massive Retaliation policy of the 1970s.
Although eventually the DoD found other methods of answering Soviet numerical superiority (deep strikes from the air, force multipliers like the M1 tank, precision guided artillery, cruise missiles, and so on), the neutron bomb was never seriously considered as a means of "saving the industry". Even generals know about radiation.;-)
See here for a bit more about the neutron bomb in the context of overall defense planning.
The only deal I saw from DISH was a combined setup, but then again, I didn't go too far into their site to find out. That's great that it runs on Linux.
Glad you did throw it out there - just knowing that there are options, even if none is perfect, helps.
I'm not too keen on paying $100/mo for the DISH network with StarBand service included in that. Not to mention the fact that StarBand seems to run only on "PC"s, most likely meaning Windows machines. I'm assuming that rules out Macs and Linux boxes. Am I right?
Slashdot Mirror
So I decided to change things around. I formed a committee (yes, an evil committee, but bear with me). The members were mid-level people from each of the dozen or so internal constituencies. We met twice a month to review the direction of the site. They would inform me if something I was doing bothered them, or if they wanted something new added.
I would also meet individually with these members, and we'd prioritize the content for their department. I'd then collect all of the content "wish lists" together into one master list. The committee members could then see the entire list, and see where their items were on the list. I'd have the Chief of Staff review the list as well, and since they knew he'd signed of on it, they couldn't hassle me when a priority of theirs wasn't high on the list.
The best thing was that these mid-level people were the sole content managers within their departments. All content for that section of the site had to go through them, and then on to me. If they slacked off on the job, or didn't help me out enough, I could talk to their supervisor about it. If they did a good job, they got kudos from the boss, if they screwed up, everyone in that department knew why their part of the site was lagging.
It wasn't a perfect solution, and it can't be applied in every organization, but it helped me maintain my sanity as the sole person developing and maintaining a 1,200+ page site. Even though I left three years ago, the structure I put in place is still being used, and the site has more than doubled in size.
The key to it all is that you have to try and understand human nature. Everyone wants to sharpshoot you if you fail, but by setting up a system that puts other people in the loop while still giving you primary control over development, you can keep your sanity, and more importantly, build a system that will work for everyone.
Best of luck - I feel your pain.
Essentially, a lot of people have realized that the currrent domestic air transportation system is flawed, primarily because "hub" airports force us to spend more time getting to the airport, getting on the plane, and then driving from the airport to our actual destination than we need to. In fact, much of the time we'd save time by just driving.
So in order to make domestic air travel actually efficient, NASA and others are working to reinvent the system. If you're at all interested in the future of domestic air travel, read the article. Fallows does his homework, and it's a good read.
You're right. The government certainly doesn't get it either. Unfortunate indeed that the government is supposed to be the party forcing Microsoft to learn.
Also, I have no argument with you about Microsoft being one of the most successful companies in history. What I'm getting at is that companies which reach this level of success have to learn to play by a different rulebook.
The corporate culture that made Microsoft so successful in getting to where it is now has also engendered a lot of ill-will. When you're that big and powerful, the last thing you want is to create situations where consumers look for other alternatives because they think you're not taking corporate responsibility seriously.
The only way any kind of settlement with Microsoft will accomplish anything is if the people who make up Microsoft's leadership actually alter their behavior.
This latest proposal shows that Microsoft is fundamentally incapable of changing its core DNA to suit a new paradigm. While all public businesses are driven by valuation, Microsoft doesn't realize that when a corporation reaches a certain size and power in the marketplace, it carries additional responsibilities.
Microsoft prides itself on providing boundless upward value to stockholders, but it seems to have a huge mental block when it comes to assessing its role in the larger culture.
Both books point to the idea that a business is actually a culture. Taking it further, you could say that a business is a society of its own, to a certain degree.
Is Ellison creating a structure that can survive after he leaves? Is Jobs? The jury is still out, but whether we like it or not, Microsoft has created an internal culture, a society that cultivates leaders who are watch makers rather than clock-watchers.
It makes me wonder if ultimately Open Source might be the only culture currently capable of taking on Microsoft over the long haul. With the notable exceptions of Linus, ESR, and Stallman, there are few Open Source "leaders" who capture the popular imagination.
The Open Source movement took quite some time to germinate. Its approach is incremental, much like the flywheel described in Good to Great. Because Open Source as a movement isn't dependent on the success of individual companies making profits, perhaps the current round of Open Source bashing is a bit premature.
Open Source has a much longer time horizon than most corporations. The development of OS software will continue, regardless of the success or failure of VA, RedHat, et. al. Ultimately, perhaps this is why Microsoft is so schizophrenic about Open Source. They realize that it may be the only culture that can compete effectively with theirs.
Is to actually exercise. "Tricking" your body and brain into thinking that you're moving your muscles around isn't an effective way to exercise. That's why every time a product like this comes out (remember how big the "ride your stationary bike with the fake moving digital scenery in front of you" products tanked a couple years ago), they all bomb.
The bottom line is that in order to improve your cardio or muscle performance, you have to actually EXERCISE. That means you're not playing a video game, whether standing, sitting, bouncing, or sliding from side to side.
You're running, cycling, rowing, climbing, lifting, or doing some other form of focused physical exercise. Study after study has shown that people get more out of exercise when they're paying attention to what their bodies are doing. In other words, when they're focused on exercising.
Sometimes there are no technology solutions to issues that are mental. It's difficult to stay motivated to exercise, but it's also a self-reinforcing thing. The more of it you force yourself to do, the more of it you'll want to do, and the easier it is to motivate yourself.
Plus, the real, physical experience of blasting down a single-track on a mountain bike beats any video game ever created.
When I first made an inquiry with PacBell about getting DSL service, they told me I was too far out. So I contacted Covad, and lo and behold, they hooked me up. I had service through Fastpoint Communications. It was awesome. I had true, always-on static IP, blazing-fast DSL.
But Fastpoint had a difficult time getting DSL subscribers, due largely to the fact that PacBell was able to jam marketing messages down the throats of phone customers, not to mention TV ads, magazine articles, and the like. Of course, the fact that most PacBell customers were having installation nightmares was beside the point.
I actually had one friend who spent six months trying to get connected through PacBell. FIVE home visits later, they finally got it working. Another friend actually had to contact the California VP of Sales for PacBell in order to get some action on his stalled installation. Talk about a bait and switch tactic.
In any case, Fastpoint went belly-up. So Covad passed me on to Earthlink. Whatever problems Earthlink is having seem to be self-created. Their phone support people are truly awesome - great attitude, very helpful. But it took a while for my service to get started, and I was actually DSL-less for two months. Once it started working, I was moderately satisfied with my new PPPoE (yech!) connection, but not as happy as I'd been before with Fastpoint.
Then I wanted to add a second phone number to my apartment. I had to switch to PacBell for my DSL because since they own the voice line, the only way to get a true DSL Internet and voice on the same line setup is if you use PacBell!
So now I am using PacBell, with an annoying PPPoE, dynamic IP setup. I've just put in an order to convert over to static IP, which means I'll now pay $70/mo., and I'll have five IP addresses, when all I really need is one, perhaps two.
I work from home, so fast, reliable Internet access is key for me. I use PacBell because I basically have no other choice. They submarined the competition, played every stall tactic in the book, and now they're a local monopoly.
Will there be any action on this at the state or federal level? With the current economic and political climate, that's highly unlikely. To me, the subversion of competition in broadband was the real tragedy of the dot-bomb crash. I don't give a crap about pets.com, but we all lost out on a great opportunity when the Baby Bells subverted true competition.
We can go through the entire cycle all over again. The Industry Standard will.. oh, wait.. uhh.. "Smart Company" will tout the virtues of new and innovative
The fearless among us will leave our cushy, well-paid jobs at established companies (wait, there aren't many cushy jobs left, are there?), to try our luck on the merry-go-wheel of the Dot-Biz economy.
After a while, Microsoft will gobble up the first few big Dot-Biz companies. The rest will go through all their funding with no profits to show for it. Most will tank. Angry investors will file lawsuits, alleging that they were misled by exorbitant claims of dot.biz companies.
A few survivors will limp along, and a few will survive. Eventually, someone will come up with the idea of a new top-level domain...
.hyp, anyone?
2) Web users don't grok it. Let's face it, most Web users think AOL is the Web. They don't know about .gov or .org, they don't even know .mil exists, and if you throw a .ru or a .uk at them, they can't cope.
3) Would you want to have your company at: mygoofyasscompany.biz? It just sounds so.. so.. 1990s!
Absolutely not. That's my whole point. When a local conflict begins to affect the rest of the world, it is no longer "just a local issue".
I think that's a pretty realistic assessment of the way things are *now*. I mean, domestic terrorism is quite different than international terrorism. Conflicts that are internal in nature generally only show up on everyone else's radar screens when they spill over into the international arena.
One reason for this is that most nation-states have zero interest in airing their dirty laundry in front of the rest of the world. Spain hasn't asked for assistance in combatting the Basques because they don't want to admit that the Basques are even a problem. Why ruin your tourist revenue by talking about Basques running around in the hills killing people?
Essentially what we're talking about are tacit rules of engagement. The long-accepted view of terrorism has been that the best way to deal with it is at home. If you're a particularly weak government, you ask for money from the United States, and you beef up your internal security.
Notice that client states such as the Phillipines get money to combat terrorist movements, but major western powers don't. That's because until now, those powers have felt confident in their ability to either squash the terrorists or at least put up with them, limiting their attacks to a car bomb here, an assasination there.
My guess is that a lot of those more powerful nations will start to re-evaluate their own relationships with their internal enemies. For example, we may see much more scrutiny of financial relationships between terrorist organizations and donors, even for example IRA donors from the United States.
If any real war on terrorism is going to win, that sort of re-examination of the rules of engagement will have to occur.
Osama bin Laden is only one of the combatants here. Let's think about who the combatants are in this conflict, which has already been going on for several years:
1) North America, Western Europe, Israel, and supportive other nations (India, Japan, et. al.)
vs.
2) A very loose network of independently-funded, sometimes (but not always) externally-supported terrorists whose agendas differ, but whose means are similar.
There are Basque terrorists in Spain, clamoring for statehood and independence. Palestinian terrorists decry Israel's occupation of their homeland, and fight to remove them from Palestine. Narco-terrorists in Columbia attempt to destabilize the national government so they can make money more easily. Bin Laden directs attacks against the United States and Saudi Arabia because of his rigid fundamentalist view of Islam. The IRA wages war on what it sees as Protestant invaders, fanning flames that the majority of Northern Irish people want extinguished.
All these groups are pursuing different aims, but they all are using the same means - extranational use of force. Groups of armed combatants who do not necessarily represent the views of the majority of the population.
In the days before September 11, 2001, the differences between these groups and older insurrections, such as the Viet Cong, the American Minutemen, and the Russian Communists, may have been hard to discern.
But now the real difference is clear. Those organizations were limited both in means and in goals. Their efforts were focused exclusively on obtaining control of specific geography, for the purpose of governing it themselves. In the main, most terrorists groups still are after that goal (IRA, Hezbullah, Basque separatists, et. al.).
However, the means for terrorists to wage war far beyond ther own borders has been unleashed. In a sense, what we've seen is less like Pearl Harbor than it is like Hiroshima. While the concept of a massive terrorist attack against a far-away nation has been around for a very long time, this is the first time it has been executed.
So now the reality is sinking in. Extranational terrorist groups, which are just small collections of active individuals, are now capable of unleashing the kind of destructive force previously restricted for use by nation-states.
Imagine that you're Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of the UK. Your nation has been fighting IRA terrorism for decades, and now the US endures this massive assault from terrorists. The first thing that enters your mind is: "Perhaps the IRA will attempt something of this magnitude as well."
Repeat the scenario for any number of presidents, prime ministers, and chairmen of nations around the globe. Every nation-state has enemies. They all must now realize to one degree or another, that their enemies have just been shown that massive attacks are possible.
Recall that the United States gained mastery of nuclear weapons in the late 1940s, but by the 1950s, the Soviets had acquired their own. Soon the Chinese, Indians, and Israelis followed. Now there are over a dozen nuclear-capable states.
In the case of nuclear weapons, we've been fortunate enough to avoid any further use of them beyond WWII. But that is because nuclear weapons have been controlled, so far, by national command and control structures. The implications of launching nuclear weapons when you are the leader of a country, responsible for the survival of your own people, is immense.
Terrorists, who have no national sovereignty to defend, do not have such limitations on behavior.
So this is a world-wide conflict between nation-states and independent small groups who now have been shown a new way to press their goals. Alliances have always been a part of warfare, from the Trojan War to the Gulf War. But in the main, alliances have been formed to deal with one easily-identified enemy. For example, in WWII, the Allies banded together to fight the Axis. Though composed of Germany, Italy, and Japan, the components of theAxis were still easily pinpointed on a map.
Now the threat is much more diverse and much more diffuse - nation-states face potential terrorist action at virtually any time, any place.
Beyond the short-term, technical issues of how we fight terrorists, the long-term approach needs to be wholistic. The world is a smaller place now, and actions that impact one nation impact many. One result of this interconnectedness is that internal politics that disenfranchise, alienate, or radicalize people will now be looked at more closely.
A classic example of this is Israel. By assassinating top Intefada leaders, the Israelis are taking care of an immediate security threat, but they are simultaneously helping to create a whole new generation of disenfranchised Palestinian youth with nothing to lose. In short, they are creating terrorists.
The rest of the world, led by the United States, needs to exert more pressure on Israel to come to an equitable agreement with the Palestinian people, because this conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis is now no longer just their problem, it's everyone's problem.
We need also to think beyond military matters when attempting to diffuse conflicts. We're discovering that bin Laden's financial interests are extremely broad and that he has seemingly profited from the market downturn following his attacks. The international monetary system needs to be re-examined from perspective of international security. While financial privacy is important, when someone has been identified as a terrorist, we should be capable of choking off their most immediate air supply, which is money.
Every terrorist organization needs physical space to operate, even if their activities are dispersed and controlled from afar. Terrorist training camps in Libya, for example, have been showing terrorists how to wage war for decades now. Shutting them down is a key means of denying terrorists the ability to perfect their craft and plan their missions. If the international community collectively puts terrorism-supporting nations such as Iraq and Libya on notice, and destroys their ability to defend themselves swiftly and without warning if and when such camps are discovered on their territory, we'll see far less willingness to support terrorism.
Our HUMINT (human intelligence) capabilities were curtailed years ago as part of the "the Cold War is over, we don't need to be involved with nasty people" mentality of the time. We need to get off our high horse and get down in the mud. Human intelligence is vital to infiltrating terrorist cells and stopping violence before it starts.
Finally, our ability to defeat terrorists will not be contingent upon some sort of ballistic missile shiled costing billions of dollars. It will be contingent primarily on our ability to insert special operations forces at the right time and place to execute surgical strikes on terrorist cells. In short, we need to place the terrorists more off-guard than they can place us.
The western world has a wide array of resources in this regard, but the coordination of intelligence, logistics, and operational assets will be complicated. The more coordination, the more chances for over-complication and security leaks. Nonetheless, this must be a multinational effort, sustained over time.
It won't be easy. It won't involve teams of hackers taking down someone's website and winning the war. It will involve skilled, dedicated people risking their lives to kill terrorists. People will die, but it will truly be so that others may live. 21st century Americans hate to admit it, but wars aren't antiseptic, and they're not video games.
This one will be long, difficult, and frustrating, but one thing is certain: the terrorist's days of easy living are over.
Basically, Apple's idea was to build small software components that could talk to each other and be loaded as necessary to accomplish specific tasks.
It was a great idea, and still is. I think the problem isn't so much the technology implementation as it is getting developers to see the benefits of such an approach.
Yes, developers. If you're running a software company, creating small components allows you less room to innovate on features. This in turn makes it more difficult to market your products.
I know your suggestion was that Linux adopt such a component-based approach for productivity apps, and it wouldn't seem that the limitations of the commercial world would apply. But the dominant paradigm in office computing is still the monolithic app, because that's what commercial developers are providing.
So for now at least, Linux developers will probably have to fight this fight alone. In order to convince users to make the shift away from MS Office, et. al., Linux apps have to offer a solution that's easier to use and faster by a factor of at least two. It's been shown time and time again that in order to overthrow a paradigm, the resulting benefits have to be not just incrementally better, but exponentially better.
Finally, is it even worth the effort? See the October issue of Wired, for an article by former Red Hatter Russ Mitchell, about why going after the desktop is a bad idea.
For example, Microsoft is the biggest software company in the world specifically because they realized early on that consumers are less interested in getting quality than they are in getting something that meets their perceived needs.
This is an important point, because unfortunately the most important aspects of software quality are usually hidden from the end user. Since most consumers actually do realize that they don't know jack about the inner workings of their software, they elect not to get inovlved in the esoterica of which kernel is more stable or which file system kicks ass.
Let's make the assumption that your company's clients aren't consumers. Let's say they're aerospace engineers. Smart peope. People concerned with quality. But the quality they are most concerned with is the quality of their own work. So their attention is primarily focused on how well the software you build for them will help them create quality aerospace products.
Also, keep in mind that the cash that runs your client's company and your company has to come from somewhere. Cashflow can often be a huge issue for clients. If a client knows that they can spend $50k for something they know they'll get in an imperfect form one month from now, versus $100k for something that they know is more elegant more cost-efficient over the long haul, they may elect to spend the $50k because their short-term financial concerns dictate that they deal with a lower quality solution now if it will give them just enough to do what they need done.
Even if your manager understands that the quality way is better, more likely than not she'd have a tough time convincing the client of that. In fact, in my experience, clients often don't really want to hear about deep quality issues. "Just tell me the tradeoffs, and I'll make the decision" they'll say. They simply don't want to really know the nitty-gritty details. "That's what I hired you for!"
The Bottom Line is money, and if your software is good enough that your clients can make money with it, most of them will vote with their pocketbooks. Most companies simply follow the buck, from quarter to quarter.
One thing you might try is to evaluate your next employer not just on the work conditions and pay, but also on who their clients are. There are companies out there that actually think long-term. An excellent book on the subject, "Built to Last" goes into detail about the characteristics of visionary companies. Yes, it sounds like cheesy business-speak crap, but these guys conducted extensive research, and they avoid easy answers.
Find a company that serves long-term oriented clients, and you may find yourself a lot happier.
Attila the Hun actually almost never outnumbered his opponents. He won using carefully-crafted deception plans and sheer terror to demoralize his enemies.
The Allies were able to intercept and decrypt a huge chunk of Nazi messages throughout WWII as a result of their ongoing effort to crack Enigma. These decrypts probably shortened the war in Europe by months if not years, but they had to use the intercepts wisely, so as not to tip off the Germans.
During the 1950s, the Russians talked about atomic bombs 'rolling off the assembly lines like sausages', when they actually had a very limited stockpile.
The point is that sometimes you deceive your enemy into thinking that you're stronger than you are, and at other times you make them think you're weaker than you actually are.
Intelligence agencies are any nation's first and last line of defense. They're the ones that tip off leaders about potential dangers, well before they surface on CNN or in the pages of the Washington Times. They're also the ones who can provide the necessary misdirection so that critical programs are not detected by the intelligence resources of other nations.
Case in point: The F-117 Stealth Fighter. Remember when Testor's came out with a plastic model of what they thought the Stealth looked like? The Pentagon freaked out on Testor's and tried to keep them from selling the model kit. Of course, when it was revealed a few years later that an F-117 group had actually been flying *operationally* for several years, and that the Stealth fighter looked nothing like the model, we could all see the depth of the deception effort.
If the NSA releases its doors to the television cameras, *particularly* to 60 Minutes (which has a long history of not having a clue about defense-related matters), it's part of an extensive deception plan.
They're just doing their job.
I've got a two-tier setup that has space for my monitor, printer, USB hub, Visor dock, external CD burner, external HD, external Zip drive, flatbed scanner, my laptop, keyboard, and still enough space for the phone and two spots for putting all my paperwork and associated crap.
I've had other home desk setups before, usually cheap, one-shot arrangements. But as others have mentioned, the Anthro products are very high-quality, sturdy, and attractive. Think of it this way - if you use your home office for hours on end, day after day, wouldn't you rather invest a bit more money for something that will actually keep you happy?
that's it! expect to see me at your neighborhood McDonald's some time this weekend, with an Uzi in one hand, and a copy of Encyclopedia Britannica in the other. ;-)
I may just have to go postal...
I couldn't agree more. Classic cases of this (and I'm just naming a few off the top of my head here):
1) During development, the M1 tank was lambasted by the press because it used a turbine engine. This "gold plating" gives the M1 tremendous acceleration, allows the M1 to use a variety of fuels, and has helped it to become perhaps the most feared land weapon fielded today.
2) Similarly, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle was savaged by 60 Minutes. Unfortunately, many reporters seem completely uninformed about how weapons development and testing proceeds. Like any system, the initial testing version can't possibly be as robust and capable as the fielded version. During Desert Storm, the Bradley proved invaluable. In fact, several actually took direct hits from T-72 tanks and survived. Is version 1.0 of any software ever as good as version 2.0?
3) During the buildup of Operation Desert Shield, many in the media mistakenly opined that the US was unprepared for a desert war. This ignores the very obvious fact that US units had routinely gone through desert warfare training at the National Training Center for almost a decade. Many units also had desert experience through Bright Star joint exercises with Egypt. This is akin to saying that because it's Open Source, Linux is inherently insecure. Someone is just not catching a clue.
4) I don't know how many times I've seen the term "elite" applied to military units that are mediocre at best. A unit that might be considered "elite" in a Third World country is usally no match for a truly elite unit like the SAS, US Army Rangers, Australian SAS, etc. It's like saying "Serving pages from his Apple IIe, Bob was able to run a world-class, high-volume e-commerce website."
I could go on and on, but suffice it to say that my personal experience in the military leads me to believe that by in large, reporters are not as intellectually rigorous as they should be. There are a few good ones out there, like Tom Gjelten of NPR, but they seem few and far between.
This is, of course, absurd, because the neutron bomb's primary purpose was for tactical and operational, rather than strategic, use. The idea is that if you can affect your enemy over the same area with a 1 kiloton neutron weapon as with a 13 kiloton fission weapon, you can essentially "manage" the nuclear battlefield better.
The neutron bomb concept came out of a rethinking of US defense policy, a reorientation towards a strategy oriented around actually fighting the Soviet Union at the point of attack, rather than relying on the Massive Retaliation policy of the 1970s.
Although eventually the DoD found other methods of answering Soviet numerical superiority (deep strikes from the air, force multipliers like the M1 tank, precision guided artillery, cruise missiles, and so on), the neutron bomb was never seriously considered as a means of "saving the industry". Even generals know about radiation. ;-)
See here for a bit more about the neutron bomb in the context of overall defense planning.
The only deal I saw from DISH was a combined setup, but then again, I didn't go too far into their site to find out. That's great that it runs on Linux.
Glad you did throw it out there - just knowing that there are options, even if none is perfect, helps.
I'm not too keen on paying $100/mo for the DISH network with StarBand service included in that. Not to mention the fact that StarBand seems to run only on "PC"s, most likely meaning Windows machines. I'm assuming that rules out Macs and Linux boxes. Am I right?